Two months! TWO MONTHS!

I am officially crap at keeping in touch with... the tinternet.

So, how have you been? What have you been up to? Any news?

As for me... well, I'm going to have to get my filofax out just to remember what's happened.

A couple of nights out... Went to view a house called Ty Canol with Steve, and loved it. It's gorgeous. More about that later.

Euan turned four! I bought him a cake this time, for simplicity's sake, and put on a decent spread of food, inviting assorted relatives to come and say hello. Nana Jan (my mum), Uncle Dan (my brother) and Grandma Rene (my grandma) came round. Grandpa (my dad) travelled up, bringing Granny (my granny), which was lovely, as she's never been to the house before. Nana Su and Aunty Shell popped in for a bit, after some persuasion. I think they're still convinced that we should be at war in some way, because I rudely dumped their Karl.

It was all lots of fun, and Euan loved having everyone around. We'd been to the Jolly Jungle with Andrea & Ethan the day before as well, so it was definitely his weekend. Nicola even came round on the Monday night, so he had another day of attention, not that he was complaining.

The following week I had three estate agents to come and value my house. Yes, we'd liked Ty Canol that much! £110,000 was the average, which sounds fair enough. It's got positives (location, decor, chickens...) and negatives (lack of garden, small, needs some work) so I think the price reflects that. Have a look and tell me how lovely it is! Go on!

That weekend was Andrea's birthday weekend in Manchester, which was nearly cancelled because of heavy snow. We made it there (just!) with some scary/exciting moments along the way. A nice pub meal followed by a bit of drinking then the Comedy Club, with drinking, then back to our hotel for... more drinking. For the first time in ages, I was really in a partying mood, and I wasn't just thinking about how comfy and warm bed would be! Unfortunately, Andrea and Steve both felt tired and wanted to go to bed. Ah well. We managed to get some shopping done the next day as well, before going back to collect Steve and go home. Lots of fun.

Then Valentine's Day. Andrea kindly babysat, so Steve and I could go out for a nice meal, which was lovely. First time in ages I'd got properly dressed up, even if the high heels made walking a little slow and tottering. First time I'd ever been out for a meal on Valentine's Day. We went to the new Chinese in town, where they had divided all their tables into tables-for-two. It was quite odd, seeing all the couples out for the evening. All shapes and sizes. They put us right at the back of the room, which at least meant we didn't have people on all sides of us. The adjacent couple were really young. And quite sweet, and utterly clueless. When asked if they would like a drink, the girl kept repeating, "I don't mind, anything!" until the lad, in exasperation, ordered two pints. The lad's parents turned up at one point, sat one table along, stayed for one drink, and teased them mercilessly. The young couple talked about fights they had seen/been involved in/heard about whilst eating their chicken curries, then left quite early, which meant Steve and I had comparative privacy for the remainder of our too-many-course meal. We thought about simply smashing the window and rolling down the hill to the car, but managed to bloatedly stagger back in the end.

Then that following weekend my chosen estate agent came to take photos of the house. I'd been gradually tidying the house all week, but Friday night saw frenzied activity, boxing up clutter and cleaning surfaces that had been quite happily grimy for years. Sylvia (Steve's mum) came round to help us, and when Steve popped to his mate's house for a couple of hours, the two of us carried on, relentlessly scrubbing and clearing and tidying. The couple of hours turned into five hours, and Sylvia eventually went home some time after midnight. A decent amount of camaraderie and teamwork, combined with a couple of naughty ciggie breaks, had helped the time pass. Steve came back around 1am, wondering why I was a bit grumpy. I wouldn't have minded, but the only reason I was disturbing all that dust was so that I could sell the place and move in with him. He could have picked up a duster.

The following week... Euan was down in Cardiff with his dad. I went to see Pan's Labyrinth, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Also had another night out with Andrea, and then went to baby Anya's first birthday party. Euan was quite well-behaved for most of it, and I even managed to get him to go to sleep so I could relax a bit. Felt a bit guilty carrying a sleeping boy out into a taxi and home later on, but he only stirred a bit, and didn't seem to mind the disturbance.

Then I had the first viewing of my house. Very scary. I've since had seven other viewings, and considering the amount of effort I put into that first one, you could say standards have slipped a bit. By last week (one viewing Tuesday, two more Wednesday night), I was greeting people with, "I'm terribly sorry but I haven't had time to tidy up properly, but if you can just try and ignore the clutter..." The House Doctor would be horrified, I know.

The thing is, it looks like we can't have Ty Canol after all. Someone else put in an offer, and it might very well all go through. And Steve's got to wait for his mum's house sale to go through first anyway... so it all seems to be mounting up against us. But I've told my estate agent all this, and they keep encouraging me to have viewings anyway, so it's easier just to say OK. One person made an offer. It was too low anyway, but if anyone offered the asking price, I'd have to seriously consider whether to accept, because then at least we'd be halfway there. Pffft, complicated grown-up stuff. Boooring.

The weekend after, I went to The Big Ballet in Rhyl with some of the girls from work. We stopped for a meal on the way, where I'm convinced the Curse of Gem struck, because the staff were delightfully clueless, the food was decidedly unimpressive, and the service was incredibly slow. Still, we made it there on time, and watched twenty or so overweight Russian dancers strutting their stuff. I really enjoyed it, it was nicely done with just the right balance of talent, choreography and humour. The others seemed only to take an interest when the six (thin) male dancers came on in the second half. Honestly, it said in the blurb that it would be large ballet ladies, what did they expect?

At the start of this month (yep, nearly there, only a couple more weeks to blether about) I went to see Maggie Boyden. She used to be our welfare officer in work, and she will still come in and see people even though we're supposed to get all our support from emails and telephone services.

So we had a nice chat. It just so happened that I really needed it that morning, because as soon as I got in I was deluged with messages. Ick. I'm gradually reaching the conclusion that my job conflicts directly with my ethical views. Not all the time, but sometimes it just seems so unfair. And I don't know what to do about it. Part of the time I just want to walk out and tell them to get someone else to do their dirty work, and the rest of the time I'm thinking, "At least it's me phoning them, and not someone who doesn't care."

Either way, this is not a sustainable situation. But hey, since the whole team will cease to exist in a few months, I won't have to put up with it forever, so I might as well see where I end up.

Dad popped up to deliver some beer to someone (yep, he's got his micro-brewery going), and managed to hang around for lunch with me and Dan. Went to the Pant yr Ochain. Very nice. Then that afternoon I went to see Euan's teacher for my first parents evening. Ooh. He's getting on fine, but he's quite... "strong minded". I think they meant awkward and cheeky. Overall they seemed quite happy with how he's doing, but he apparently doesn't like sitting down to do boring old work. Well, who does? So I'm not worried about that.

Then... another night out with Andrea that Friday. We tend to start off in Barracuda, where we can get food if necessary, and play a few games of pool, and go on somewhere else if it's a late one. All good fun.

And... I spotted an advert on the Staff Notice Board, which was set up a few months back. It's a national thing, on the intranet, and it's usually full of boring stuff. But this was someone from NICO in Newcastle asking for people who liked gaming and fancied writing reviews. So I sent an email asking for more details, he sent me a web address, and explained what was involved. I wrote a sample review, they seemed to like it, and hey presto, I am now an official games reviewer for MadGamers! My review of Viva Pinata is on the site. I'm so proud! I know, why am I taking on more writing when I'm not even keeping my own website up-to-date? Because I'm motivated by fresh challenges, you see. I've been writing this for two years. It's basically a diary, and I am quite honestly bemused that anyone reads it, or misses it when it's not updated! But thank you all the same, for coming back. So it takes a couple of reminders from loyal readers to get me writing this. But writing games reviews and articles? That's new and interesting. And there should always be fresh material. And if I start slacking, I'm sure they have a big stick to beat me with!

Then... a week spent organising activities for Comic Relief. I'd managed to get everyone on my team fifteen minutes to come and make toast in the kitchen, which we sold to the rest of the office. Went down a storm. And Andrea, Dan, me and Steve stood fining people on the door if they weren't wearing red... people see the bucket and just chuck a bit of money in to make you go away, generally. I never press anyone for money though, because charity can be an emotive issue. The idea had been to wear something flamboyantly red, with prizes for the best ones. But most people had just put a red shirt or tie on. The only contenders for the prizes were someone who had sprayed his hair red, and someone in a bright red scarf and crazy shirt. Sigh... And that's not counting Steve, in his Superman T-shirt, red shoes and socks, a cape borrowed from my Supergirl outfit, and some frilly red knickers over his jeans. But he can't win. They'd say it was a fix. There was also a quiz, which I was supposed to be marking at lunchtime, but that's where it all sort of stopped.

My meticulously-planned day just crumbled away when I got a call from Dan at the hospital saying I should go over because Grandma was very ill. It's only across the road from work, so I went straight over. Still wearing my stupid red stilletos, frilly red shirt, and bit of red fluff in my hair. That was 12 o'clock. By 1pm, the doctors were saying that the surgery they were hoping to do wouldn't be possible. Grandma passed away at 4pm.

You could say it was a bit of a shock. She had gone into hospital the night before, and they thought she'd just fallen, because Dan and Mum had found her curled up and suffering from hypothermia. But she'd warmed up and improved, and it seemed everything would be fine. We all assumed she'd just potter along for another fifteen years or so, none of us thought there was anything wrong. Turns out (the post-mortem was today) she'd had cancer of the colon, which had caused peritonitis. Which had led to all kinds of complications.

We knew she'd been having stomach trouble for a few months, but that was nothing new with Grandma. She had an ulcer of some sort years ago, and she never ate very much.

So. Erm. Everything's in a kind of limbo. Mum's taken time off, and has started organising everything. The funeral's next week. I went into work on Monday after a weird weekend, but I hadn't slept much, which had helped turn my snuffles into a full-blown streaming sniffly coughing sneezing cold. Everyone was looking at me. Quite coincidentally, it was my second appointment with Maggie the welfare officer, which helped a lot. I cried a bit, and the rest of the time my eyes were streaming anyway, so I looked quite crap. The day started OK and I cleared a few cases, but after a few hours I was just opening cases, reading through the notes, and closing them again because I couldn't think what to do. People were looking at me with concern and/or pity, and I just wanted to go home. I used my lunch to count the money raised on Red Nose Day - over £400, which I was pretty impressed with. Steve and Andrea had stepped in to mark the quiz and dish out prizes thankfully, so there are only a few loose ends to tie up.

And I've been off work yesterday and today. I could have coped with the cold on its own, or with feeling upset. But both at once just made me want to hide under the duvet.

So everything's on hold at the moment. Except I finally got round to booking a few days in Amsterdam for me and Steve before Easter, which at least gives us something to look forward to.

So... this babble ends on a bit of a "meh" note, which is where my head is at the moment. A bit numb. A bit befuddled. But I'm about to send a load of photos over to Dan, which he will spend hours putting into some kind of catch-up gallery for me, because I haven't put any photos up for ages. So there you go, some pretty pictures to feed your eyes.

And I'll be back soon, I promise.