Selenay's Ramblings

The final couple of days of my holiday were good, except for the horrible heat. I'm not built for heat. It gives me migraines.

I did a rock choir workshop via Zoom on Saturday, which was a new thing for me and I really enjoyed it. The style of teaching and singing is quite different from what I do with my community choir, but I enjoyed the change from my usual stuff. And we were doing Both Sides Now, which is a fantastic song (as if anything by Joanie Mitchell isn't) and one that the community choir would probably never touch so it was a great opportunity.

(It also gave me a potential fic title for my current fic. Maybe, for once, titles won't be The Worst(TM)?)

Now I'm back at work and nothing blew up while I was gone, but our workload for August is ridiculous and I'm going to be putting my foot down about adding any more work to our queue that's due this month. We literally can't. And the situation is the same for another team I work with. The business has woken up after covid and wants everything right now, but we're understaffed and can't hire so we can't do everything they want. August is going to be stressful.

I've booked some time off in the first week of September anyway. Two half days and two full days. Adding in the bank holiday, that week I'll only actually work on two mornings, just to try to keep things ticking over.

My sister is having some work done on her house - repairs and decorating they'd planned to do before the baby came but then lockdown happened and they couldn't have anyone in to do it. Now they want to get it done before the baby gets bigger, because some of the work is in the room that will be his nursery when he stops sleeping in their room and some of the other work is repairing things that tiny fingers might get hurt on when he starts to get mobile. So my sister and nephew are coming out to stay with my parents that week, and they'll be just round the corner so of course I need to go and hang out with them.

And also kidnap my nephew a bit.

My sister is going to be doing a bit of work during her maternity leave, starting in September, so she really needs some quiet time during that week to get started on it. Hence, nephew wrangling! My mum may also be allowed to kidnap her grandson when I'm not around. I'm so excited about getting Sprog time. He'll be three months old on Wednesday and he's the most gorgeous baby ever. I adore him to pieces. He's often grumpy for various reasons (poor thing has had a tough start to his life), but that only makes his smiles more precious.

He has such a range of expressions.

And when he's about to cry, his lower lip sticks out in the most adorable pout. We're all torn (even his parents) between snapping a photo of it and scooping him up to figure out how to stop him crying. So far, scooping mostly wins.

I didn't expect to adore this child so much, but apparently I've turned into that doting aunt who will defend her nephew to the death. I couldn't be happier about this situation.