The great escape, thwarted

It's tough, pumpkin, coming up with something new to write to you about every day. There's so much going on, both in the world at large, and inside my head, that everytime I sit down to write to you I have to somehow squish it down into something that's both palatable and readable. I try to make every entry in here about a single thing, so that I don't get sidetracked and try to spill my whole brain onto the keyboard (which apart from anything else would make an awful mess).

At the moment,we're trying to get everything set up for when you arrive. To that end, we're taking care of stuff now that we won't have the time, the energy or the money to do after you get here. When I say changes, I mean both physical and mental changes, in the way we live, and in the house that we live in. We're organising, weeding, painting, discarding, buying, decorating, destroying, building, planting and planning all at once. Each weekend we try to have a major project that we think we can knock over in two days, in between our social schedule.

This weekend will be all about making the house a bit nicer by putting the dogs outside. Now this has been tried before, but with less than ideal results. Having a dog who is a criminal genius has led to numerous and creative modifications of original specification in fencing and barriers, after many arrivals home at the end of a long day to find ever more creative methods of escape and destruction being employed by Miss Purdey and assorted cohorts.

This weekend, pumpkin, marks the end of all that. Lovely puppies who until now have led a carefree life of idyllic romping on their parent's bed will be banished to the backyard to think about their crimes. This will be managed by the installation of a special doggy fence that will stop them from tunelling through to next door to 'play' with the rabbit like they did at Christmas. What this also means is that the dogs will not have to go to the toilet in the courtyard anymore, which again, should lead to the courtyard smelling nicer.

I know this all could sound to you like me being selfish and just trying to get a lovely courtyard out of this deal, but the flipside is that the house will be just the same when we come home as it was when we left it. It seems a simple enough idea, but this is a very exciting concept for me, pumpkin, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

This will, of course, only last until you're old enough to be left in the house by yourself, at which stage I will prepare to once again return home and bear witness to destruction on a grand scale.