NotSheep

I’m losing the habit of regular blogging here. Must try harder. I’ve just realised that apart from my post checking if the WP upgrade was working, the last thing I wrote was ten days ago. I was off-line for half that time, and it’s been too sunny to be indoors ever since. So it’s back to dredging the depths of my memory, with help from Twitter, to try to figure out what’s been happening. And another looonnnnnnggggg post. The short version: friends, sun, sea, sand, ice-cream, caravan, garden, French practice, interesting people buying stuff from me, annoying midwife. Doesn’t sound bad overall, does it?

On Friday (not last Friday, the Friday before that - it’s bad, isn’t it?) we went to visit friends who are soon moving overseas. They had a baby three weeks ago, and have three other children under six, so they’re pretty busy right now! It was lovely to see them again, and E (the mum) and I went into town together - abandoning all other children with K (the dad) - to get passport photographs of the littlest one taken. Ever tried to arrange it so that a three-week-old not only keeps her eyes open for the photo but actually looks straight at the camera? That took a while…I did get to cuddle the baby though, and that made me even think this pregnancy-business might be all worthwhile

(One of the midwives phoned me during the photo-attempt, and asked if I was going to have certain blood-tests done. I said no, and explained why - because the supplements I’m taking would make the results meaningless - and she said “well, it’s all about choice”. Which seemed good at the time.)

On the way home, Jack made me laugh when he said thoughtfully, “It’s weird that Daddy got you pregnant just by saying pregnant.” I’m not sure where that particular thought process originated.

On Saturday (not last Saturday, the Saturday before that…), as mentioned, I did a WordPress upgrade, in an attempt to correct the errors that had been appearing ever since the php upgrade on the server. It seemed to go smoothly - there are still a couple of plugins not functioning, but I haven’t actually properly looked at them yet, so fingers crossed they won’t be difficult to upgrade/correct. Once I was sure the blog was working (a girl’s gotta have priorities), we all took off to the caravan - taking two cars, so no packing people and stuff in to bursting point - yay! In fact the children shared themselves between the two vehicles to the point where we were actually driving with one child in each row of seats, which certainly made for a peaceful journey.

In the afternoon the boys took themselves off to various parts of the caravan site, apart from Barney, who spent some time in the caravan trying to get a digital tv box working - when asked why, he said, “So we can watch Eurovision tonight”. I pointed out that it was on a channel we could receive directly on the tv in the caravan, so the digibox wasn’t needed, and he exclaimed with relief “Thank goodness for that!” Should I be worried at how fascinated my children are by this song contest? During the show, Freddy wanted to know if anyone had ever entered a song just to make people laugh…hm, I’d have said that would be most of them. I didn’t stay up - after seeing the calibre of the first five or so entries (and wondering just how bad the songs that didn’t make it through must have been), I took myself off to bed, and was soon asleep.

We woke on Sunday morning (not yesterday…) to a gloriously sunny day. I was given a cup of tea in bed (and asked, “Is that cooked enough?” Er…) before getting up and hanging Barney’s one-and-only shirt over the deck to dry. He does own more than one shirt, but didn’t pack any extras. There’s always one, it seems… we spent the time doing some French revision (well, practice papers), then he joined his brothers in playing around the site with all the other children who were around. It’s nice to be up there on a weekend occasionally (although we love having the place to ourselves during the weeks too!) We spent some time down on the beach in the afternoon, and brought some of it back with us in our shoes. Scratchy left in the evening, as he’d work on Monday.

Someone (looks accusingly at eldest) taught my youngest to demand that people “say please!” when they want anything from him. This would be fine if he would settle for us saying it once, but he likes to hear it several times…

On Monday we went into the town, although I can’t remember why now. I took a bunch of kids and a bunch of coupons to Burger King and fed the lot of us for the grand total of £6, which I thought was quite impressive - and fortunate, for when we returned to the caravan, I decided it was much too hot to do any kind of heating-up-of-food, and we had cold chicken and good crusty bread with hummus for dinner. And coleslaw. Lots of coleslaw. Jack discovered he loved coleslaw, and ate half a family-sized container of it. He didn’t even stop when I told him it was vegetables

Tuesday morning was still bright, but breezier, and we hung out on the site for the morning. Freddy and Toby had a debate over a sudoku book - Freddy saying “It’s my sudoku!” and Toby arguing, “No! It’s my work!” In the afternoon, in an attempt to convince Toby to have a nap, I put everyone in the car and we drove off to a nearby town which has a lovely seafront with a great playground. Afterwards we went to buy ice-creams; the ice-cream shop owner was very interested in home-education and we’d a good chat about that. Over the years we’ve been home-educating, I’ve found that the responses I get have changed. At first it was nearly always “oh, I didn’t know you could do that!” but more and more often now, I’m hearing, “oh yes, we know someone who…”

There are two sites for touring caravans next to ours, and one of them was inhabited last week by a very small caravan and two sisters who must have been in their 80s. They were lovely ladies, and thoroughly enjoyed the company of my boys (especially Jack, I think, who took to stopping and talking to them frequently). On Tuesday evening I went out for a short walk and was asked to see if I could fix their television. One of them had asked the other how to turn up the volume, the other had said it was the second button across the front, the first had counted from the wrong end and detuned it. She was very grateful when I managed to tune it in again, telling me it would save her from hearing “Now we could have been watching tv if you hadn’t…” all evening

On Wednesday, we had a lazy morning, during which the midwife from Friday’s call phoned me again, and announced that she had consulted with a haematologist and my GP (neither of whom has ever laid eyes on me, and none of this done with my consent) and they’d all decided I needed to be taking iron supplements (er, no…) and that she had arranged a prescription. Nice of her to make all these decisions for me…I expressed how cross I was at being told it was all about choice and then it being made clear the choice only existed as long as I was making what she considered to be the right choices, and she tried to tell me that the haematologist had been my idea - which was nonsense. In the end I told her I was considering her involvement in my pregnancy and would let her know what I decided, and hung up. Very cross.

We drove home on Wednesday afternoon - it was Barney’s last chance to get to a Scout meeting before Scout Camp, and we thought it might be quite a good idea to have the info about the camp. George and Freddy also went to Cubs, and came back with yet more badges. The pile of badges waiting to be sewn on is now about thirty-something high…

I had advertised a couple of items for sale in the local paper, and got home to find the ads had gone in sooner than I’d expected, so there were lots of phone messages. I spent Thursday ringing people back about them, and a couple of people came to look (and buy). One person said, “Oh, just give me your postcode, I’ll put it in the sat-nav” - and then rang three times during the 20-minute journey for directions. The last person who came turned out to be one of those fascinating people you occasionally meet - a New Zealander who’d been transplanted here, started a hairdressing business, branched out into various alternative therapies, and then found his passion in animal rescue - all kinds of animals. He’s invited us to go and visit his animals anytime, and we certainly will

The rest of Thursday and much of Friday were spent in the garden, enjoying the sun (and wondering if we were the only place in the UK getting any, given the tweets coming from people in other parts). We’ve a patio in one corner of the garden which is quite a little sun-trap and which is also very private, due to the arrangement of houses and windows on houses and trees around the garden, so I was able to free my bump without worrying about the neighbours - although I did wonder how visible it was to the helicopter which flew overhead. The boys got their super-soakers out, and I yelled to Twitter “Super-soaker fight!” - but sent it to the wrong recipient on my mobile phone, so presumably I’ll get a phone-call requesting an explanation the next time my mother turns her phone on

I also had a phone-call from one of the midwives (not the same one) wanting to make arrangements for getting cylinders of oxygen and entonox delivered - and never a word about blood-tests or doctors or anything else - think I must have scared them). The cylinders are to be delivered at the end of next week - which make the birth seem reassuringly close, but really, let’s face it, it’ll be mid-July, won’t it?

Scratchy, having spent the last two or three years making fun of me (and the three older boys) for doing Sudoku and various other logic-puzzles, got hooked on Sudoku himself, which caused great mirth for the rest of us

(In the meantime, I’m now doing Killer Sudoku in a magazine plus Hashi, Hanjie and Hitori on-line, so perhaps I shouldn’t laugh too hard at him )

On Saturday we did some tidying-up in the garden - trimming bushes etc - and played in the paddling-pool. On Saturday evening Scratchy was filling the bathtub with water so that I could have a soak in it, when Toby went in to investigate, leaned over it - ready for bed, in pyjamas and all - and fell in. He was perfectly fine, but a bit miffed

Sunday morning was more of the same, but after my nap (er, I mean, Toby’s nap…well, that was the intention), it was getting cloudy so we put some things away in preparation for the inevitable (we thought) rain. Not sure it ever actually arrived, though, and this morning is, once again, warm and sunny, so I think that’ll be our plans for the day arranged then

When it comes to blogging every few days, all I can say is, “Thank goodness for Twitter”. Because my memory is, uh, what was I saying?

Monday morning was spent running from one errand to another, including stopping to see the midwives and get blood taken to check my B12 level - and proving, once again, that I have horrible veins. Neither the midwife nor the student midwife was able to get a cooperative vein, and in the end they called a nurse from the treatment room to have a go. She managed to get blood - and only poked me once with the needle, which is good, but left a great big bruise, which isn’t so good. By the time we were through, I was late for Toby’s speech therapy, but the therapist being in late pregnancy herself, she was understanding. I also took the bicycle with the puncture (the one that was Freddy’s but was about to be given to Jack) to the bike repair shop, but they weren’t able to fix it until Tuesday, which wasn’t a lot of use since we were planning on leaving straight from there for the caravan. So I went back home and collected yet another bicycle - Toby’s smaller one - just in case we weren’t able to get it repaired. We did get it sorted out though, in the same shop that fixed it on Saturday, and they didn’t even charge for fitting the new tube or tyre (because of the running back and forth we’d had to do).

We got to the caravan and spent the afternoon outdoors, as it was sunny and reasonably warm - not tee-shirt weather, but certainly pleasant. On starting dinner, I realised we were out of bread, and then I realised I was out of cash, so I couldn’t even send Barney to the shop - so cheese toasties were out. I also realised we’d left the toothbrushes at home - there’s always something. So Tuesday morning found us driving into the big town, because although there is a chemist’s shop in the village, it’s not exactly large or well-stocked (they didn’t have Band-Aids when I went looking for those). I went armed with a meal-plan for the week and bought everything we needed. Back to the caravan for lunch, then the boys spent the afternoon in and out, as the weather allowed. They made friends with E, a boy about Freddy’s age whose family also have a caravan, and he ended up staying for dinner - he was kind of left hovering on our deck when I called my own children in for food, so I guesstimated how much spag bol there was and figured I’d feed him too, if he wanted. The dinner-time conversation was quite amusing - many home-educators find that people quiz their children to see what they’re learning, but my kids turned the tables and quizzed E instead: things like, “What’s the name for a number multiplied by itself?”

E stayed after dinner too, while they watched the rest of their movie (Spiderman 3 - really, really bad - I was almost praying for it to end!) and finally left about 9.30. I must have twittered quite a bit about the wind and rain, because when I said I thought there was only one other family there, Merry messaged me to ask where we were and ask if it was purgatory I think the answer to that is provided in the replies I got from the boys this morning when I asked when they wanted to go back to the caravan. Toby yelled “Yes!”, two voices said “Soon!” and the remaining two said “As soon as possible!” - so now we’re trying to make plans for the weekend and next week…

I woke on Wednesday morning to a very strange sound: silence. No rain beating on the windows, no blasts of wind…the silence didn’t last long when children started to wake though, especially with George, who was in chittering mode. Not chattering - chittering has a whole extra element of irritating. Never was I more grateful for getting-them-outside weather! I tried and failed to put my watch on - it’s usually quite loose as I wear it quite far up my wrist, but it was too tight, and when I looked at my hands, I realised how swollen they were. I’ve also got tingly fingertips, and I’m hoping it’s not the knitting that’s doing it, because I’m really enjoying knitting again

During the day on Wednesday the staff from the caravan park removed the caravan opposite ours, using a "big digger truck", as Toby put it, and thus provided great entertainment for small boys. We also spent a while down on the beach with bicycles - which Chris disapproved of because of the potential damage to gears and chains, but really, if you had the opportunity to cycle in and out of the Atlantic, wouldn’t you? In the afternoon, Barney asked to be taught to knit - he’s not usually the good-with-his-hands kid, but surprised me in how quickly he picked it up and got quite good at it. He proclaimed it “pretty fun”, and at bedtime was disappointed to be sent to bed because he wanted to stay up and knit (”it’s kind of addictive”).

On Thursday morning I’d a call from a midwife to tell me my B12 was now normal - which leaves me searching for some other explanation for my fatigue We walked to the shop in the morning - which usually takes just a few minutes, but took forever because my pelvis was so sore, and left me exhausted. We expected our friends K & J to be using the caravan from Friday, so planned to leave then, but I decided to leave Friday rather than have to pack up the car in the rain forecast for Friday morning. I spent the rest of the morning tidying and packing what I could, in preparation for leaving in the afternoon, while the boys cycled, skateboarded and playgrounded. I got the bicycles onto the car at about 2.30 - with difficulty, given that I have a big bump in the way of lifting them and that the carrier is designed to carry three bicycles and I had five… The boys played for another hour or so before we left, and Barney knit on the way home in the car. We arrived home at about 5.30 and the first thing I did was put on the water-heater - and oh did that hot bath ever feel good! Shortly after I went to bed, I got a text-message from J to say they weren’t going to be at the caravan this weekend after all - and I’d left the power, water and gas on…probably not a big problem, although the milk I left in the fridge might not be so good by the middle of next week. We could end up back there over the weekend, when the forecast is snow - now that could be an adventure…I promise I’ll take some photos this time if we do.

Yesterday afternoon’s sunny weather was promising, but never fulfilled that promise. The weather changed overnight: we had thunder and lightning, heavy rain and wild winds all night long. I didn’t know you could get sea-sick in a static caravan Several times I thought someone had climbed onto my bed, only to realise it wasn’t the bed that was moving, but the whole van. Slightly worrying! We made it through the night, however, and into the morning. I considered waiting for the weather to brighten before walking to the shop in the town, but when it got wild again, I decided to leave the boys here while I took the car. Since it was such a cold, wet and windy morning, they spent the morning studying - I’m a horrible mother, me. When the weather improved slightly (i.e. the rain stopped, though there were still gales blowing) and I told them to put the books away, I was still a horrible mother, because I made them go out to play - although their resentment didn’t last long when they met up with other children who had been turfed out of their respective caravans by their respective fed-up parents. We discovered that Freddy’s bicycle tyre was flat again, so I’ve had to promise to take him into the big town tomorrow to get a new inner tube. In the meantime, he’s been riding George’s bicycle, which looks like it fits him better than his own, and George has been riding Barney’s, which seems to fit him better than his own…and I’ve realised that Jack fits better on Freddy’s than on his, so it seems we’re ready for the trading-bicycles game again.

I twittered how quiet it was while the boys were at the playground (their voices were only faintly audible over the wind), but spoke too soon, for within minutes Jack had arrived back covered in mud. He got changed into his clean sweater (hah! I told them they needed to pack two sweaters each!) and went back out. A few minutes after that, George came in - to say he was “covered” in mud doesn’t really accurately describe the situation, because it suggests the mud was all on the outside, when in fact it was through every layer right to his skin (and in fact he said later, “I think I even sniffed some mud!” LOL) So he got stripped and re-dressed from his underwear out, and he too went back outside. I know he got muddy falling off the Flying Fox, but I’m not really sure what happened to Jack. Whatever it was, he didn’t learn - he arrived back muddy again, saying “This time only my trousers got muddy, but I’m okay with that”. Right.

Jack’s second sweater was soon muckier than his first, and he couldn’t find his first, so he borrowed one of Freddy’s, with Freddy’s permission - which was okay until Freddy got his own sweater wet and muddy and spent twenty minutes chasing Jack around the park (Freddy on foot, Jack on a bike, so fairly pointless!) yelling, “I want my sweater back!”

The park started to busy up a bit as the afternoon progressed, with the arrival of people who presumably have jobs to go to during the week, though it didn’t get particularly busy. I suspect last night’s gales have put a few people off! By the evening, my lot were more than ready to come in for cups of hot chocolate before bedtime.

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

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

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

George and Freddy have gone to Cubs - after a great deal of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from George because he couldn’t find his Cub scarf. Mine’s been missing for weeks, so he couldn’t borrow it. Barney offered to lend his, but George couldn’t find that either. I think he eventually found one before they left, but I was pretty much tuning it all out by that stage so I can’t be sure.

I never did get breakfast on Monday, and lunch consisted of oatmeal-raisin cookies the boys had baked on the weekend, but we did eventually get on with studying. George and Freddy returned to ju-jitsu on Monday night. Barney’s been thinking about Air Cadets, which meets locally on a Monday, but decided he was too tired on Monday evening, though he says he’s going to go and check it out next week.

We ploughed on with the studies yesterday, interrupted only by someone who came to have a look at our insulation and who, I realised afterwards, hadn’t even raised an eyebrow at all the children being here during the day, or when I mentioned that we home-educate. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. Maybe home-ed is becoming mainstream?

Today has been a lazy day around here; I think an hour of active games with Beavers last night pretty much took any residual energy I might have had. We’ve all been studying hard for the last couple of weeks though, so I don’t feel too guilty. I did speak to Mr. B (the French teacher who is being so helpful in arranging Barney’s GCSE exam) again; I read him a couple of samples of Barney’s past papers and he was impressed. The exam has four components: reading, listening, writing and speaking. The first two of those are “wee buns”, as they say around here, for Barney: it’s like filling in forms for him. I don’t think he’ll have much trouble with the speaking bit, but Mr. B is going to meet him when we go in to do the paperwork for the exam-entry, and he’ll be able to give us a heads-up about any potential problems there. The writing is the major sticking-point - Barney has no exam experience and thus none of those skills which are needed on top of actual ability in the subject in order to do well in an exam. (Having said that, I’m sure there are plenty of students who do have exam experience but who still don’t have those skills - I know I was one!) That’s where the past papers are really needed for him. His first attempt at a writing paper saw a letter which answered all the required questions but with no additional information. His second attempt saw the same letter, re-written, massively long and full of details - but took much too long. On his third attempt he spent most of his time planning the letter and then ran out of time to actually write the bit that gets marked. His fourth attempt was a great improvement; he got everything completed and squeezed in nearly everything that the marking scheme mentions, although he didn’t have time to do a read-through at the end. Still, 37/42 on the weakest bit isn’t bad. We’ll keep at the practice papers and with luck, by the time he’s doing the exam, he’ll have the technique perfected. Expect lots of bits of French on this blog in the next few months as I try to keep up with him…

No Scouts tonight; one of the leaders is away on a residential with the school where she’s a classroom assistant, and it didn’t occur to the other one that she could have asked Scratchy to come in until after she’d rung all the Scouts to cancel it. Ah well. It will give Barney more time for Facebook before they shut down Scrabulous

I’m going to finish this with a mention of a very good friend who is undergoing heart surgery tomorrow. Lots and lots of fast-healing vibes are heading her way!

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…)

I haven’t written anything here since last Wednesday, and there’s no good reason. It’s not as if I’ve been busy doing anything else - quite the opposite, in fact. With no car, we haven’t been going anywhere. My friend S came over on Friday with her children, but apart from that, we haven’t even seen anyone else. I’m starting to feel cabin-feverish; I really, really hope the car is fixed by the end of tomorrow, because then I can spend the rest of the week going places. I also really, really hope the car is fixed by the end of tomorrow because we’re running out of certain grocery essentials.

If we’d had the car, we’d have probably been away at the caravan this week. Usually we can’t go until a Thursday, because of Beavers on Tuesday and Cubs/Scouts on Wednesday. But there will be no Beavers or Cubs or Scouts for the next two weeks, because the roof on the Scout Hall is being replaced, and the builders are starting today. As a result, I’ve a load of Beaver equipment in the garage - and also as a result, we’re going to have to re-arrange our programming for the next few weeks. We’re going to finish this year with lots of planned programmes we never used - but that will just make it easier to programme next year

Since we’re stuck in the house, we’ve been getting through as much “school” stuff as possible. (I still, after more than six years of home-ed, haven’t come up with a good name for the formal and semi-formal bits. Any suggestions?) I figure if we do lots of that now, we can take time off once we’re mobile again

I’ve also been getting lots of clearing out done, though most of that was done before the car went kaput, so maybe it’s just a phase I’m going through. Which reminds me, I’ve still got a moan about socks in my drafts…

My children are getting quite good at this packing-to-go-away-for-a-few-days thing. I do wish, though, that they’d worry a bit less about which Yugi-Oh decks and GameBoy games they’re taking and think a bit more about counting pairs of socks. 0.5 pairs of socks, anyone?

We left on Thursday morning after getting everything packed into the car and visiting the butcher for our weekly dog-food collection (lots this week - about 30kg). Shortly after we arrived at the caravan, just after we’d got everything into the van, the wind and rain started. After an hour or so the weather improved and we went to the playground for a while before going to the shop for some provisions and cash. There’s only one cash-machine in town and it’s one of those where you pay a fee, so I always go to the post office in the back of the shop for my money - except that it turns out that it closes at lunchtime on a Thursday. And the cash-machine was out of service. And I needed cash to pay for a gas cylinder, since ours were empty. Without gas, we’d have no cooking, no heat, and no hot water (apart from what we could boil in the kettle). Fortunately the guy working the caravan site was willing to give me credit until Friday

The weather was wet and windy in the evening too, so the boys watched a movie before bed. Overnight the weather continued to be wild, but by Friday things were looking much better. I realised, while the bagels were toasting, that we’d nothing to spread on them, so I had a quick early-morning run back to the shop. After tidying up, we - kids, dogs and me - went to the beach. I got some money from the post office on the way back, then we spent the early part of the afternoon inside playing cards, since it was raining again. The boys had asked to learn how to play poker - well I didn’t know, but we found a book of card-games and taught ourselves. We had no poker-chips so we played with pennies, and when I realised we needed more than we had, I sent Barney to the post-office with four pound coins, to ask for pennies. I didn’t think to tell him to take a bag to carry the coins in, and he didn’t think to ask for one in the shop, so the poor kid cycled back with his trousers nearly falling down due to the weight in his pockets

Later in the afternoon Barney and George headed to the games-room while Freddy and Jack went to the playground. Once Scratchy arrived (he was going to take the train, but someone from work who lives near the site drove him instead), we had dinner, then the boys went back out to play again for a while before coming back for more poker

For the first time this week, I was actually awake and functional all day long - certainly moreso than yesterday, which was largely spent almost-horizontal. George and Barney did go to Cubs and Scouts respectively in the evening, though George’s friend R didn’t make it, since he had too much homework. He’s in his last year of primary school, and his mum (a nursery teacher) spoke to his teacher, who told her that two hours a night is about right for that age. Astonishing.

Cubs and Scouts went well, apparently, and nobody brought any badges home to be sewn on, which is just as well since most of the last lot aren’t sewn on yet.

This morning George cleaned up the kitchen after breakfast (muttering all the time - he mutters a lot) while the others did their jobs around the house. Barney seemed particularly helpful this morning; the reason for that became clear later

By lunchtime George and Freddy had done some maths and Barney had worked through quite a bit of his French textbook; it’s mostly just refresher for him right now, but he’ll soon be at the same point as George (who’d gone ahead while Barney was away). I’m not sure how it’s going to work - maybe they’ll work together, or maybe Barney, not needing to absorb the vocabulary and structure, will forge ahead - but we’ll work it out when we get there. When Freddy went off to investigate what we could have for lunch, he reported back that there was nothing to eat. I was a bit disbelieving, and sure enough, investigation revealed a wide variety of options in the Big New Fridge alone, before even opening the cupboards. Lunch was more or less a fend-for-yourself affair; Barney was the last to eat and I had to laugh as he walked into the kitchen and announced, “Right, hand over the bread and nobody gets hurt!”

Scratchy did some errands for me at lunchtime - a shower and shower-rail that I hope will work in the boys’ bathroom (it’s too long for a standard curtain-pole) and a copy of Anne Frank’s Diary, since Barney and George are going to do a project on it. We’re reading Carrie’s War at the minute, then we’ll have a brief look at life in Europe during WWII, then read Anne Frank together.

Lunch over, I checked the post and discovered the renewal forms for the car insurance - for the car that went up in flames about a month ago. I rang the broker and reminded them that the vehicle wasn’t really in an insurable state any more…

After that I did some German with Barney while George finished his maths before we read some more of Carrie’s War. During the rest of the afternoon I realised that it’s almost a year since Henry arrived with us - this time last year we were moving furniture in preparation for his family coming. I also had most of my Christmas shopping done - it didn’t quite work out in the end, of course, due to Henry’s arrival, but it was still a sight more than I’ve done this year. I must speak to Scratchy and see when he can take a day off so that I can disappear to the shops - I don’t shop on weekends if I can possibly help it.

I noticed this morning that George was scratching his head in a sort of manic fashion, so thought a nit-check might be in order. On entering the kids’ bathroom, however, I was confronted by a huge spider - in the bath, so no immediate panic, but too big to wash down the plughole, so not leaving the bath usable - at least not if you’re me. I checked George’s head in the master bathroom instead, and the result of that was that everybody else got checked too. Trust me, sometimes negative is better than positive. And I’d certainly have preferred five negatives in a row to the five positives I got

While I was checking Barney, I realised how grown-up he’s becoming. He’s taller, his shoulders are broadening and becoming more muscular…and he told me he’s starting to get a bit interested in girls. Not that any girl will ever be good enough for him, of course He also asked if he could go to the youth-club tonight - aha! that explains the excessive helpfulness all day! Unfortunately when he went to walk C this evening and swung by his friend N’s house, he discovered that the youth-club isn’t on tonight. Why, he doesn’t know, because he didn’t think to ask. Is it just too early in the term? Is it cancelled for evermore? Is it running every night except Thusdays now? The mystery remains… and Barney’s had a shower for nothing

For those scratching their heads: the title comes from Helen’s very (ahem) helpful comment

Seriously. Not a word of English between them, unless you count the aforementioned “Google” and “Toshiba”, and frankly, I think you’d be hard pushed to consider the word “Toshiba” English, however broad an accent you say it in. And the funny thing is, despite our total and complete lack of ability to speak to each other, I really like them. They’re lovely. They’re funny and cheerful and co-operative and treat each other well and they just seem like really nice kids

Was it terribly anglo-centric of me to have assumed they would understand at least rudimentary English? I was thinking along the lines of: teenagers, industrialised nation, bound to have had some English lessons. But it seems not, unless they’re playing a great big joke on me. Though if it turns out that everybody else in the group speaks English and I got the only four who don’t, there’ll be heads rolling

I found that the Altavista Babelfish translator worked on my laptop; I have no idea how good or bad the translation is, but it’s bound to get more of the idea across than anything else I can do. Between that and showing them photographs, I managed to get across to them what the options for today were. Since four of them plus my own children makes more-than-fits-in-the-car, we were limited this morning - but the castle’s only five minutes away, so I made two trips and got everyone there. They all seemed to enjoy the castle, sometimes even making jokes that we all got (like comparing heights of lifesize models of Normans to themselves). Jack just kept on talking to them, either oblivious of their inability to understand him, or just not caring about it, and since none of them seemed to mind, I let him continue.

I offered them McDonald’s for lunch; all their travel equipment has McD’s logo on it, so presumably they’ve provided sponsorship and I figured they would probably a) recognise and b) eat it. Walking from the castle to McD’s though, it occurred to me that there’s a Pizza Hut next to it, so I asked if they recognised that, which they did, and asked which they’d prefer. They chose Pizza Hut. That worked out well, partly because there’s a barbecue tonight so it was better to avoid the burgers, and also partly because it’s a buffet, so I figured everyone would at least have access to something they liked to eat. It’s also an all-you-can-eat buffet, and these are, after all, four teenage boys, so I figured we’d get our money’s worth - and having seen the quantity of pasta that Freddy alone put away, I wasn’t wrong. Scratchy arrived part-way through the meal - he took a half-day today - which meant we had two cars available and were able to go further afield: a bowling alley.

Ten-pin bowling turned out to be a very good idea. Everyone had fun, everyone laughed and cheered and enjoyed the jokes (like the flukiest strike ever after the ball bounced off the rails no less than three times), and it didn’t require many actual words. I have no idea if my Japanese Scouts had ever bowled before, and no way of finding out.

I have photos from both bowling and the castle, and will post them tonight if I’m not too tired to sit up straight.

After bowling we headed home - I stopped to put over £70 worth of fuel in my car! - and after about 15 minutes of effort, I got the message across that they had a couple of hours free before this evening’s barbecue. At least I think I got the message across.

To explain some of the previous post: 2007 sees not just the Centenary of Scouting, but also the 21st World Jamboree, which will be held in Essex. It has long been tradition that Scouts attending a Jamboree in a country which is not their own travel via another country which is more local to it, staying a few days in that country beforehand, and they are hosted by volunteer families during that time. This is called Home Hospitality, or HoHo.

Swedish and Japanese Scouts will be arriving here this week; our District is one of those selected to host Scouts from Japan. Each participating family usually hosts two Scouts (or two Leaders), and we were going to be hosting two boys, aged 15 and 17 - until this week, when a parent in one of the other host families broke her leg. Since we have room and so many children that we no longer notice a few extras ;-), we offered to host a second pair. And so we have two 15-year-olds, and two 17-year-olds, coming to us from Tuesday to Friday.

(Asking if we could help, the District Commissioner said to me, “I’ve got a little problem.” “Are you sure,” I asked, “that it’s the kind of thing you want to discuss with me?” “Oh,” he replied, “I didn’t think anybody had noticed that.” LOL)

Barney will just miss them; he’s probably going to be returning next Sunday. We asked him yesterday if he wanted someone to go to collect him from France, or if he was happy to take the flight alone, and initially he very definitely said he didn’t want to fly alone, but this morning he told us he had thought about it some more, and that he just wanted to do whatever was easiest for his French family, and that would be for him to fly on his own. I know it’s not really what he wants, and I hope it’s not too difficult for him. I offered to send him a copy of HP7 so he could read it during the flight and make the time go faster, and he eagerly accepted the offer, so I’ll have to get one packaged and posted first thing on Monday.

I’ve now read most of it twice, having finished my first reading in the early hours of Wednesday George is nearly at the end too, he started at about 9 o’clock this morning. He didn’t even read all day - he, Freddy and Jack were off at a birthday party for the boy next door for most of the afternoon. It was very weird to be in the house with Toby fast asleep and the others all gone

Speaking of Toby, he had a hearing test yesterday; he doesn’t use any words consistently yet and the paediatrician wanted it done because it’s what they’d usually do for a child his age who wasn’t talking. I thought it was a waste of time; I knew his hearing was fine, and we already knew why his speech is delayed - but in the interests of appearing cooperative I agreed. He passed the test with flying colours; at least the paed had the grace to say “Well, Mum was right and I was wrong - as I knew she would be!” I do feel his speech needs some encouragement though, so I phoned the speech therapist this week and asked her to see him again soon (she was going to re-assess him next April); she’s sending out an appointment. She offered us a cancellation for next Wednesday, but I think I might be slightly busy then

After the test we went to visit the local butcher, as we do every Friday. My dogs are on a prey-model diet and he provides the food. He keeps a great big bucket with a lid in his walk-in refrigerator, and he puts anything he can’t sell into it: ststuff thatuff that didn’t sell, stuff that he’d never sell, stuff where the cutting went wrong, etc. We get everything from whole chickens to beef heart, and the dogs love it. Once a week I go in with another great big bucket with a lid, and he dumps everything from his into mine. Most weeks it’s about what the dogs eat in a week; sometimes it’s a bit more, sometimes a bit less, but it seems to balance out well, and if we’re ever short (which doesn’t happen often), I throw in whatever happens to be on sale at the supermarket. I take my bucket home and freeze the contents in portions of approximately what the dogs will eat in a day, then every evening I take out one container to thaw overnight. It’s a great diet for the dogs, with loads of benefits for them and us - not least of which is that it costs us nothing. I do usually buy something from the butcher when I go in to collect it, but everything he sells is so good that it’s not exactly a hardship

Yesterday Freddy asked if he could go in with me when I collected the dogs’ food “just to see what it’s like”. (Freddy and Scratchy are the reasons I’m not a vegetarian.) He had a look around and said, “Can I buy something? I’ve got my money with me.” I agreed, and eventually he settled on pork-and-chili sausages. The butcher says he doesn’t get many eight-year-old boys in asking for pork-and-chili sausages. He also gave Freddy lollipops for him and his brothers, so we got about nine days’ worth of food for the dogs, four lollipops and about ten prize-winning sausages, all for the low cost of £1.90, which Freddy paid anyway

Today has been so much better than the last few days, it seems quite unreal. I still didn’t manage to get up until lunchtime, but I did manage to stay upright long enough to shower, vacuum the kitchen, feed the dogs, water the plants, sit outside and read to the kids… I even went out for a while late in the afternoon, leaving Scratchy in charge. One of the things I did to distract myself in the last few days was google for organic box schemes - you know, where they deliver a box of seasonal fruit and veg every week? - well, there aren’t any in this area, but clicking through several sites did lead me to the website of an organic farm and shop which is just a few miles away, so I took a trip up there this afternoon. I didn’t buy much - we didn’t need much - but the boys pronounced the strawberries fantastic. “Just picked this morning,” said the woman in the farm shop as she put my purchases in a bag. “And they’ll be polished off this evening,” I replied. I wasn’t wrong.

Got the dogs out for a walk too, after dinner. They’ve been pretty neglected this week.

Just as well I’m healthier; we’ve a trip to the zoo planned for tomorrow (booked with a group, so not easy to move), and also Scratchy’s coming down with what I had

…is driving me nuts. Jack has a habit of asking for things indirectly - for example he’ll see some biscuits or toast and instead of just asking for some, he’ll say, “I’m still hungry…” I find it very irritating.

The most recent news on Barney is that he seems a little bit brighter. We’ll be talking to him on the phone again at the weekend, and I’ll remind him that the success of the exchange, and how much he enjoys it, largely depends on how much effort he makes. Perhaps he’s a bit too laid-back for his own good? I’m just glad things are sounding a little better.

The rest of us have been doing our usual things. I’ve been doing more French, German and maths with Freddy and George. Freddy didn’t go to ju-jitsu on Monday evening, as a result of an attempt to kick Toby - well, not really an attempt, he wasn’t actually going to do it, rather he just waved his leg in that direction, but we have a policy that if you can’t cope with life at home with the family, you’re not able to cope with life anywhere else with the general public… so he had an early night instead. George did go to ju-jitsu, however, but was found in the bathroom after 10 p.m., which meant that he was very tired all day yesterday. He decided to go to bed instead of SJA Badgers - entirely his decision (and not like him to be so mature LOL). He did actually go to sleep early; both he and Toby were fast asleep when Freddy and Jack and I got back from Beavers. M, the boy next door, has also joined us at Beavers for the last two weeks, and it is, according to his mum, “a big hit”. Last night we made a huge poster about what life might be like in the future, then played a game where the Beavers had to “collect” each other like magnets, which they thought was fantastic - and I’ve just had an idea for a variation on that, turning it into a sort of tag, rather than teams… I’m only writing this to remind myself, so you can all ignore me

The pups have been taking up a fair amount of time, as pups do. They’re really pretty good, and we’re doing a little obedience training with them each day. They are growing fast, particularly Cass, whose collar I’ve had to adjust already - she’s going to be twice the size of Andie, I think.

My laptop is still misbehaving, something to do with the fan, we think. Scratchy thought it was OS-related, but experiments seemed to disprove that, so then he decided to dismantle it - he had it spread across the table in hundreds of bits - I couldn’t look, too squeamish When he put it back together, it seemed to work - for a couple of days, then the error message re-appeared. So it seems better, but not fixed. Sigh.

The trampoline has been temporarily turned into a gardening table, as we’ve been re-potting lots of shoots of various things. I got loads of pots from a woman on Freecycle, though I could still use a few bigger ones. (I also got a Little Tikes climbing-frame for the garden - missing a bit, but still very usable). All the plants have to go into pots; I could plant some stuff along the borders in the garden, around the bushes, but the pups would probably dig them up, whereas I can move pots outside the garden into the driveway (which goes down the side of the house, we’re not talking front garden full of potatoes a la Good Life here). I have high hopes for my sweet peppers and garlic - mostly because, of all the things we’ve planted, they’re my favourites to eat

Off to the garden-centre for more compost now…

My children are full of chocolate and it’s only 20 past 9…

While they were getting dressed and cleaning their teeth, the Easter Bunny set up an Easter Egg Hunt in the garden and a trail through the conservatory to lead them to it

Their reaction was so worth a few minutes traipsing through the wet grass (I’m sure the Easter Bunny would agree ;-))

We’re off to visit friends later - they’ve a caravan on the coast, which they’ve very kindly said we can borrow sometimes. Since they’re schoolies (both kids in school and dad’s a teacher), we can use it during term-times. I haven’t stayed in a caravan since I was about four years old though, so we’ll see how we feel after the first go Today’s just a visit to make sure we can find it and to see how it all works - and to see our friends too, of course

We spoke to Barney yesterday morning; he sounds a little better but still quite flat. He was tired after the long drive last night, which is probably part of it, but he also says he’s bored. I hope the next couple of weeks improves things for him.

So this is 2007. *Looks around* Hm.