NotSheep

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Every time I start a post with a comment about not blogging frequently enough, some kind of Blog Karma seems to kick in, and the next post seems to take even longer. There’s no hope at all that I will remember all the blogworthy things that have happened here since the last time I updated, so I’m just going to write about what I remember and give up on the rest.

Shopping. Lots of. For Christmas, mostly, but also for clothes and shoes for Barney and George. It’s not that the others don’t need such things, but I know from experience that taking six children out to find clothes for any number of them is asking for trouble, whereas if I can abandon most of the children with their father and focus on one or two, I stand a chance. I was still ready to hide in the stock-room by the end of it all, but at least they did get reasonably outfitted, and the others are the recipients of more hand-me-downs, so aren’t in such desperate need. Except that George and Freddy apparently need dressed-up clothes for the Sea Cadets Christmas Dinner next week. (Not dressing-up clothes, which wouldn’t be a problem, but shirts and ties and proper trousers and proper black shoes with laces.) The Christmas shopping was rather more successful, largely because most of it was done on-line. Now I just have to hope it all gets delivered in time. Excuse me for a moment while I click the “refresh” button again on my Amazon orders page…

(I’m really, really pleased with something I managed to get from ebay, something for one of the boys, but I can’t say which boy, because if any of them sees this, they’ll know instantly what it is! I was less pleased about spending half an hour googling to try to find the Bionicle Jack said was his favourite one, only to then discover that it’s one that Barney invented.)

Gift-shopping complete, and I’ve even written and posted Christmas cards, which surprises me, I confess, as I’d almost given up hope of getting that done at all this year. It did leave me feeling old, however, as I found it easier to write them with my reading-glasses on. Toby made me feel a bit better when he looked quizzically at me and said, “You look cute in your glasses!”

The Christmas tree is up and decorated, and rather than have the Annual Christmas Lights Grump – which tradition is, I have discovered, not unique to our family after all – I decided to buy a brand new set of lights for the tree. LED ones, so the bulbs won’t go after three days. With enough lights on one string to do the whole tree, to avoid the other Annual Christmas Lights tradition, which involves sitting on the floor pressing the button on the controls once, and waiting, then once more, and waiting, then once more…you get the idea – because the top half of the tree is set to “fade” and the bottom half to “twinkle”. I even found a set on green string. (Just what is with white string? Haven’t the people who make the lights noticed that Christmas greenery is, well, green?) Of course, having bought new lights, when we decorated the tree, I plugged in last year’s lights – just to see if they worked, you understand – and they did. Perfectly

I have no wrapping done at all though, so you can stop blowing raspberries at me. I haven’t done much about Christmas food either, although I have managed to empty and defrost the big freezer in preparation for a big shopping list.

Lots of skool going on, catching up on not-previously-done things and attempting to finish up various bits before we take a break for Christmas. Barney won’t get much of a break – he’s got three more science exams and a maths GCSE in the second and third weeks of January. He did manage to get another day’s gliding on Sunday, though, so don’t feel too sorry for him. The others have continued with their usual range of activities. I was prevented from taking a drink from my cup of tea one day because a child was estimating the weights of things and had estimated the weight of my cup of tea but hadn’t yet weighed it to see if he was close. And this morning, the blinds man(*) seemed amused by all the ejukashun going on while he was here to measure up: Barney doing a practice paper for maths GCSE, George talking about base 2 and base 3, Freddy arguing with me that no, bisecting that angle wouldn’t work because he was trying to draw a trapezium, not an isosceles triangle, and Jack, er, drawing hedgehogs on his maths book. Toby, not to be outdone, was making a picture of a Christmas stocking.

* That’s the man who installed the upstairs blinds last year at about this time. While putting up the Christmas tree, I got so fed up with the half-done repair jobs on the half-done repair jobs on the broken thing-that-holds-the-slat in the living-room that I snarled said “forget it” and phoned him up to ask how soon he could get new blinds put up on the downstairs windows. About a week after they’re measured, he said. I’ll move the Christmas tree out of your way, I said.

That’s all I can remember, and Louie is ready to nurse to sleep, so, er, I’ll write another post in six months or so. Yeah, in six months. Take that, Blog Karma!