Quick update

Here's what's new with us:

1. I am on a productivity drive

In one week I got my inbox at work down from 1400 emails to none. This doesn't mean I've done everything I need to do, just that I'm trying to file properly and I've moved all the emails that need me to do something to a folder called "Action". Whether this will help or not remains to be seen, but at least now I'm not trying to keep all the things I need to do in my head.

(It also remains to be seen whether my inbox will bloat again in a month or six months, but I'm hoping that by boasting here that I'm on top of it I will be too embarrassed about losing face and try to keep on top of things.)

2. ThingOne's been sleeping badly (as, consequently, have we)

We think it's teething and development. Again. A major bout of teething always seems to coincide with significant development, and makes it hard for ThingOne to sleep. First it was crawling last summer, then walking at the start of the year, and now her language is coming on and she's putting new words together.

We try to slow her down, but we go to get her in the morning (5.30 recently!) and she's frantically naming everything she can see: "Door, cat, socks, duvet, zip, daddy, mummy, teeth!" Calm down girl! We've had a couple of good nights, so I hope things are easing off now.

We're also teaching her about the potty using books, chocolate and dancing (ThingOne gets to do The Poo Dance if she does a poo in the potty. The process stresses her out a bit (lots of "uh oh"s if she stands up and there's something in the potty) but the chocolate helps and she enjoys seeing her produce go into the toilet and get flushed away ("Bye bye poo"). So some of ThingOne's development is our fault, but Anne was keen to potty train in the summer so ThingOne could run around nudey and not get cold. And given it's July it IS technically summer, but the weather's been so dreadful that it might as well not be.

3. I have a new camera

Using profits from matched betting I've bought a digital SLR camera (Nikon D40x). I've not had a chance to use it yet as I'm waiting for an SD card to arrive. I've made over £300 by betting on football matches (and I know nothing about football) using matched betting techniques (which, believe it or not, give a guaranteed return) and I was able to use that, Dixon's price matching and some force of will to pick up this natty camera for no cost to myself. Sometimes these things work out. Or course, all the effort I put into saving a few quid here will be for nought the next time I need to call a workman in or get my car repaired, where other people would do the job themselves with minimum effort.

Anyway, the upshot is I'm hoping the quality of my photos will improve. I used to love using my dad's SLR and even got reasonably good at it when I was at uni, but it takes so much trial and error, and my hope is it will be easier when you don't have to wait a week for the film to be processed to see the results.

Here's a photo of ThingOne dressed as a cat for no good reason.