What do you do when you've nothing to do?

Even the busiest of us have times when we do nothing. Those times when we're at home, no-one else is around, or if they are, they're occupied. I'm feeling the need to have something that's my "go-to" thing. Some kind of default activity that's just there, waiting for me.

If I had a sewing room, maybe I could have a lovely patchwork quilt project (this is a secret aim of mine... not so secret, really). But I can't default to it for the odd hour here and there, if it's always going to involve clearing the dining room table and setting it all out.

I have a tapestry on the go. My children laugh at me, because I tell them how Husband gave it to me the first Christmas we were married. That's 17 years ago. It's not my speediest project.

I've long given up having houseworky projects as defaults. It's just too depressing. You never finish them all. You never have a perfect house. Better by far to accept your imperfect house and find other things to do.

I'm not going to join Facebook or Twitter, because I want a default activity, not an addiction.

There's always blogging, but... sniff... blogging is so lonely these days, now that all my comments go into people's spam filters. It's a sad, one-way conversation. It makes me feel voiceless and frustrated (please, rush off and rescue me from your spam filter, and click on the "this is not spam" option, before I give up blogging altogether).

My children spend hours petting the dog, and rubbing his tummy as he lies goofily on his back. But he is too smelly for me to want to engage in that. I do quite often walk him in an idle half hour. He's so pathetically eager and grateful, that it's easy-pickings in the "emotionally rewarding activity" stakes. But I'm looking for an indoor activity.

Half an hour is usually enough to catch up with The Archers on iPlayer, or a quick burst of something recorded on TV (an episode of Scrubs is my current fix of choice, or Downton Abbey if I have a little longer).

If I was a generation older, I would read the paper, but these days, if I buy a paper, I find I recycle it unread, while browsing the news online.

I sometimes browse recipes, and think about delicious dishes I could cook, or sweet treats I could bake. Then next time I have a window of empty time, I do cook them. Sometimes. You have to be quite organised to cook in that way.

I often write emails to friends. "Haven't been in touch for ages. How are you?" I like doing that. Or I phone my mum for a chat. I like doing that too.

I have a book on the go, but I find it hard to settle down for a read, unless it's bedtime. Why is that?

I wish I could be that person who will do just a few yoga poses, or abdominal exercises. Then I would be more toned, and less wibbly-wobbly in the midriff area. But the journey from knowing that would be a good way of spending 20 minutes, even 10 minutes, to the actual doing of it is such a very, very long road. I did buy a yoga mat. I do have yoga dvds. They are in what is called "as new" condition.

I do enjoy a quick canter round hilarious videos on Youtube, but don't tell my children. Obviously, Youtube videos are a waste of time. You don't want to grow up to be the kind of person who fritters away their time watching cats slipping on wooden floors, or dogs looking very guilty, do you? And that's what happens if you don't develop other interests. We all know that.

Writing. Whatever happened to writing? I used to do more of that.

So what about you? You're at home. You don't have anything that HAS to be done. You can do what you please. What is it you turn to?

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Then one bloggy Christmas eve(ning)

I wondered if there was something a bit sad about posting on Christmas Day. But I decided that there isn't (although Blogger is down, so I've had a frustrating time trying to read posts and leave comments, and who knows if this will make it onto my blog). The children are asleep upstairs, my parents-in-law and sister-in-law are retiring to bed downstairs in the basement, and it's as if I have the house to myself. There's a quietness and a stillness that I'm enjoying in contrast to the noise and excitement of the past 16 hours.

Husband has just wandered down in a t-shirt that is as old as our relationship (15 years), which has a picture of me on the front of it. It was made by some friends for him when we got engaged. In those days, printing a photo onto a garment was a real novelty. It wasn't like today, when you can't move for smiling children on mouse mats and household pets on key fobs. The t-shirt is Husband's garment of choice for nightwear. I rather like the picture of me on it, actually. Young, carefree, smiling, looking over one shoulder at the camera and pretending I didn't know I was about to be photographed. Having been through the wash regularly over 15 years hasn't done much for me, it must be said, and I'm very faded, but still smiling.

"Are you coming to bed?" Husband asked.

"Soon", I replied. "I'm just needing some me time."

I'm probably less tired than him, as this afternoon I slept through the entire length of Mr Bean's Christmas Special - the movie that was drawn out of the hat, winning over Snow Buddies and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. I imagine I would have slept through either of those too.

Today I have:

Woken up at 4.45am and remembered that I hadn't put the dishwasher on, crept downstairs, decided that putting it on might wake sleeping visitors (it's a very noisy dishwasher), and crept upstairs again,

Read aloud a note by the fireplace which said "Yum yum, thank you very much. Love, Santa Claus", while knowing that the cookies (which 5-yo iced at her Kindergarten party, and which have been in a ziploc bag in her backpack for a week) were in the kitchen bin,

Laundered a bath mat (don't ask, it was a puzzle to me too),

Cooked salmon for eight,

Finished a 1,000 piece jigsaw with no picture to copy from (group effort, that one, not me personally),

Wondered how to get a big, bright pink stain out of woodwork, left by 5-yo's Glitter Lava Ice craft kit,

Cut a chunk of hair out of 5-yo's head, right above her forehead, as the only way of removing a large glob of Glitter Lava Ice,

Wondered who on earth thought up the name Glitter Lava Ice, surely a contradiction in terms,

Skyped and phoned family in Britain, and heard all about the snow there,

Boasted back about our Midwestern snow: "Oh, it'll be here for ages - the forecast says it won't get above freezing for several days",

Unwrapped some lovely presents, including ones bought proudly by my two sons with their own money,

Created merriment by saying that the little Santas we have as a table centre, gathered round a battery-powered nightlight, looked as if they were huddling together and warming themselves round a brassiere.

I hope you have had as happy a day as I have. Perhaps you've even managed to sneak some me time in there too, even if at 11.30 at night. But now I'm tired, and I will wend my way upstairs (after putting on the dishwasher this time), and join the faded, crumpled, eternally youthful version of myself already in bed with Shadowy Santa.

To all, a good night.

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Ladies in Lavender

I make a point of not having any commercial affiliations on my blog. It's a policy. A policy is a useful thing (I should know, I used to be in the Civil Service). It's useful, because when I get an email from someone asking if I'd like to promote their organisation or their product, I say "I have a policy not to". I think that sounds polite, and it means I don't feel obliged to explain any further.

I am making an exception. I am mentioning a product. That's because I'm entering a competition. I don't need to win. I just need to be one of the first 20 to enter. If I do so, those lovely people at MamaBabyBliss will send me a bottle of Oooh... lavender bath soak. Except they won't send it to me, because I'll give them my mother's address. Lavender is not only terribly difficult to spell, but also her favourite. She deserves it. Imagine living over 3,000 miles away from your youngest three grandchildren.

To enter the competition, I have to write a blog post about "me time". I'm going to enter the post I wrote a year ago, almost to the day. As "me time" goes, I dare anyone to better a week-end in New York without the children, and with some of the best company western civilisation can offer (my brother, his wife and family).

Here is that post.

New York, New York

Do you want to know how much can be fitted into the hours between 12.30pm on Friday and 9.30pm on Monday? Let me tell you:

two 6 hour journeys (4 flights), dinner with my old friend and her new husband, visits to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Museum of Modern Art, purchase of nice stripey top in the Museum of Modern Art Design Store, trip through security measures to visit Statue of Liberty (this deserves separate entry), matinee kids’ ballet by the Paul Taylor Ballet Company, lunches and dinners in fabulous eateries, wander around Soho, walk round Central Park, glass of wine in the revolving bar at the top of the Marriott Hotel, walk along the Connecticut shore watching sea birds pick up shells, rise 10 feet in the air and drop them to crack them open (packaging these days can be such a challenge), watching the departure of my sister-in-law on the back of a Harley Davidson with a complete stranger, reading 212 pages of a 273-page book (which I then left in the seat pocket of the aeroplane - grrr), writing a post-card to the friend I visited New York with 14 years ago, and a lie-in.

This leads me strongly to suspect that when you change your watch from Central time to Eastern time, you’re not just moving into a new time zone, but into a whole new time reality. The hours must, somehow, be longer, or fatter, or more flexible. I’m sure I couldn’t fit that much into a week-end here in the Central time zone. Even just having breakfast and getting ready to go out takes half a morning. I feel I must be on the brink of some very clever discovery to do with space, time and astrophysics. Or maybe it’s just that I usually have three kids in tow and a heap of things to do less interesting than exploring NewYork City. Hm. No, I think I’ll stick with the astrophysics discovery. It could be big. Actually, we in the Central time zone had a chance to try it out a few days ago, when we put our clocks forward, but you know what? Those smug East coasters are so sneaky, they put their clocks forward at exactly the same moment. We’ll never find out their secret.

Anyway, back to New York. It was all fabulous, totally totally fabulous. Apart from the obvious things that were wonderful (family, old friends, the buzz of a big city, the inherent interest of the places visited, the freedom of it all), the biggest treat was having someone else organize me. It’s very relaxing not to have to be in charge, for a change. Someone else found places to eat, someone else read the map, someone else made decisions about what to do and when, someone else calculated how long to allow to get to the airport. I begin to see the attraction of those big organized holidays with a tour guide. And no wiping. I didn’t wipe a nose, a bottom or a kitchen counter for four days. I did swipe my credit card a few times though, which is altogether a more satisfying feeling. Swiping not wiping – that was my big city experience.

I just have to tell you about the man I sat next to on one flight. He was in his 80s, and he and his wife were travelling from Florida to Connecticut for the surprise 90th birthday party of his sister-in-law (I just hoped it wasn’t too much of a surprise for her). “Don’t like the French, but I like the English” he said, puzzled by my account of my English brother who would choose to live in Paris. And then he told me why he liked the English. He was serving as a gunner in WWII, and was shot down behind enemy lines in Burma. After he and the two other airmen who survived had been trying to find their way back for a few days, a local man found them, and hid them upstairs in a building, indicating that they were to stay put. They had no idea whether he had gone to fetch the Japanese or the Americans. The next day, they heard footsteps approaching up the stairs. They were at the ready, guns trained on the trap door in the floor. When it opened, there were a couple of British soldiers, who greeted them with “Bloody Yanks. Can’t be trusted to do anything without us, can you?”

So that was New York. Did I mention that it was fabulous? I’m thinking about my next week-end away already… Oh, and that bit about my sister-in-law leaving on the back of a Harley Davidson? It was quite true, by the way. You’ll have to wait till next time for the story, though.