Well, just spent a good two hours in the kitchen making a fairly big dent in the pile of washing up. There's still more to be done, don't worry. -.-

What I *want* to do at the moment is continue writing the stories I've been writing. What I want *to have done* in the near future is made progress on costumes. I don't seem to get much done on either of those.

I do feel like I just can't catch up these days. I spent a few hours earlier trying to get some work-work done (i.e. work for a client of my business rather than house-work). Didn't make a huge amount of headway there, to be honest. I do wonder whether I'd be better to leave that until after ConFuzzled. They'll probably be understanding, and it's a longer-term project that I've not got done for quite a few weeks now anyway.

The big things I really want to get done in the next week are costume things: some creation, some modification, and some repair. Given that my parents and I will be away from Thursday to Sunday to stay with family for my mum's birthday, that gives me (counting on fingers) Wednesday this week, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday next week, then I'm off to CFz.

I hope I can even get the "essentials" done in that time. I probably ought to wash my Spider-suits. I *really* want to make a replacement anchored hood for my Power Ranger suit (the original that came with it was grossly oversized and also managed to become slightly pink in the wash recently, oops). I want to try to add padding to the helmet, partly to reduce echoing and make it easier to talk, but also to make it stay in place on my head. Then there's a new suit I've been building - I'm exceedingly unlikely to get that finished in time, but I at least want to add the waistband I've made to the leggings I made, because they can be worn separately. I also want to finish sewing the zip into the body suit and possibly add a simple tail, because that would mean it was finished from the neck down (except for feet, I suppose, but I can just use shoes for now) and although I hate to wear suits in public without a head, I could at least show it to friends in private then.

There are loads of other things I've been failing to get round to recently too: ride bicycle, ride motorbike, walk/run/swim, spec and order parts for the new computer I've been promising to build for my dad for years now, replace one of my UPSs that's failing, build myself a new home server to replace one that's well over a decade old, replace my desktop machine, and a lot of overdue upgrades and improvements to my hosting network at the datacentre which I've been failing to get round to for ages. And there are things at home to fix: the main oven broke recently (although the small top oven still works thankfully), the electrics in the workshop need replacing because there's an earth fault somewhere, the rennovation of the stairs my dad almost finished years ago needs finishing, the overhaul of the dining room likewise (one door to hang and a few other minor bits), and... I'm not sure what else, but there's certainly a mountain of cleaning that really needs doing if not other repairs.

There's just so much and it's so hard to get on with anything these days, and my parents' health both failing isn't helping. My mum's dementia hasn't been getting noticeably worse lately, but it's bad enough that she can do almost nothing without help. My dad's generally in decent health (but rather unfit, quite overweight, and tired a lot of the time) but today he *ran* for the bus while on his way to his blood test appointment (for adjusting his warfarin dose) and his hip's been hurting him since he got home. I really hope it's just a minor ouch that'll heal up really soon - today I had to do pretty much all the meals, and some laundry that he would normally have done. The aforementioned washing up has been building up for days because he spends so much time sitting watching films with my mum, to keep her company, probably partly because I suggested a while back that he should spend lots of time with her because socialising is the best treatment, but I didn't mean just watch TV! But he's got into the habit of watching TV most of the day most days. And that means lots of things just don't get done... I monitor my parents' email nowadays (at their request) because otherwise important things can get missed for days and lost amongst the torrent of (what I'd consider) spam (but almost all of it is stuff they signed up for, so technically it's not spam). So I'm an email secretary on top of so many other things.

At least the final guests have left the rental house now. We've owned the house next door since the early 1990s and rented it out to, mostly, holiday makers, itinerant workers (including actors and theatre technicians, Wimbledon tennis players, floor installation people, and others) and people who need a temporary home while theirs is repaired (floods, subsidence, fire damage, etc). The last people who stayed in the house were from Germany and have been visiting every year for I think over 25 years now. Lovely folks, said they will miss staying in their "second home". But anyway, the house is now empty and sold-subject-to-contract, and we're buying-subject-to-contract a place near my sisters where hopefully my parents can have much more social contact, I can have much more help looking after them, and with luck improve the last part of their lives.

Anyway, I'm over 5700 characters so I probably ought to stop boring everyone. Appreciate your health while you have it; I'm getting an object lesson in how it can fail when we get old.