NotSheep

We’ve had hail on and off all day. Five minutes ago it was coming down in great big pellets. That’s when Jack came into the kitchen, and loudly announced,
“I’m going outside!”
“Oh no you’re not!” I say.
“Yes, I am!” he replies.
“But look at the hail,” I say, “It’s cold and hard and it would hurt you.”
“I will put my coat on with my hood up.” he answers.
“And what about your hands?” I ask.
“I can just put them in my sleeves.” is his response.
“And what about your face?” I say.
His eyes glance briefly upwards as he checks his brain for an answer.
“I’ll just put my hood over my face.”
I laugh, and he laughs, and walks out of the kitchen.

He always has an answer for everything.

A minute later, Barney notices Jack in the conservatory, which is off the kitchen in the opposite direction to the living-room. One word from me and he does exactly as he pleases.

I’ve hidden the key to the conservatory door

We had French toast today for lunch, to make up for not having had pancakes yesterday. Freddy very nearly had pancakes yesterday; the Beavers were supposed to make them last night, but the cooker in the Scout Hall died. I considered making pancakes today, but decided it was a bit too much hassle with Toby wanting to be in my arms all the time, so opted for French toast instead. I’ll make an extra-big batch next year

Barney slept fairly late, having been at St. John Cadets last night, but although George had been out at SJA Badgers, he woke up early - again complaining that his stomach hurt. He felt slightly warm to the touch too, but announced “I think I have enough energy to manage eating breakfast”, and seemed to recover quickly after that. After breakfast, we had a look at the history of mapping, and talked about how maps were created many years ago, and what tools were available - compasses, dividers, sextants, etc. We looked up sextants on-line to see how they worked. Then somebody needed a small ruler for something, and none could be found (there are at least six in the house somewhere, so I had a bit of a rant about things not being put away properly. George and Freddy read about Jupiter in their book about the solar system, and then looked up other books to see what else they could find out about Jupiter.

(This reminded me about Barney, when he was 8 or 9 years old, telling us - and everyone else at the party we were attending - “My stomach is like Jupiter.” When asked why, he replied, “Because it’s a gas giant.” :roll:)

Barney, George and Freddy did some maths, while Jack went off to look for rulers (he says he knows where they are, but he didn’t bring any of them back). Freddy’s learning about symmetry, a topic that was always popular with Barney and George. Barney worked through a page of simultaneous equations, and found them easy. Freddy did some more English, learning about titles and introductions, and George learned the names of clothing items and colours in French, made a computer picture using dots, and finished some geography he’d started yesterday (about coastlines).

Meantime, I had a look at the Schools Surplus website, where I found they were selling rulers by the dozen. Not worth placing an order just for rulers though, is it? - so I found a few other things to buy too

The kids sat down to watch a dvd, I lay down with Toby, hoping that once he fell asleep I’d be able to get up and tidy up (didn’t happen). Then the boys’ friend R arrived and they played for an hour or so before dinner (spag bol). Barney has just been left at Scouts, where he fell outside the hall (scraped hands and a bit shaken, but otherwise okay, apparently) and George has just arrived back from Cubs, where he showed everyone his ceramic Harry Potter badge/magnet (depends what you stick to the back of it), his dinosaur skeleton, and his origami collection (I did take photos of that, must get them on the computer soon) - so that’s the Artist badge and the Collector badge taken care of

I’m sick

I have a sore head, a sore stomach, and a really sore throat. I can’t breathe properly, I can hardly swallow at all, and every inch of my body aches. I had a feverish night (and not in a good way), and I’ve been dozing on and off all morning, trying to get a temperature that isn’t either sweat-pouring-off or shivering-cold.

I’d have phoned in sick if I could, but of course I can’t. So Scratchy phoned in instead (think he’s taking a flexi-day). There was just no way I could have coped with the kids this morning. He brings me Toby when he needs fed, and otherwise he’s been wandering about with Toby in the Storchie and trying to get the others to tidy their rooms (without success).

I’ve had a cup of tea, but I don’t think I could swallow anything solid - not even the minestrone soup that Scratchy dug out of the freezer.

Going back under the covers now.

So after two nights and two days of shivering and shaking in bed, I’m finally feeling - well, not better, but something akin to human, which is a definite improvement.

Thank you to all those who left get-well wishes and vibes in comments and via email. Scratchy didn’t really have a lot of choice in the whole staying-home thing: I couldn’t even make it to the bathroom without clutching at walls and any other available object for support (and the bathroom is only a few steps from the bed). I think we were both getting a bit worried, because it felt very similar to how I was nearly five years ago, right before I was carted off to hospital in an ambulance, spent a week in there and most of the following year in bed. The symptoms were the same, just less severe. But I think I’m on the mend now, which is good. I’ve had enough of shivering and shaking and not being able to swallow, thank you. And we won’t get into the whole coughing-up-a-tonsil business, except to say that yes, I know it probably wasn’t really a tonsil, but it did look like one (and I used to work in a pathology lab, so I do know what a tonsil looks like). Firmer though.

(If that’s TMI, think yourself lucky you’re not reading Joyce’s blog. I won’t link to it, because it’s passworded, but believe me, she beats me hands-down in the ewwww stakes.)

On the bright side, having consumed about 67 calories in about 67 hours has put me back on track with the whole lose-weight-this-year thing. Likely to be very temporary, unfortunately

Thursday emphasised just how much certain family members need routine: George was out of control all day. Between Scratchy unexpectedly being here, me hiding under the pillow, and the lack of any kind of structure to the day, he just didn’t cope well. So on Friday morning, I pulled out the remainder of what I’d planned for the boys this week and handed it to Barney, with instructions to help Scratchy understand and they all sat down and did some work. Barney did quite a bit - French, maths, history, writing in his blog and writing a story. George and Freddy only did a little bit each, but it was enough to give the day a shape, so yesterday involved much less screaming and far fewer tears.

Barney, George and Freddy had swimming lessons this morning, but George didn’t go to trampoline due to a mini-meltdown-moment Jack went out with them this morning, but I think he might be getting sick too, because he came home in a fairly horrid mood and is now asleep beside me. I hope he doesn’t get as sick as I did, because it really wasn’t pleasant - and also because when he’s not feeling well, he tends to be very, very loud about it.

I struggled out of bed for about 40 minutes yesterday to plant the aquarium - I’d ordered the plants on-line at the beginning of the week, not realising (of course) that I was about to collapse in a heap, and they wouldn’t have survived very long if they hadn’t been planted, so I enlisted Barney to entertain Toby, and Scratchy to help me (i.e. I sat and wrapped plants and handed them to him and he did the bits that necessitated standing up). We got it done, but by the end of it, I felt ready to keel over, so I disappeared back under the covers.

And that, dear reader, is also where I’m going now.

The Guardian reported recently that teachers’ organisations rejected plans to introduce weekend detentions:

Forcing unruly students to spend weekends in school detention was a “ridiculous” idea that would only serve to increase teachers’ workload, a union has warned.

The deputy general secretary of the NASUWT says:

“There is also the irony of teachers losing their own spare time to punish the misbehaviour of their own pupils.”

But wait! There’s more irony - even if he hasn’t noticed it:

It is also understood that parents whose children were excluded from school would be called in for compulsory interviews to plan their children’s return to the classroom. If they allowed their children to skip detention, they could be issued with parenting orders, which include £1,000 fines.

And then of course there’s the irony that he hasn’t noticed the parallel irony to the irony he remarked on…

My head hurts.

I’ve been blogging for a year! One year ago tomorrow, I wrote my first post. I don’t think I ever managed to keep writing in a paper diary for more than a week, but I’ve kept up with this - and very much enjoy it. And three of my kids blog now too

It’s been quite a year too. The big event was, of course, Toby’s birth He’s seven months old now, and he’s still tiny, but he’s lovely. It’s getting harder to blog though, now that he’s discovered that bashing my keyboard makes an interesting noise (and makes mum make some interesting noises too LOL)

We had a few less expected events this year too - like buying a house and moving to a different town. That was a difficult decision to make - not so much whether to move, but which house to go for! I think we made the right choice though

There were a couple of negatives this year, but overall it’s been a very good year for us. I’m glad I blogged it!

Wow. A year. Amazing.

You Are Lightning

Beautiful yet dangerous People will stop and watch you when you appear Even though you’re capable of random violence You are best known for: your power Your dominant state: performing

Hmmm…

Lack of blogging yesterday was possibly due to shock of having 12 comments on the post from the day before. I don’t think I’ve ever had 12 comments before, unless you count comment spam. Anyway, have now recovered. Keep those comments coming though, ’cause I like ‘em

Right, so what have we done since Wednesday… well, the boys had a maths madness day yesterday, when they all did loads and loads of maths. Then the older three went off to archery in the afternoon, and Freddy came home with a badge because he was the best at something-or-other. He’s very pleased with himself - he’s come very close to getting this badge and then just missed out several times, so he’s thrilled to finally do it

This morning there was a great deal of stamping and drawing going on - and then a bit more stamping (of feet) when I discovered the state of the dining-room. Anyway, got that cleaned up and headed off to the aquarium shop.

We have now added three of these to our aquarium. They’re clown loaches, and apart from being very useful (they eat snails), they’re also very amusing - real characters. After watching them for a couple of minutes you can see why they got themselves called clowns. They’re about 5 or 6 cm right now, but could possibly grow as big as 16 cm.

We also added six of these - just because they’re so pretty. They’re blue-eyed gertrudes. They could grow up to about 3 cm in length; right now they’re about half of that.

Barney and Scratchy have gone off to play basketball this evening - Barney was a bit fed up because he’d arranged to “meet” some friends from the archery club on Runescape this afternoon, but none of them was on-line when he was. Tomorrow is the usual Saturday morning swimming-and-trampoline deal, and then… well, probably some fish-watching

Those of you who do not have Canadian/Toronto connections may skip this one, as you won’t understand it anyway

My car window, that is - or it will be, tomorrow. We’re going to see our homeopath. It’s about a two-hour drive, in good conditions. The forecast is for torrential rain. We were planning on spending today with friends who live closer to the homeopath and staying over with them tonight, but yesterday just left me feeling drained and I cancelled those plans. If wasn’t for the facts that we’ve waited several months for the appointments, and that she’s set aside the whole morning for us, I’d postpone the homeopath too. But also I don’t want to have to wait for another appointment for George, because things aren’t improving for him. Something isn’t working. He managed three meltdowns before 11 o’clock this morning - I think that must be a personal record. I’m worried about what will happen as he gets older if things don’t change.

But he can also be the most delightful, charming, sweetest child. Tonight he and Barney made dinner - lemony fish-fingers (proper home-made ones) and potato wedges. And he got stuck in and did all the necessary tasks - even the part that left his fingers covered in flour, egg and breadcrumbs - with enthusiasm. And ate quite a bit of it too. And chatted and smiled and interacted with everyone in a very pleasant way.

And that can come and go in an instant. His mood can turn from misery to delight, or vice versa, in a heartbeat.

And somewhere in the background, Freddy is usually being the voice of sanity, despite being nearly two years younger. That can be quite amusing, I must admit. I’d rather he didn’t have to be, though.

Scratchy and Jack will be seeing the homeopath too, both for their eczema - Scratchy’s improved dramatically when he was last treated (about four years ago) and Jack’s disappeared completely after the first time he was treated, then returned and was treated again and got much better, but it’s getting bad again.

Otherwise this weekend was as expected - swimming, trampoline, watching fish… our half-cat re-appeared briefly - I don’t know where he’s hanging out these days but he’s obviously fine anyway. We also finally hung some (not all, because we ran out of frames!) of the pile of certificates for various things that the boys have amassed: swimming, Cubs, Clay Creatures, ju-jitsu, circus skills… terribly deprived isolated, these home-educated kids, you know

We were lucky this morning in that the rain stayed off for most of our journey to the homeopath. I hadn’t realised how long the appointments would take, though, so the kids had a long time sitting in her waiting-room. She’s given me a remedy for Jack, and she gave George and Scratchy each something while we were there. We’ve to phone her in three weeks to discuss how they’re getting on.

While she saw Scratchy, I’d a chat with her secretary - the usual “I don’t know how you have time to home-educate with five children!” stuff. My usual answer is “I don’t do school-runs” - which usually gets a thoughtful look and a sudden understanding Anyway we had that conversation, and then later she said something else about finding time. I asked what time she got up. 7.30, she said. And what time did her son get on the bus, I asked. Ten to nine, she said. I asked what she was doing all that time. “Getting him organised for school,” she replied - and then, realising what she’d walked straight into, burst out laughing

On the way back, we stopped to grab a late lunch. A few minutes after we got back in the car, Jack piped up that he needed to pee We weren’t far from a large service-station with a restaurant etc so we pulled in there. The restaurant had a big sign up that their facilities were for customers only, so Scratchy took Jack over to the shop at the service-station. They didn’t have public toilets, but they said he could use the staff ones in the back. So Scratchy took him in, pulled the door, and reached up and pulled what he thought was the cord to turn the light on.

He thought wrong.

It was the panic alarm.

Which has a direct link to the police.

It gave the staff and the police a good chuckle anyway

Although we only had lunch at about 3pm, the kids insisted on being fed again at 6 - demanding creatures, they are So they’ve all just chowed down on mac’n'cheese while I had a bath (at first with Toby and Jack, but I got to top up with lava-water after they got out :-)) Barney, George and Freddy are off to ju-jitsu in a few minutes, and I’m going to lie down and nurse Toby to sleep - and hope that Jack doesn’t bounce all over us too much.

Barney and George spent a good part of the day planning and writing adventure stories. I can see their writing developing - Barney’s stories get longer and more complex each week, and George is learning to explain things to his reader a bit more - his stories often consist of series of noises, like “Bam!” “Yeuch!” “Pow!” “Owee!” - and I’m supposed to understand the action They both did some Latin and French too, and all of them did some more of the Mapping project. George and Freddy did more of their Solar System book - Jupiter and Uranus today - and Freddy did a huge amount of maths. Several maths concepts seem to have just clicked into place for him, including some we haven’t actually covered, like negative numbers. He seems more grown-up in quite a few ways recently.

Toby has been clingy and a bit whiny all day. He’s got his first tooth coming - I can see the tip of it just below the gum - but I wonder if he’s also coming down with something. At any rate, plans for scalloped potatoes with tonight’s dinner were abandoned when it became clear I wasn’t going to have two hands for long enough to slice the potatoes, and we had the emergency instant mash instead

Freddy had Beaver Scouts tonight, and George had St John Ambulance Badgers. They’re both home and in bed now, but Barney isn’t back from Cadets yet. He’s signed up to do some volunteer work with them, though I’m not really sure what that involves; I think he just goes along to events with them and presumably does serving of cups of tea and stuff - I can’t see him doing any actual first aid yet. He’s enthusiastic though, and I think it’s good that he wants to do it anyway

I’m going stir-crazy, I need to get out of the house.

The boys need some fresh air - Barney and George in particular. They’ve been niggling at one another all morning. If it wasn’t raining, I’d take us all on a long walk into town and the library this afternoon. Yes, I know we wouldn’t melt in the rain, but - well, I don’t like windy and rainy, so I’m not going unless it stops.

Barney and George have both continued with their adventure stories today. They’ve also both done history, geography and science, and we all read some more of The Weatherbirds and did more of our Roman project. Freddy has done lots more maths, getting stuck a couple of times when he didn’t actually read the questions, but ploughing on through it all at quite a pace. I’ll have to pull some new maths stuff out for him in the next few days.

Toby has spent the morning nursing and cuddling - that tooth still isn’t quite through, though he’s happier today than he was yesterday so I think that if he was coming down with something yesterday, he’s fought it off. He still wants to be in my arms constantly though, which is fine, except that I could use a shower, and would quite like to get something organised for dinner.

Jack has flitted about getting in everyone’s way as usual, and is still in pyjamas, despite having been told to get dressed numerous times over the past four or five hours. These kids with minds of their own - I just don’t know!

I’m being hit by comment spam, and although my settings have not let any of it through, I’m getting fed up with deleting it. So I’ve changed my settings, and for now, only those who are registered and logged in will be able to comment. I think most of my regular commenters are already registered anyway, but if you’re not, and you have some reason that you don’t want to register, and you have something to say, use the Contact Form

Four years ago I was in labour. I’d been in labour since about 6 pm the previous day - and I’d a good few hours left. The result of that labour - Jack - will be 4 tomorrow

This morning George and Barney did some French and ICT while Freddy did some English. Scratchy brought the car at lunchtime so I could do errands this afternoon. I’d planned to buy some things for Saturday, when we’re having a small celebration for Jack’s birthday, but I didn’t manage to get much. We ended up meeting Scratchy for dinner at a shopping centre near where he works.

George has been up and down this week. On Tuesday he had a meltdown before breakfast, but made it through the rest of the day without a hitch. Yesterday, again a meltdown before breakfast and again the rest of the day was fine. At one point, he’d gathered up a large pile of books and was about to carry them out of the room when I turned with Toby in my arms and bumped into him - scattering the books across the floor. This would usually be a classic meltdown trigger for him, and said “Sorry!” and prepared myself - and he calmly said “it’s all right, it wasn’t your fault, it was just an accident”, then gathered them up again!

And then today was one meltdown after another - from waking this morning, until (finally) falling asleep at 9pm. It’s exhausting

Sheila Kitzinger tells it like it is

A few choice quotes, in case you’re in a hurry (but if you’ve got five minutes, do go and read the whole thing):

The new parenting is a style of baby management aimed to prevent children interfering with adult social life, sexual activity, or career.

Good mothering is seen as taming and training of the feral young

The essence of these advice books is that they treat the baby as an enemy. It is a hostile invader. The mother must arm herself against her baby in order to train it effectively.

And Kitzinger’s summary:

Babies are social beings from birth. They seek touch, human scent, and warmth, are fascinated by their mothers’ facial expressions and movements, and respond to these in a lively way. It is not enough merely to service them - to change diapers, feed and bathe them, and leave them lying under a plastic mobile. “Sleep training,”"controlled crying,” and other disciplinary techniques can make life easier for adults, but because they turn babies into objects of management, may deny them the rich sensory and interactive environment in which personalities unfold and they are able to give and receive love.

As a social anthropologist I have observed mothers and newborns in many different cultures, and have been struck by how women take it for granted that they keep their babies close and put them to the breast when they are restless, cradle them against their bodies with an easy unselfconsciousness, and helped by other women in the community, who are always ready to hold and soothe a baby. The evidence from history, and from cultures all over the world, is that, by and large, ordinary, spontaneous, loving mothers who are alert to their babies’ needs, and who are supported by other women, do better than all the experts put together. Our babies are not our enemies. You don’t need an MBA in baby management to be a good mother.

Good stuff.

Your Inner Blood Type is AB!

Your personality is hard to define - you’re very unconventional. And even if your personality could be defined, it would be completely different next week! Outgoing and shy, sensitive and thoughtless, you tend to have a very split personality. This makes you unpredictable. You can be a total angel - and a total devil. You are most compatible with: everyone! Famous Type AB’s: Jackie Chan and Marilyn Monroe

I used to be the same dress-size as Marily Monroe too. I’ll get there again.

You Have a Choleric Temperament

You are a person of great enthusiasm - easily excited by many things. Unsatisfied by the ordinary, you are reaching for an epic, extraordinary life. You want the best. The best life. The best love. The best reputation. You posses a sharp and keen intellect. Your mind is your primary weapon. Strong willed, nothing can keep you down. Your energy can break down any wall. You’re an instantly passionate person - and this passion gives you an intoxicating power over others. At your worst, you are a narcissist. Full of yourself and even proud of your faults. Stubborn and opinionated, you know what you think is right. End of discussion. A bit of a misanthrope, you often see others as weak, ignorant, and inferior.

I do wish the people who write these things would bother to check them for simple mistakes before they put them on-line. It’s temperAment. And it’s possesS. See, they completely missed that I’m pedantic

Ongoing argument with Jack:

Jack: I’m nearly four.
Anyone else: You’re already four!
Jack: No, I’m not!
Anyone else: Yes, you are!
Jack: I’m not four! I’m nearly four!
Anyone else: No, you’re four now - you had a birthday.
Jack: No, I’m free. I’m nearly four!

Repeat ad infinitum.

Spent most of the morning mooching about and generally getting nothing done, but did manage to sit down and work out some plans for ejookashunal stuff this afternoon. We managed to polish off all the leftovers from yesterday - particularly Barney, who had pasta salad for breakfast (in preference over bagels, which is quite a shock, because he does like his bagels…) and discovered he loved chili at lunch and would have had more if there had been any to have.

Barney spent most of the afternoon writing fiction - he’s really getting into writing now. I’m always impressed with what he writes - it’s really good. The others watched a couple of movies this afternoon; I’ve been thinking about whether it would be worth our while getting a freeview box, but am very put off by cost - of box, of tv licence, of recording device of some sort which would then be a necessity…

Barney and George have been chatting away in pig latin, much to Scratchy’s disgust because he can’t figure it out I’m told they read about it in an Agent Z book and worked out the details for themselves. So there’s been lots of “ummymay isay otnay aay ittway” and the like going on. Freddy is doing his best, but he tends to stick one “ay” on at the end of each sentence, rather than doing it word by word, which does reduce its effectiveness as a secret language somewhat I discovered that there are several on-line translation services for pig latin (!) - and you can even get google in pig latin - when I showed Barney the latter, his response was “awesomeay!”

All is peaceful now, as everyone’s asleep except me. Eythay ustmay avehay eenbay iredtay

…and shivering and blinking hard and going “blergh” is going on here right now Yep, I’m ill again, though just a cold with a minor fever this time - nothing compared to how I felt a couple of weeks ago. I don’t think I was properly over that - I’ve been very tired ever since, and I’m certainly no better today. There will be much swallowing of vitamin c and zinc going on in days to come.

Apart from that, the pig latin has continued unabated, with even Jack joining in. The boys all did some maths today too, and they all drew pictures for Illustration Friday, except for George, who’d done his yesterday. This week’s theme is “feet”, and you can view our submissions here. George also wrote in his blog about Jack and his birthday (specifically, about the cake), and then this afternoon they sat down to watch a - well, I hesitate to call it a movie, it was an animated version of Robin Hood, and while the animation looked fairly modern, it had all the hallmarks of stuff produced in the 1970s. Can’t say I was enthralled, but the boys seemed to like it and it kept them quiet for an hour or so.

I struggled into the dining-room for dinner, and in response to Scratchy asking “can you swallow?”, said “yes - I can’t breathe, but I can swallow.” Jack piped up “I can breathe!” and proceeded to demonstrate We do have some interesting conversations over meals: yesterday there was a discussion which started with why cannibals don’t eat each other and meandered through vegetarianism and the ethics of eating various things, including your own family. It involved some funny comments that I meant to blog, but I forgot to do so yesterday and of course now I can’t remember what they were

This evening the older three are off to ju-jitsu and Jack is already asleep. I’m going to huddle most of me under the covers, with just enough left out to do some sudoku. Did I mention I converted the bloke in the post office to sudoku last week? Well I did. It’s a drug, I tell you, it’s a drug

Sneezing all gone, I’m feeling better. Toby has a very snotty nose, but apart from that we’re all (shhh… say it quietly so as not to tempt fate) well again

Today was a great day. This morning was one of those good ones where you just somehow manage to get lots and lots done. The boys started with their mapping project, then Barney played guitar while George and Freddy did some stuff on the solar system. Then Barney and George worked together on maths, Latin and French, while Freddy wrote about what record he’d like to break. That started off as a bit of a struggle - the first eight words or so took about 15 minutes, and then suddenly he hit his stride and had shortly produced an entire page of record-breaking wishes. They all looked at where I’d put their Illustration Friday drawings on this blog, and all were pleased to see that they’d already had some comments on them Our new kettlearrived - I hadn’t been planning on replacing our kettle - it was kinda cool, changed colours when it heated up - but it was leaking at the bottom, so off I went to find the best deal, and Amazon won, so George took off the (ridiculous amount of) packaging and I got to test it out. The old kettle-cord ran below the breadmaker, so I had to move that to take the old one away and put the new one in its place - and that led to a bit of re-arranging of the kitchen countertops. I grew up in a home where nothing lived on the kitchen counter; my grandmother put absolutely everything away, every time it was used. To make a cup of tea (something that happened a dozen times a day), she and my grandfather would:
- take electric kettle from cupboard
- take electric kettle power-cord from drawer
- put water in kettle and put on to boil
- take teapot from cupboard
- take teabags from cupboard and place two in teapot
- pour boiled water into teapot and place teapot on hob
- empty any remaining boiled water into sink, and put kettle away in cupboard
- put kettle cord away in drawer
- take teacups out of cupboard and pour in tea and milk
- empty remaining tea down sink, put teabags in bin, wash out teapot and place in cupboard
- sit down and drink tea!

I seem to not have inherited the clear-countertops gene though. My counter boasts: a toaster, several chopping boards (stacked vertically beside oven), a food processor (I deliberately bought one with a small enough footprint to stay out on the counter, because it wouldn’t get used otherwise), a microwave, a knife container, a paper-towel holder, three containers of mixing spoons, whisks, spatulas etc, a breadmaker, a radio/cd-player, a (new) kettle - and usually a variety of books, bits of paper, post that needs dealing with etc.

Anyway, back to today. In between all of the above, I also managed to prepare tonight’s dinner (shrimpcakes and cheesy potato gratin - the shrimpcakes were from this recipe and were delicious) as well as make some pizza dough for tomorrow’s lunch. And I prepared most of tomorrow’s dinner (pasta and cauliflower with cheese thing) while I cooked the shrimp-cakes tonight, so I’m feeling rather domestically virtuous right now

After lunch we gathered up as many of the library books as we could find (about half of them, that is…) and toddled off to the library, since it was such a nice sunny day (cold, but sunny). I’d a good chat with each of the three older boys while we walked. I asked Barney what the best and worst things about his life are right now, and he said “Toby” and “Jack” respectively The best and worst things that aren’t brothers are, apparently, the schoolwork he does (cool - we must be doing something right then) and that he misses some friends who live a couple of hours away. Will have to make an effort to get to see them soon. George and I talked about his work too - he thinks everything he studies is great, especially science and Latin Freddy is of a similar mind, adding that he particularly likes English because it’s “easy-peasy”.

George and I had a chat about his “wobblies” and such too - we had a couple of really good days last week, but the last few days have been dreadful, and we’re seeing more tics than we have in a while too. I’m hoping this is the storm-before-the-calm after his homeopathic treatment

Freddy noticed a cemetery on the other side of the road from where we were walking, and they were all keen to have a closer look, so we went in and had a look at some of the headstones. We started off in a newer part of the cemetery and moved through to some older graves - some back to almost a century ago. There are probably graves that are older than that further back in the cemetery, but I didn’t want to spend too long there today - we’ll go back another time. We had an interesting talk about the ways in which life would have been different for people who died in the early 20th century. We also saw a grave from the 1970s of a brother and sister, aged 18 and 17, who died as a result of an accident - what an awful thing to have happen

As we got closer to town we met some police officers who commented that I’ve my hands full (if I ever register another domain name, it will be some variant of “gotmyhandsfull” - it could be my catchphrase, except that I hear it rather than say it!). We had a short but pleasant chat with them. They were walking faster than us and soon left us behind, but then they stopped in a shop and we caught up again. “Hmmm…”, said Barney, “You look familiar somehow!” The boys wanted to know something about the police station, and the policemen said that if we’d been going in the other direction, they’d have taken us in to show us the bit we were asking about, and said that if they saw us again, they’d do that

Finally we got to the library, where we returned and renewed books - well, I did that while the boys all charged off to the back where the kids’ section is. I went over and sat down to feed Toby (who’d been fast asleep in the Storchie for the entire time we’d been walking). After a few minutes another mum came in, wearing a baby in a ring-sling. I was going to comment on how nice it was to see someone else using a sling (it doesn’t happen much here!) when she came over and said “Excuse me… but I think I recognise you… did you used to go to La Leche League in D-?” I said “Yes!” and she said “You’re Deb, aren’t you? I’m T.” Wow! I don’t remember her at all - she said she only started going before that group moved (which was when I stopped), so we must have only been to the meetings together a couple of times - she’s a much better memory than me! We had a chat about various things including home-ed and breastfeeding, and then got onto homebirths and local midwives. Those who have been reading a while might remember when I phoned the local midwives before we moved here, and my shock when the student midwife who answered the phone actually suggested home waterbirth to me - the midwives later told me that she’d recently attended her first ever homebirth and waterbirth (all in one) and thought everyone should have one - well, guess whose home waterbirth it had been? Yep, it was T’s

After we moved the midwives actually gave me a phone number for a woman they’d recently attended at home, and now I’m thinking that was T’s!

She also mentioned that the local LLL group was now using a much bigger room than they were in last year - this is relevant because it had been (fairly gently) said to me that there wouldn’t be room for me to bring all my children to meetings - so I’d just given that idea up, but I might go to the next meeting and see how it goes.

After the library, we did a quick tour of the local charity-shops (spent a grand total of £2.10 on two books, three toys and a keyring) before meeting Scratchy and heading home for my here’s-one-I-made-earlier dinner

This evening Freddy and George have been to Beavers and St John Badgers respectively, and Barney is now at St. John Cadets. Jack is asleep beside me, and Toby is about to head the same way shortly, I think. We packed a lot into today!

A late start to a busy day. Poor Toby has a horrendously runny nose and found it hard to settle last night, so when he slept in this morning, I stayed cuddled up to him in bed to get him to sleep for as long as possible. The result of that was that we didn’t really get going until about 10.30, but we still managed to fit in quite a bit. Studying was geography, history and science, and the oldest three all played recorder (together, but not together, if you can imagine what I mean). Jack accompanied them with a variety of instruments - harmonicas, shakers, a triangle - cacophany doesn’t quite cover it Barney and George did some writing along the same lines as Freddy’s yesterday (record-breaking). I finished the prep for tonight’s dinner (a pasta casserole - all I had to do was cook the pasta, mix it all together and sprinkle it with cheese), made smoothies and, realising how bad the kitchen cupboard doors were, cleaned them. Between Barney and me, we rolled out the dough for stinky pizza (so-called because that’s what Jack called it in a fit of crankiness once - right before polishing off several slices) and the boys had that for lunch.

Scratchy had to go somewhere this afternoon and needed me to drive him, so he left work at lunchtime. The boys and I had to wait about 45 minutes for him, so we took a big box of pencils, a Roman word-search (that is, the words were about Roman things, not a word-search that came from Rome), and a page of mosaic colouring each. That kept them all entertained except for Jack, who was in never-stop-talking mode. Toby kept nearly falling asleep in the Storchie, but then something interesting would cross the edge of his field of vision and his head would pop up again. Another curious one there then

Home for dinner (which now only involved turning on the oven), after which I sent George upstairs to “clean your teeth and get your Cubs uniform on”. He came down in a suspiciously short time, and I asked “Did you clean your teeth?” “Yes.” “Just now?” “Oh,” he replied, his eyes rolling, “I didn’t know you meant now!” “Well I did!” I grinned. As he left the room to go do it, he said, in a here’s-a-helpful-suggestion kind of voice, “Maybe you should try saying what you mean”

He also found his long-lost Cubs trousers. He’s been wearing whatever dark-blue-or-black trousers he could find for ages now, but tonight, his proper uniform trousers re-materialised - in his drawer. Imagine

George has been to Cubs and Barney’s now at Scouts. George returned with the details of his first Cub Camp - eek! we’re only weeks away from camping season! The sheet says “sleeping only if necessary from 0400 to 0800″ - sounds like whoever wrote it has been to a Cub Camp before

why it’s so difficult for anyone except me to put things away properly.

I suspect quite a few readers will nod, roll their eyes and say “oh yeah, I know that one!”

Anyway.

It seemed to be one of those days when nobody really wanted to be around anyone else. Maybe I should have just sent everyone to separate rooms; I’ll try to remember that next time The boys did some bits and pieces this morning - science, maths, French. Lunch was late, and made by Barney. I cooked this afternoon, but it was for everyone to eat later when they got home from archery. Jack fell asleep at about 6.30 and has now woken up again; I really hope this doesn’t mean he’s going to bounce and talk until midnight

Started the day with studying for the boys. George heated some rice and experimented to see what the best ways of keeping it warm were. Freddy mostly did maths. Barney spent ages creating a spreadsheet on the computer before I looked in on what he was doing and discovered he was typing the figures into each cell individually - i.e., not using formulae. He was working out each number on his calculator. Hm. We’ll just call that a lesson learned, shall we?

Went off to buy more fish for our aquarium and returned with a variety of platies - nice, bright, red and orange-coloured things, some of which have black tails. I did a quick water change before installing the new residents, and had to trim back some of the plants. This is a new thing for me, as up until now no plant has ever survived living with me for more than a few weeks. I was told that aquatic plants were easier, but although I was unconvinced, it seems to be true. Our aquarium is looking good these days

Left the fish getting to know each other and we all went off to Pizza Hut for dinner (an early Mothers Day thing). The family meal deal we bought included the “ice cream factory” (i.e. you get ice-cream and you can add whatever toppings you want) for two, so we added an extra two, which produced great delight. Barney put so many sweets on his that he couldn’t actually eat them. George said he couldn’t finish his, donated it to me, then asked if he could go get more. The logic in “but you couldn’t finish the last bowl” completely escaped him.

Bit of a depressing conversation during the meal; I would really like to start a business of some sort, but can’t think of anything I can do well enough to get paid for it, or anything I know enough about to sell. All ideas welcome, because we can’t come up with even one

The boys had requested a game tonight, and they chose the Millennium edition of Trivial Pursuit - which, played under the original rules, might well have lasted until midnight.

I’ve just bought additional memory for a laptop, having been given the part number etc by Scratchy. Purchased on ebay, paid for it, told him the auction number, and he went “ah…” “Ah what?” - turns out it’s for a desktop, not a laptop. Why don’t they have different part numbers, when they’re two completely different parts?!

It was a tense time. The adrenalin was flowing. There were moments when I held my breath. And there were moments when I blew out hard, to clear the dust from it.

My laptop, that is. I got an extra memory module for it this week - and unlike the one I bought for Scratchy’s laptop last night, this one isn’t for a desktop. It arrived this morning, so I did my intrepid-explorer bit and installed it. Because it’s a super-thin laptop, it’s a bit more complicated to install new memory, so I’ve just had it in pieces:

I hope nobody’s squeamish

I had to find the instruction manual to figure out how to do it, which meant getting out the box it all came in. Inside the box is the docking station for the laptop, which has lots of extra bits and pieces on it. I don’t think it had ever been out of its plastic wrapping before, so I looked at it just so I could say I’d seen it. Other things in the box that I’d never looked at before included a portable floppy disc drive, a spare power thingy, a thing that fills in the space if you want to take the CD/DVD drive out. I’ve only had this laptop for 2.5 years

Barney insisted I take a photo of the screen, as a record of “the time when mum’s laptop was turned off - I want to remember this!”

Of course it’s been turned back on now - and it’s working There’s a lot less dust inside it now too - and it’s so much faster! Just whizzing along

Deb does a little happy dance

Swimming at 9 this morning - and it’s amazing what a difference that extra half-hour makes The later time does mean that George has to hurry to get changed after his swimming lesson, because trampoline starts 15 minutes after the swimming lesson finishes. He managed this morning, which was surprising, to be honest, because the rest of this week has been a very difficult one with him - meltdowns at every turn

Barney caught up on some studying he hadn’t got to during the week - in fact he was already doing maths before they left for swimming this morning At one point after George got home, Barney was writing, George was planning a story, and Freddy was blogging

Later on I headed for the spare bedroom with the older three - having had everything I found on the floor chucked in there for the last few weeks, it was a bit of a disaster area. We’d resorted to bribery, and said that when it was all tidied, we’d buy the latest Harry Potter DVD, so they were fairly willing. In fact I was very impressed - all three got stuck in and we got far more done than I’d expected. Freddy in particular just got on with it; it’s interesting to watch him and George, because they have such different styles. George wanders about looking for something interesting to pick up, whereas Freddy just grabs a handful of whatever’s closest and walks around the room putting things where they go We didn’t completely finish, but we’ve sorted everything and now it just all needs put away - shouldn’t take much more than half an hour tomorrow. One factor in how much we accomplished was the fact that Jack wasn’t there “helping” - he and Scratchy had gone off to collect a freezer that came to us via Freecycle. We’ve had a small chest freezer for ages, but it just isn’t big enough anymore, and I’d posted a couple of weeks ago in case anyone had a bigger one they wanted to offload, or wanted to do a swop. I got no replies then, but today I got an email from someone who was just about to post her 14 cubic feet freezer on Freecycle, wanting to know if we’d found one yet, and would we be interested in hers - well no we hadn’t, and yes we would!

It was dark and raining heavily by the time they got home though, so it’s still in the back of the car

I’d really rather have an adequate freezer And this one is more than adequate - it’s huge! It’s about three times the size of the one we had. I spent the morning cleaning out the garage to make room for it. Thank goodness it’s an upright one; if it was a chest freezer I’d have to sell the kids’ bikes to make space

Lunch was thrown together from whatever-was-in-the-refrigerator, and then in the afternoon the boys and I finished sorting out the stuff in the spare room. They now have a limited amount of stuff back in their room, and I’ve my fingers in knots hoping they don’t trash it all again

As promised, we bought the HP4 DVD once the room was sorted out, and so we’d an early dinner and watched it afterwards, then chased them into bed.

My grandfather died in 1996. He’d have been 86 today if he’d lived.

He and my grandmother were wonderful: kind, honest, genuine people. They loved us and supported us. When I was four years old, my parents split up and we moved in with my grandparents - my mother, my sister, and me. We lived with them for the next ten years. My mother worked full-time, my grandmother didn’t (at least not in the paid sense) and my grandfather worked a job with flexible hours, so in many ways they were my parents. They collected us from school, cooked us dinner, etc. After raising their own children, they had a couple of years of empty-nesting, and then started all over again with a four-year-old and a baby. I’m sure they must sometimes have wished things were different, but they never gave that impression.

I wrote last week about how they’d make cups of tea. They amused us in all sorts of other ways too. They were always doing things “for one another”. My grandmother would buy groceries and say to my grandfather, “I picked up lamb chops for your tea” - as if she wasn’t going to eat any. My grandfather would bring in coal for the fire, and say “I’m just bringing in a bit of coal for you” - like he didn’t sit in front of it too. They had quite the double-act going over Chicken McNuggets - Scratchy and I used to take them to McD’s just to get it going

My grandfather could run a house better than any other man I’ve met - better than a lot of women too. He didn’t often have to do housework - my grandmother was well beyond houseproud - but when he needed to, he had no difficulty. In later years, when my grandmother’s eyesight was failing, he took over most of the household duties. He could turn his hand to most practical things - fixing cars, recovering soft furnishings, building a coffee table. For my first Christmas (when I was ten months old), he made me a wooden rocking horse - it got passed along to my sister, then my cousin, then back to me when Barney was born, and all my children have used it. I’ve still got it

Long before I ever got pregnant, I had decided that my first son would be named after my grandfather. When Barney was born, my grandfather was thrilled. I only wish he’d lived to see my other children - he’d have loved them so much.

Happy Birthday, Granda.

This one takes a while, but it’s quite interesting. As with Sue, I think it got me mostly (but not entirely) right.

Barney, George and Freddy have spent the last couple of days learning to type - I downloaded a typing program for them and they’ve spent hours at it - the dining-room has been turned into a computer room, with the two desktops that were already there, plus a laptop that Barney’s using - oh, all right, my laptop’s in there occasionally too Barney also had a look at Kids Programming Language today too, but I think I need to figure it out first - and I’m clueless. Oy, Jax!

The clocks changing at the weekend has not improved anyone’s form this week; George didn’t get to St John Badgers tonight because I said “if you scream at me one more time you’ll be having an early night” - and didn’t manage to even finish the sentence before being deafened with the next scream. So he’s now in bed with a book. Jack and Freddy are supposed to be in bed too - Beavers was cancelled tonight, so they’ve been bouncing about here for the last couple of hours. Barney has gone off to St John Cadets though. And they all made it to ju-jitsu last night.

Toby is very pleased with himself because he has learned to wave when we say “can you wave?” and to splash in the bath when we say “splish splash” or similar. He’s getting pretty good at feeding himself too, though he’s still on very small amounts of non-breastmilk foods. He likes rice-cakes, and I’m hoping that might save my sanity next time I have to drive somewhere. The tooth I thought was about to erupt a couple of weeks ago still hasn’t done so, but that doesn’t seem to slow him down when it comes to food

The next time I manage to screw up my blog’s theme, or forget to close a tag, or do something else silly that affects my blog’s appearance or performance, I will remember this, and I won’t feel so bad

Official Google Blog: And we’re back

The Google Blog was unavailable for a short time tonight. We quickly learned from our initial investigation that there was no systemwide vulnerability for Blogger. We’ll let you know more about what did happen once we finish looking into it.

Update: We’ve determined the cause of tonight’s outage. The blog was mistakenly deleted by us (d’oh!) which allowed the blog address to be temporarily claimed by another user. This was not a hack, and nobody guessed our password. Our bad.

Just in case you didn’t know, this is Sonic the Hedgehog –>

My kids like to play Sonic games on their Gameboys, and they have a couple of Sonic DVDs - oh, and they’re convinced that I’m as fascinated by all-things-Sonic-related as they are. They were doing something to do with Sonic yesterday, and Freddy insisted on telling me all about it - including this comment: “And it’s so unrealistic; I mean, he just stays in the air without even moving!”

Yeah, ’cause otherwise we’d have all thought he actually existed, right?

Today has been a non-day - or rather, it would have been better if it had been a non-day, that is, if it hadn’t actually happened. Nobody was in a particularly pleasant mood, least of all me - I threw a fairly dramatic tantrum around lunchtime, while trying to carry Toby, make lunch, prepare dinner and deal with demanding children all at the same time. Things improved slightly this afternoon, but I still went and hid in the bath after dinner. George has now gone to Cubs (with his most recent badge not yet sewn on) and Barney will be heading to Scouts in an hour or so. Scratchy has been asked to swing through the grocery store and buy supplies of things we ran out of today, plus all of anything that’s on a really good special offer, since we now have the freezer space for it

You know that rule that says that if you have a bad day, it’s followed by a good day? Well, I’m here to tell you: not necessarily.

And that’s just talking about my family. Then there’s the world, which seems to be getting scarier by the minute.

Have you noticed the various announcements today about the ID card and database?

A perfect end to a perfect week: my breadmaker died.

It’s only a few months old, so I phoned the manufacturer, who said I should return it to the shop and they’d replace it - but the shop no longer carries that model or anything similar. So the manufacturer said to tell the shop to send it back to them, and they’d send me a new one. Of course I don’t have the box, and I have no idea where the receipt went, so we’ll have to see if the shop cooperates.

And I had to make my bread by hand - well, no, really what I did was use the food processor and then just shape it and bake it in the oven, so it wasn’t actually all that onerous, and my title might be a slight exaggeration

The boys did pictures for this week’s Illustration Friday (see? there’s the “artists” bit from the title), and spent some time on the computer, as well as being surprisingly helpful - George in particular. In fact George hasn’t had a meltdown all day - I don’