just going out, may be some time

Sherlock's taking me out tonight (any minute now...he's just putting a clean shirt on). I don't know what we're doing, it's a surprise. I'm...amazed, amused, and touched.

I was also amazed and touched by everything L did this week to look after me while I was ill. And occasionally amused. He claims still not to be able to taste things properly after trying that napalm soup he made me. It was perfect though. And he picked up Sherlock from school, entertained him, fed him, and still somehow managed to do his job.

As he said, I know there are single parents who have to do that all the time, and I have no idea how they manage. It's my actual job, and I still get a lot of help, from L and Mrs H and Anthea when she's here, and even the boys, now that they're more used to the concept of chores.

Right, time to go... Hope you all have a lovely evening. I'm sure I will. 

not just ugh, contagious ugh

brb, coughing up phlegm and lungs for the foreseeable future. 

removable teeth

Hello, this is Mycroft.

John and I went to this museum of surgery today. They have an operating theatre from the 1800s, with tiered standing room all around it so students could come and watch the operations. We came up this spiral staircase:

man in a river

Mycroft and I went to the Tate Modern this morning. Afterwards, we walked along the river for a while. And saw this man...standing in it.

In the water. By the Millenium Bridge. With a microphone. Playing a guitar. An electric guitar. There was an amp on the shore. 

possibly turtles

If I've done this right, there will be a video of some turtles just under this sentence.

If I haven't...let me know, and I can add some pictures instead, but I'm through messing about with that video.

Today was mostly just walking, a search for Innie's cheese (we didn't find it), and a stop at Sherlock's school to see how the tadpoles are getting on (with permission this time). The turtles are not at Sherlock's school. He wanted to catch them and relocate them, but even if I'd approved of this idea, they were much too fast.

I find I'm missing L, even though he hasn't been gone anymore than usual this week. We don't have all that many lunches together, but I thought it'd be nice today and then remembered he's an hour and a half away and that wouldn't really work.

Mycroft's with his old tutor for a couple of hours, and Sherlock and I are just going to pick him up now. Want to leave us dinner suggestions? 

weird cheese

Yesterday, it was weird fruit; today it was weird cheese. I see a weird cheese and fruit platter in our future, since there was a limit to how much weird fruit the weird fruit salad would absorb before overflowing the edges of the bowl.

We have a stout cheese that's sort of geometrically patterned with little triangles and diamonds (my choice). We have a vampire cheese, which is crumbly and inundated with garlic (Sherlock's). And we have Stilton ice cream, which is of course not a cheese, but Mycroft insisted it was close enough. I'm not entirely sure I want to eat that one, but Mycroft says if I don't at least try it, I'm setting a bad example for Sherlock. Unfortunately, I think he's right.

We'd meant to go to the aquarium as well, but there were so many people when we got there that even Sherlock said maybe he could wait for another day. I think we'll have better luck going early. Thanks, incidentally, to everyone who gave us suggestions - I've got them written down. Might save Kew Gardens for when L can come with us. It sounds like something he'd enjoy, though I'm sure he's been before.

L's done for today and on his way home. I'm glad it seems to be going well for him. I suppose I'm also somewhat ambivalent about him going on this course. For reasons I can't seem to pin down. Anyway, it's done now, no sense dwelling on it. 

easter

When Harry and I were still young enough to dye Easter eggs, we usually went to our grandmother's house for it. She wouldn't buy the commercial kits, so it was onion skins or beets - basically either yellow-brown or pinky-red. They weren't very exciting, and the best part was rolling then down the hill in her back garden afterward, although when I say rolling, I actually mean chucking, often quite hard. I think both of us would've been even happier if they hadn't been hard boiled.

The idea was that you won if your egg was intact at the bottom, and you got to eat it, but both of loathed hard boiled eggs, so it wasn't much incentive.

And then one year we hurled them down as usual, went to collect them, and found that under the smashed bits they were all chocolate inside. She'd poked holes in the shells with a needle, drained the eggy part out, washed them, and filled them up with chocolate before she gave them to us.

She never did it again, and I can't blame her, because it must've been a beastly job. Lovely surprise though. I talked to my mum today and asked if she remembered that Easter. She said yes, because her mother had called her the day before we arrived while she was in the middle of doing it. She said it was the only time she'd ever heard her mum swear. I can believe it.

I am not that patient, and all the boys' eggs were of the solid chocolate or creme eggs. Fortunately, that's the way they seem to like it, especially Sherlock. He claims to have eaten 14, which I'm sure can't be true because we didn't buy that many, but his sugar high was epic. If the crash is equally epic, he may sleep till Christmas.

locks forever

I hardly know where to start. It was a very busy weekend, and with the boys home from school it's been an equally busy week. The week has mainly involved laundry and cooking and running about in the park. The weekend mainly involved...

...Locks. Lots of locks. Loads of locks. Legions of locks. A dubious birthday present perhaps, but made up for by the sight of L vaguely sweaty and breathless with his sleeves rolled up after the seventeenth one. Or occasionally sans shirt. I'll ignore the part where he took an involuntary swim with a decomposing rabbit. Although I do now wish that I'd thought to rinse his jeans and all Sherlock's clothes out at the time rather than stuffing them in a plastic bag to marinate.

It was lovely, actually. Even the locks. The boys were doing them on their own by the end - with the help of the dogs, of course - while L and I lounged about and tried to make sure Sherlock didn't go overboard, either literally or in his interrogation of strangers.

Sample questions:
"Why do you have so many rings in your lip? Doesn't that make it hard to eat? What happens to your nose ring if you get a cold, doesn't it go all snotty?"

"Why is your moustache so big?"

"Why is your flute so tiny?" (It was a piccolo.)

"Why are you wearing slippers outside?"

And, perhaps most potentially awkward, "Why are there three of you and only one bed in your boat?"

Everyone answered kindly and to the best of their ability.

It was a perfect trip. I may have to start looking forward to my birthdays again if they're going to be like this.

And after we got home, I got the most surprising of my presents - a birthday card from L's mum.