NotSheep

From Alice in Wonderland, I mean. The one who needed more time. It’s been ages and ages since I blogged. Partly that’s because I’ve been so busy, partly it’s because I was sick and hiding in bed as much as possible for a couple of days, and partly it’s that on the rare occasions when I have two hands free, I’ve been doing things that are slightly higher-priority than blogging, like making dinner. Of course a real blogger wouldn’t put food before blogging, but I have an appetite (and a desire for sleep).

So, with the aid of the things I’ve posted on Brightkite over the past week or two, here is a rundown of what has been going on.

Toby had a speech therapy assessment with the new speech therapist (the old one is still on maternity leave). She was impressed how much language he has; the delay is only in his pronunciation, not at all in his vocabulary or his ability to use it. The old ST is called Anne, the new one is not - but Toby was adamant that she was “New Anne”. As we were leaving, he told me he’d come back and play with New Anne again. Toby has also been telling me about his “baby button” and that all “my bruvvers” have one too.

Louie decided that 4 o’clock in the morning is wake-up-and-start-the-day time. Uh, no. Especially not if you’re the mummy who can’t get to sleep until 1 o’clock in the morning.

Jack had a couple of days of coughing, during which his breathing was getting worse too; I was almost on the point of taking him to the hospital when he got better.

Barney had a day away with Air Cadets - he had to be delivered into town by 7 a.m. to get on a bus with all the others. That’s 7 a.m. on a Sunday. The only good thing about that is that it wasn’t me who had to deliver him He had a great day, doing all sorts of activities at the airport, and returned home after 7.30 p.m., exhausted and famished. He coped through Monday, but we’d the mother of all meltdowns on Tuesday, when he just wasn’t able to cope with anything. Cuddles and talking and a couple of hours of peace and quiet helped him tremendously. He did make it to Air Cadets on Monday night, but he skipped St John Ambulance on Tuesday and went to bed early instead.

I managed to go through all the kitchen cupboards - I was getting tired of a) not being able to find anything and b) not being able to get anything out of them without six other things falling on me. The kitchen has been largely Scratchy’s domain over the last few months - a fact reflected in Toby’s statement to Scratchy: “My mum is in your cupboards!” However Scratchy is not nearly as organised as me, and tends to shove things wherever there’s a space. The consequence of that is that the plate-cupboard contains everything from instruction manuals to vaseline, and that we have four large packages of paprika and six containers of chili. I wonder what I can cook…

We had my friend J and her children to visit - we don’t see enough of them, but we somehow managed to see them twice this week. On Monday J had a meeting near here, so she left the children here while she did that, and then they all stayed for dinner. I thought my fatigue on Tuesday was as a result of a busy day on Monday, but by Wednesday I was feverish and sneezing again, so maybe not. Wednesday and Thursday were write-offs due to me being sick, but on Friday we made up for it by doing lots of errands, including visiting the library, where I’d one of those conversations - a perfect stranger commented on how great the boys were, we chatted for a minute, then she asked didn’t they go to school and I said we home-educated and she asked a bunch of interested questions and agreed about all the problems of the school system and remarked on how well home-education seemed to work, and then, in a sort of embarrassed manner, she confessed to being a teacher

We also managed to buy shoes for Freddy, Jack and Toby. Jack’s new trainers have Marvel Comics Heroes on them and Toby’s have Scooby-Doo - it’s hard to say which of them is more pleased

After all our errands, we went to hang out at J’s house while we waited to hear if Scratchy’s car had passed its MOT. Fortunately it had, and J kindly drove me to our mechanic to go pick it up. And then we came home with J’s miniature Schnauzer (because J is going away this weekend) and her sat-nav (because I wanted to play with it, and she knows how to get where she’s going this weekend). I thought we might see how well it worked for geocaching, but there’s so much else to do, and the skies are getting a bit grey now…

With the kitchen straightened, I got cooking. I tried to make meringues (we’d made something that called for egg-yolks, so I had whites left over) using a recipe I found for making them in the microwave, but it…well, let’s just say it didn’t work very well. They were either mushy blobs or brown cement. I gave up after the first few and made the rest in the oven, which was much more successful. And I’ve been using my slow-cooker a lot, although it doesn’t help that the digital control panel on the front isn’t working, which means I can only use it on one setting. (I discovered several on-line reviews talking about the same problem in that model, so I phoned the manufacturer, but their response was less than impressive - if I send it back to them (at my expense), they’ll look at it, and if they decide there is indeed a fault, they might offer me a new one at a discounted price. I told them that seemed like throwing good money after bad.) We also made flapjacks, which went down very well with everyone. I might do more of those this weekend, if I ever finish sorting through children’s clothes - yes, it’s that time of year again (is it ever not that time of year?)

Need to think about: Christmas presents and Hallowe’en costumes. In that order, because Scratchy’s off to Canada for a week later this month, and he might be able to pick up some gifts there, if I plan well enough.

We bought a car.

Well, we’ve almost bought it. I’ve initiated the money transfer for it, and we should be picking it up on Saturday - in the evening, because we’re having a birthday party for Freddy in the afternoon. His birthday’s today, but he has friends who *shock* go to school, so the party’s on Saturday.

But first, the usual what-we’ve-been-doing catch-up.

As mentioned, Barney had the first bit of his French GCSE on Wednesday of last week. We drove home on Wednesday evening, Barney having decided that it was worth missing Scouts to get to spend some time with his friends. On Thursday there wasn’t a lot of activity around here - I was much, much too tired. Barney went to the youth-club in the evening, but it closed early because there were too few people there. Scratchy had taken the car to go deliver our no-longer-needed bunk-beds to another freecycling home-ed family, so he couldn’t collect Barney. I arranged for a taxi to bring him home and be paid by cheque on arrival.

On Friday morning we cleared floors so that the charity-shop people could come in and collect a sofa-bed - the pick-up was arranged a week earlier. The sofa-bed needs recovered, or at least a throw over it, and I’d told them all its faults on the phone and been assured it would be fine. So I was mighty annoyed when they looked at it and said they wouldn’t take it. Had they told me that on the phone, I wouldn’t have been bothered. Grrr.

Saturday morning was spent clearing out Jack’s room, which is also now Toby’s room - his toys and clothes are in there, and he’s mostly been sleeping in there too. We got it to a reasonable state before I collapsed in a heap. I decided to have a bath, but as I started to run the water, I realised there was no plug - it was attached to the bath with a chain the last time I’d looked! I called all the boys and told them nobody was going anywhere or doing anything until it was returned; Jack promptly ‘fessed up and said it was under his pillow. It’s perhaps a sign of age, or perhaps a sign of the number of children I have, that I didn’t even ask why, but just gratefully accepted its return.

On Sunday morning Scratchy looked at my middle and asked if I was about to fall over. I considered hitting him, but decided that a) he had a point, and b) if I tried to swipe him, I might, er, fall over…

We spent most of Sunday outside, including some time with a power-washer cleaning all the bits and pieces for the garden. Just how do they get so dirty over the winter? It doesn’t even seem to matter if they were left out or put away. Sunday evening was very hot and sticky, and I lay in bed wishing we’d a ceiling-fan. I’m a big fan (sorry) of them; they make a tremendous difference and are much cheaper and greener than air-conditioning. I looked at some on-line and talked Scratchy into it; his only real objection was that he’d have to install it, so he hadn’t much of a chance of winning.

On Monday, Freddy was supposed to go to ju-jitsu and Barney was supposed to go to Air Cadets, but there were so much grumpiness around dinner-time that I sent everyone to bed instead. Scratchy spent hours trying to install the ceiling-fan he’d picked up at lunchtime, but couldn’t get it working. On Tuesday morning he phoned the manufacturer’s help-line and explained the problem, only to be told he seemed to have “got a dud”, and should get it exchanged where he’d bought it. Also on Monday, I phoned about a car that was advertised…and then on Tuesday, drove out to my friend K’s house, where I’d arranged to stay over so that I would not be driving 280ish miles in one day. K’s children were at school when we arrived, and didn’t know we were coming - and when she picked them up, she didn’t mention we were there. They figured it out when they saw our car in the driveway, then ran through the house to find us in the garden. C, her oldest, punched the air and yelled “Yes!”, and J, the next-oldest, ran around in circles shouting something that sounded like “Wagga wagga wagga!” Barney leaned towards me and said into my ear, “Do you think they saw us?”

The car turned out to be worth the drive; we’ve decided to go for it. The guy selling it brought it to K’s house for me to see - which was a round-trip of between 80 and 90 miles for him - I know I’d driven further, but still, it was nice of him. The car is as the ad says, except the mileage is slightly lower than advertised (first time for everything!) and it has lots of extras that weren’t mentioned. It’s in very good condition. After I’d driven it, K took it out for a test on the country roads (very country - the kind where you breathe in going around the corners because you’re not actually sure they’re wide enough), and it took about 15 minutes for her to get out of the driving seat when she came back. I said that Scratchy was no help in making a decision, because he just said “It’s up to you”, but that I knew K would give me her opinion. K, still in the driving seat, said, “Buy it!”

I told the seller I’d sleep on it - I was already fairly sure, but I’d rather feel completely satisfied when spending thousands of pounds! Next morning, I phoned the insurance brokers. Since we’re going to be a two-car family again, one of the vehicles has to be insured in Scratchy’s name - and we’d a claim in his name last year (the exploding Peugeot). At that time, we asked if it was worth claiming or if the impact on our premiums would be too much, and were told “oh no, it won’t make much difference”. Yesterday, the story was different: “Oh, that makes it very difficult…” - and a quote twice the amount it would have otherwise been. I’m glad of those on-line comparison websites, because after going through one of those, we got a quote of about £10 more than we’d have been paying if it was insured in my name.

Phoned the seller, agreed to buy the car. I met him later on and got all the details I needed for payment and getting insurance sorted out, then drove home. In the evening I lay on my bed and sent text-messages to people to invite their kids to Freddy’s birthday party. I used to be so much more organised: we had proper invitations, delivered by hand/post/email, at least two or three weeks in advance. Now you get a text-message three days beforehand

The advantage of doing all this when you’re already completely exhausted is that you end up so knackered that you actually sleep for the first time in months. Four hours in a row, that’s what I got last night. It might not sound much to some of you, but it was obviously a shock to my system, because I actually had a bit of energy today. I used it to run errands. I tried to take the boys to Burger King for lunch (Freddy likes Burger King, and it’s his birthday, after all) - but when we got to the counter to order, we were told they had no burgers. I asked what was the point in being open. “We’ve got chicken,” they said. Huh. I thought they were Burger King. It really must take some feat of incompetent management to actually run out of burgers when your job involves running a burger joint. We ended up at Pizza Hut instead; Freddy made do

We came home after the errands and sat in the garden in the sun. Whilst sitting out there, I was very pleased to see Molly, a cat who used to live with us (you can’t ever really say “my cat”). She moved out in late 2006 or early 2007, and we’ve caught occasional glimpses of her since. Today she came walking across the top of the fence beside me and even let me stand up and pet her briefly before moving on. She looks healthy and well, so clearly she’s getting whatever she needs from somewhere, which is good to know

Scratchy came home and installed the replacement ceiling-fan, and it all works, which I think supports the manufacturer’s conclusion about the first one. I asked Barney if he’d like to mow the back lawn and he groaned; Freddy promptly volunteered, but once he’d started, it was quickly apparent that it was going to take him the rest of the summer, so I ended up taking over. If, after that, this baby doesn’t arrive tonight, I think I might have to resign myself to waiting to mid-July *sigh*

Apart from my ranty blog of yesterday evening, I haven’t written a proper blog-post in ages, so here is a rundown of the highlights/lowlights/midlights/whatever. I should note that in creating this post, my memory has been greatly aided by Twitter

We returned to the vet on Valentine’s Day so that Andie could also be spayed. We couldn’t book both dogs on the same day, as the practice only does one spay a day - that way they can do it first thing in the morning and keep a close eye on the dog all day in the office. We figured it was no bad thing to spay our two a few days apart anyway, to let us make a fuss of them individually, but both recovered very quickly so it wasn’t really necessary.

While Andie was at the vet, we went off to the shops. We’d a book-token to spend - given to one of the kids so long ago that I couldn’t even remember whose it was - so they shared it. It took a Very Long Time to make a selection, and in the end I spent the last bit of it on a book of my own choice: Michael Morpurgo’s Alone on a Wide Wide Sea. I also bought a long-reach stapler, an item about which I am sadly excited.

We also all had our eyes tested. Barney didn’t need a new prescription, but got new glasses anyway, given the state of his old ones. What the optician doesn’t know is that the new ones will be in just as bad a state as the old ones within a week. In fact in the car on the way home, he asked if his new ones were lopsided - he’s been wearing a lopsided pair for so long that “straight” feels wrong We talked about him getting contact lenses, as he would like to go back to fencing but doesn’t like doing it without his glasses, and you can’t wear glasses with the face-mask. He’s too young for wearing contacts all the time, but if it’s a couple of hours once or twice a week, it could be do-able. None of the others needs glasses, although Jack has a mild astigmatism. I’ve had perfect vision ever since having laser surgery about seven years ago, but now my age is showing, and I’m very slightly long-sighted. No reading-glasses needed yet, but I was pre-warned that I’d probably need them in another two or three years. Just what you need a couple of weeks before your 40th birthday: to be reminded that you’re getting old

Toby added Bananaphone to his repertoire.

And my friend whose heart surgery went all wrong a few weeks ago underwent the second attempt, which appears to have been very successful

On Friday we had someone come and look at the garden, figuring we probably couldn’t afford to pay someone to do it but we might as well ask and find out. We were right the first time. It looks like we’re sorting it out ourselves. Now we just need a few weeks without rain to allow it to dry out enough to dig and roll flat, before putting down turf. Seed would be cheaper, but would take a lot longer to establish, and we’d really like to be able to use it this summer. So Saturday found Scratchy out there in his wellies, accompanied by various children at different times, some of whom were more useful than others.

Monday was a crazy day, but I’ve already written about most of it here, so no real need to go over that again! One amusing moment (rather than hair-pulling-out moment) was when Toby was having lunch - pizza and bananas - and singing, “Hit me baby one more time”.

Toby continued his unbearable cutess on Tuesday morning, sitting on Barney’s lap while he did his French and repeating everything he said. Later he was heard yelling at Jack in the kitchen: “Jack! Open! Bananaaaaa!” Yes, I think he’s definitely turned into a talking child now.

Yesterday was another one of those up-and-out-early days, completely unnecessarily, as recounted here. After leaving the office and sitting in the car shouting and crying down the phone at a friend and Scratchy, I drove back across the city so that Barney could be fitted with contact lenses for fencing. Unfortunately it turns out he can’t put anything in his eyes. In fact, he can’t even open his eyes if he suspects there’s a finger anywhere near his eyelids, so contact lenses are a non-starter, for now at least. He’s going to practise poking himself in the eye for a few months before giving it another try.

While he was at the optician’s, I walked down the main shopping street of the town with the others. Now for this bit, you need a bit of back-story. We used to live in that town, and three of my children were born there. One of the reasons I started considering a homebirth when I was expecting George was that the local maternity unit was so completely, absolutely, dire. The local Supervisor of Midwives actively discourages homebirth - she spent three hours in my home trying to talk me out of it, mostly talking rubbish about the dangers and describing physiological processes that could not actually happen. She lied to the National Childbirth Trust about local homebirth rates, multiplying the true figure by 50 - yes, it’s that bad that it could be multiplied by 50 and still sound low. She tried to intimidate me by threatening to remove care. The local maternity unit, despite having no SCBU and therefore taking no high-risk cases, has a similar c-section rate to the next nearest unit, which takes the highest-risk cases from the entire population. The unit is old, dirty and insecure. I’ve witnessed a baby removed (by a visitor) from the nursery and the fact not even being noticed for more than two hours. Confidentiality is non-existent. And so on…

Yesterday morning it was announced that the unit is to close in about a year. As a result, there was a news journalist and cameraman out on the street, looking for people to give their reactions. Well, when they saw me coming - visibly pregnant and accompanied by four children - they probably thought they were in line for an early finish and a long lunch. Unfortunately my response was not of the “shocked, appalled that they’re taking this service away” kind that they were expecting. Instead it was of the “good riddance, it should have been closed years ago, it’s probably the worst unit in the country” type… Scratchy is well-aware of my feelings on this particular unit (and shares them) and when I phoned him to tell him about being stopped, he roared with laughter

After our errands and meeting up with Barney, we went to our usual all-you-can-eat pizza-and-pasta buffet for lunch, where we always get our money’s worth During the meal, Freddy and George educated me about the different kinds of knights in the Middle Ages and what the various protocols involved. Then they all inspected and discussed the restaurant’s fire safety system. But when Freddy started to pretend to unzip his forehead and announced, “I’m a Slitheen“, I decided that was as far as I was willing to let that particular discussion go

We’d a quick playground visit before collecting Scratchy, then I left everyone at home while I took Cassie back to the vet’s to get her stitches removed. Soon after getting home, I went to bed - but the day wasn’t over for George, who was part of the team at the County Cub Quiz. Our team came third and George arrived home very tired, but happy

I’m hiding in the dining-room; there are eight children here at the minute, several of whom are grumpy (all mine) which cannot be impressing the guest children, though all of them are being very polite about it. A friend had an appointment with one of her clients in this area this afternoon, and since her eldest is on half-term this week, she collected her other children from school and they all came here. My friend then left to go see her client and she will, I hope, be back soon, as dinner is almost ready to hit the table.

We spent most of the morning cleaning the conservatory, which has, for the last few months, been nothing but a holding pen for the dogs when they come in mucky from the garden, which is every time they come in, because the garden is like a field, but not as clean and tidy. To stop them from traipsing mud through the whole of downstairs, we’ve been leaving them in there until the mud dried up and/or fell off them. This has been a reasonably effective technique for keeping it out of the rest of the house, but another consequence was that the entire room - walls, windows, floor, furniture - became covered in a thick layer of mud, loose dirt and dog-hair. Four of us attacked it this morning with mops, large sponges and buckets of soapy water, and about three hours later, it was…well, cleaner. Not really what you’d call clean, but certainly a sight better than it had been. Everything will have to be washed again to get to that it to actually clean. The floor has been mopped seven times and still isn’t clean, but at least the colour is visible again. The vacuum cleaner had a nervous breakdown part-way through the process, but recovered later, and fortunately we’ve a smaller one upstairs, so I was able to use that in the meantime.

Barney spent the morning trying to work out what the tune in his head was; when he hummed it to me, I thought it sounded like the theme-tune to Star Wars, but when he figured it out, it turned out to be David Bowie’s “Starman”.

By lunchtime we were all wet, soapy and mucky, so I sent the boys upstairs to shower in turn in my bathroom (the family bathroom has a bath and a shower attachment but nothing to hang it on on the wall, and no shower-curtain). I went up to have a shower myself once they were done, and discovered that someone had been at bottles of moisturiser and make-up, and moisturised the toilet-seat. Then my shower was interrupted when Barney arrived to tell me he could sing Starman in French: Il y a un homme d’étoile, attendant dans le ciel… Hippy Hothousing Homeschoolers

The midwife rang with my blood-tests results. The good news: my iron-level is great. The bad news: my folate level is low. The good/bad news: my B12 is also low. The reason this is both good and bad news is that it means I have to have B12 injections, which hurt going in and then sting afterwards, but they are very effective and this will probably help my energy-levels a lot. The midwife annoyed me, though, when she said, “So with this, do you still want to go ahead with the homebirth?” - since she knows how I feel about hospital birth, I think this meant she really didn’t understand the results. She phoned the GP, who phoned me and emphasised how important it was that I get these levels up - she wants me in the treatment room at the practice three times a week for injections. When I asked if the community midwives could do it at home (as they did last time this was a problem), she wasn’t keen on the idea - largely, I think, because she doesn’t want to hand over something she sees as medical to the midwifery team. But the practice midwife, who will be the one giving me the injections in the treatment room, is off until next week, which means I won’t get started until then. So: urgent enough to take up a couple of hours of my time, three times a week, but not urgent enough to let the midwives get on with it at home (which would have allowed me to get the first injection tomorrow). And everything I’ve read says that when both B12 and folate are low, it’s important not to supplement folate without supplementing B12, so I won’t get started on that until next week either. Argh, I feel a treadmill slipping under me…

After Wickedly-busy Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were…slow. I can’t handle a day like that without taking a day or two to recover, so there was little more than the necessities done on those days - and even the necessities were largely done by people other than me. Cassie, on the other hand, made a remarkably quick recovery - after being fairly sleepy on Wednesday evening, she was up and raring to go on Thursday. Her crate is in the hall, and when its side door is open at 90 degrees, it blocks the hall - but on Thursday morning when she was on one side of that and I was on the other and she wanted to get to me, she didn’t let it stop her - she leapt right over it. One day maybe she’ll realise it’s on hinges and she can just nudge it with her nose or her paw

She did keep getting painkillers until Friday evening, and was supposed to get antibiotics until this morning, but I forgot to give her yesterday morning’s dose, and by the time I remembered it seemed a bit pointless. Her wound looks great, and she’s leaving her stitches alone, so I decided it was almost certainly fine not to finish the course.

I spent most of the day in the dining-room, tidying it (it was 7/10 on the tip-scale) while the boys dealt with the living-room (which was 9/10 on the tip-scale). Once it was tidy and all the bits of paper were in various piles (”deal with sometime”, “deal with this week”, “deal with soon” and “sort this out now” LOL), the boys sat around the table and did masses of studying. Scratchy took Jack out to get groceries - Jack in his “leather” (actually vinyl - and that kind of very vinyl-y vinyl) jacket, came up to me before they left and asked, “Isn’t this so cool?” - and it was, but it was the pose he struck and his facial expression that made it so, rather than the jacket They brought back dinner - Chinese food, in honour of Chinese New Year (which is a three-week festival in China, I’ll have you know, so were not at all late in celebrating it two days after New Year’s Day). Well - not genuine Chinese-Chinese food, but what we call Canadian-Chinese, although I suppose having lived here for over a decade, we should really be calling it British-Chinese or Euro-Chinese or something. The stuff you get from the take-away, anyway. We can get our mitts on Chinese-Chinese food, but it requires a trip to the Chinese supermarket, which is not somewhere any of us wants to be on a Saturday afternoon, and requires us to cook it ourselves, which neither of us was really up for yesterday. We were pleasantly surprised at how little it all actually cost from the take-away; we think they might have given Scratchy a discount. We know he got a discount when he took the boys to the Chinese New Year celebrations last weekend - they charged him for three people instead of six!

Anyway, our New Years dinner was very tasty, and I actually managed to stay upright long enough to sit at the table with the rest of the family until it was over, which isn’t something that’s been happening too often recently.

Toby was rather bouncy in the evening, having fallen asleep mid-afternoon and slept for two hours. I was ready for sleep long before him, but fought it, knowing that if I went to sleep at 9, I’d pay for it in wakefulness in the early hours. Unfortunately staying awake until later didn’t work, as I was awake from 1.30 until after 5 anyway. The combination of small people kicking me (from both inside and out) didn’t help, and nor did the snoring, but really it was mostly plain old insomnia.

I still managed to be awake at 9.45 this morning and got on with more sifting through the paperwork, getting to-do lists done, etc. I used to use an A5-sized filofax-type organiser thingy, and it kept me much more organised, so I’m going to work towards having everything in there again. I already feel much more organised - I know there’s nothing that needs done in the next week that I haven’t got on a list, and I have a plan for dealing with it all. There are still some more papers to deal with in the next few days, but now that it’s all organised in one place, I know I’ll get to it. I found a letter about an appointment on Wednesday that I’d forgotten about and that I was supposed to confirm, so I’ll do that tomorrow morning - I hope just in time. I also found a £10 voucher that we got from Argos that we got before Christmas - I was vaguely aware that we had it, but only discovered today that it expired on February 14th, so spent some time trying to figure out what we needed from Argos, and finally settled on a watch for Jack for his birthday next month and a pack of six rechargeable batteries. I also found a £25 voucher for Tesco, sent to me as a thank-you from the woman whose two Japanese Scouts we took on along with my own two last summer; I keep forgetting I’ve got it, but maybe now it’s in the front pocket of my organiser, I’ll remember to use it! And I discovered a book token, given to George for his eighth birthday, I believe (remember he’ll be 11 in June!) - I don’t even know if it’s still valid or not, though there’s no expiry date printed on it. And a cheque for £40 which is I’m pretty sure won’t be honoured now, since it’s nearly three years old - and I don’t have any memory at all of receiving it. You see why I want to get all this stuff sorted out?!

Again, I managed to stay upright throughout dinner, and even for a short period afterwards - which is more than poor Toby did. He fell forwards from the mattress of the bedside-cot and did a face-plant onto the side of it, giving himself a nosebleed

It’s been one of those very strange days when all sorts of unexpected things happened. I’ll tell you about Monday and yesterday first, because - well, because they happened first, and that’s what I’m like.

I realised over the weekend that my driving licence had expired. In November. How did this happen? Don’t they send reminders? Well, yes they do…but somehow my address change never got processed after we moved, and I was a bit busy having a baby (Toby) etc, so it never occurred to me that the new bit hadn’t arrived. I never use my licence - a bank teller asked me for photo ID once and I started to look for it in my bag, but the next teller over said “oh, it’s all right, I know her” so I never took it out and looked at it. If I had, I might have realised that the address was wrong, and then I might have told them again, and the reminder they sent out might have been sent to where I actually live.

I phoned the licensing people on Monday and a helpful man there told me what I needed to do and pointed out that until I did it, my insurance wouldn’t pay any claims. Oops. So getting it sorted out moved rather rapidly up the to-do list. One of the things I had to do was get photos taken and have them signed by someone who has known me for at least two years and is a “respectable” person - which made me think hard, because we don’t have a minister and the doctor I’m registered with has never actually met me and the only teacher living in the street has only known me since last summer. Eventually I remembered a friend who doesn’t live too far away and is a teacher (though whether he’s respectable is definitely up for debate, as he and his wife were the first to agree).

George cut out lots of circles in the afternoon, so that I could use them with Beavers for Pancake Puppets. Meanwhile I browsed for other pancake-related activities we could do, and phoned my co-leader to check that the cooker in the hall was working. And got frustrated with Twitter’s recent flakiness.

Barney went to Air Cadets on Monday evening - proudly wearing the t-shirt they gave him last week - and Freddy went to ju-jitsu. George announced he was too tired, then took great offence when I told him to go to bed right after Freddy left. But y’know, if you’re too tired to go out, it doesn’t make any sense to stay up until the time you’d have come home if you’d gone out in the first place. In the meantime, Jack and Toby played in my bedroom with a VTech phone thingy. Jack was ordering in: “Can I order two ice-creams? Cold, with a stick in one of them and a stick not in one of them.”

On Tuesday morning, Scratchy arranged to work from home for a while so I could run out and get photos taken for the driving licence application. Somehow he thought he’d be at work by 10. Given that the chemist (nearest place to get them done) doesn’t open until 10, I’m not sure how he thought that would happen. He also thought that he’d be here with five children and still get some work done…heh. I got home and did some work with the boys and got more frustrated with Twitter’s recent flakiness.

Tuesday evening: Beavers. I took all the cut-out circles and various other bits of equipment with me, including the ingredients for making pancakes. We split the Beavers into three groups to make their pancake batter. Then we took them into the kitchen and…discovered the cooker was not working.

We talked about pancakes, played games, made Pancake Puppets and sent each Beaver home with a cupful of pancake batter. We told the parents to look at it as an easy breakfast the following morning. Not sure how that fits in with using up all the eggs and butter etc before Lent, but there you go.

Afterwards I went to visit my maybe-respectable-maybe-not friend and he signed all the things I needed him to sign. By the time I got home, it was nearly time to collect George and Barney from SJA Cadets, so I dropped Jack at home and the neighbour’s son at his house. My neighbour told me that I’m “an idol in this house” - I’m not sure how much of that is because I have five children and how much is because we home-educate. We were talking about getting them all up and out in the mornings. I’m in two minds about this: both he and his wife work full-time, and I really don’t know how anybody manages to do that and also manage children and their schedules, but also - well, they’ve only got a six-year-old and a teenaged daughter, so it does look from my perspective as though it must be fairly straightforward. I suppose we’ve all got our own ideas about what’s difficult. Anyway, I went to get Barney and George and finally got everyone home and to bed, having warned them that we needed to be up and out early today.

We had to be up and out early because Cassie was booked in at the vet’s to be spayed. They only do one spay a day, and they do it first thing in the morning so that they can keep an eye on the dog all day, so you have to be there by 9 o’clock. I reckoned that leaving at 8.30 would be okay - and I’m sure it would have been. Unfortunately I was woken by Toby jumping on me at 8.29. I haven’t leaped out of bed as quickly as that in a long time. Much shouting at everyone to get dressed etc - poor Jack was rudely awoken and almost dragged out of bed. Older children dressing and chivvying along younger children, many orders being given. We were pulling out of the driveway exactly eleven minutes after I opened my eyes. So it turns out I could do it if I had to - but I really don’t want to!

We got lost on the way to the vet’s (it’s a very rural practice), but got there with just a minute to spare. The four parking spaces across the road were taken, so I parked across the back of one car and told Barney to come and get me if I needed to move the car. I talked to the vet, filled in all the forms etc - and then two police officers came in and said, “Is that your Chrysler Voyager out there?” It turned out that someone had parked on the other side of the road - probably marginally more legally than the way I was parked, if there are such things as gradiations in the legality of parking - and between us, we were blocking the way of a large truck. And a police-car. Actually I don’t know if the police-car just happened to come along or if the truck-driver called them, but either way, I abandoned Cassie and ran out to move the car - and give Barney an earful for not coming to get me. Oh, he’d seen the truck. Oh, he’d even told the police officer where I was. But did he come and get me? No. And just as I was turning the car back onto the road, the text-message that Barney had sent me arrived: Car needs moved.

I provided all the children with a drive-through breakfast and took Toby to get new shoes. He has reached the dizzying heights of a size 5. No longer will it be true that his shoes are almost as wide as they are long Next stop: play resource centre, where the pickings were slim but at least my membership card hadn’t (quite) expired. Conversation with Barney en route about the ethics of animal-spaying: “Isn’t it sort of like genocide?” Well, I can see the reasoning, but I definitely think the pros outweigh the cons. I realised I didn’t have the vet’s telephone number with me (result of earlier speedy exits) and that I was supposed to ring at 1 p.m. to find out when Cassie should be collected, so I phoned Scratchy and asked him to google for it. A few minutes later he rang Barney (on top of everything else, my phone battery was dying) and told him he’d phoned the vet. Uh…beginning to see where Barney gets his (in)ability to follow simple instructions! (Not shouting at all now. Oh no. Of course not.) Oh well, one more reason for the vet to think I’m a moron.

And then off to the driver licensing office with my forms and my passport and my photos and my cash. The licence will take about two weeks to arrive, but will be dated from today, so at least I’m now driving with insurance.

Hm, what did we do next? Home for lunch, I think. A game of 20 Questions in the car. Barney: “Hey, guys! I have a really good one! It’ll only take one question!” Jack: “Is it a frog?” Barney: “No! It has to be the question we usually ask first!” Freddy: “Is it alive?” Barney: “Yes! You figured it out! It’s a live. Get it? It’s A Live.” Uh, right. Me: “So what exactly is A Live?” Barney: “Isn’t that really a philosophical question?”

Home and found the vet’s phone number myself and phoned at 1 p.m. Cassie was doing well and would be ready to leave at about 3. Good stuff. Checked the post and discovered a letter from the Education Board - oh, had they finally noticed us after only nearly seven years of home-educating? But no…it wasn’t addressed to me. Or even my address. It was, however, addressed to the Scout Group where I take Beavers, with the actual postal address of the Scout Hall on it. Not that we get post delivered there…but how on earth did it make it to my mailbox, in the next town, when it didn’t have my name, house number, street name or postcode on it? The mystery was solved when I remembered one of the other leaders I’d met at the Cubs Quiz a couple of weeks ago - he works for the post office and apparently they get confused because they can’t deliver to some of the Scout Halls - so they just give anything Scout-related to him and he figures out what to do with it. He must have remembered where I lived and decided that was the quickest way to deal with post for our Group

Also in the mailbox: a card about a parcel delivery. What could that be? I haven’t ordered anything recently. It said to collect it tomorrow, but I don’t plan on having the car tomorrow, so I took the chance and went to the post office anyway - and noted with optimism that there was a ParcelForce van right outside it. And yup, there was my parcel. Remember way back in November when I bought something from Ebay Canada for George for Christmas? It was posted to me on November 13th, and the Canada Post tracking system had it on their website as leaving the country on November 22nd. But it didn’t arrive in December; George was very understanding when I explained to him just before Christmas and said that he’d get it when it got here - but by the end of January, I’d given up hope of ever seeing it. Well, we saw it today. George is now the ecstatic (his choice of words) owner of a pair of Vector Prime and Wing Saber transformers.

(Oh, and can anyone explain to me why in the UK, where we call it “the post”, it’s “Royal Mail”, but in Canada, where they call it “the mail”, it’s “Canada Post”?)

We brought Cassie home too, all shaven underneath and acting subdued. The vet brought her out to the reception area from the back of the surgery and said “She’s just lovely!” Yeah, she is

And now…George and Freddy are at Cubs, Barney is leaving soon for Scouts, and I’ve got a website to work on. It’s a simple website, but the person who wrote it did so using Microsoft Publisher, so the code is 95% rubbish. I volunteered for this - it was a plea for help on Freecycle - but the bloke whose site it is has said he’ll service my oil boiler for nothing in exchange, which I think works rather well all round

I’ve probably done more today than I have in the last two or three months put together. I’ve certainly been out of bed for more hours in a row today than I have for ages - probably since mid-Octoberish. It’s now almost 10 p.m. and I’m still wide awake and while I wouldn’t say I’m brimming over with energy, I haven’t fallen over yet. That could be a sign that the fatigue is finally lifting, I suppose, or it could be that I’m going to pay for this big time in the next few days.

Yesterday and Wednesday were pretty much like most days have been for the last while, with me struggling to stay awake and upright long enough to actually do anything with the boys, then collapsing into bed at the first opportunity - which makes it all the odder that I’m still awake and upright now.

I woke about 7.30 this morning to the sound of rattling in the driveway - the lids had blown off the recycling bins (which were at the end of the driveway, waiting for collection) and all the recycling stuff was blowing around the street. After the boys had breakfast and were dressed, I sent George and Freddy out to collect the strewn contents, with a reminder to watch for cars, since it was about 8.20 - fairly peak-time for traffic here, with people leaving for school and work. I thought they’d complain about the cold and wind and having to go out and pick stuff up, but when I went outside, they were grinning and told me “We had fun!” Cool. So now I know what to do next time they complain of being bored: throw the rubbish out and arrange for a bit of a typhoon.

Meanwhile Barney dressed Toby for me and I gave instructions to Jack in between cleaning my own teeth and getting dressed and gathering what we needed to take with us. We were out of the house by 8.40 a.m. - yes, 8.40. In the morning. Kind of blew my mind I couldn’t get the boot of the car open; it’s still not been permanently fixed since the switch in it went at the beginning of December - it’s now supposed to lock and unlock manually with the key, but that didn’t seem to work either this morning.

Our first stop was the barber’s shop - it’s a one-man operation, and while he does a good job, he also takes his time - about half an hour per customer, even little ones - so I wanted to get us in first. There was already someone waiting at the door when we arrived at 8.50 though, so that didn’t quite work. Then at about 8.58, the barber stuck his head out of the upstairs window and told everyone he was just out of bed and would be down in a few minutes I decided to leave the three older boys (who were the only ones getting haircuts anyway) and go off and do some errands, but first I phoned the local community midwives and asked the head of the team (L) if she’d have some time to swing by my house sometime today. “Oh, it’s lovely to hear from you - are you pregnant?” she said. Anyone would think I had a reputation.

9.20 found me sheltering in the doorway to the bank, which is right by the open water, so the typhoon was certainly making itself felt there. I made a phone-call to a friend who’s about to go off to tour the US for six months and had a chat with her while we waited for the bank to open. After getting some money in my pocket, I phoned Barney to see how far they’d got - the barber was still working on the first customer (the man who’d arrived before us) so I went and gave the boys some money to pay for the haircuts and brought Jack and Toby home to do some tidying up. Discovering how disgusterous (that’s Merry’s word but I like it) the downstairs of the house was, I vacuumed and mopped and cleaned out the dogs’ crates. Other people do vacuum in this house, but it doesn’t seem to occur to them to move things while they’re doing it, so disgusterous was definitely the right word.

Barney phoned me at about 11 to say that both George and Freddy had had their hair(s) cut and that he was just starting to get his done - I’d told him to ring me at that point, figuring it gave me plenty of time to get Jack and Toby into the car and go back down to collect the other. I’d left extra money with them in case they were done just as L (midwife) was due, or while she was here, so I could tell them to get a taxi, but since she wasn’t due until 11.30, I drove back to pick everyone up.

Semi-shorn (i.e. half of us had had haircuts), we came home and finished tidying up, then we heated up some leftover pasta for lunch. L arrived and we had a lengthy chat, starting with her asking if I wanted more or less the same thing as last time, and was I planning to have a pool again - which I am. With a grin, she said, “You notice I didn’t even ask if you were planning a homebirth?” - well yes, I had noticed that she’d just skipped over that bit entirely The meeting with her went well; she’s got the measure of me, I think. In other words, she knows not to assume anything, and not to do anything without asking, and she knows that I’m pretty well clued-in about my options and the pros and cons of them all. She didn’t mention anything at all about me being over 40 by the time the baby arrives, nor did she mention anything about grand multips (I think I do just qualify for that description now). Even better, she told me that the community midwifery manager has moved on - to a different job in a town about an hour-and-a-half from here - which as I had planned to make it clear that she was to have nothing to do with me, not even paperwork or being present when my name was mentioned, was very good news. Good riddance - though I do feel for the people where she’s working now.

Anyway, a very positive appointment. L asked if I was willing to have any bloodwork done, and was surprised when I said there were some things I actually wanted checked - mainly my iron and B12 levels, since either or both of those could be partially or fully responsible for my current knackeredness, and if they are, it’s a relatively easy fix. I’m declining most of the other stuff though - it wouldn’t do to get too cooperative Wanting those bloods done was one of my reasons for contacting L now, rather than waiting. My other main reason was that although I’ve felt lots of things that might have been fetal movement, I haven’t felt anything that was definitely thus - I wasn’t very worried, since I’d felt the fundus (top of the uterus) and knew it was about the right height for almost-18 weeks, but I thought it would be reassuring if she could pick up a heartbeat. She offered a choice of pinard or doppler; I chose pinard because I’m really not keen on routine ultrasound exposure. Unfortunately she wasn’t sure of what she was hearing with the pinard, so I agreed to a very fast listen in with the doppler, and she found a good strong heartbeat of about 140/minute, which is just about absolutely perfect. I also felt some is-that-baby-moving-type movement while she was doing it and she agreed that it was indeed baby moving

She agreed to come back and take blood for tests next week (I think the B12 needs a tube which isn’t a routine one for them to carry in the community) and after that I’ll see her again about four weeks later. There’s a new midwife on the team (the primary midwife who was here for Toby’s birth has retired) and a new student, so I’ll get to meet them, and I was reassured by L that if I don’t feel comfortable with any member of the team, I only have to say so and it will be arranged for my care to be from the others - which I knew, but it was very positive to hear someone on a midwifery team actually say so without even being asked. One of the other team members, G, is doing a lot of work with the GP practice that Toby and I have just registered with; I’ve only met her once, but on that occasion she had a good old rant about routine tests and procedures which aren’t justified, so I took to her rather well - I’m quite pleased to hear she might be more involved this time. L left to go and check when her holiday-time is booked next summer, as she’s very keen to be able to attend the birth this time - she was really disappointed to not be on-call when Toby arrived. She’s one of those soothing, supportive midwives, and if she is on-call when I go into labour, I might just call

So…that over, I told the boys to get ready to leave the house again, as I’d plans to go and check the cookware section of Ikea and had to collect Scratchy. But George had locked the car when we got home, and didn’t know what he’d done with the key. We only have one key, and we only have one car, so its un-findable-ness was a bit of a worry. After 20 minutes or so, it turned up between the ottoman in the front hall and the wall. At that point, I discovered that Toby was shoeless and sockless - we found socks (the boys all having received character-socks in their stockings, that particular bane of my life seems to be much diminished for now - thank you Sally!) but one shoe remained stubbornly missing - and still has not been found. Eventually we gave up on it and left the house with a pair of much-too-large wellington boots for him instead. We do own a pair of wellington boots which would fit him much better (they are very little and very cute) but those could also not be found - it only occurred to me hours later that they were probably already in the bag in the boot of the car. Not that I could get the boot open anyway…

By that point there was no time for Ikea before collecting Scratchy, so instead I scooted into town to check the charity shop for cheap blankets for the dogs’ crates, them having pretty much eaten most of the blankets that were in there before - but parking in the afternoons is at a premium, and I ended up joining the line of about nine other cars which were double-parked. I told Barney to run in and get me if he saw a traffic-warden, but apparently the traffic-warden came up from behind and “just popped up at the window”. Maybe he felt sorry for me when he saw All Those Children, or maybe he was having a good day, or maybe he’s just a nice bloke, but whatever, he didn’t give me a ticket - instead he came into the shop and found me and asked me to move my car. Quite a nice surprise, that!

Scratchy, having been taken out for lunch by his boss, had told me to meet him outside a certain shop, so I went there and waited…and waited…until he phoned and mentioned that he hadn’t meant that shop, he’d meant another shop in the same chain - not the nearest one to where he works, not the one opposite the other shop he’d mentioned needing to go to, but an entirely different branch. Hence my twitter wondering if I speak the same language as the rest of the world.

We decided to go to Ikea anyway. Scratchy hadn’t been before, and I wanted to see if they had any pizza-stones (for baking bread as well as pizza). They don’t sell pizza-stones, but I bought some plant-pots at 99p each and Barney bought a £2.99 stool to fit under the roll-out desk under his bed. Freddy announced to all the people in the lift that his favourite age was 16. It must be really cool to have a favourite age which is exactly twice your current age

We decided to eat in the Ikea restaurant, partly because there wasn’t going to be time to get home and feed everyone before the Cub Quiz, partly because we didn’t like the idea of driving across the edge of the city at rush-hour. The menu is limited, but I must admit that being able to feed my entire family for about £9 is fairly impressive. (Actually it wasn’t the entire family - Scratchy was still stuffed from having lunch out - but even so…) With respect to time and travel, it would have made sense to take George and Freddy’s Cub uniforms with us when we went out in the afternoon - and I did think of that, but was already running so late that I decided not to stop and get them - in retrospect, that was not the best move. We got home, George and Freddy shot in and got changed (and George cleaned his teeth, having “forgotten” this morning) and I shot off with them again. We got to the Cub Quiz with about 90 seconds to spare, then waited for 10 or 15 minutes while the stragglers from the other teams arrived…

Our Pack had two teams in the quiz; Freddy was on one, George on the other. One of the Cubs on George’s team was sick, so they were down to three members - but still managed to come second, which meant that they got medals, and also that they’ll be attending the next round (county, I think) in February. Freddy’s team tied for 8th place (out of 17). The leaders and parents had their own mini-quiz in an adjoining room (a tactic designed to stop them cheating helping their Cubs) and I think we did quite well. Okay, so I sent Scratchy a text-message to get him to find out the name of an actor, and okay, so I convinced the rest of my team that another photograph was of Kenneth Branagh when it was actually Ewan McGregor…but none of the rest of them had come up with any names at all so it’s not like I made them get it wrong. In my defence, the photos had been specifically chosen to make them harder to identify. We got Edmund Hillary and Somebody LightSomething from Snow Patrol though, and a couple of sporting figures whose names fell out of my head as soon as I’d written them on the page…

And now, I think it’s time I did that falling-over thing I’m getting so good at. Night all

Lots of the links in this post lead to posts which are now private because they contain photos (and I only keep those posts public for two or three weeks after publishing them). So log in, or else…well, or else you won’t be able to see them.

When I started this review, I thought it had been a quieter year than 2006. Now that I’ve spent half a day writing it, I understand why I’m so tired. I think I should go and lie down for a year or two.

The beginning of 2007 found us - well me, anyway - trying to come to terms with the imminent loss of Barney and Henry. The latter sulked for several days after I booked the flights, and the former had a meltdown during which he expressed his doubts and fears and began to understand that courage is not about a lack of fear, but about doing something despite your fears. We made a list of things we wanted to do before the big boys left, and started with a trip to Ecos and another to the Folk and Transport Museum, where we explored both inside and outside, despite the wild windy weather. We saw the marvellous Titanic exhibition and had a ride in a flight simulator. We discovered that our activities were going to be seriously affected by our local leisure centre closing for two years. I got tough on Henry over his maths, which suddenly improved dramatically, and we rounded off the month with a trip to the bowling alley.

February began with a home-ed trip to a Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust property and I noted how much boys like sticks (big ones in particular) and felt relieved that Jack did not repeat his escapade of our previous visit. The “wild” theme continued with a visit to a wildlife rescue centre and we checked one more activity off our to-do-before-they-go list when we spent an afternoon tie-dying t-shirts, with fab results. Toby ended up on antibiotics - the first time any of my kids has had them for over nine years - due to infected nailbeds on a finger and thumb; I also got an infection but managed to clear it with lots of soaking. Freddy and Jack and I went on a trip to the local marina with Beavers. We all went to visit the Palace Stables and St Patrick’s Trian. Arrangements for Barney to attend Henry’s school in France were made. We visited a wildlife reserve with a friend of ours who ran the place until recently - he was a wonderful guide Toby got his first haircut, and the rest of the boys attended Chinese New Year celebrations. We spent a day with some other home-ed families at an aquarium and rescue centre, followed by hours in what was probably the worst traffic jam ever seen around these parts - but we just managed to join the rest of the Beavers for a visit to the police station, where I was handcuffed (but only briefly ). We returned to the Folk Museum, since the weather on our last visit had driven us indoors fairly quickly. And Toby turned into BatBaby.

March found me trying to pretend that Barney and Henry’s departure wasn’t less than two weeks away. We visited the science centre again and we went bowling again and visited the Castle again. George and Freddy had an argument about who was going to be first in the dentist’s chair, and we went to not one, but two museums in one day - the first telling the story of the linen industry, the second a small local museum which had a special display of Japanese artifacts. Henry had an, um, interesting visit to a local school, to speak with the class of one of the Scouts and he complimented both my French and my ability to teach maths I took Barney and Henry to the Ulster-American Folk Park, where they discovered (re-discovered, in Barney’s case) the story of the Irish settlers in America and got fed pancakes fresh from the griddle. Scratchy took all the boys to the science centre to meet The Titan.

And then they were gone…

Scratchy went with them, they had a great few days, and Barney decided to stay (not that there’d ever been much doubt). I spent a few days with friends before going to collect Scratchy at the airport (and missing him), then coming home to celebrate Jack’s fifth birthday with cake and yet another trip to the science centre. We cleaned up the garden, explored Mind Maps, and I was rescued by one of the Beavers’ dads when I got a flat tyre. And Barney, still in France, had a brief illness, which made everything more difficult for everybody.

Wow…all that and we’re only up to the beginning of April!

Barney recovered, we all got some time outdoors and Freddy and George earned their ju-jitsu orange and yellow belts respectively. I returned a bit of electronics kit, then had to go and get it back when I discovered I’d actually returned something else entirely. Scratchy took George, Freddy and Jack to the science centre while I took Toby to his first speech therapy assessment. Easter was celebrated with much chocolate and a visit to the seaside. The boys helped prepare for two new arrivals who also brought many visitors, and Barney continued to enjoy his time in Europe. Later in the month, my laptop started misbehaving and we’d a couple of difficult phone-calls with Barney. We continued our gardening efforts - little did we know that summer would never actually arrive. George and I attended the Cubs’ District Sports Night and Barney cycled around the French countryside.

In May, I took delivery of a replacement laptop, we got lots of new badges, Jack was happy and we discovered a Dalek in the garden. Barney started to sound more cheery and went to the beach, and the rest of us had a party for Freddy’s 8th birthday and took the dogs to the forest. George went to Centenary Cub Camp and I took the Beavers to the same location for a Centenary Beaver Day.

In June we started with a playground day with other home-ed families and George acted all grown-up while I was ill. We had another home-ed outing - this time to the zoo - and the pups continued to grow like weeds. We took advantage of a sunny weekend with a trip to the coast, a picnic lunch on the beach and a visit to our friends at their caravan. Barney, meanwhile, was enjoying the South of France. Jack showed off his knowledge of anatomy. We took off for a few days at the caravan, during which we watched the deck being completed and I took the older boys to the Giant’s Causeway and the Rope Bridge. We decided to stay over the weekend too, and we spent most of our last day in the surf and the sand. Once home, Toby fell downstairs, George had a birthday party, we talked to Barney and returned to the caravan with an extra pup - the sister of our pups, who was being adopted by our friends.

We started the second half of the year by running away again - back to the caravan, on a moment’s notice. On our return, we called Barney, only to discover that his French papa had been in a bicycle accident. The next few days were worrying for all of us, as he had surgery twice and was in an artificial coma for over a week. When he finally came around, things started looking much better, but it was decided that in view of how long his recovery was expected to take and the fact that his wife would be spending a lot of time at the hospital, it was best for Barney to come home a bit early and perhaps return for a few weeks next summer. In the meantime, we prepared for a visit from four teenaged Japanese boys - Scouts, en route to the International Jamboree. Their arrival came with a bit of a surprise: they spoke no English. This complicated things slightly, but we managed by drawing, pointing, showing photographs… we took them to the castle, ten-pin bowling, and, along with the rest of their group and ours, to the Rope Bridge and the Giant’s Causeway. During that outing I had a fascinating conversation about education with a teacher. The lack of words-in-common didn’t prevent the teens and my own children from getting on like a house on fire, though, and we even started a little cottage industry in origami. We are very glad we volunteered for this; if you ever get such an opportunity, take it! Just two days after leaving our Japanese teens to one airport, I was on the way to a different airport to collect my own almost-teenaged son.

And on to August - the latter bit of the summer that never was. We started by gathering early in the morning with other Scouts from our District to mark exactly one hundred years since the beginning of the camp that started the whole Scouting movement. I got a brand new camera, we had more of those great conversations that make you wonder why you ever buy workbooks, Toby turned two and Barney and George attended the world’s smallest drama group. We all went to a friend’s birthday party, then came home and got ready for bed - only to have our bedtime plans dramatically interrupted when the car - the one that had been sitting in the drive, in the rain, not running, for over 24 hours - burst into flames. We had another day-trip to the caravan, Cassie got sick and then better again, and Jack wondered if we owned a magic carpet. We decided the local indoor playground really wasn’t worth the bother (or the money) and spent a couple of days with friends we don’t see often enough. We walked dogs, met some Germans and spotted some seals, we cut children’s hair, Barney played tennis and Jack didn’t do Kindergym. Toby did rather well for birthday presents and was cute, as usual.

September brought puttering and putering, attempts to purchase a new refrigerator, yet another week in the caravan, during which the dogs ran away and back, the door cut Tobys’ thumb, Jack learned to ride without stabilisers and we rode bicycles on the beach. Barney joined me and the other Scouting adults of our group in cleaning out the hall in preparation for a new roof and we attended the wonderful Last Night of the Proms. We got back into our usual routines of studying and activities and we knocked our Beavers numbers up over 20. We made playdough, wrote letters to Santa(!), squeezed in a few more days in the caravan before the summer-that-never-started came to an end. I got scabby knees and the boys all switched bicycles. We got lovely letters from one of our Japanese Scouts and his mother, one of our car tyres died (exploded?) and Barney went to Scout Camp - as did Scratchy, having finally filled in his form to become a Leader.

October brought our first real preview of teenage mood-swings, funny noises which took the one remaining car out of service for a week and cost us a small fortune - and then more, a month of no Scouts (because of the roof replacement), moans about socks, another science centre visit, a day at the zoo with hundreds of Beavers, dogs helping redecorate and National Schools Film Week, during which we saw Tales from Earthsea (largely because I hadn’t realised it was manga) and Arthur and the Invisibles. We had another science centre visit, another visit to the castle, lots of sickies around the house (including me), and dressing up for Hallowe’en.

In November I continued to feel very rough, Toby improved his flirting skills and was dismissed by the paediatric cardiologist, Jack was invested into Beavers and Freddy swam up from Beavers to Cubs. Barney turned into a teenager - we celebrated with a day at the science centre and the bowling alley.

December - visits to the dentist and the mechanic, Freddy’s Investiture into Cubs, the local pantomime, the purchase and installation of a Christmas tree, an announcement to the world, cookie-baking, gift-wrapping, and balloons and face-painting at Ikea. We had our Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, which worked very well on all counts, especially the one that let me laze about on Christmas Day. And, of course, there was Christmas Day itself, after which we hibernated until 2008.

You all know how hopeless I am at reviewing what we’ve done, so instead of a day-by-day, here’s a series of random thoughts on the past week or two.

As I mentioned, we purchased, installed and decorated a Christmas tree. I must take some photos of it. I’m getting very lazy about taking photos. We made Christmas cookies on Sunday and they all got eaten before I had a chance to snap them for the blog. I think that’s a good reason to make some more, no?

Freddy chose which cookies we’d make, because he had worked hard on cleaning up the house on Sunday morning, and because he was the only one who was interested at that moment in time. He chose The Ultimate Sugar Cookies (he’ll go for anything called “ultimate”) and A Honey of A Cookie, as well as Chocolate Jam-Filled Thumbprints - I’ll put recipes at the end of this post. We made the sugar cookies first, then made and ate stinky pizza for lunch while the dough for them chilled. While they baked, we prepared the dough for the honey-cookies. Barney came in and looked most offended that we’d got on with the cookies without him, so he went ahead and made the chocolate-raspberry ones on his own. It was the first time he’d made cookies from start to finish without anyone helping, and they were very good (much better than they sounded in the recipe!)

In the meantime the dough for the honey-cookies was chilling in the refrigerator, but once my mother and step-father arrived, we never got around to taking it out again, so they didn’t get made until yesterday evening. The visit passed without incident; Toby proved (again) that small children who are not forced to allow themselves to be passed around and hugged by all and sundry do not, as a result, end up shy and reserved and clingy - well, he did cling, but he clung to my step-father - he even wanted to go home with him!

I have often mentioned how Jack knows everything and believes that everyone else knows nothing; this was proven once again when my mother was opening her gift from us. He was watching intently and she asked, “Do you know what’s in it?” Jack’s immediate reply: “Not yet!”

Yesterday was a lazy day; I needed one to recover. But Toby made me laugh when Jack called him to come and play with him and he shouted back “I busy!”

Oh, we spoke to Henry’s parents - well, I spoke to his maman, and Barney spoke to Henry and his maman. X has made an excellent recovery; he’s just returned to work - part-time for now, to see how he gets on - and is physically well. He has no sense of smell, and can only distinguish a few tastes; the doctors have said that might still come back but if it doesn’t do so soon, it probably won’t. They were told by the surgeon that there was so much blood and the source of it was so difficult to find, that he very nearly gave up. We’re very glad he didn’t.

We acquired, via Freecycle, four new bookcases of varying sizes and colours. They will be going into the boys’ bedrooms, in the hope that I can move some of the books from downstairs into them, which might mean we don’t have to double-stack the books on the bookcases downstairs. The situation here is ridiculous.

Oh, and I love my butcher. He has been giving us all his scraps and bits he can’t or doesn’t want to sell since we got the pups back in April. He keeps a big bucket in his walk-in refrigerator and we pick it up once a week. Once or twice we’ve supplemented what he gives us, but I think feeding C&A in the last eight months has cost us less than £10. He’s also, as well as the usual stuff, giving us all the bits left over from the meats he prepares for customers for Christmas, so we’ll be getting lots of turkey carcasses etc at the end of this week. you’ve heard the phrase “as healthy as a butcher’s dog”? Well, my dogs are butcher’s dogs by proxy. And yesterday he rang me to say that he had a bag of food a supplier had offered him for free, because its sell-by date was yesterday. It turned out to be two entire, huge, pork shoulders. I think there will be a very big tin of sweets and a couple of bottles of wine going that man’s way this week…

(I have to admit that chopping two entire pork shoulders into bits small enough to be daily rations for the pups - big pups, but still pups - isn’t really the activity of choice for a woman who is a) exhausted after a busy weekend; b) a vegetarian at heart; and c) still in the feels-like-barfing stage of pregnancy. But still.)

Speaking of dogs - these two are going to go into heat for the first time soon. At least, I hope they are, because the hormonal teenager act they’re doing is driving me nuts. They’re howly and whiny and not very cooperative - partly because they’ve been largely neglected while I’ve been ill, but also the pre-heat thing. Their sister, who is the now the companion of friends of ours, went into heat about three or four weeks ago, so fingers crossed ours will get it over with soon. And right after that, it will be off to the vet with them to ensure that they do not add to the number of pregnant females in this household.

George and Freddy had their last ju-jitsu class of the term last night; they came home having won a selection box each in the raffle. Barney went to the youth-club, where there were Roses free for the taking, so he brought me home three chocolates. And Scratchy came home from work with a mini-bar from Laura Secord, from his boss who was in Canada last week. So it shouldn’t be long before I gain back the weight I’d lost through feeling barfy for the last few weeks.

Cookie recipes below the fold.

(more…)

We’d another day of running around the country yesterday - I’m still trying to catch up on all the things that I got behind on while I was ill. The boys had an early lunch at home, then I did a few brief errands: bank, post office, that kind of thing. I’m always glad when I do those errands that I have a big kid or two with me, because it saves getting the little ones in and out of the car all the time - it must cut the time needed by at least a half. We stopped at about 2.30 and bought chips, since I hadn’t had anything to eat and was starting to feel the effects (but of course I couldn’t just buy them for me…)

Then it was off to my friend J’s house - she has a card for a local wholesale place and I was hoping to get small selection boxes or something for the Beavers, but as it turned out they’d hardly anything there and nothing suitable within my budget. I’d intended to leave most of my boys at my friend’s house while we shopped and to take at least Toby with me, but Toby had no such plans: he wanted to stay and play with the others, and - probably the key factor - the dog. Toby is absolutely fascinated with animals and his favourites seem to be dogs and giraffes. Anyway, shopping with me couldn’t compete. When my friend and I got back, he was happy to see me, but chose to stay and play for longer rather than come along on my next errand (I’d to go to talk to my mother and step-father about something). I got back for the boys at 6.25, which was cutting it a bit close, since we’d tickets for the pantomime in our town - on the other side of the city - at 7pm. Fortunately the traffic was good all the way across, and we made it with a few minutes to spare.

The pantomime was an amateur production in more ways than one but it entertained the kids - including the two Beavers I found sitting in the row behind me! Toby watched in fascination for about the first half, then started gigglng at the singing (I don’t think that bit was actually supposed to be funny, but whatever), then decided he’d had enough of sitting still, so I took him outside and he entertained himself for the rest of the evening by running up and down the hall. Jack, Freddy and George enjoyed the daft jokes and numerous references to a bird doing a “whoopsie” on someone’s hat, and Barney took pleasure in shouting the opposite of what the audience was supposed to shout every time he had a chance. Entertainment for the whole family

We got home shortly after 9pm, but nobody had had dinner (the boys had snacks at J’s house) so it took a bit longer to get everyone into bed. We all woke late, and we’re having a lazy time for now, though we need to get the living-room sorted out if we’re going to get a Christmas tree up this weekend, as specified by the plan. Oh yes we will…

I fear I’m neglecting my blog. It’s partly that I’ve just been too tired during the last few weeks to write, partly that I don’t like to do whiny-blogging, and partly that we haven’t really been doing much worth noting. I’m feeling a little more energetic now (only a little, mind) so I hope that the next few weeks will be much better than the last few have been.

Saturday was largely spent organising and wrapping Christmas gifts, and I started writing our cards too. I know I said it last year, but next year I really am forking out for printed cards. It just takes too long to write all our names on each card - there are too many people here! All the gifts for friends are now wrapped and I’m nearly ready as far as the children are concerned - there’s a package from Canada which I really really really hope arrives soon, since it’s the main individual gift for one child. Not sure what we’ll do if it doesn’t get here on time. The big pressie this year is a shared one between all of them. It starts with a W, followed by two of the same vowel, and I’m just very glad that we bought one about ten days before they disappeared from stores all over the country. (We got really lucky, in fact - we bought it when there was a) a voucher offer on and b) most of the games were half-price. As a result we spent less on the machine, extra controllers and all the games than the price I saw on a used one without any games at all in a second-hand shop yesterday!) I’ve been muttering about them being out of stock everywhere, so the boys don’t know for certain that they’re actually getting one. Freddy is doing his best to wangle the information out of us, but I’m determined not to say for sure one way or the other - just so there’s at least an element of surprise on Christmas morning

To