too cool for...nursery

Friday was Dulcie's first full day at nursery and, once again, it went without a hitch.  I still can't believe how smooth and easy this transition has been and it hasn't just been not-bad, it's been positively great.  Dulcie absolutely loves nursery days and comes home full of the joys, chatting about the lady who looks after her, the children who have become her wee pals, the activities she's been doing and the places she's been on outings.  It's such a relief and I'm so glad my instincts about the nursery she's at have been proved correct.  All that said, this morning I left Dulcie screaming and cying and shouting for me, which was really hard to do (this was the first time she had cried at all) but I'm sure she was fine within a few minutes and hopefully she'll still have a good day.  Her wee pal Calum (a lovely boy a few years older who has taken her under his wing) was already trying to distract her with all the best toys as I was leaving.  Dulcie adores Camlum, as she calls him, so I'm sure he would have been able to cheer her up... but I'm still going to phone and check she's OK once I've done this!

I was trying to get a classic first-day-at-nursery shot of Dulcie before she left on Friday, but this was the closest I got since we lack a garden, let alone a garden path, we were (of course) running late and Dulcie is too interested in the camera these days to stay on the right side of it for long.  Still, this shot gives you a fair idea of the realities of Dulcie's nursery days - leaving a chaotic flat behind with her over-sized Spider-man bag strapped to her back, raring to go and ready as she'll ever be.  I think I'm ready to give up pretending we'll ever have a perfectly photographable lifestyle.  We fly by the seat of our lazy-arse, easily-distracted pants round here.

Despite itching to do something to make a dent in the ever more hovelly hole of our "home" while I had a day to myself, I spent Friday RESTING.  I finished one book, watched Australian soaps while eating my lunch, started another book and had a snooze before heading out to pick Dulcie up again.  Well, I did also do a mini supermarket shop, make a curry for dinner and wash the sofa covers following a cat-puke incident, but that was as far as I veered from the path of rest and relaxation.  I plan to spend today resting to the max too, now that I'm back in the house and settled with my hot chocolate.  To be honest, just the walk to Dulcie's nursery and back is enough to make me feel like I need to sleep all day in order to recover at the moment.  I'm teetering on the fence between trying to deny I feel so bad and trying to accept it enough to allow myself the time and space to rest.  I've been off work for almost four weeks now and don't feel any better.  Does this mean I'm never going to feel better or does it just mean that it's pretty hard to rest in any beneficial way when a little mum limpet likes to have you at her beck and call every minute of the day AND NIGHT?  Hopefully it's the latter.  I'm going back to the GP soon to get signed off for a few more weeks and, as of this week, Dulcie is going to be doing three full days at nursery.  I'm going to do my best to override the guilt while she's there and just rest, rest, rest and eat plenty of homemade soup... which I'll have to use some resting time to shop for and make.  Aargh!  And this nagging voice at the back of my mind keeps telling me it would be easier to rest effectively and would make non-resting time so much less strenuous if my house was less chaotic.  Should I clear up and clear out or should I stay in bed with a good book?  Should I traipse to the supermarket and stand over a soup pot or should I eat less healthily but more conveniently on easy-to-grab food?  Resting is a hard art to master.  I suppose I'm just scared this isn't resting to recover but is instead  resting into a permanent and different level of living which is not the level I want to live at.  I just want to have the energy to do something fun once I've done everything necessary. 

Insert sad face here, like so :(