Right then.
September is packing its bags and autumn has fully moved in — jumpers on chairs, leaves in the hallway, and me pretending the heating debate hasn't started yet.
This week had a very specific flavour.
Crumble season. Car-seat crumbs. Half-finished to-do lists. And Storme Diaries humming away in the background like a third child who also needs snacks.
It began, as most of my weeks do, with a morning that looked manageable on paper.
On paper I am organised. In person I am a woman hunting for a missing library book under a pile of clean-ish washing whilst shouting "teeth" into the void.
Indie had opinions about breakfast. Strong ones. The other one treated getting dressed like an optional workshop. John found the library book in the exact place I had already checked twice, which I am choosing to find charming rather than personally offensive.
We made it out the door.
Barely. But we made it.
Essex in late September has this soft, slightly smug light — golden enough to make the school run look cinematic, cold enough to make you regret not bringing the thicker coat.
I spent the drive doing that classic mum multitask: navigating, negotiating snack diplomacy, and mentally editing a podcast paragraph that had been living rent-free in my head since Sunday.
Nobody warns you that creative work and car-seat archaeology can happen in the same twenty minutes.
Speaking of archaeology.
I cleaned the car seats this week. Well. I started cleaning the car seats this week.
Found: one sock, three raisins of uncertain age, a sticker sheet that had become one giant sticker, and a crayon that has absolutely seen things.
I declared it a fresh start. By Thursday there were new crumbs. Nature is healing. Nature is also sticky.
Midweek was podcast land again — the good kind.
Not a shiny launch announcement. Just the quiet graft: listening back, tightening edits, writing notes, staring at a title for too long, making tea, forgetting the tea, reheating the tea, becoming one with the tea.
There is nothing glamorous about building Storme Diaries in real time with two small humans in the house.
There is, however, something deeply satisfying about finishing a stretch of work and thinking — yes. That sounded like us.
John wandered through at one point, looked at my laptop, the cold tea, and the apple I'd cut for the kids and somehow never eaten myself, and said, "Shall I just… make dinner?"
Reader, I nearly proposed again.
Dinner was sausages and something vaguely green. I am calling it balanced.
Then came crumble season energy.
I had this whole vision: apples, cinnamon, a proper Sunday pudding, the house smelling like a catalogue.
What I got: apples chopped whilst refereeing a toy dispute, oat topping assembled with one hand, and a crumble that came out slightly too brown on top and somehow still tasted like a small victory.
We ate it on the sofa. Nobody used a napkin correctly. I felt briefly like a woman who has life together.
Then someone spilled milk and the illusion clocked off for the evening.
By the weekend I needed air more than I needed a plan.
We did a proper Essex autumn walk — cheeks cold, kids charging ahead, me pretending I wasn't calculating whether we'd make it home before the next meltdown or the next raincloud, whichever arrived first.
We did. Just.
Home meant muddy shoes by the door, jumpers on radiators, and me looking at my to-do list like it personally betrayed me.
Half of it unfinished. Most of it still relevant. None of it more important than the fact we laughed at dinner and someone fell asleep mid-story and I got ten quiet minutes with John and a cuppa that was actually hot.
So that was the week.
Crumble. Crumbs. Cold tea. Warm kitchens. Podcast tabs. Soft light. Loud mornings. One library book recovered. Several to-do lists politely ignored.
And me in the middle of it all — still building something I care about, still forgetting where I put my coffee, still choosing this beautiful mess on purpose.
Here's to autumn weeks that don't need to be impressive to count. 🍂🤍