Absolute fiasco of a morning today.

We didn't sleep much, as it was just too hot (not a sentence I would have expected to write, living here, but there you go) so I couldn't think what Bobby was doing when he suddenly leapt out of bed at the crack of dawn and dashed outside. It turned out that it'd just occurred to him that although we'd bought the car about a year ago, we hadn't yet renewed the car tax disc. And yes, it turns out that we should have done it a whole month ago. God only knows how many fines we may have racked up - they have cameras that take pictures of people's tax discs just to pick up on slackers like us. And I gather we'll also have to pay an 80 pound fine - a big chunk of money for us. After what felt like hours of increasingly desperate searching through drawers and files we finally found the registration form and insurance details, and realised that the reason we hadn't received a reminder was because we'd never changed our address with the DVLA. And also realised that, because we'd been so slack with the address thing, we couldn't do the car tax online. Ugh.

During this whole frenzied process, Emily was whinging because I wouldn't help her do her hair...

But mom, it looks terrible! There are bumps in it! Why are you so mean? Don't you care about me at all? Most mothers would love to help their daughters look their best!

...Stephen was stomping and crashing about upstairs in an extremely bad-tempered way because I'd asked him to make sure that the guest shower and loo are presentable, as my parents are arriving at lunchtime and spending a couple of days with us...

Why am I the only one who ever does anything around here? This is so unfair. You treat me like a slave. You're all obnoxious. Obnoxious!!

... and Sophie was huffing and puffing because she had spread every single one of her school books and projects and artworks from this past year across the entire downstairs floorspace, and didn't feel like picking them up ...

But I have no space for them in my room! Can't we just leave them here on the floor? You're so mean - if you loved me, you'd want to have them where you could see them all the time! Everyone else's mother cares about their stuff!

Her huffiness had not yet worn off by the time we had to leave to walk to school, and so, for about a quarter of a mile, she stomped along next to me, arms dangling like some sort of tiny gorilla, making these strange constipated-sounding angry grunting noises.

But then she forgot about it and was cheerful for the rest of the walk, and I remembered that I do actually love her, and the rest of the family, too.