NotSheep

I’m again resorting to microblogging to remember what has been going on since my last post here. With Twitter’s abandonment of those of us outside North America, I’m one of those who have switched to Brightkite - which, I have to say, is very nice. Still in beta though, and invitation-only. I’ve no more invites left, but I’m assured they are replenished regularly, so if you want one and don’t know where else to find one, send me your email addy and I’ll send you one when I get some more.

Anyway. Children have continued to be, er, children. And teenagers. Well, one teenager. And he has, over the last week, swung between being delightful and inciting me to murderous threats. This adolescence business isn’t much easier on parents than on the adolescents themselves. Barney has been teaching Louie to talk - he’s quite convinced that Louie’s emerging vocalising is because of his talking to him. And one day last week, when he’d been holding a crying Louie for a minute or two while I was busy in the kitchen, I returned to find Barney in tears, because Louie was. But then on Thursday, he was so grumpy that I sent him out to post a letter, in the hope that some fresh air would improve his mood - and on Monday, he was lucky to make it through the day alive. But then Monday was like that for everyone, including me. We were all horrible versions of what we are. Not a good start to the week.

Bedtimes: Toby has been amusing. In response to Jack’s bedtime-delaying tactic of “I’m thirsty!”, came Toby’s reply: “No! It’s Eddensday!” Another evening it was Toby’s turn to resist going to sleep. I called from my room, where I was nursing Louie, “Go to sleep!” - Toby yelled back, “I’m not talking to you! I’m talking to Daddy!”

Toby was a bit off-colour yesterday - he woke late, then went back to sleep (rather than bounce past us all demanding breakfast, as he usually does), finally came downstairs and lay on the sofa, where he fell asleep again. He brightened after lunch though, and seemed to be completely recovered by the evening.

Louie has been getting smiley, and doesn’t seem so much like a newborn now. I really need to take more photos before he’s a teenager like Barney! In the four-minute breaks I get when he’s happy to be with someone else, I’ve been clearing out the dining-room - the rule in this house seems to be that anything you have in your hands should be deposited on the nearest flat surface - and with the dining-room table being 1.5 metres square, it’s got a lot of flat surface, and therefore a lot of junk on it. And that’s before we even consider the numerous bookshelves… it’s nearly done now - but why is it that when you clear out and tidy and organise any room, there are always five items left at the end which have no home to go to?

I phoned the exams officer at the school where Barney sat his French GCSE, to ask about his mark for the spoken component, which was the only bit we hadn’t received. We weren’t worried about it; we knew that bit wasn’t going to pull his average down, and indeed he scored one mark less than in his highest component. Barney’s planning to do his maths GCSE next, and the exams officer seemed quite enthusiastic about that idea - which is useful, as he’s also the maths teacher He explained how the exam works, what the papers are, etc, and which book the school uses - we might buy it, but I’ll try to find it somewhere to have a look at it first. The book that Barney’s been using is very dry (Edexcel IGCSE). We had friends staying over on the weekend, and they arrived with a selection of maths GCSE textbooks, so we’ll have a look at those too. Barney and I went to meet said friends at Ikea on Friday before they came (Ikea being a lot closer to us than it is to them), and we planned to have lunch there - but Barney, being a 13-year-old boy, was certain he’d starve if we had to wait for their arrival, so we had almost finished our lunch by the time our friends arrived and bought theirs. The boys - theirs aged 14 and 12 and mine aged 13 - chatted while they waited for food - subject matter: Yugi-Oh and girls. It’s an interesting age… We then had a walk around Ikea while our friends planned new bedrooms in their loft, during which Barney discovered his mobile phone was missing - it probably fell out of his trouser-pocket, given how much stuff he had crammed in there. Fortunately it was found and returned to us by the security staff. The phone itself isn’t worth much, but the loss of all the photos Barney has taken of Toby and Louie - well, that would certainly have upset him.

We enjoyed our friends’ visit; as is usual, the kids bounced about and occasionally argued, and the adults talked and ate. And it certainly made for an early night after they left - my lot, having been up late the night before and not stopped moving since their friends arrived, were asleep at varying times between about 7.10 and 8.20.

Also on Friday, I visited the local bike shop (to get an inner tube for a stroller tyre) and discovered there’s a cycling club which operates from there. Barney’s very keen on the idea, so he’s going to swing by the shop on his bike sometime and let them see if it’s adequate for him to participate or if he’d need to upgrade (I hope the former!) And I went to the garden centre to look for pots for my houseplants - and managed to soak myself when I picked up a set of three pots without realising they were full of rainwater - I poured it all down my front, and had to wring out my tee-shirt. I did get some pots though, and picked up two hanging-baskets for £1 each - on clearance because the plants were nearly dead - but I only wanted them for the baskets anyway!

Hm, what else? I got all retro and bought a DVD of Grease from ebay, and we all watched it several times - the first time any of the boys had seen it. They all enjoyed it, although Freddy stated that it was “okay…but I prefer movies with violence.” Hm. Quite astonishing how many of the lyrics I remember!

I did some investigating to see what our best deals for phone and broadband would be, and discovered that our local exchange has been local-loop-unbundled - which in theory means we should be able to get faster broadband at a lower cost - but in practice, in our case, means nothing at all. Of the three ISPs which are LLU-enabled on our exchange, one of them won’t provide us with broadband because it reckons we’re too far from the exchange and we won’t be happy with the service, and the other two are AOL and TalkTalk - neither of which I’d go with if they were free. So it looks like we’ll be staying with Newnet - we could switch to another ISP which isn’t one of the above and save about £1 a month, but Newnet’s service has been very good, so it really isn’t worth it. Would be nice not to live at the opposite end of town from the telephone exchange though.