1. Sometimes, at work, when I’m befuddled and feel quite moronic, I think about the nice things people said to me — not just nice, but totally over-the-top supportive and kind — when I despair-posted the other week and then I smile to myself and soldier on. I never said thank you to those people, so thank you. Your sweetness lives on in my brain heart place.

2. I channelled the real Santa and bought Arlo a ridiculous Nerf gun for Christmas. Because nothing says Christmas like a gun made to kill zombies. If foam darts could kill zombies we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, would we.

3. I was having a direct message conversation with my fabulous father-in-law the other day. We were talking about squirrels and their natural predators and he wrote, “It’s a tough world when you taste good & aren’t too bright” and I just keep seeing it at the top of my DMs in twitter and every time I see it I laugh and wonder if I could tattoo that somewhere on my person or if I should just put it on the blog and have it live forever here instead of on my skin, where it would take up rather a lot of space.

Well, now that’s done.

4. I walked into a pointy part of our banister last week and I have had a black eye for a whole week and I am really tired of people making domestic abuse jokes. I’m still participating in the conversations with people, because I know what kind of conversation they’re expecting to have and I’m too tired to crusade but I’m thinking percentage-wise at least one person who has been present for one of the many “oh did you REALLY walk into a banister?” conversations I’ve had this past week has actually been abused by a partner and that just makes me sad.

5. The other day I cried walking home from taking the kids to school because this woman was taking her grade-one-aged daughter to school and they were very late and the girl didn’t want to go and the mom was dragging her up the hill and there was crying and yelling and the daughter dropped to the snow and wouldn’t get up and I just couldn’t take it. Sometimes I just can’t take it.

6. All the clear, cold, snowy weather we were having made me a bit panicky. As Eli put it two days ago, “I wish all this snowing would just stop.” (he was cold)(I’m just a creature of habit who needs rain to survive, apparently.)(Don’t get me wrong, if I could pick what kind of weather I’d prefer to have for thirty days straight I would pick sunshine and cold over dark and rainy, but I’m USED to dark and rainy and we fears change we does.)

7. If I had to work more than two or three days a week I would be typing this from the psychiatric ward. Picking a part time job was the smartest thing I ever did.

8. It’s exactly two months until my fortieth birthday!

9. I don’t have a ninth thing but I can’t leave it at eight because I detest the number eight and the number nine is automatically more powerful.

Here is a photo to compensate.(?)

Eli, practising for his first Facebook profile picture, which will be taken at his first Kings of Leon show.