6.30: Arrive home.
7.00: Eat
7.30 – 9.30: Wrangle children into bed.
9.30: Decide not to turn on computer. I will talk to husband or watch television or read my excellent book. Do so.
10.00: Help husband deck the house with laundry. Have my efforts rejected as “laundry does not dry in a bundle”. Mutter darkly about the joy of owning a (very bad for the environment) dryer.
10.15: Husband goes to bed. I tell him I will be up in a minute as I want to read my book in bed.
10.16: Slip over to the computer for a quick look. Cat hops up on my lap with contented purr.
10.17: Stare dolefully at yesterday’s blog post which has received no comments (yes, this remark is addressed to YOU).
10.18: Draft some deathless prose. Post it.
10.35: Trot off to bloglines where I find 630 new posts.
11.30: Still here, reading away, eyesight going, fingers freezing (heat has gone off, haven’t bothered to turn it on again as I will be going to bed in 5 minutes).
11.40: Decide to skip reading the full feed from the Huffington Post, wonder why I ever subscribed. Nearly at the end now. Hurrah.
12.00: OK midnight, I’m definitely going to bed now. Definitely, definitely. Just going to comment on a couple of posts.
12.30: Oh God, oh God, it’s really late, I must go to bed. I’ll be exhausted tomorrow.
12.45: Just going to have a quick look at my sitemeter and then I’m going to bed, definitely, definitely. Look at those readers in China, I wonder how they got here? Oh right, they were searching for wafflemakers. Did anyone look at those links I put in, let’s just quickly check the outclicks.
1.00: Oh God, it’s one in the morning. I must go to bed. I must. I must. Just going to quickly check how does this feedburner/twitter [insert technology of choice here] thing works.
1.15: Too baffling. OK, now I’m definitely going to bed. Just a quick check on the email and then I am definitely going to bed.
1.30: OK, delete the junk mail, tum ti tum. Send a couple of quick mails.
1.45: Maybe just check back to see whether anyone has commented on my deathless prose. Maybe, maybe, but no, oh wait, 45 spam comments. Delete same.
1.50: Just one quick last look at bloglines.
2.10: OK, that’s it. I am definitely going to bed now. Dislodge cat. Try to warm frozen fingers.
2.15: Just going to have a quick read of my book in the bathroom while I wash my teeth and floss.
2.30: God, this book is really good, why did I play on the computer all evening when I could have been reading this?
2.45: Move to sitting on the stairs. No, I’m going to stop reading. I’ll just fill a hot water bottle for myself as I am now frozen to the bone. Filch tepid bottle from daughter’s bed. Go downstairs book in hand and fill bottle up from the kettle. Back upstairs, book in hand.
3.00: Will sit for just one moment on the stairs with delightfully warm bottle toasting my perished extremities. This book is really excellent. If I go to bed now and don’t get up until 8 I will still have five hours sleep which is lots, Margaret Thatcher survived on four (though, of course, that explains why she was so cranky).
3.45: Finish book. Put child on the toilet. Crawl into bed. Husband says blearily “what time is it?” Am frozen. Get up again to refill hot water bottle. Back to bed to instant and dreamless sleep.
5.30: Husband cannot sleep. He tosses and turns and eventually gets up. I say blearily “what time is it?” He goes downstairs to put on a wash and do some work.
6.00: Some child crawls into bed beside me. I swear that tonight I will go to bed early. This can, in fact, be achieved. I say to my husband “help me, stay here and make me turn off the computer”. And he does and then I am tucked up and lights off by 11.
