NotSheep

It is my belief that there is a design-flaw in women. I think that each time we have a baby, we should grow an extra arm. Because we need it. I’d have eight arms by now - the two that I was born with, and another six - and I might just be able to keep up.

But I don’t have eight arms; I have two. And they are both engaged, a great deal of the time, in holding, nursing, changing, carrying a baby. And when they’re not, they’re usually rushing about the house (attached to the rest of me, of course) trying to do all the needing-to-be-done things that have occurred to me while my arms were busy with the baby and the other children.

Hence, very little blogging recently. I can’t blog with one hand; I just can’t. It’s not that I can’t actually physically do it - my typing-speed with one hand is actually not bad, considering it’s one hand - but it doesn’t come anywhere close to my speed with two hands, and that’s just too frustrating.

(Also my trackball mouse has been slowly dying; I’m awaiting the arrival of a replacement. I did try a Fish Mouse, and I love the concept - a trackball that needs no surface on which to rest it - but it just wasn’t responsive enough, even set to the highest speed. And I cannot be doing with these stupid touchpad things that you get on laptops; I hit it accidentally way too often even when I’m not using it.)

Back to your regularly scheduled etc.

Another reason for the lack of posts here is that there hasn’t been much to say. It has rained. And rained and rained. Fortunately we weren’t affected by the flooding, but that doesn’t make me any less fed up with all this rain. According to a friend, because the country is getting warmer and wetter, we can expect summers like this for the next few decades. In that case, i need to move. I don’t need the Bahamas; I just need somewhere that has at least a couple of months of reliable sunshine and warmth each year.

Since we’ve been stuck indoors, the boys have done a bit of studying, and Toby has joined in: he has been bringing me the Superphonics book and demanding that I tell him what the sound is on the page it’s open to. He’s also been drawing a lot - particularly spiders, most of which even have eight legs, and some of which also have eight eyes. It’s a pity he wasn’t around when they were designing women - he might have given them some useful ideas.

I’ve read The Diary of Anne Frank aloud to the older boys. They were beginning to complain that it was boring - and then I read the words “Anne’s diary ends here”. They looked at me in shock and confusion - they’d been expecting a happy ending, or at least a resolution of the tale. As I read through the rest of the book - what happened to Anne and the other residents of the Annexe, the discovery of Anne’s diary and the results of its publication - they were all blinking back tears. Then each of them in turn chose to read the book again.

It was a good time for them to encounter it, I think. George and Freddy have been reading a lot about the Second World War, but it’s hard to comprehend the suffering of huge numbers of people, and I think Anne’s diary made it more imaginable for them. We can think about those who lost their lives, but I think the diary helps us feel it. I visited Bergen-Belsen in my late teens, and have never forgotten the impact. I would very much like to take the boys there sometime.

But back to the present. I need to work through all the stuff - mainly books - in my dining-room; I did try to attack it last week but only managed about ten minutes before Louie demanded my presence and attention again. I also need to do some orgo-planning (it’s a home-ed thing), and I need to do some programme-planning for Beavers; I’ll show up and be a countable adult leader for the next few months, but I doubt I’ll be much use in terms of actually physically running games and activities over the next few months. Programming, however, seems to have become my responsibility. I don’t really mind that; I’ve almost two years of Beavers programmes worked out already (because I’ve been clever enough to keep records of what we’ve done! ) and since the longest anyone stays in Beavers before moving up to Cubs is about two-and-a-half years, once I’ve another year of programmes sorted, I can just recycle them all. But for now, I have to get that year of programmes done. I hope to have at least up to Christmas sorted by the time we start back in September.

My attempts to get organised have not been helped by Twitter’s decision not to send any more text-messages to its users outside North America. I’ve been using I Want Sandy a lot, largely due to its ability to send reminders and details to my mobile phone via Twitter direct messages. Now that Twitter isn’t sending me any messages, it’s 95% less useful, so I’ve been looking at alternatives. Brightkite is still invitation-only, so isn’t very busy, but I am very impressed by both the service and the responsiveness of those running it. And it sends text-messages. It doesn’t work with Sandy yet, unfortunately, but nothing else does in the UK. Bah.

One thing I have managed to do is establish what my holiday cacti actually are - this was do-able with one hand because it involved reading lots of plant websites. The plant that I thought was a Christmas Cactus turns out to be a Thanksgiving Cactus, and the one that flowered briefly in June turns out to be an Easter Cactus, and the third, which hasn’t bloomed yet (at least, as long as I’ve had it) turns out to be a Christmas Cactus. Confused yet? I took some cuttings from the Thanksgiving Cactus a few months ago, and despite my opposite-of-green thumbs, they seem to be thriving. They’re not big enough that you could actually say they were plants yet, but perhaps they could be called plantlets. So I got all confident and took some cuttings from the other two as well, and have planted them with high hopes.

And that’s your lot, because writing this has taken absolutely ages, and I’ve a to-do list as long as several of the extra arms I’d have if this whole reproduction thing had been done properly.

I’ve written before about how a lack of structure affects us here, and the past week has been a very good (or bad, depending on how you look at it) example. Apart from Barney’s French revision, there hasn’t been much structured study going on for the past few weeks, and since his last exam, he and I have been relaxing too. And I know that this laid-back, no-routines way of living has been largely responsible for the absolutely horrible behaviour and relationships around here recently, but that doesn’t make it any easier to cope. Mid-week, it all came to a head, and I proclaimed that I couldn’t take any more. A few days later, and I think the boys are starting to see that constant bickering and bad attitudes on their part have an effect on me - and that the effect on me has an effect on them. And so I’ve had commitments from each of them, together and separately, about how things are going to be from now on. We’ll see.

With no mum willing to make an effort to organise more, George’s 11th birthday yesterday was a quiet affair: family, card, cake, candles (and now that I think about it, I’m not even sure we all signed a card - maybe someone signed it on my behalf).

Hard as it is to believe that George is 11, the real shocker is Barney, who has developed not only the beginnings of teenage spottiness (which was expected, because he’s not exactly meticulous about personal hygiene), but also a shadow of a moustache on his upper lip. You have to look hard to spot it, but it’s there. And this child teenager, who for years has been saying that he doesn’t want to grow up because it’s more fun being a child, is thrilled about it. Me, I’m just trying to come to terms with having a child who is taller than his grandmother and old enough to have facial hair.

Nesting continues apace, and I now have three very clean bathrooms, a very tidy living-room and a reasonably clean kitchen. The conservatory and dining-room still need to be attacked (the dining-room is at that stage where the main reason not to begin is being unable to decide where). But the big change this weekend is that it is now actually possible to move around my bedroom. It’s a large room, but there was so much clutter that it was actually becoming difficult to navigate. However…piles have been tidied, surfaces cleared and cleaned, and there might even be room to put away some baby-clothes - once I’ve laundered them, that is. The diapers have been washed and some of them hung to dry, and I gave away a load of them on freecycle (had about 30 replies to the offer!) Having declined a visit from the midwifery manager (why does she routinely visit homebirthers? does she think we’re doing something dangerous? are we some kind of threat?), I’ve had a letter from her instead, telling me why I’m high-risk (over 40, fat, five previous babies - all the usual unsubstantiated-by-research scare stories) and all the awful things that might happen because of it. She can’t possibly not know that I’m well-informed - the local midwives are bound to have told her - so it would seem this is either shroud-waving (even though the local midwives are also bound to have told her that won’t work) or an ass-covering exercise. Either way, it doesn’t seem particularly respectful of my right to make my own decisions, and it doesn’t very much surprise me that the homebirth rate in this area has fallen in the last three years.

Line of the day, from me to Toby: “No, bandaids don’t work on Hot Dogs.” Explanation: Toby’s favourite animal is the giraffe, and he has several toy giraffes, all of which are called Hot Dog (at his insistence - I have no idea why), including a soft stuffed one which doesn’t have much of a neck (for a giraffe, I mean), but is nonetheless nearly as big as him. And this morning, it mysteriously developed a hole under one arm…er, I mean, front leg. Toby demanded a bandaid for it, so I had to explain that this was a more serious injury, requiring stitches. Lucky he doesn’t know about medical superglue and steri-strips, really.

Is it still considered nesting if the cause of you scrubbing the bathroom from top to bottom was that you were sitting on the loo and looked at the skirting-board and realised just how disgusterous it was?

That’s what I spent Saturday morning doing anyway. And then I spent Saturday afternoon recovering.

As mentioned, Barney was off at Scout Camp this weekend. I’ve heard it said that you’re not a real Scout until you’ve done a very wet camp. Well, I think Barney can now consider himself a real Scout. They all got soaked on a hike (at least twice) on Saturday afternoon, including when they got lost taking a “short cut” back to the campsite. Then there was heavy rain and gale-force winds overnight on Saturday. Apparently some of the groups on the site packed up and left on Saturday evening - and some didn’t even pack up, just leaving their tents (and hoping for the best, I suppose). But our Scouts are tough - and they stuck it out, and were rewarded with a couple of hours of bright dry weather on Sunday morning. Of course the Scout whose head was under the soccer net when it blew over might have preferred to go home on Saturday evening, rather than going to the hospital at lunchtime on Sunday…but a few stitches later, he’ll survive. And Barney, on arriving home, replied to the question, “How was camp?” with the word “Brilliant.”

Toby and I might have met him at the hospital, since Toby fell down the stairs. Well, not “fell”, exactly. Jack, having been told hundreds of times not to dance about on the landing, danced about on the landing - and knocked Toby down the stairs. Top to bottom. I heard it from the kitchen. Clunk thud clunk. He’s got a bump on his head and a lovely bruise on his elbow, but appears to have mostly bounced. He’s perfectly well, though - just as determined as ever, refusing point-blank to wear a diaper to bed last night (he’s been reliably dry during the day for about three weeks) and we compromised on a pair of Tots Bots training-pants - theyre little towelling underpants with a bit of spongy fabric sewn into the crotch. And he woke up dry this morning and took himself off to the potty. Grown-up or what?

Midwife coming out this morning. They want to a “wee sample” so they can test it themselves. Never mind that I’ve actually worked in a hospital lab, apparently I’m not competent to pee on a stick. Sigh.

Oh, and I’ve actually found and sorted the tiniest baby-clothes. Not laundered them yet though.

George and Freddy both made it to Cub Camp, spent the weekend at Cub Camp, and returned from Cub Camp - all in one piece, and without any problems. Oh, sure, I was informed of a list of injuries when we picked them up - banged my arm on this, hit my knee on that, and even one “fell out of a tree” which was news to Akela - but all were reported with smiling, glowing faces, and the one complaint - that it had been cold during the night last night - was immediately followed by “but it was okay because I just put my sweater on”.

This was Freddy’s first time at Cub Camp, but I hadn’t worried about him, because all the energetic, social activity that Cub Camp involves is right up his street. When George went off for his first ever Cub Camp, I was quite anxious, but I knew Freddy would handle it just fine. He was a bit nervous when they were leaving on Friday, but I told him to expect to have fun, to be tired on Saturday afternoon and maybe even want to come home for a while, but then to expect to get a second wind and have such a good time that by Sunday he wouldn’t want to come home at all. We walked across the field where they’d camped and were greeted with Freddy’s grinning face looking up at us and saying, “I don’t want to go home!!!!”

George was the one with the extensive list of injuries, but managed to make it right through Cub Camp without a single wobbly moment - which didn’t surprise me terribly much, because I figured he’d save them up and have an almighty meltdown after getting home. But he also managed to make it through dinner and into bed tonight without a single wobbly moment. Now that surprised me. There’s hope for him yet

It’s weird, but even when everyone’s in bed and fast asleep, even after the time when George and Freddy would also be out of my sight and silent, I’m still aware of their absence from the house.

I spent the weekend not finding and going through baby-clothes and not considering baby-name options. I had a visit from two more midwives yesterday morning; they noted that I had no swelling, no headaches, no visual disturbances and that although my blood pressure was raised when they took it with me sitting up and talking, after lying down for a minute, it had dropped substantially - so they toddled off happy. And all that was after an argument with Barney, who considered it the height of horribleness that I insisted that at 9.15 a.m., he put down his GameBoy, get out of bed and have a shower. And today I did find and inflate a birthing-pool, and this afternoon after collecting Freddy and George, we stopped and bought a new hose to use for filling it, so I suppose we’re one step closer to ready. Ah, what’s the rush…I’m only 38 weeks on Tuesday

Wednesday morning: Barney did another French practice paper while I got organised to leave, and it quickly became clear that he had not been asleep early enough on Tuesday night. It was decided (by me, unilaterally) that he would be having an early night.

Late Wednesday morning: We attempted to leave town. First I discovered that the booster-seats were all in the other car (at Scratchy’s office), which meant adding another stop to our plans. Then when Barney was last out of the house, I asked him to lock the door - only to find, five minutes after we left, that he had left the front door wide open with the keys hanging in it. That meant heading home again, of course, and on the way we must have managed to get behind every kind of slows-you-down vehicle there is. A tractor, a street-sweeper, a learner driver, a double-decker bus (I have never seen a double-decker bus around here before!) - you name it, I was stuck behind it. We got home and I checked through the house and locked the door myself.

Bank, library…finally we managed to get out of town. I had one more stop to make before we really got moving, but when we did, we made good time. Barney and I talked as we drove, and he said he felt that he’d gained more from the process of preparing for the French GCSE than from the actual exams - which is how I feel too. He’s learned a lot about working out what examiners are looking for and making sure you give it to them, about making sure you answer what’s asked and planning out what you’re going to write, about preparation and revision, etc. He’s never done exams before - he left school before the first set of SATS would even have been done - so this has been a valuable experience for him.

There was great excitement from the boys as they realised that the peculiar-looking item on the back of the large pick-up truck we were overtaking was actually a climbing wall lying on its side. When we arrived at our friends’ home, Barney did one more practice paper before his friends arrived home from school and they all started bouncing about the house together.

In the evening our friends all had plans: a Scout/Cub sports evening, to which they’d invited Barney (but he needed an early night), George (but he didn’t think he was in the mood to cope without a meltdown) and Freddy (but he didn’t want to go if George wasn’t going). So we stayed at their house, I had a bath in their very deep bathtub (which, despite being very deep, still isn’t quite enough to cover my bump), and we all went to bed early. Seriously early. I think they arrived home shortly after 9, but we were all asleep before it.

Thursday morning: Friend A had offered to drive Barney to the school to sit his exam, to save me having to do so, and although I’d initially declined the offer, I changed my mind on Wednesday evening when I was feeling horrible and exhausted and contraction-y. So they left shortly after 8, and I stayed where I was and tried not to think too much about the exams. A couple of hours later, I got all the other boys packed up and into the car and went off to collect Barney. I took thank-you notes from Barney for the exams officer and the French teacher, who’ve both been so helpful about arranging this exam, along with a bottle of wine for each of them. The exams officer was surprised and pleased, and told me he’d had a look into the room when the exams were starting and Barney had seemed to be getting on with it all just fine. When asked if the school would be willing to facilitate other GCSEs in future for Barney, said they would - basically anything they do through the school that doesn’t involve coursework is probably okay, and maths (which is the most likely next subject Barney would sit) is definitely fine, because the exams officer also happens to be the maths teacher… While we were talking in reception, Barney came out with a smile on his face; he feels that yesterday’s papers went well. His friend J, who attends the school, came out with him, and begged for him to be allowed to stay over for a few more days, then, when I said no, begged to be allowed to come home with us

The French teacher was out of the school on an errand, but we left his wine and thank-you note in the office, and a while later I sent him a text-message thanking him for his help, and received a lovely text-message back saying “For goodness sake guys that is so very kind. It was a pleasure to have been able to help. Wishing you all bonnes vacances!”

We drove home without incident, and arrived back to the smell of fresh paint - the woodwork in the kitchen no longer lets the freshly-painted walls down

My friend K, with whom we stayed on Wednesday night, has had catheter ablation surgery (where they stick a needle up through your veins into your heart) twice this year - once in January, when they managed to perforate her pericardium, and again in February, when the surgery went more smoothly. As a result, she has a blood pressure monitor, which she kindly tossed my direction, to see if we could get a lower result than the midwives. The first few attempts, on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, produced high readings, and the highest one of all came on Thursday morning just as Barney would have been starting his exam papers (160/119 - scary at the best of times, but for someone whose usual BP is nearer 90/70, even moreso!) A few minutes after arriving home yesterday afternoon, I checked it again, and got a reading of 129/85. That’s a substantial drop by any standards! I checked (somewhat obsessively, I have to admit) throughout the afternoon and evening, and all the readings were between 120-something and 130-something systolic and between 70-something and 80-something diastolic. This is good news, as it indicates that the raised readings were more likely due to stress than any nasty physiological pregnancy-related process. Midwife has been on the phone this morning, asking when it would suit for her manager to visit me (answer: never, because there’s no justification for doing routine visits to women planning homebirths when you don’t do them for women planning hospital births!), and arranging to come out tomorrow morning - I’ll have a few more readings done before then

Right, time to get George and Freddy to start gathering items for Cub Camp, which starts this evening. We’ve made a good start to the packing - they’ve got a bag each. I wonder how much we’ll find of the things that are meant to go inside them…

So I think we can forget that whole risk-of-premature-labour thing now then. You know, with me being 37 weeks and all. Looks like I was right when I said I didn’t feel the baby was coming anytime soon.

Not that it’s all smooth sailing now, of course - oh no, that would be too much to hope for. At the midwives’ visit last week - the one where I knew I had to tackle one of them about not getting my consent for various things - my blood pressure was up. Hardly surprising, really. But they wanted to check it again early this week, just in case, so yesterday another two midwives arrived - one of them I’d never met before, the other was the one who was freaked out by the idea of teaching me how to do my own B12 injections. As it turned out, she’s a lot more laid-back when she’s not convinced she’s risking her registration, and we actually got along quite well. Too bad she’ll probably be away on holiday when this baby arrives. Anyway. I knew they’d be worried if my blood-pressure was still high, so of course I was worried about that happening, and of course my blood-pressure was still high She wanted to come back and check it again today, but I said I thought the best way to keep it down was to leave me alone for a few days I’ll be away tomorrow and Thursday, and I’m certainly not letting anyone put a BP cuff on me on Friday, when I’ll be trying to get George and Freddy packed for Cub Camp, so I’m being left alone until the weekend.

I did do a bit of nesting yesterday morning, but then I ran out of my home-made kitchen cleaner, and it turned out we were out of white vinegar, which is one of the essential ingredients, so I couldn’t make more. It was horrible; I was devastated over having to stop cleaning. I had to go and sit in the garden and read to console myself

Barney didn’t go to Air Cadets in the evening, as he’d a headache - I think he’s a bit stressed about the exams later this week (as am I). Freddy decided to go to bed early too, rather than go to ju-jitsu, but I think in his case it was in the hope that he wouldn’t have to get his hair cut (and it didn’t work - he still got clippered, as did Jack). So now they’ve all got short hair, and all have been nit-combed again this evening. I am very impressed by the Nitty Gritty comb - it really does seem to get/kill all the lice the first go. Even when you find a head that’s absolutely teeming with the horrid little things, the second time you comb with the Nitty Gritty comb, there never seems to be anything left. Fantastic. Well, not as fantastic as not having them in the first place, but better than it taking weeks to get them all off. Also the people who sell it are Very Nice

(Itchy yet? )

More practice papers for Barney today, while George and Freddy spent most of the afternoon attaching Cub badges to Cub sweaters in preparation for Cub Camp. We’ve so many badges waiting to be sewn on that nobody even knows which ones belong to who anymore. I ironed the badges on Barney’s Scout shirt too, but he has another week before Scout Camp, so he can do the sewing once his exams are all over. Roll on Thursday.

Tried to find the library-books; succeeded for about half of them. I hid those in the boot of the car anyway, so that at least they won’t go walking off before we find the rest.

Toby’s ear still has a scab, but is recovering nicely from my ministrations on Sunday evening. And speaking of Toby, I can’t believe I forgot to mention this before, but he has toilet-trained himself. He’s been running about diaper-free for a couple of weeks, because he was a bit red down there and the weather was nice so he was only ever going to pee on the ceramic tiles or in the garden, but I’d left a potty in the kitchen just in case. He appeared to have no interest, but when I asked him last Monday if he’d peed and he said yes and showed me where he’d done it on the platform of the climbing-frame, I just said casually “oh okay, maybe next time you can pee in your potty”. He agreed, but I wasn’t holding my breath. On Tuesday, though, he came outside to find me to tell me he’d done just that, and when I wandered back inside, I found he had. And he’s continued to do so ever since. Zero-effort potty-training; I like that

Tomorrow: another practice paper or two with Barney, get everyone packed for an overnight stay with friends, than a hundred-mile drive to said friends’ house, in readiness for early exam on Thursday. Back Thursday, though will probably be too knackered to blog. Will certainly be twittering though

The rain went away again (yay!) so we’ve been mostly outside for the last few days. I spent yesterday morning doing my best impression of Professor Sprout (not Grubbly-Plank, as I twittered - I was promptly corrected by Barney on that one - Grubbly-Plank was Care of Magical Creatures, not Herbology! ) - moving houseplants which had outgrown their pots into larger pots, and splitting some where there were several of the plant in one pot (four spider-plants, all in one pot - I’m fairly sure two will survive, I’ve my doubts about one, and the last one’s future is anyone’s guess). My Easter cacti have just started to flower; they must be following the same calendar as my babies.

I had a momentary panic on Thursday evening when I was told that Cub Camp started on Friday evening, but the source of this news was unreliable, and fortunately Cub Camp is not until next weekend.

Barney’s revision continues apace; on Friday he even argued in favour of doing more practice papers than I’d suggested. I think he has benefited a lot from going through the process of sitting this exam; even if he fails (which is unlikely), he’ll have learned a lot about exam techniques, about how it’s not just about knowing the subject matter, about planning and carrying out revision, about organising his thoughts and planning out beforehand what he’s going to write, etc.

Toby showed himself to be just as logical and pedantic as his brothers, when he fell off a chair in the kitchen and came to me complaining that he’d hurt his head. “Were you climbing?” I asked. “No,” he replied, “I was falling!”

Jack wanted to know how many days there were before his birthday. Since he just turned 6 in March, the answer was, “a lot!”

I gave the living-room a thorough clean this morning - the dust was threatening to take over. When I say “I gave…”, what I mean, of course, is that I mostly supervised while everyone else did it. But everything from the light-fitting to the floor under the sofas is now clean, and the room looks a lot better. Maybe I’m nesting. I’m not convinced the rest of the family appreciates it

All the equipment for the birth has been delivered - a couple of boxes and several cylinders of gases are now stored in the cupboard under the stairs. One of the midwives who arrived with the boxes was the one who had done the whole checking-with-doctors-no-asking and sending-prescriptions-despite-being-told-no thing, and I raised this again with her, but she’s either unable or unwilling to understand why her behaviour should bother me - and once again tried to twist the truth about who had said what - so at some point this week, I shall be telling the midwifery manager that I don’t want her on the rota. I shall also be telling the midwifery manager that I don’t require a visit from herself, and asking why it should be local protocol for her to visit all women planning homebirths. I’m not feeling terribly well-supported right now; of the five midwives who are on the rota, there’s one I’ve never met, one I haven’t seen since my last pregnancy (and I didn’t see much of her then), one I’m about to refuse care from, one who panicked at the thought of teaching me to do my own B12 injections, and one who keeps muttering about my “tendency to lie breech” (despite the fact that all of my babies so far have come out head-first, and that I’ve probably another six weeks of pregnancy left, and that only one of my babies - the first - was head-down at this point in pregnancy).

Anyway. The nesting continued in the conservatory, where I sanded and painted the shelves that used to be above the radiators in there (until we took them off to paint the radiators and walls); they’re now the same colour as the walls and providing extra space for all the extra plants I’ve got after the replanting. After that, I was ready for a bath - because of both sore muscles and arms splattered with paint - and after the bath, I needed to lie down for a few minutes, so I did. And fell asleep. Hm.

In the evening, we discovered that we are nit-ridden so everyone got attacked by the Nitty-Gritty combs. George and Barney weren’t too bad; they’d both had haircuts in the last few weeks - but Freddy and Jack both are in dire need of haircuts and have very thick hair. Toby’s isn’t too thick, but he did need a haircut, so after his hair was rinsed, I took a pair of scissors to his hair - and his ear - just a little nick on the top, but it bled and bled and bled. It wasn’t a huge amount of blood, but it took ages and ages to stop, and he’s now fallen asleep with one ear sort of folded over and covered with a big lump of gauze and a huge band-aid. It was quite amusing to watch him trying to have a look at it in the mirror though…

If this publishes successfully, without giving me any errors, then I might have succeeded in sorting out the problems of the last few days - through a reluctant upgrade, admittedly, but then a reluctant upgrade that works is better than a non-working blog, right?

If you pick up any errors, please use the Contact Form to let me know.

Errors won’t be fixed immediately, because the “minutes” in the title refers to how long I now have to pack and get everyone into the car (cars!) because we are off to the caravan and beach for a few days. See y’all later

Edit: Seems to have worked. I’m off!

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*

I’m waiting for the water to heat so I can have a shower before I get ready to leave the house in order to drive a ridiculously long distance to look at a car - so I thought I’d blog while I waited.

Those who’ve been around here a long time will remember the last time we faced the need to buy a vehicle - when Henry first arrived in September 2006, and we went from being a family of seven to being a family of eight, with one seven-seater. The options were similar then:
- buy something big - like a Volkswagen Shuttle or Caravelle - which would seat eight or nine people
- buy something small, which Scratchy could use for work, leaving the current vehicle for the kids and me
- buy a second seven-seater

The problem with big is the cost - both of the purchase and the insurance. The problem with small, we decided then, was that we’d have spent our savings, and since the seven-seater we had then was already ten years old, if anything happened to it, we’d have nothing big enough even for kids-plus-one-adult. So we went for the second seven-seater option and bought a Chrysler Voyager. That turned out to be a good move, given that our old seven-seater spontaneously combusted in the driveway in August 2007. Had we gone with the small runaround option, we’d have needed to find another seven-seater in a hurry. As it was - we already had one. And we’ve managed with that one ever since. However, with another baby arriving in July, we are back to where this whole blog-post started.

So. Small runaround option discounted, I think. We could get a five-year-old nine-seater Caravelle for about £12,000 - but we’d have to source it from England so would be buying without seeing first. Or we could get another seven-seater of the same age and spend about £4,000 less. The disadvantage of the latter option is that it would still not have enough seats for all of us at once - but then, it’s not often we travel long distances all together, so does it really justify spending an extra £4,000 to be able to do so? (Not to mention that the extra cost takes us from “uses most of our savings” to “overdrawn”.)

The supply of seven-seaters here is more limited than it is elsewhere in the UK, but there’s a Grand Voyager currently advertised at a price we can manage - and we like our Voyager, and the Grand version is a bit bigger (more length, not more seats), so it might be a good buy for us. It’s a very long way away though - literally the other side of the country - but if it’s as good as it sounds, it might be worth the journey. When we bought our Peugeot 806, we also drove a ridiculously long way to look at it - mainly because geography is not my strong point and I’d arranged to view it before I figured out where it was - but it turned out to be worthwhile - it was a great car for us.

So here I go. The kids and I are staying with friends tonight; they live much, much closer to where the car is located, and it will allow me to drive there today and back tomorrow. The boys are not exactly upset about going to stay over there - in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them washed and dressed quite so quickly. And you can expect me back here sometime tomorrow, either having agreed to buy a car, or having been disappointed in a car, or - quite possibly - still musing over cars.

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

It’s been a very long day for Barney and me. I woke up to find that the baby had changed position overnight and that I now look about eight months pregnant, but no time to investigate that - Barney and I had to get out of the house bright and early. We arranged last week that we would go today to visit the school where he’ll be sitting his French GCSE. It’s about 2.5 hours away, so we left the house at 9.20 and after a couple of brief local errands, we were on our way. Barney is fantastically good company on a long drive; we had a wonderful conversation which included (and this is only a partial list): the kinds of careers he’s considering; how he could accomplish the things he thinks about; forensic science; robotics (particularly artificial limbs); what philosophy is about; his disappointment (his word) on hearing about the likely problems of human life on other planets due to differing air pressure, because that means that if there are extra-terrestrials, they won’t be able to land here and we won’t be able to land on their planets; a theory that life on earth is all a huge alien experiment; an alternative ending for the last Harry Potter book (Harry kills Voldemort, then James wakes up and is glad to find it was all a dream and that his son, who is after all only a year old, has not been through all that, then there’s a knock on the door, an evil laugh and a flash of green light…)

We stopped to visit my friend K, who is recovering from an unsuccessful operation on her heart just over a week ago; it’s the school her two oldest children attend that has agreed to let Barney do the exam there. After lunch at her house, we drove to the school and went in to meet with the French teacher and the Exams Officer.

Both were very welcoming and delighted to help. The French teacher spent nearly an hour with us; he looked at the past papers Barney has been doing and is very satisfied with the level of work in those, and repeated what I’ve been telling Barney for the last few weeks about the need to get organised at the beginning, watch the time, make sure he gives the information that’s specifically requested, etc. He spoke in French with Barney too, and again is very satisfied with his French, but says Barney needs to be more forward, more relaxed, and bring a bit of theatre to it. He gave us one extra past paper (the only one he could find in his stash that Barney hadn’t already done) and a couple of textbooks which have practice questions in them, as well as lots of information and hints about the aural exam. Barney also got to meet and chat with their French assistant, who is a French woman who has been in this country for three weeks. We were shown the gym, where he’ll sit the exam, and the seating arrangements for it were explained to us. He also gave us timetables and his email address and told us to contact him if there was anything at all that we needed or had questions about. The Exams Officer presented me with an invoice for the exam: £24, which is exactly what the Examination Board charges. In other words, the school is not asking for any reimbursement for the time the French teacher spent with us today, for the materials they’ve provided, for the time which will be spent on Barney’s aural assessment, or for invigilation.

I think we’ve been amazingly lucky to find them - after emailing and phoning from October to January, I was on the verge of giving up. I haven’t asked about Barney (or the others, when the time comes) sitting other exams there, but I’m hoping that once we’ve been through this one, the school will be willing to cooperate for other subjects too.

We finished at 3.20, which is also school-letting-out time, so we collected K’s sons, C and J, and drove them home. They and Barney then got to spend some time together before we left for the long drive home, during which Barney fell asleep (so it wasn’t nearly as interesting for me as the outward journey!) We just made it back in time for him to go to Air Cadets; fortunately we’d brought the things he needed with us. And we have another busy day tomorrow - not so much driving, but plenty of action, I’m sure - so I think it’s time I went to bed. Maybe I’ll just check on my Scrabulous games first though…

Today was loud. I spent a lot of it muttering about the volume in the house - Jack and Toby seemed to be having a competition to see who could scream loudest, Freddy’s generally loud anyway and George certainly hasn’t been what you’d call calm and quiet recently. And then I went to Beavers, where it was even louder. I’ve started a new tradition there: when I want quiet, I stand quietly with one arm in the air. Gradually the Beavers copy me, looking expectant. The first few times I did this, it took 20 or 30 seconds for them all to catch on, but now if there’s anybody still chattering about seven seconds in, I can almost guarantee there’ll be another Beaver or two nudging them and nodding in my direction to make them notice. Making yourself heard over a small group of Beavers - we only had six in September 2006 - is one thing, but when there are 20 of them, it requires all your energy behind your voice if you want it to be louder than them all put together. Standing there with your arm in the air requires much less energy

(Unfortunately it doesn’t work so well at home, largely because everyone isn’t usually gathered in one room, so I could wave my arm until it fell off and they wouldn’t notice.)

I’ve also been nominated to keep doing the Beaver programming, which I don’t mind. I’m not bad on the planning end, and I don’t find it too onerous. I had programmed from September to the end of January, but didn’t want to just keep going and step on anyone’s toes. Tonight when I arrived (with a programme that could be used, or not, it didn’t matter either way), I asked “So do we have a programme?” and the response was comments like “That’s your department!” and “You’re good at it, you can do it.” The only part of it that has been difficult recently has been the actual getting out and gathering things we need for programmes; a combination of only one car in the family and my lack of energy have complicated that bit - but one of the other leaders has agreed to take care of that as long as I provide her with lists of what’s needed. The other one is finding out the school term dates because we don’t usually meet during school holidays, and I’ll get on with putting together a plan that will take us to June. It’s a good agreement; I get to do the bit that only needs me to sit on my bum in front of a computer, the others get to avoid doing the bits they think are boring, and the Beavers get a damn good programme, if I say so myself

Otherwise…Toby appears to be on the verge of giving up naps. This seems unreasonably soon to me. I feel it would be much better if he would continue to nap early each afternoon for, oh, at least another three years. He has different ideas, it seems. He’s also taken to helping himself to things from kitchen cupboards - any kitchen cupboard, regardless of height or contents. Yesterday he got a teabag(!) and emptied the contents over the landing floor. Actually, now I think of it, he hasn’t been limiting himself to the kitchen.

He’s a long way from being the child who’s the hardest work at the minute though. By 10 o’clock this morning, George, having been even more intense than usual today, had already been informed that he would be going to bed early tonight instead of to SJA Cadets. Barney went though, and has volunteered to take part in a competition of some sort at the end of February. We know the date, but time and location (and what he’s supposed to do) remain a mystery. Freddy and George are taking part in a regional Cub quiz competition on Friday night, so it seems we’re back to the usual busy schedule.

The Big Thing for Barney so far this week, however, has been that he went off to investigate Air Cadets. And came home to tell us that as soon as he takes the forms back and takes some basic training, he could be flying a small aircraft - actually taking the controls - with supervision. I thought I had another four years before I had to worry about him taking control of vehicles, but I was thinking of the kind which have four wheels and stay on the ground - it had never occurred to me to worry about him taking to the skies at 13

I got out of the house early (for me) on Saturday morning, to go to the local garden centre to buy a Christmas tree. And thus began a weekend of faffing about with a tree.

Freddy came with me, and we inspected the trees quickly, because it was pouring with rain. I noticed a woman checking trees with a tape-measure and thought “That’s a bit much, how difficult is it to eyeball something that’ll fit below your ceiling?” And anyway, they’re all tagged with the height-range, right? Well, I’m sure you can guess the rest of that bit of the story.

The garden centre was offering free delivery locally - one of the reasons we bought the tree there (the lock on my car-boot is stuck locked so bringing it home would have involved mucking about with the roof-rack and I couldn’t be bothered). They said it would be delivered “today, probably in about an hour”, so I went home and everyone rushed about to get the living-room tidied and move things to make room for it. And about six hours later, the tree was delivered.

And it was a few inches too tall.

So Scratchy brought out his mini-hacksaw (aw, cute) and cut off the top bit - which worked okay, because the rest of the tree is really bushy. Then we tried to fit it into the stand. And it wouldn’t fit, because of the funny shape of the bottom of the trunk.

Do not buy a Christmas tree which bears any resemblance to a hockey-stick.

So Scratchy attacked the bottom with his mini-hacksaw, which was a particularly unproductive method, but despite having boxes and boxes of tools in the garage, it seems we don’t own an ordinary saw. Or we didn’t, until Saturday, when Scratchy went to buy one because one of us was probably going to attack the other with the cute mini-hacksaw.

The tree eventually got put up and decorated by Sunday evening - although some of the ornaments still aren’t on it, because we ran out of hangers, and I’m not using bent paper-clips this time. But despite being not-quite-vertical, it does look good.

Now if only we could figure out a way to get the outdoor lights plugged in…

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

Toby found a Poo-Chi (robot dog thingy) that one of the others got for Christmas years ago and Scratchy put fresh batteries in it, which delighted Toby very much. Then he found a small ball and decided to teach it to fetch. Throw ball. Look at Poo-Chi. Point to ball. Look at Poo-Chi. Pick up Poo-Chi and fling it in direction of ball. That’ll learn it

Sunday, being the day after a (relatively) busy day, wasn’t worth mentioning.

Yesterday was a busy day - but not quite as planned. I left in the morning with a to-do list: the first stop was the bank, to get out some money, followed by a return visit to the shop where I bought a gift several months ago, only to stash it in a very safe place - so safe, in fact, that nobody can find it. So, replacement purchased, now I just have to wrap it and post it (in a box with various other things, to France). After that, the plan called for me to visit the dentist, but on the hills between the two towns, my car suddenly became Very Loud Indeed. I found a hotel car-park to pull into and peered under the car, and sure enough, part of my exhaust was hanging down I rang the mechanic who said “bring it in after you’ve been to the dentist”, but within a few miles I could hear the pipe tapping the ground so I headed straight for the garage instead. The mechanic reassured me it was safe for me to take into town and went to look up the part - and discovered it’s a dealer-only part, so he can’t get one. However he said he could weld it, which would do as a fix until we were able to do something else with it, so off we went to the dentist. I appear to have been grinding my teeth in my sleep, which is causing me some jaw-pain and lots of very loud jaw-clicking, so I had to have an impression made of my mouth. I had this done a long time ago, so I knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant, and I was right.

The mechanic’s hoist was still in use, so I bought us all lunch before heading back. The owner of the garage has recently retired, but still lives in the house next to it, so we chatted with him while the now-manager sorted out the exhaust. He charged very little for the work, and considering that and the fact that he’d squeezed us in, I gave him a bit extra and told him to spend it on a bottle of wine for himself and his wife. He got surprisingly aw-shucks about that; much blushing and shuffling of feet

Next came a flying visit to the aquarium store; our aquarium has been looking a bit sad for a while now and I wanted to replace the little fish who’d been keeping it algae-free until they died (probably from over-feeding - sooo much algae!) I thought they were otocinclus, but apparently they were ancistrus I bought two of each anyway; let’s hope the state of the tank improves soon. It’s been in the dining-room since we bought the Big Fridge, and I miss it - it was really nice having it in the kitchen where we all passed it loads of times every day and you could watch it while the kettle boiled.

Home after that - it was late afternoon and I was beat. Still got most of my to-do list left outstanding, so I’ll have to get out and about again tomorrow or Thursday. Tomorrow, I think. Too many people shop on Thursdays.

Today’s plan: do something educational with the boys this morning and rest this afternoon in preparation for Beavers tonight.

Latest news: Toby has learned to make rude noises with his mouth (boys!) and Barney has been playing GameBoy so much that his hands are becoming deformed (boys!)

Do you want to know the biggest problem with having a larger-than-average family? The one thing that makes you wish you’d stopped at one child? The most frustrating issue in today’s family-with-five-or-so-kids?

You do?

Well, I can tell you. It’s socks.

In this house anyway - obviously I can’t speak for all families with five-or-so kids.

For years we’ve had a box in the bottom of the linen closet, into which all socks and underwear have been tossed after they were laundered. When the boys were younger, once every week or two we’d sit on their bedroom floor and sort through it, pairing them and putting them in piles according to who owned them. That worked well when a) I was the one who decided which socks to buy and b) there weren’t five pairs of feet involved. For the last couple of years, we’ve just used the box, with no sorting: when a child needed a pair of socks, he would go and find a pair. Except that as often as not, said child would complain that he wasn’t able to find a pair that fit. Quite how that could be the case when there are 72,406 socks in there, I don’t know, but that’s what they said.

Last weekend, as part of the Big Clear-and-Clean Project, we went through the box. It took four of us sixteen hours.

Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. It was a pain in the neck anyway. The all-in-one-box system clearly isn’t working anymore, so it’s been abandoned - in fact I’ve removed not just the box but the space on the floor of the linen closet where it used to sit. The upstairs vacuum cleaner is there now. (Yes, I have an upstairs vacuum cleaner and a downstairs one. Henry for upstairs, smaller Henry - known here as Henrietta, though I see there’s now an actual vac called that - upstairs. The downstairs one gets used every day, and having another upstairs means it’s easier to vacuum upstairs, so it gets done more frequently. Plus I got the second one off freecycle.)

Anyway, socks. Apart from the pairs of socks which have been given to various children to put in their sock-drawers, I have a big bag full of socks which don’t appear to have a match. I also have a box full of socks which have been matched, but which nobody admits to owning. Most of these are black, grey, or dark blue.

I remember reading advice from someone a few years ago who said that she’d bought a bunch of identical socks, all the same size, colour and design, which fit all of her children - the point of this was to eliminate any necessity for matching up pairs of socks, and the those-are-mine/yours-no-they’re-nots. Obviously she didn’t have children who were both twelve and two years old. In fact of all my children, the only ones who could actually wear the same socks would be George and Freddy.

Last year, I tried to buy them all socks which would make it very clear who owned what. The idea was that all the socks belonging to one child would be the same colour - or at least have an easily-distinguishable design, such as black-with-coloured-heels. I had no idea how difficult this would be; they don’t seem to make multi-packs of socks in one colour. You have to buy a pack with one pale blue, one dark blue, one pale grey, one dark grey and one black. And if you buy that for one child, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for maneouvre when it comes to choosing colours for the others.

I am still looking for ways to manage the socks - and the laundry in general, really. Googling these issues mostly produced suggestions like “store them in drawers in the laundry room” - which would be fine, except that my laundry/utility area is in the garage, so they’d be cold. (I know someone who keeps all her kids’ clothes in the laundry room, and makes them get dressed in there. If I had a heated room, I’d do that too. She also has a laundry chute. It’s almost sad how jealous I am.)

That’s how many bits of lego I picked up today. But being the forgiving person I am, I still had a play with this after seeing Tim’s version - if I’d the energy I might have done the entire family

George and Freddy’s room looks great, apart from the three boxes of stuff I need to go through (mostly photos, I think). I do feel a bit sorry for Freddy: I think he’s naturally a much tidier person than George (which wouldn’t be difficult!) but he has to put up with sharing with either George (messy) or Jack (not quite so messy but very talkative).

I’ve gone through Jack’s room too - that was on the agenda for tomorrow, but there was so much stuff distributed between the two rooms (like lego!) that it didn’t make any sense to leave it. I’ve also moved Toby’s toys from my room into Jack’s room, and I might move his clothes in there tomorrow too; he’ll eventually sleep in there, so I might as well shift some stuff out of my space.

I’ve also gone through their clothes and put away the summer stuff - very little of which was worn this year - and quite a lot of their remaining clothes. I’ve decided to be really severe about how much clothing I allow them - they all have far more than they need (which is weird, because I buy them very little) and it just adds to the mess. They’ve each got five pairs of trousers left (including at least one p