Too....tired....to....work...

I should at this very moment be writing my new plan that will see my home office turn into a global PR empire. I should be coming up with extensive action plans and to do lists. It's not like I even have to do the stuff on the to do lists, I just need to write them. But when you are very, very tired, your brain doesn't work. And I don't think writing a business plan with a tired brain is going to result in a very effective business. Certainly not one that is going to take over the PR world in a masterful feat of world domination type of way.

I am tired because my husband is away. Again. And I'm experiencing my first full week of both children going to school/pre-school. This has meant a) no Wednesday off like I normally have b) I have to make dinner every night because the nursey isn't feeding them anymore c) I have to make packed lunches every day d) I seem to have to wash and dry uniforms hourly and e) I have to pack gym bags, book bags, spare pants in case of pee accident bags, sign homework books, ensure show and tell stuff is done and sign a million forms. Each little thing takes up a few of my brain cells, and believe me, given the amount of wine I have drunk in my 35 years, there aren't many of the fellows left. This means the remaining brain cells have to work twice as hard, hence the tired brain syndrome that I seem to be experiencing.

And then there's the pirate pizza party looming on the horizon that needs organising. Today I made the foolish mistake of taking both boys directly from school to Tesco's to buy party supplies. A rookie mistake and one I shouldn't have made but I did (mainly because I just don't have another chance to do it). So I had to deal with the consequences of my 4.5 year old not being able to choose the prize for the pass the parcel game (because he wanted something large and very expensive and I wanted a £2 Mr Men pirate book). And so he unleashed his fine set of lungs upon the poor Tesco shoppers. It's amazing how a small person's voice can reverberate off the ceilings of such a vast space. He was so loud that people literally flocked from across the store in the hope of seeing something incredibly exciting, like someone losing an arm in a wood chipper. But all they saw was one small, tired boy exceptionally unhappy with his lot in life, and they left tutting about how he needs a good smack and 'if only parents could control their children' etc. Which is always nice and soothing to one's stress levels.

Tomorrow I get to do all of the above mentioned bag packing and brief child 1 on what he needs to do for show and tell (apparently it's a lot of showing and not much telling). Then I get to launch a client, write the business plan I should be doing now, all my regular day to day work, then fetch kids, take them to swimming lessons, feed them, and then spend my evening inflating a large plastic pirate ship which is going to become a ball pool. I've had to do this because it's guaranteed to rain on Saturday which means I can't send the kids out onto the trampoline to bounce off the e-numbers from the party sweets, and our lawn is so long we'd definitely lose children, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but their parents might complain.

And Friday isn't shaping up to be much easier as I have to (after work) make pizza dough, fairy cakes, prepare pizza toppings, prepare fairy cake toppings including tiny little pirate sails on cocktail sticks, blow up balloons, vacuum the gunge on the downstairs floors, wrap the pass the parcel, string up pirate bunting, strategically position chairs around our kitchen island to accomodate 8 mini pizza chefs dressed as pirates, and drink several vats of wine.

So this is why I'm tired. You see I don't make it up. I really do have quite a lot to do. And one thing I shouldn't be doing is whittering on here when I have a billion other more enterprising things to do. But this is where I brain dump. It's my mental spa. A mini brain massage before carrying on....But my de-stress time is over. Time to crack on.

The Business Link Man is coming. I'm a bit twitchy

I have a vast amount of work to do but I can't settle down and do it. That's because I have a man from Business Link coming to see me in about 15 minutes time. Since setting up my little business 2 years ago, I've yet to get any real expert advice so I'm a little nervous in case the man falls off his chair laughing at me when I start describing the way I work. I think they're trained not to do that. Or at least I hope they are, even if inside they are tutting and clucking at the idiot small business owners they have to meet.

I've written a list of all the things I want to ask him, but I fear that the allocated hour won't get us through more than the top 3 items. I've also printed off my business plan, such as it is, and I've vaccuumed the downstairs bit of the house, put away the toys and cleaned the kitchen in the hope that it projects a professional 'office' environment. Ordinarily I would take him into our drawing room - which is the smart grown up room that is never used - but it is currently filled with piles of clothes destined for a women's refuge shelter and eBay sales. Plus there's the start of a 1000 piece puzzle scattered on the coffee table and which is likely to stay that way until the children leave home. I won't show him my study which looks as though the taliban have been carrying out bomb detonation training classes in it.

I've put some lipstick on and changed out of my slippers and into real shoes. I'm all twitchy. I keep telling myself that this isn't a test. It's not the taxman. He's just a nice government-funded expert to help me grow my business. Yet my heart is racing. I'm not sure what I'm more afraid of. Him telling me that I've been doing everything wrong. Or him telling me that I've been doing everything right and now here's another million things to do. Because I'm just not sure when I'm going to be able to do them. Ordinarily I would say between 2 and 3am, but son 2 seems to have taken that slot with his nightly birthday cake nightmares. Every night he wakes up in a vile temper, flinging his moo moo cow across the room and shouting that I've made the wrong birthday cake. Yesterday I was told that it had to be a dinosaur cake, despite it being a pirate party. I don't know how to make a dinosaur cake. However, I could stick the plastic dino toys into some buttercream icing atop a fairy cake. I wonder if that will cut it?

Sorry, I'm wibbling. Just nervous. Better get off blog and mentally prepare. Practice my birth breathing. Who would have thought it would come in handy so often?