NotSheep

High time I wrote something here, isn’t it? The reason for my absence is that illness has struck – one family member after another has come down with flu in the last couple of weeks. I started feeling achy and shivery two weeks ago, and it’s really only in the last 24 hours that I’ve been back to normal(ish). And when I’m not up and about, getting things done…well, things don’t really get done. So there hasn’t been a lot to report since my last post. I’d managed to write a little bit before the lurgy really hit, so I’ll do a day-by-day, but there isn’t a lot to say about most of them.

(Editing to say that I seem to have managed to write quite a lot despite that!)

Saturday (the one before last) – I woke up morning feeling worse than ever – sore throat, coughing, shivery, almost no voice at all. I hid in bed for a while, but when I was offered a cup of tea and something to eat, I thought maybe it would make me feel human enough to crawl out of bed and do something with the day. I was a bit surprised a few minutes later when Cyril arrived with a plate of pancakes – it didn’t take long to train him, did it?

The food-and-tea thing worked reasonably well, and before too long we were all on our way to the swimming-pool. It was Louie’s first time swimming; he spent the first few minutes looking around and trying to decide what to make of it, then he decided he liked it, and smiled and laughed, especially when his brothers popped up beside him to grin at him. I didn’t want him to get cold (although the child is putting on the padding, it has to be said!) so after about 20 minutes I handed him over to Scratchy, who got him dried and dressed and brought him home. Barney had been playing with Toby in the toddler-pool to let me concentrate on Louie, so I took over there and everyone swam and played for a while more before I took Toby and Jack out to get changed.

While Jack and Toby and I waited in the café for the others to come out, Jack started to drop hints about being hungry. I wasn’t about to turn a cheap(ish) swimming outing into an expensive lunching-out session, and told him I had no money (quite truthfully – all I had was the pound that I’d used for the locker!). A minute later, Jack said in a wistful voice, “If only I’d brought some money with me…” Not long after that, he said, “If only I was a wizard…” – then Toby joined in, saying, “If only I was a Christmas tree…”

On the way home the boys were playing cards in the car – Cyril, bless him, was trying to teach Toby to play blackjack. When we arrived, we found a pile of post, including two letters for Cyril (one from his mum, one from his oldest sister, who doesn’t live at home anymore). I asked if he wanted to take them upstairs to read them alone, but he said, “No – I don’t want to cry.” I wasn’t sure if he meant that he was going to try to read the letters without crying, or if he meant that he didn’t feel that he was going to cry, so didn’t feel a need to be alone – but either way, he read one of them, smiled while he read it, then went to have lunch before reading the second – all of which was a pleasant surprise, as he’d cried at every letter he’d received up to that point.

On Sunday my shakes-and-shivers were increased, and I spent the day in bed, trying to get better as quickly as possible and to avoid making anyone else sick. It didn’t work, and I spent quite a bit of Monday in bed too. I made it downstairs for long enough to take cookies out of the oven for Freddy (he’s quite capable of baking without supervision, but still doesn’t like to take hot things out of the oven himself), but that was about as much activity as I could manage. The boys got on with looking after each other remarkably well; I worried that Cyril in particular would be affected by my lack of presence, but he seemed to manage just fine and kept himself busy doing whatever everyone else was doing.

Monday night involved Air Cadets for Barney, and Cubs for Freddy – who didn’t want to go, and couldn’t really explain why. He’s been a bit like this with most of his activities in the past couple of weeks. I encouraged him to go anyway, telling him that one week of attending the new group wasn’t enough to really see what it was like, and so he went, and came home grinning.

On Tuesday I felt marginally better and managed to spend most of the day downstairs. Cyril’s maths book had arrived in Monday’s post, so we had a look at that – or rather, I had a look at it, as he’s not supposed to be exposed to any French, and he had a go at some of the maths once I’d interpreted it. The others did a bit of skool too. While playing with Barney, Louie grabbed his glasses, and managed to snap one of the bits of metal that holds the legs on, so Barney had to dig out an old pair (not the previous pair – he can’t find those – but the pair before, which have one lens so scratched up that I doubt he can see anything at all through it). I phoned and asked if they had the same frames in stock – I figured it would be faster to simply put the lenses into an identical frame than to have a new pair made up, but when we went to collect the new frame on Wednesday, they’d made a new pair up anyway.

On Tuesday night, George and Cyril went to Scouts, and I think (although am not entirely sure) that Barney went to SJA Cadets.

Wednesday didn’t go at all as planned. I was feeling almost human – but the youngest three children were showing signs of coming down with the symptoms I’d had a week before. I intended to take George to get a haircut and to collect Barney’s glasses, but when I tried to start the car, it refused to cooperate. I phoned the mechanic to ask advice – was it worth trying to start it by rolling it down a hill? did I need to call the roadside rescue people? – but he said he’d come up and look at it. He’s only about five minutes away, but it was still kind of him to do it. He got it started, but said it would need a new battery, so I had to do all my errands without turning off the engine before delivering the car to him. One new (and expensive) battery later, the car is working, except for the radio, which has lost its security code – getting that from the dealer isn’t going to be cheap either

Sea Cadets for George, Freddy and Cyril on Wednesday night, but no Scouts for Barney, who seemed to have come to a grinding halt on his OU TMA, so stayed at home to try to beat it into submission – and succeeded. It has now been photocopied etc and is going in the post today. He submitted his final CMA on-line yesterday, so that’s MU120 done and dusted. We’ve an appointment at the OU office tomorrow to discuss his options for next year, but for now he’ll be concentrating on his maths and sciences GCSE – at some point this week we have to get into the school where he sat his French GCSE and get him entered for those.

Thursday was another non-day – after Wednesday’s stresses, I was exhausted and sick again, and so there was another day of non-productivity. Usually Thursday evening means fencing, but I’d had a text message earlier in the week to say it was cancelled, so we aimed for an early night for everyone instead.

Friday…we did more skool, including more maths for Cyril, who was astonished to realise that we’d already worked our way through the first chapter of his maths book (which only has eight chapters). I forget just how much more efficient it is to work one-on-one than in a classroom environment. He did have a brief episode of teariness, but I think I caused it by mentioning that he hadn’t written to his family in France for a week – again, I think this is a good thing, because it means he’s “with us”, rather than here in body but there in his head, if you see what I mean. We didn’t manage to go swimming on Friday or Saturday, because although I was feeling reasonably well again – still having coughing fits, but feeling okay in between them – Barney, Jack, Toby and Louie were sick (and all of the others were showing potential signs of following them). The ju-jitsu-ers did make it to ju-jitsu on Friday evening – just. The first ju-jitsu class starts at 6 p.m., and I really need to start remembering that at some point before 5.52 p.m.

The youth group that Barney was part of last year started up again on Saturday, and as it’s for over-12s, George and Cyril went along too – Barney’s not exactly thrilled by this, as he was quite enjoying having it to himself, but he’s putting up with it. A letter had arrived earlier in the week giving the time and plan for Saturday afternoon, but as I hadn’t taken charge of the letter, it was nowhere to be found George sent a text-message to one of the youth workers to find out what time they had to be there, so that was okay – but none of us remembered that they were planning to go see a movie. Scratchy left the three of them at the building where they meet, and went to buy groceries, then came back at the time he thought they were to finish, only to find the building locked up and nobody around. Barney hadn’t been able to find his phone, so there was no point in calling him. George had his phone, but wasn’t answering it. So Scratchy sat around in the car until I finally got a text-message back from George, telling me they were at the movie-theatre.

Saturday seems to be Cyril’s mail-day – again two letters arrived for him while he was out. This time he took them to his room and left them there unopened while he returned to play with the others – which I think is a very good sign. And when he did open them, and discovered a packet of sweets from his twin brother, he used them to bribe the others In fact the last two weeks have been excellent with Cyril: after really struggling for the first couple of weeks, he seems to have stopped looking for negatives and started to get on with living in a different way and making the most of it. Even though I wasn’t very pro-active in keeping him busy over the past week, he’s been cheerful and getting involved as much as possible – I’m really hoping that we’ve turned a corner

Now I just need to work on George – he does want Cyril to be here, he does like Cyril, but I think the changes to his routine are leaving him fairly shaky and he’s been quite wobbly lately – culminating in a fairly major meltdown yesterday morning. He tends, when things are getting to him, to hide in a pile of books, forgetting that he’s supposed to be making an effort for the exchange too. He needs regular down-time to keep him steady – but it’s difficult to give him that and simultaneously keep Cyril busy! I hope that as the family settles into new routines, things will improve there – and apart from yesterday morning, I do see some encouraging signs, so fingers crossed.