You should be ok VG - we live at the bottom of a valley and the elders, so to speak, say that it is three days from thaw to highest water level.
We are right next to a stream which is a trickle in the summer but it has been a foaming river-type thing this week. We have 4ft of leeway still as the channel is deep but watching the field at the back flooding was a bit worrying.
No1 - I have drafted a hundred replies to your emails the other day in my head. My mum came to stay unexpectedly and it hasn't been possible to write any of them out.
What follows may be incoherent as everyone is circling asking me what is for lunch. look in the fridge yourselves you &*£$--
Having small dc and keeping your relationship on an even keel is just bloody hard. Before you have the small ones you lavish attention on your dh and then your time and affection gets diverted (more with each child), they don't get how much your life/body/outlook has changed, they are rarely in that position of being the person with whom the buck stops re. childcare decisions, they can find something else to do (like cleaning, article writing etc) when the whining steps up. And everyone is knackered.
I love my dh absolutely, and he is a proper feminist. But even then it is very tricky to keep the power balance between the sah parent and the working one fair. If someone is working all the time they operate in a 'getting things done, pushing on with targets' kind of way that makes them very about the way you operate as a sah parent. Much of that job is about learning to manage boredom and repetition, and stringing out activities to fill out the time.
When dh didn't get why I was frazzled and tired after days with the small ones and was kind of jealous of my 'nice' days at home with them I pointed out that if I was in a customer services job and came home saying that one of my clients had verbally abused me all day while another headbutted me regularly he would not think I was having an easy time ...
For what it's worth, your emails about your dh always make me feel sure that you love him. Your kindness and generosity in talking about his issues was palpable. As your friend, I would want to ask you to make sure that that understanding doesn't mean that you let a person away with treading on your rights. Remember your mn name: no-one should put no1 in a corner.
DH has spent 3 hours, with me and the children this morning and has just said under his breath, 'why is this baby always crying'. V. important to get them to realise the responsibility and effort involved in being the person who has to deal with that all day every day.
Got to run as huffing and puffing is getting extreme and I don't want my house blown down.
Buckets my dear- are you feeling any better today? Did you get a chance to talk to dh?