Frazzled. That’s how I feel today. It’s been a crushing week in Daddyville.

It’s been tough going for a couple of reasons. First: the kids have been off school for Easter, meaning they’re constantly around the house looking for food and entertainment. Second: our second car broke down, leaving me stranded in the house whenever Lisa’s in Belfast attending to her mother.

As I hinted at the end of that last post, I’m gradually, almost grudgingly, being drawn into the role of full time house husband. Today, I’ve been looking after the kids (Daniel’s slipping into a worrying phase of biting and hitting – picked up from two very viscious little critters down the street from us).

While Lisa was still in the house, I tried to jump start the car. No luck there, clearly it wasn’t the battery. I phoned the mechanic, who lazily said that he’d try to pick it up sometime today. On a Friday? He still hasn’t turned up and it’s 5:50pm. A weekend without wheels awaits.

So I tried to get a bit of work done on the website. No energy for writing, I tidied up a few things and was glad to see some contributors on the site had submitted some new posts. I find writing 20x harder when the kids are home, because the constant distractions derail my train of thought every time. If I’m not too tired, I’ll do my writing in the evening.

Turning my hand to the house husband thing, I decided to scope out a few recipes. The instability we’ve gone through recently has led to us eating far more take-aways than usual. We need to get on the home-cooking bandwagon again. So, I’ve picked out a few recipes from around the web – Chicken Caesar salads, Irish Stews and pasta salads that I can turn my hand to next week. Maybe they’re not the healthiest, but I can add them to my repertoire of cheese toasties and carbonara. You’ve gotta start somewhere, don’t you?

And after all that bouncing around, I stumbled upon this post about Myths Of The Working Parent. Fantastic. Even just looking at the timetable at the top of that page, I realise I wasn’t imagining the fatigue. And something in the back of my head wants me to drink myself to sleep, except I know I have to get up and do it all again tomorrow. I don’t need a hangover for a companion.