NotSheep

Jack has bump on his forehead the size of a Creme Egg. Poor kid tripped over something in George & Freddy’s room (not surprisingly - it’s a bombsite as usual) and banged his head on the television they use for the Playstation. Scratchy tried to put ice on it, but that was made difficult by a) the fact that we didn’t have anything that was icy except for ice lollies, and b) the fact that Jack was not pleased about the idea - crying his eyes out and shouting “I better! I better!” at the same time.

Eventually he let us put a cold washcloth on it for a few minutes, then some arnica cream. I can’t find the arnica pills - I know I gave a bottle to our mechanic a few weeks ago, but I thought I’d another bottle. There’s a bottle of a 30C remedy but the label’s worn off so I can’t tell for sure what it is, and I don’t want to use it without knowing. Will have to remember to buy more before HESFES. And nux vomica for the journey too. And Rescue Remedy, since I can’t find that either. Will have to squeeze a shopping trip in this week in between getting the car serviced, seeing the homeopath, seeing the solicitor, packing the bags…

Jack’s asleep now, but he does wake up a bit when we try to put more arnica on, so I’m not too worried about concussion. Will keep an eye on him anyway though.

Barney is playing Zoombinis on his laptop. I like Zoombinis; I wish I had time to play George is playing something else on Scratchy’s laptop - no idea what though. Freddy is wandering about being bored (a complaint he was also making at 11.30 last night - half-awake and complaining about boredom!)

I’ve studied all morning and have completed my next Stats assignment - well, I say completed, I mean I’ve guessed half the answers and left one of them out completely. I’m now having a short break before getting stuck into Graphs *sigh*.

I’ve eaten all the chocolate I can find, and I still don’t understand most of the book on Graphs. I’m seriously thinking of dropping out of this course. I can usually just about get to grips with the assignment questions, but I really don’t feel I’m grasping the material - I’m just spotting book examples that are similar to the assignment questions and copying the procedure. I really don’t expect to get enough marks in the exam to pass - so is there any point in continuing to struggle with the coursework?

Jack’s head looks a lot better - he’s still got quite a dramatic bruise, but the lump has almost disappeared and it doesn’t seem to be bothering him at all.

I gave Scratchy a list of things we needed to get organised for HESFES yesterday. I’ve just checked and it seems he piled the sleeping-bags in the corner of the living-room and took out a pair of shorts for each child. Amazing how much he gets done when he’s left to it *sigh*.

We’ve been discussing baby-names - or rather, I’ve been trying to discuss them and Scratchy has been either suggesting really stupid stuff that he knows will irritate me, or failing to say anything at all. I don’t think I’ve ever got this far in a pregnancy without having names more or less chosen; it’s got me slightly disconcerted. And I don’t know whether it’s harder to choose names for a boy - given that we’ve already used 12 of them! - or a girl, since we’ve had all these years to compile a huge list of favoured girls’ names and never used any of them. Maybe I should take a couple of baby-name books to HESFES instead of a couple of OU books. I might get somewhere with them then.

Just realised it’s been three days since I blogged!

Been busy getting stuff ready for HESFES, as well as all the pre-moving-house paperwork stuff. Seeing the solicitor this afternoon re the latter, and the former is nearly there. Well, the stuff for the kids is nearly done, I haven’t packed so much as a pair of socks for me yet. No rush - we’ve a good 18 hours before we need to leave!

Jack is not helping. He got into the first-aid kit this morning and poured a bottle of homeopathic remedies down the sofa, followed by my Rescue Remedy. Grrr.

I’ve been and got another B12 injection, hoping it will increase my energy-levels a bit. I really am getting quite worried about how I’ll manage over the next couple of weeks, and it’s not like we can come home early if I’m really unwell.

Anyway, this will likely be my last blog until after HESFES (though there is internet access on-site, so you never know), so behave yourselves until I get back

Just after publishing my last post, I got an email to say the transfer of the funds for buying the house was complete. And as I read it, I thought “when did I last update the details on that account?” Well, guess what I’ve done? I’ve had the money sent to an account we closed two years ago. Panic stations.

Having made some transatlantic phone calls to try to sort this out, it seems the funds should bounce back by the end of business tomorrow, and then they’ll send them to the right place. Huge sigh of relief. I just hope there’s no extra delay, because we’re not that far from completing on the purchase…

What next? Oh yeah, can’t find one of the cats. They don’t go outside (partly because they’re not spayed yet, partly because they’re not very bothered), but we hunted everywhere in the house and couldn’t find Molly. We even checked the attic. Eventually I concluded she must somehow have got out. This is not good, especially when we’ll be leaving early tomorrow…

Then the BBC producer who’s doing the home-ed thingy with Barney phoned to ask if she could come over and do a last-minute interview with him before we left. I told her it was fine as long as she didn’t mind climbing over crates and boxes and piles of things that were supposed to be packed. So she came. As she was finishing up, who appeared round the living room door from the front hall? Molly. I’ve no idea where she was, she can’t have been outside, but we checked the hall and closet at least four times and didn’t find her.

So…she went into the kitchen and started to eat. And Barney went “ooooh, look at her neck!” Her collar had somehow been pulled very, very tight, and had actually worn away the skin about 3/4 of the way around her neck, leaving it red and raw and extremely painful-looking, and slightly smelly. So when Scratchy got back from Beavers with George and Freddy, Barney and I headed off to the vet. She needs cream on it every day - now I know there is no way Scratchy could do this, so the vet agreed to let her stay there, and also to allow Ginny (other cat, Molly’s daughter) to stay, as they’re very close and I really think they’d be unhappy if they were in two different places with us away. So we came home and got Ginny and took her down (and bought the vet’s milk, cigarettes and newspapers on the way - that was the deal - buying cigarettes is not something I’d usually agree to do, but since he was making such an effort for us….I suppose it could have been worse, he might have wanted The Sun…)

So the cats are with the vet, Scratchy is happy he doesn’t have to feed them. A friend who’s a cat-lover is going to check in on them late next week to see if Molly’s healed enough to come home, and bring them here if she is. If not, they’ll have to stay there until we get back - this is not ideal (not least because they’ll almost certainly come back with fleas), but at least I know Molly’s neck won’t be getting infected and more painful with nobody around to keep an eye on it. Barney said he hadn’t realised how much he cared about Molly until tonight; Ginny’s always been the more cuddly of the two, so I suppose he naturally related more to her, but he was pretty upset about poor Molly tonight.

*Sigh* - what was that about “interesting times”? I’d settle for a little bit of boredom now and again…

A and her partner took off shopping for most of the day, which left us with the house to ourselves - well, except for a visit from my dad and my step-mum and one of my half-brothers and my half-sister and her two children…so not exactly “to ourselves”, really :-). I hadn’t seen my half-sister in about six years (and she doesn’t even remember that), and had never met my younger nephew. I hadn’t seen my half-brother in 15 years! - and he was about eight years old last time, so it was really great and really freaky all at the same time. We’d a good time, despite my dad being convinced that home-educating through secondary level isn’t really possible and getting into a bit of a discussion about that…

George (that’s Mr 18-days-late-nah-not-coming-out-yet-bam!) has informed me that he knows *why* he was so late: “I was developing style.”

Woohooo! I got to meet my first real live English home-educator (well, not counting the one that lived in England for a bit but now lives in NI, and the one who lived in NI for a bit in-between Scotland and India…). Anyway, I can tell those of you who haven’t met her that Tracy M is lovely, and just exactly the same in real life as she is on-line. Her kids are lovely too (especially her daughter, who is just gorgeous, and who arrived in a tiara from the Celyn’s fund ebay auctions). We chatted loads and I had a really good time with her. Thanks for visiting, Tracy

Today we did the grand tour of Rochdale, and the grand tour of Huddersfield, and the grand tour of Honley. None of this was intentional :-/. I did plan to go to Asda in Rochdale, as we really needed to pick up some food, and we had breakfast there, but after that it all sort of went…well…not downhill, because you never go downhill for long in this part of the world, but certainly “up hill and down dale”!

Still, after all that, we finally arrived at Tracy O’s house. I’ve been really looking forward to meeting her and was so disappointed that she wasn’t coming to HESFES, so it was terrific to have the chance to meet up before we head down that way tomorrow. She has four gorgeous girls, including a baby who is just fantastically charming. The boys had a good time and came home with catchable-bubble-stuff all over their heads, so they look like they’ve got quite severe cases of dandruff

Off to Bristol tomorrow…

We made it to Bristol in good time today, arriving a good couple of hours earlier than I’d expected. And I got to meet Shyrl & Celyn :-). Celyn is completely gorgeous, much more beautiful than the photos (which are already good). I am really enjoying meeting all these on-line friends, and the boys are having a great time meeting so many other home-educated kids

Picked up Scratchy at Bristol airport this evening, so now we’re all here and ready for HESFES

Didn’t want to blog about this earlier, but I was in a complete tizz because that money that I sent sailing off to the wrong account still hadn’t bounced back, and I was panicking more by the day. But today I finally got a phone-call to say it was back and was on its way to the right place, so…a huge sigh of relief, followed by a trip to Ikea

Can hardly wait for tomorrow!

This will be brief, because I don’t really feel like writing about it (or doing anything else really).

We got to HESFES on Friday, as planned. Wasn’t very impressed with the field for this year’s camping - toilet-block was not refurbished as planned, field could not be described as “perfectly flat” by anyone - dunno what Andy was looking at, but it certainly wasn’t the top field. But anyway, we got the tent up, and got the stuff in, and the boys ran about a bit and we had our first meal on-site. And when it got dark, headed off to bed.

Then we spent the night trying not to slide down the hill. As a result, my hips and pelvis went into spasm, and I was in horrible pain, not able to take a step. Not even able to use the toilet (sorry if tmi).

So we ended up leaving

I’m devastated. It took us five years to get to HESFES and we didn’t even manage to stay until it started. The boys hate me, and I can’t say I blame them. Barney has tried to be brave (”I know you must have been really desperate”) but he’s still been in tears - as have I, for most of the last few days. Today is the first day I’ve been able to even sit up in bed without pain. I can’t even begin to describe how disappointed I am

We’re supposed to complete on the house next Thursday - six days away. Is everything settled? Ha! *$%&!%*^#@(%&^@*#

Two weeks ago, our solicitor asked the vendor’s solicitor to provide answers to several questions, mostly to do with things that might have involved building control - conservatory, garage etc. And the “answers” came back - most of them reading “Not known”. Right. So we’re supposed to buy a house that might have planning permission for things like the conservatory or might not…our solicitor has been chasing this ever since, but the vendor’s solicitor still hasn’t answered all the questions.

And of course now they’ve gone home for the weekend. So are we moving next week or not?

I hate the house-buying system in this country…grrrrrrr

…it’s not like I have to make any actual arrangements before moving…

We finally got the contract back from the vendor’s solicitor at 4.31 pm yesterday - less than 48 hours before we’re supposed to get the keys. Nothing like leaving things to the last minute

But at least it’s through. So we should have the keys tomorrow, and we should be able to move in this weekend.

Of course with everything being so last-minute, our notice-period on various services is going to run past when we actually move - so we’ll have to pay for things like rent and broadband for a month after we’ve actually gone. And the mail redirection won’t kick in for a couple of weeks, so we’ll have to come back to pick it up until that happens.

I hate the house-buying system here. Have I mentioned that? I hate it. In fact, it seems that nobody likes it - not sellers, not buyers, not estate agents, not solicitors. But, as is typical here, nobody does anything about changing it.

On a completely separate note, it seems that my children can only ever operate with one hand, because the other hand is always being used to hold a book. I think this is generally a good thing, but it can be frustrating at times (like when they “can’t carry my plate to the kitchen”, etc). They’ve spent the last couple of days re-watching all of Walking With Dinosaurs and re-enacting parts of it. I suggested they watch a DVD, Jack chose Spy Kids 2, he and Freddy watched it and Barney and George lost interest and went to do something else. Then Freddy chose Walking With Dinosaurs and Barney objected on the grounds that it is “educational” - but once it started, suddenly all four of them were there watching :-D. Apparently “educational” isn’t all bad after all

The baby, who has until now settled for either giving me heartburn or kicking my pubic-bone, has acquired the skill of doing both simultaneously, which is why I was chewing Gaviscon in the bath at 2 o’clock this morning. I’ll assume that means he or she is growing. Only a few weeks to go (thank goodness - I’ve not enjoyed this pregnancy, and much as I’d love more babies, I can’t see doing the gestation bit again - though as I reminded Scratchy last night, I’ve not signed anything to that effect). Did anyone notice my ticker at the bottom of the blog? Just as long as you all realise that it’s based on the so-called average pregnancy of 40 weeks, and not my usual practice of extending it