The gardening/housekeeping chat is very calming even though I don't know a weed from a plant. I love to look at a good garden - working on one however is a totally different thing. Lovely picture book, thank you for sharing.
Willow that must have been so scary for you having that money taken. Good job your bank were on the ball. Funnily enough something similar happened to self absorbed friend just a couple of weeks ago (it probably won't surprise you to know I could tell you about it in great detail if you'd like?!) Mark never liked her because of her total preoccupation with herself but my take has always been at least you know what you get with her. But yes I think, for a few weeks anyway, I'll try to see less of her.
Cake they always forget to take something with them don't they? And they either forget to bring back loads of things (mostly new things) or they bring back a load of other childrens' stuff. I think what you said about proper counselling is prob a wise move. I think I should probably look into it but it seems like effort!
Somer your MIL sounds nice? I'm sorry you're struggling a bit at the minute too. I've only ever been to yoga once in my life and decided that, just as with aerobics, I'm too uncoordinated to follow which bit of me I'm meant to put where. Hope your meeting at school went well.
Squirrels I'm not in a good place at the minute either - I don't know if it helps to share that with you or not. I hope so. In fact, today has been a really really bad day. I'm just so utterly miserable. 14 weeks today so nearly four months - nobody has suggested as much but I feel people will be expecting me to get over it by now. Mark died in February (admittedly the end of) and as its June now, February probably does sound like an age ago to most people.
I think because in general I've coped better than people were expecting me to they think I'm ok. I'm not, and feeling less so every day :(. Not depressed as such or suicidal just purposeless and pointless and nobody's priority. Don't want to be either unless it's Mark's. I can't articulate just how much I miss him, I can't believe how much I miss him. And I can't accept I'll never see him again. I just can't.
As for the bad parent front I'll sign up for that too. I'm just grateful that three of mine are old enough to cope physically/practically and that they give the youngest one a lot of support. Mentally of course is a different story and ds2 has his first A level tomorrow. Hopefully they, and yours Squirrels and Somer will look back and acknowledge that we did the best we could for them at a time that was hard for us too. And that any failings on our parts stemmed from great losses and not from lack of love for them.
Also, I've never been a believer in having lots of things organised for them to do. I think after the first two got to a certain age, and I'd heard the words "what are we doing today" a million times (exaggerate? Me?) and I'd worn myself out, bankrupted us and bored myself to tears, I very quickly subscribed to the philosophy of "less is more". Or in other words - entertain yourselves, you'll thank me for it one day!