My Life as a Dot Point

• A neighbour got my hopes up by telling me he'd seen Bertie the missing Badcat mooching around the local school, but seeing as he waited a week to tell me this, and despite our going to the school every night and calling and rattling the food container, we still have no kitty.

• Getting my hopes up again and having them dashed a second time was pretty upsetting and I ended up crying in front of the children which is probably not a bad thing but made me feel slightly guilty nonetheless.

• Usually when I'm sad I get pet therapy from cuddling the cat and hearing him purr. My friends are all advising me to pat the Cherub instead.

• All the rain this week makes me worry about him in case he's stuck out in the elements, because he always used to come in absolutely outraged about the wet stuff from the sky that made him all wet! and would meow loudly and indignantly at us each time it happened.

• In happier news, my mother came to Melbourne for the weekend. In fact, on Sunday we saw both our mothers -*in one day*-! This is a very rare occurrence. It was of course lovely to see them and as a further benefit there is nothing like having both your mothers come to your house to make you clean up in the wake of Missing Badcat Depression. I'm sure neither of them expect me to do that, but I say whatever works.

• Climber and a friend entered a poster in a science competition. Climber was a ring-in because another child pulled out. The two boys did a great job and worked surprisingly really hard. The best thing was their loony sense of humour in the presentation which the judges commented favourably on.

• I have been helping out in Cherub's classroom with their concert preparation, which has been excellent fun. I have to cancel my Thursday night Tap Class this week so that I can go and be a stage-mother, I am that excited. Little preppies doing their first school concert, squee!

• We had a Trivia Night on Saturday night for our ex-creche, and Astrid and Elda and Pea Soup and Ulishoes came, plus some lovely creche pals. As ever, the night was a lot of fun despite the really awful pizza (bacon and barbecue sauce, bleah) and this was mostly due to the excellent company at our table.

• Fixit took money from my wallet before I left and didn't put the wallet back in my bag. This meant I turned up without a cent to my name and now owe Astrid $16 for the ticket and drinks to all of the above. But I'm good for it!

• Sadly, we only came third because the questions were kinda hard this year. Unlike last year when we only got one question wrong. The thing about our team is that we're quite good on the names of celebrity children but not so strong on random facts like what percentage of animal kingdom is comprised of insects [90%] or what Australian town was the birthplace of some Tour-de-France bikeracer [I forget]. And I don't want to be ungracious in defeat or anything but I strongly suspect a man wrote the questions this year, hmph. Not that I'm competitive or anything.

• We ended up winning a minor prize for correctly answering all the How Well Do You Know Your Creche Staff? questions. There was a fair bit of strategy utilised in taking out that title, including trading answers on the Guess the Celebrity Face sheet and offering Pea Soup's delectable home-made dark-chocolate-and-raspberry-fudge as a bribe.

• In the end I think I have to blame Nell for our not winning; she selfishly went to Goulburn to see her mother's exhibition opening instead of coming with us, and I feel sure we would have won if she'd come because the difference between us and the winners was a mere 31/2 points which Nell is totally good for.