NotSheep

As usual when I don’t blog for a few days, I can’t remember what we’ve done for large portions of the time. This is why I try to post every day, even if it’s just “did maths, had lunch” - because otherwise I’m lost. Take last Thursday, for example. I have no idea what we did. I’m pretty sure I did some bookwork with George and Freddy and Jack, I’m sure I spent some time with the pups, I’m confident that I ate stuff (I’d remember if I didn’t eat, believe me) - but beyond that? No idea.

On Friday we had my friend S and her children over to spend the afternoon and meet C&A. Her son R kept getting as close to them as he dared, then yelling “Werewolf! Werewolf!” and running away Eventually, in order to give the pups some peace to sleep and keep R out of every other room in the house, we left C&A in the conservatory and we all went out to the garden and locked the doors

Friday evening was a Cubs district event - a sports night at a forest park about 40 minutes from here. Scratchy was very tired and didn’t even want to go to basketball (!) so I took George and R from across the road (who also goes to Cubs regularly now), and drove the two of them, three other Cubs and Akela (the Cub leader) to the event. I took my scarf with me in case I was needed in an official capacity; just as well really, since there were, counting me, two of us. The sports evening was a huge success: the weather was perfect, the boys (and girls, mustn’t forget there are girls too now) had lots of fun, the barbecue was efficient and edible (which is all you can ask, really, when you’re feeding several hundred Cubs plus related adults), and I got to meet quite a few other leaders from the district - all Cub leaders, of course, not Beavers, but it was still good to get to know some of them a bit.

Driving home was horrible; I reckoned on 45 minutes, including the time taken to leave everyone off at their houses, but three separate road-closures and the resultant traffic jam meant it took one-and-a-half hours. Believe me, one-and-a-half hours with five hyper Cubs in the back feels like a lot longer. I was pretty wiped out by the time I got home. Partly as a result of that, I spent Saturday with a splitting headache - the kind that just stops you functioning - as well as being exhausted. In the afternoon I went to bed for a couple of hours, but things didn’t really improve until about 7 p.m.

We spoke with Barney in the morning; he sounded a little brighter again, although during the first few minutes of the call, when I was speaking with Henry’s parents, Barney was crying, so he was still a bit weepy when he got on the phone. He did start sounding better during the call though, and laughed when I told him of the missing-Barney conversation I reported earlier. At one point I reminded him to talk to Henry’s parents and tell them how he was feeling, and he said, “D’accord…I mean, okay” All the other boys also got a chance to speak to him for a minute or two each - even Toby, who had a big grin on his face when I asked if he wanted to talk to Barney, and an even bigger grin when he heard Barney’s voice. The exchange rules say that calls should be no longer than 20 minutes, but there are so many of us it always ends up being about an hour I think all Henry’s calls were about that long too though, so maybe it’s nothing to do with numbers Scratchy says he feels that he actually spends more time talking with Barney now than he did when he was here

Yesterday was spent sorting out the garage, trimming the bushes at the front of the house (and managing not to cut through the electrical cord this time), playing in the garden, retrieving the pups from the neighbours’ garden - every time we think we have their escape route blocked, they find another one. At least they’re growing fast and will be too big to squeeze under the fence soon - Andie is now about 9 pounds, and Cass is 14… and they’re not even 9 weeks old yet