"Bother!" said Pooh. "Eeyore, grab the paperwork and start inventing some sort of plausible-sounding Personal Development Plan."

My absence has now been long enough that I figured I should write something explaining what I'm doing, so....

Last weekend the in-laws were visiting for Barry's birthday, and this weekend we were visiting the in-laws for Barry's uncle's birthday. Both of these were pleasant interludes (especially Barry's uncle's birthday, which was a surprise party arranged for his 70th, complete with disco and buffet meal, both excellent, and which gave us the chance to see people we haven't seen since the wedding and show Jamie off to the assembled hordes) but I am now even more severely behind than usual on all the blogging and other Internet-related activity I want to do. So, I was looking forward to catching up this coming Tuesday (my weekly day off) and next weekend.

And then, while driving home tonight, I suddenly remembered that my appraisal is the week after next, and I'm supposed to have completed a bunch of paperwork in preparation for this by Monday week. I'd planned to take the forms with me this weekend in order to get them done while the doting grandparents watched the baby, but unfortunately this otherwise brilliant plan was scuppered by me forgetting all about it at the crucial time. I am somewhat annoyed with myself for this.

Oh, well. I'll scribble something down before it has to be handed in, but it is yet one more thing keeping me from the dazzlingly incisive posts I was planning to make. (Yes, they would have been dazzlingly incisive, thank you very much. Hah. Prove otherwise.)

Meanwhile, it's extremely nice to know that people are reading this blog. Hello and welcome to the new people who've posted to the comments sections, and hello again to what now seem to be some regular readers. I do actually own the No-Cry Sleep Solution already, but thanks anyway to the person who offered to send it. And, Em, thanks for sharing the post about the different things you tried with Micah's sleep - excellent read. Did things ever improve with the 45 minutes of crying? (I remember you posting about it on the group, and someone suggesting putting him down earlier.) And the house... ah, yes, the house. Well, the story is now longer and more complicated than I can face going into, but currently we are going ahead with the purchase after sorting out just enough of the issues to make us feel that we didn't quite have grounds for a last-minute dropping-out. Things should be sorted, one way or t'other, within the next week. We hope.