NotSheep

I keep promising to be better about blogging, but I keep breaking my promise. I have no hands – at least, no free hands. And I have nothing particularly exciting to report. Things have been going on, we’ve been busy, but there hasn’t been anything out of the ordinary.

Well, we’ve woken up to snow this morning, which I suppose is fairly out of the ordinary – we don’t often get more than a flurry here, and if it keeps going for the next couple of hours, there might even be enough to go out and play in. We won’t be cold indoors though – we have plenty of oil for the heating. I know this because I was woken at 7.19 on Tuesday morning by a phone-call from the oil delivery driver, who thought the back gate was locked. It wasn’t – it just had something against it to stop it blowing in the wind overnight – but he’d given it a push and it hadn’t moved. I suggested he push it harder, he did, it opened, we got our oil. Unfortunately, however, he didn’t deliver electrical fuses, so when Scratchy blew all the fuses in the house on Tuesday evening, he ended up going out to the garage along the road to try to buy more (he had some, and replaced those, but one of those needed was a different size). It was when he was in the shop at the garage, discovering that they don’t sell fuses, that he realised that all the circuits that still weren’t working might be on a circuit-breaker instead, and so they were.

We now have a full set of replacement fuses though. It just seemed like a good idea.

Barney has started two more OU courses – MU120, which is a 30-point maths course, and S154, a 10-point course on astronomy. He’s already submitted his first assignment on MU120 – I’m pretty sure he’s got everything on it correct. His maths skills are good – although some of his study-skills could use polishing, such as getting things done in a reasonable amount of time, and not distracting himself by making smart-alec remarks on everything that’s going on around him when he’s supposed to be studying. His maths course requires a spendy new calculator, but a friend in the USA discovered that she had the one he needs, and is sending it to him in return for an Amazon gift voucher (thank you RP!)

I have to sit down this weekend and complete his funding application for both courses – I’ve already paid for both but should be reimbursed. To get funding for a longer course, he needs a bank account that funds can be paid into. He had bank accounts (plural) already, but one is a savings account and there’s no local branch of that bank, so we thought we’d use his other account, which also has no local branch but does have a cash-machine card. However we found out that the setup on that account is peculiar – no proper sort-code and account number – so it couldn’t be used, and we ended up opening yet another account, with yet another bank. I made an appointment with a local branch, but when the person phoned me to confirm the appointment and tell us what we’d need to bring, she turned out to be a very snitty woman who kept trying to make him sign up for a different account instead, and who insisted he’d need photo ID (current passport expired, so not acceptable to her, and new passport not received yet – see below) and didn’t seem to understand that most 14-year-olds don’t have a great deal of photo ID. Due mainly to her tone and attitude, I cancelled the appointment, but went into another branch a couple of days later, where a very helpful woman opened the account without needing a passport or photo ID – or even an appointment. (We opened one for George there too. As a result, the six pieces of mail we got yesterday were all for Barney and George – and nothing for us.)

And Barney informed me late last night that he’s going to be away on Sunday with Air Cadets. He knows when he’s to be there – he just doesn’t know where he’s meant to be…if he ever finds out, it will be a busy weekend: he joined a youth group last weekend and will be there on Saturday afternoon.

His passport photos have been returned to us as unsuitable because there’s glare from his glasses. I’m surprised they were clean enough to produce any glare! Anyway, we’ll have to get more done – without his glasses, as the passport office recommended.

(Scratchy has glasses too now – just for reading, but he’s never had glasses before, unless you count sunglasses. Fits his grumpy old man image though.)

George had his first night at Scouts last night. He could have moved up from Cubs last year, but I felt that waiting a year was a better option for him, and Akela was willing to go along with that. I’m certain now that it was the right thing to do, but now we can’t put it off any longer. Last night wasn’t a resounding success – he is the smallest one in Scouts, he got hit in the face by a ball, and in the first game they played, he managed to pass the ball very nicely to a member of the opposite team, so after that none of his own team passed to him again. He wasn’t a happy bunny when he came home, and he was very tired – although he’d been there for three hours (1.5 for Cubs, then 1.5 for Scouts) so that wasn’t surprising. From next week, he’ll only attend Scouts, and I hope that he’ll cope better, but with a 9.30pm finish and George being on the not-so-good-at-tired side of things, I can see an interesting year ahead.

I’ve also been getting very tired again recently, and a couple of weeks ago I started getting other symptoms that are, for me, indicative of B12 deficiency. I hm-d and ha-d for a couple of weeks before psyching myself up and doing another B12 injection. We’ll see how things go. Maybe it’s due to the virus I had a few weeks ago – that seems to be a trigger for me.

We’ve been getting all schooly and doing handwriting practice – everyone, except for Louie. Barney’s writing has improved over the last year or two, but he really needs to get faster and clearer if he’s going to be doing university-level stuff. George’s handwriting is good when he tries, but spiky when he doesn’t – but he actually likes doing things like handwriting practice anyway. Freddy’s handwriting is dreadful – partly because he’s left-handed, but clearly there’s a family trait for bad handwriting in there too. Jack is really just starting to write more than the odd word, so the practice won’t do him any harm, and Toby is very happy to be included with anything his big brothers are doing, so I printed off some worksheets for him too. I hope that a few weeks of daily practice will make a difference – if it doesn’t, I’ve no idea what to try next

Right, I think it’s time to send small and not-so-small boys out to play in the snow before it melts or turns to slush. Any ideas how I can be out there with my camera and in here with my baby at the same time?