Grief is exhausting.

It takes a lot of effort to mix with other human beings when you just want to crawl into bed and avoid the world. According to the counsellor and the doctor that is not a healthy approach. They are both suggesting, god forbid, exercise. Let’s not forgot how that turned out last time I tried … remember the treadmill incident people.

So rather than exercise I developed my own grief management strategy today. Hurricane Tracey is back in town, she’s cleaned the house, including the fridge, done a few loads of washing and cooked a baked dinner yesterday so I decided to give her the night off.We sent the kids to the movies, we went to the pub, then to the Spanish restaurant in town. We allowed the children to join us after the movie because, well sangria is nice and I needed someone to drive me home (I’m starting to see the benefit of having a teenage driver in the family).

As per usual I failed the food blogger test by forgetting to photograph the food BEFORE we ate it. So you will just have to trust me when I say the mixed plate of tapas was very nice.

The next round of tapas I DID manage to photograph seconds before the teenagers demolished them.

Then we got to the paella, the waitress had made me reduce my order to the paella for one ’cause she thought I’d ordered too much food. She was right. We had to get a doggy bag for most of the paella – that’s lunch tomorrow sorted.

By now my children were telling me off about being on Facebook and Instagram at the table. So off course I wasn’t allowed to photograph the absolutely delicious dessert.

I did try to photograph the children but one was cross at her mum and didn’t want to be photographed (hey for once it wasn’t one of mine), the flash went off when I photographed my two and the Princess Child – always cool in a crisis  – managed to maintain her model pose and cheery smile. Hippy Child however, crumbled into a flash avoiding, face pulling monster that left her looking … well decidedly unattractive. If she ever ends up famous the paparazzi won’t be able to make a cent from her, she can’t deal with flashes at all.

Friends of Danni who I know read the blog – no need to tell her I put this photo up OK!!!!!!!

The evening ended with my chauffeur driven trip home.

Now I’m tucked up in bed about to watch The Newsroom DVD I bought today.

This is the Shambolic method of grief management and look – no exercise required AT ALL.