Phelps and the Five Pillars

Phelps is back on form after his op, barging into Betsy's homework about Islam in his relentless pursuit of warmth, attention, strokes and the opportunity to sit on anything made of paper.

Twenty is also recovering, though they are both off their nosh a bit.

Last night turned out to be one of those sleep-light nights that parents are forced to have occasionally. The lowest point was at about 2am when I was just thinking I might be able to get some sleep when Chris's phone started binging and bonging and I couldn't get it to shut up. Then, a spider fell in through the window onto my head! My head! I leapt out of bed, it did the same, but while I froze, it sprinted under the bed. I then spent ten minutes shining the bedside lamps under the bed trying to find it in the lunar surface of the section of carpet that hasn't been hoovered for a decade.

Spent the next hour wide awake thinking it was going to get back into bed with me, scanning the sheets like a Navy SEAL. The hour after that, I dropped off every few minutes, then snapped awake when I remembered the spider again. Chris slept through all of this, obviously.