Please don’t forget to subscribe to my new blog’s feed.

And when you’ve done that, I have a new post up at most | least.

For some reason updates to my new site most | least appear in bloglines and via email for this (old) site. Which means many of you may not have been bothered to change over and subscribe to the new feed. And why would you when it still comes to you anyway? If DHL brought me a weekly delivery of chocolate cake and Brad Pitt I wouldn’t care if they changed to UPS. Not unless they started bringing me auto parts.

But - this will happen no longer so I urge you to subscribe to my new blog’s feed now. I can promise you chaotic posts of a chaotic life. And if you haven’t subscribed before, why not try it now? You can always unsubscribe if it turns out my life is just a little too chaotic. (I frequently wish I could unsubscribe from my life but apparently it’s not possible.)

You can also subscribe via email at my new site if you prefer - just enter your email address in the box in the sidebar on the right when you get there. It’s all done via Feedburner and your address will not be used for spamming, I am heartily assured by the folks there.

Also, in preparation for the next Google sweep I would be eternally grateful if those of you who have linked to me in the past could be kind enough to update your blogrolls. Here is the title of my new blog because that line in the middle of the two words is kind of tricky:

most | least

(On my keyboard the line looks like two vertical lines one on top of the other and is above the \ key, so I type Shift \ to get it.)

And on a related note, my blogroll will be returning at the new site as soon as I am out of the Google sandbox. Although sometimes it feels nice to be in there, just burying my head a little and, you know, not having to deal with three small children.

Because I am forbidden from rearranging the furniture in my house (for fear that someone will not notice that the sofa has actually moved), I now have to take it out on my blog. So please come on over to my new blog site most | least where I will be writing from now on.

So we have a little boy called Joe staying with us at the moment.

At 3.30 this morning I was lying in bed with my coughing baby on one side, a croupy middle son on the other (Matthew had long since departed for a spare room) when Joe came and joined us. He said nothing but crept in between me and William and fell asleep in my arms.

I haven’t been able to offer him any real comfort since he arrived but at 3.30 in the morning a silent cuddle was, I guess, enough. For now.

As I hold my poorly son’s hand, entwined through cot bars,
I’ve been thinking of you.
Almost ten, as we unpacked trunks, we found matching pyjamas,
a shared birthday, destined to be friends.

Then a few weeks later, when noisy footsteps came to get you
and roused us from sleep,
still their day but the middle of our night
we listened in interested silence
until we heard your sobs of grief.

Then a long time later you came back
because, well, where else could you go?

And night after night, we held hands,
across the gap between cold metal beds
as you sobbed silently.

And I think of your son, asleep across the hall.
Newly nine,
also an orphan.

Some people are truly remarkable. There’s no other word for them.

If you’re from outside the UK you may not know the name Jane Tomlinson. Brits know her as the woman who has raised huge sums of money for charity despite having cancer.

Jane has advanced breast cancer. She has spent the last seven years being active and productive - two things she felt were particularly important to her - by raising money for charity through marathons and triathlons. To date she has raised around £1.5 million ($3 million). $3 million: that’s an incredible amount of money.

To me she is a survivor: she beat the cancer once and when it invaded her body again she refused to give up what was important to her. She lives every day to the full. She has raised incredible amounts of money for charity despite going through many cancer treatments. She has inspired countless other breast cancer sufferers and motivated countless others to fundraise.

Yes, she is a truly remarkable person.

***********

As you know, Whymommy is just starting her battle against breast cancer. Because of this she cannot go to BlogHer and is giving away her registration and her reservation at the W. Isn’t that kind? She’s also fighting cancer, not just in the literal sense, but - like Jane - in her attitude to it. And that makes her pretty remarkable in my eyes too.

On Friday I sat on the beach watching my children play and as I watched them running in and out of the freezing water I was thinking about my blogging friend WhyMommy and her two small boys. Thinking how incredibly strong she is. Thinking of all the support flooding in from across the blogosphere. Thinking that when I wrote a post about how the medium of blogging works so well in creating networks to support each other I didn’t know a few days later another of those networks would be gaining momentum.

WhyMommy has breast cancer. She is 34. Her two boys are 2 years old and 5 months old.

She is all of us.

I don’t think I’ve asked anything much of my readers before, but now I’m urging you to join me in doing one of two things:

1. go over to WhyMommy’s site and leave her a positive comment (even if you’ve never read her blog before); and/or

2. join the Wall of Support of Team WhyMommy and put the badge on your site.

Thank you.

‘Matthew, you look knackered. Take some time off. Put a week in the diary in June, the weather will be good and we’ll take the children to the beach and do some fun stuff.’

So he did. And now we have a week of rain stretching in front of us.

So yesterday, because the safari park or beach were out of the question, we searched desperately for rainy-day outings, eventually settling on the InTech Hands-On Science Centre in Winchester. The roads were flooded, the baby threw up and then cried the rest of the way, I felt in a vague shock-like, caffeine-deficient state from two nights of not getting to sleep before about 4.30am (due to the poorly baby), the A303 route was blocked with all the in-need-of-a-bath rock-lovers making their way back from the Glastonbury Festival, causing us to take a 40 minutes detour and so I grumbled pretty much all the way that the place had better be good. Because I’m that kind of good-time gal.

The centre was okay. The children were a little bit too young to really learn anything useful but they loved running around touching everything (so many germs to pick up! so little time!) and I was at least able to envisage a quiet journey home where they all slept from exhaustion and therefore I could too. The centre is obviously a good choice for a place for schools to take their students but it was like wandering amongst feral animals at a zoo: if they were learning anything I would have been amazed. There was pushing, shoving, shouting, rudeness and generally running about like they owned the place. Ben was knocked down by one child who didn’t even stop to apologise. There were two flights of stairs which Ben ran towards everytime he got bored and most of the displays were too high for him to touch without being lifted. That’s not my idea of a fun time.

Rainy weather + lack of sleep = bad mother.

Husband in London for work today on our holiday week + rainy weather + further lack of sleep = even grumpier mother.

Husband taking children off mother’s hands for an hour tomorrow? + new book to read = happier mother.

What are the chances do you think?