Feeling I should write. in Et tu Brute? The ides of March must mean spring 2016!

So I’m writing. It’s sunny and warm, the cats are living it up!! They are perfecting the art of fly stalking and actually catch the odd one! They’ve even eaten stingy insects - there’s usually a little twitching after that bah ha ha!

Well, interestingly, Facebook messenger is now only available on smartphones by way of the messenger app. I don’t have the Facebook app nor the messenger app because I don’t like the permissions. I mentioned that on Facebook and within minutes, received a pm!! I still have no idea who it’s from lol! To be honest, this inability to use personal messages has brought me a step closer to giving up fb… Their need to make me need more stuff on my phone actually puts me off as I’m in a world where I feel like I need less, well, less stuff, less connectivity.

The girls are already on less connectivity - half an hour of non educational tablet (anything to help with homework is allowed) and one tv show per day. I’ve seen a huge difference in them, Lila is creating so many artworks and inventing things, she’s out on her bike around our street on and off all day, T has been building Lego, going on the trampoline and is, currently, playing with corn flour (corn starch in America) and water - if you’ve never done it I thoroughly recommend it! There are fewer eruptions although they’ll never stop totally! It also means that they choose their tv carefully instead of watching whatever happens to be on. I’ve been leaving my phone upstairs more (if it’s near me it’s far too tempting) and my hand sewn, hexagon patchwork quilt is growing, slowly but steadily.

Well, my achilles isn’t happy again, but I backed off earlier than last time - as soon as it felt funny I ran 4km (the distance I was from home) and have stretched, strengthened and massaged since. Talaia and I have started swimming together every Wednesday for half an hour, during Lila’a swimming lesson. We go in the other side of the pool to do lane swimming. I can’t wait for her fitness/confidence to grow so I can get a proper workout! She gets into little autistic panics which often involve grabbing me… I think the lifeguards have figured out that I’m a strong swimmer because they’ve stopped leaping off their chairs as soon as she grabs me! She can swim, she just needs to remember it! On top of that, I went for a bike ride this morning, the rain was lovely, big, glollopy summer rain drops which I felt soak through my clothes, my socks, my shoes, my helmet, but it felt good. I cycled 14km and grinned the grinniest grin ever; rain drops bouncing off my teeth as I went! I think I’ll be running again next weekend but would like to chuck a bike ride into the weekly mix 😃🚲🏃🏊wait, is that a triathlon I see?! Nah, I’ll leave those to my brother I reckon!

Ps. Half time in the northern Ireland v Poland game and those are the most extreme stats I’ve ever seen!