NotSheep

Well, a bit more, if I’m honest. More long-time-no-blog. Sigh.

Okay. Beginning at the beginning. A week ago - ah, no, almost two weeks ago now - it was the end of British Summer Time. Not that we actually experienced a summer, you understand. As for all those people on the radio etc saying things like, “You get an extra hour in bed tomorrow morning!” - well, uh, no, and quite clearly you don’t have children. Because no, I didn’t get an extra hour in bed, and didn’t expect to.

Sunday (not last Sunday - all days referred to mean over a week ago, until further notice) was spent doing bits and pieces around the house. The boys all studied, having spent most of the week watching movies. Freddy got frustrated whilst exploring tangrams because his hexagon “isn’t a sensible one!” Definition of a “sensible hexagon”: Uh, I dunno.

The positive side of being up an hour early (which is what happens to parents when the clocks go back) was that I got a lot done - or at least, I felt that I did. By 6.45, dinner was over, the kitchen had all been cleaned up, the dishwasher was running and all my children had had baths and were in pyjamas (except Barney, who’d showered on Saturday and isn’t yet quite willing to shower daily). Maybe I just need an extra hour every day?

On Monday morning I got up with plans to tidy up before the arrival of a friend I haven’t seen in a long time, but those plans took second place on the discovery that I couldn’t actually get Barney’s bedroom door open due to the massive accumulation of all sorts of things behind it. I decided he’d been warned enough times and started to go through it all myself. Many bits of Lego and K’nex and goodness-knows-what-else were reallocated to their homes in other bedrooms. I filled two bin-liners with bits of paper and broken toys and things collected from long ago - and I didn’t actually throw out anything he cared about. Except, perhaps, the charger for Jack’s GameBoy SP. Hm. Anyway, I expected him to be royally hacked off at me afterwards, but he didn’t even seem annoyed. We talked about it a day or two later, and I suggested that maybe he’d been a bit relieved - that he didn’t have to do it all himself and/or that it was all decluttered (because really, it was Cluttered!) and/or that a lot of what was removed was stuff he’s probably too old for now, but maybe it was hard for him to let go. He agreed with all of that, saying that sometimes change is difficult. Hm again.

After the Great Bin-It Adventure, Barney spent a few hours - well, it seemed that way - making toast for everyone. Toast and more toast and more toast. They all finally stopped eating about ten minutes before it was time to start thinking about lunch…

My friend T arrived with her daughters, who pretended to be shy at first but were soon bouncing around the house as though they’d spent their entire lives living with six boys. I was feeling fairly organised, with dinner in the slow-cooker before they even arrived - but it was needed, because I knew I had plenty of taxi-ing to do on Monday evening. First Barney was left at Air Cadets - oh, no, first we had to convince Toby that it was okay that Scratchy’s car was parked in the wrong spot in the driveway (I’d moved it to the back of the drive because he wasn’t going to be using it for a week). Then I took George and Freddy to ju-jitsu. On settling down in the car outside ju-jitsu to entertain Jack and Toby (Louie already being asleep) for the next hour, Jack moved into the front seat and spent a few minutes admiring my dashboard: “You have lots of lights up here!”

I’d arranged for Barney to get a lift home from Air Cadets - they’re supposed to finish at 9.30 but it’s regularly between 10 and 10.30, and I really didn’t want to be sitting in the car with five other children waiting for him - so was able to be home with all the other children in bed by about 8.40. I’m glad I don’t have to do that every week.

On Tuesday morning Louie woke before 6 a.m. - changing his internal clock isn’t quite as easy as changing the one on the microwave (something I have to figure out twice a year, having completely forgotten since the last time - every time). I managed to keep everyone upstairs until 7ish, but then gave up and went downstairs and made us all cinnamon French toast. Some excitement was provided when we had a flurry of snow. Jack came wandering into the room and I told him to look out the window. “It’s raining?” he asked - uh, yeah, like that’s something that’s worth remarking on here! “It’s snowing!” I told him. Jack’s response came in an amazed voice: “It’s winter?”

He watched the snow for a few minutes, then turned to the table with a pencil and paper, and asked me for a reminder on how to write a capital L. I told him, he wrote it, checked with me that it was right, then balanced his paper on the window-sill and held up his hands with his thumbs sticking out (left hand making a capital L). “The snow is coming from the left,” he announced. I thought all that demonstrated impressive problem-solving skills

With my stress-levels rising on Tuesday afternoon (a product of the usual trying-to-do-seven-things-at-once), I handed Louie to Barney, who took him into the living-room. I went in to check on them a few minutes later and found Louie on Barney’s lap, with Barney reading to him - from Shakespeare. Hey, it worked

Dinner was early, in part because I was exhausted and in part because Toby was looking very likely to fall asleep. All parents know what a bad idea it is to let a three-year-old fall asleep at dinner-time.

Wednesday morning was very, very cold. I’d been resisting putting the heating on for more than a few minutes morning and evening to get the water heated, but I gave in. I felt justified when I read later that the temperature had been the coldest recorded in October since 1934. We had dinner for lunch - partly because I felt, even if nobody else did, that we needed something substantial inside us to warm us up, and partly because it was just easier that way. Then, of course, we had lunch for dinner. Jack and Toby certainly didn’t seem to be suffering any lack of energy though - they wore themselves out by hopping all over the kitchen because it was entertaining Louie so much Maybe my fatigue was more to do with being up from 4.50 a.m. with Louie, who seemed to have misunderstood the whole idea of clocks going back and had switched his clock an hour forwards instead.

Scratchy was due to arrive back here on Thursday morning, although for a while we weren’t at all certain that would happen. First there were delays in Toronto due to air-traffic control. Then there were the high winds at Toronto Airport, and snow forecast here. He got to the airport in Toronto early, and managed to catch an earlier flight to Newark, which turned out to be just as well, because the flight he was booked on was delayed even longer, and he’d have missed his connection from Newark - which would have meant him spending 24 hours in Newark waiting for the next one. And that would have meant him getting back on Friday morning, rather than Thursday morning - and that would have meant me taking all six children with me when the Open University met Barney.

Oh, and we’re back to days of the week meaning their most recent occurrence - that’s progress…

Barney and I, accompanied by Louie, went into the city by train, which, compared to driving, was a) slower and b) more expensive (even taking parking into account) - but it had the advantage that I could have Louie in my arms or even nursing while travelling, rather than listening to him cry through the end of the morning rush-hour. He seemed to like the train - lots to look at, both inside and through the window. And Barney was happy too, because the staff maths tutor at the OU agreed that he could do the course he wants to do. The paperwork was submitted and now we just need to wait for his student number to arrive so that he can log onto the website and start the assessments (having already worked through the textbook!) - and to find out if his funding application has been accepted. We’d assumed that he couldn’t get funding, but the OU staff we spoke to all said it might be possible so we might as well apply. All the better!

The boys watched a movie on Friday afternoon - I was told what it was, but can’t remember. Anyway, they asked, “What year was this made?”, and when Scratchy said “About 1982″, their response was, “Really? It’s so modern!” Er…1982 was modern. Wasn’t it? I distinctly remember 1982, and I’m only…uh, well, perhaps the less said the better

Friday evening found lots of children in costumes flitting about the street, of course, as mine and others went trick-or-treating. Barney dressed as ART - which stands for A Ridiculous Thing, and has to be seen to be believed. I do have photos, and I will get them up soon. He took Jack and Toby out while George and Freddy stuck together - which worked well, because it allowed Scratchy to be here to man the door, and that allowed me to take off to bed with Louie

Where are we? Oh yes, up to last weekend. I spent most of the day planning things - studying for the boys, to-do lists for me, Christmas plans… I had hoped to make most of the gifts for others this year, but I suspect that might be too optimistic, given my lack of ability to get two hands available for anything. I did think about buying some kits from Opitec, but they’ve decided to charge us ridiculous postage too now - £25 for any order up to £250. I’d only be spending about £30, so I’m not doubling it with the postage charge. So instead, I went out yesterday to try to at least make a dent in the “need something for so-and-so” list. Lots of people oohing and aahing over Louie in the Storchie. I had to stop at about 1pm to nurse him, so I fed myself at the same time, and had a conversation about breastfeeding with the woman at the next table. She had no children, and was very positive about breastfeeding and fascinated by how it all works, but was obviously a bit nervous about asking at first. I did make a few (very) small dents in the shopping-list, but mostly what I got was sore feet. How I used to shop all day in stilettoes is beyond me - as is why I used to enjoy it! I think there’ll be as much on-line ordering as possible done this weekend, and then I’ll have to brave the stores again to fill in the gaps.

Someone yell at me if I haven’t blogged again by this time next week…

I’ve been doing a lot of pointless driving. Not that I knew any of it was pointless while I was doing it, of course.

On Thursday I drove to the airport three times. The first time, we left soon after 8 a.m., to take Scratchy to catch his flight to Newark, from where he would continue to Toronto. I left Barney at home in bed - there isn’t room for everyone in the car, and he’d been out at Scouts on Wednesday evening, so he was happy to have a lie-in. The only problem was that I forgot to tell him in advance, so I had to wake him on Thursday morning anyway, or he’d have woken to an empty house without knowing we’d all gone!

After lunch I went back to the airport, to collect Scratchy, whose flight had been delayed by 14 hours because a part was needed to repair the plane (very reassuring!) He could have stayed at the airport, of course, but it’s boring and expensive, so he came home for a few hours. Before I went to collect him, I had to phone his mum, because she’d arranged to go with a friend to collect him from the airport, and we’d no idea when he’d finally get there. His mum isn’t great in English on the phone, so it took a few minutes to get past the “Who’s this? Who you want? I think you have the wrong number!” before I was even able to start trying to explain what was going on.

Eventually Scratchy did get on a plane, and the plane did take off. The delay meant he arrived in Newark too late for his connection, of course - and it meant he arrived in the early hours of the morning, when there are no commuter flights to Toronto (at least not on Continental), so he had another few hours to wait. By the time he got to Toronto, he’d been travelling for about 30 hours.

This morning I got everyone ready to be out before 9.30 to take Barney to a nearby town where they were testing a new life-raft - he’d volunteered for this during Air Cadets on Monday night. We woke to wild winds and driving rain but he wasn’t at all put off going. We got to the harbour and left him along with the other volunteers, and I started to drive home. I nearly finished driving home too, before my mobile phone rang - Barney, to tell me that the test had been cancelled because of the weather. On the one hand, wild windy weather seems the perfect time to test out a life-raft, since that’s the kind of weather it might have to handle once it’s in use - but I suppose once it’s in use it will already have been tested, whereas so far it hasn’t been. So I turned around again and went back to collect him again. 25 minutes each way, twice. It was time for lunch before we got home.

The rest of the week - well, apart from adventures already reported…ju-jitsu for George and Freddy on Monday night, where someone told Freddy that hundreds of the girls wanted to be his girlfriend. Freddy is my most boyish boy - he doesn’t do girly at all. Doesn’t like girls, won’t touch anything pink, believes Barbie is evil, etc. (Actually, I might be with him on the last one.) So he was quite bemused by this news, and didn’t really seem to have any idea what he should think about it. On Tuesday I cried off Beavers (it was Investiture, which I’d rather not miss, but on the other hand it meant they didn’t need a programme from me for the evening) because I was so tired and feeling achy, and didn’t want to get sick just as Scratchy was leaving for a week. On Wednesday Scratchy took Barney, George and Freddy to yet another Film Education showing (this one being for older kids) while I stayed at home with the others, and then in the evening George and Freddy went to Cubs and Barney had Scouts. On Friday we all stayed home, except for a brief trip out to collect a new inhaler for Jack, whose chest was heaving again. The GP didn’t want to phone a prescription through for him (against protocol, apparently - better to leave a six-year-old to have trouble breathing, obviously) but I persisted and eventually he agreed - although he still didn’t phone it through for another three hours. Jack’s breathing seemed pretty rough beforehand, but he had a remarkable recovery after just a couple of puffs on the inhaler and hasn’t needed any more since. Hm.

We’ve been schools-film-weeking. Yesterday we went to see two movies - I booked both because usually something that we’ve booked gets cancelled. Of course this year that didn’t happen, so we went to watch The Golden Compass in the morning, and Ratatouille in the afternoon.

We liked both of them. Barney and Toby had an arm-wrestling contest to pass the time while we waited for The Golden Compass to start - Toby was very firm about the rules, especially the one about taking it in turns to win Jack watched the scary bits of the movie whilst crouching down behind the seat in front of us, but Toby wasn’t a bit bothered. “Are you okay?” I whispered during a scary leading-up-to-a-battle scene. He nodded and exclaimed, “I like the bear!”

I commented on Brightkite etc that watching the reactions of teachers as they spot the home-educators at “schools” events makes an interesting game. Some of them look surprised, some of them look taken aback, some of them look cross. Sometimes they’re really positive - one even offered to get me a cup of coffee when she was going for some for the other adults in her group. And sometimes they’re astonishingly rude (especially for people who are supposed to be setting an example to their pupils) - we even had one a couple of years ago who was so bad that the cinema staff apologised to me for her behaviour.

But today, we had a new reaction - which I don’t think had anything to do with us being home-educators - and which I can only call “absurd”.

As always, I sat near the exit, because I want to be able to slip out easily if one of the younger children is scared or fussing etc. And as always, we were there in good time - the booking confirmation tells groups to arrive half an hour before the movie is due to start, but they never do. We were there at 9.40, but the first school-group arrived at 9.58. As the school-children filed in, several of the girls did the “aw! look at the lovely wee baby!” thing. Not one of them showed any sign of noticing that I was breastfeeding him. No funny looks, no embarassment, no giggles, no nudges, nothing.

And yet, a few minutes later the cinema manager approached me and said that one of the teachers had complained about me feeding my baby - “because of the children” - and wanted me to leave.

I was quite shocked, really - as well as being a bit embarrassed (for the manager, mostly!) and faintly amused. It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced any negativity towards breastfeeding in public - and to be quite honest, you’d have had to look pretty darn hard to see anything. I was feeding discreetly, in an oversized t-shirt, in a dimly-lit cinema. I’d bet she sees mums at the school gates exposing more flesh than I was - maybe even teachers too!

I told the cinema manager that I’d no intention of abandoning my other children in the theatre, nor of dragging them all out, and asked if any of the children were bothered. (It’s remarkable how many adults who complain about breastfeeding are only doing so “for the sake of the children” - without any indication that the children have a problem with it at all.) He said no, they didn’t seem to, and apologised and muttered something about having to speak to me since she’d complained. I suggested he go back and ask her if she’d find it less disturbing to have my baby crying through the movie. He told me that his own two children had been breastfed and that he had no problem with it and apologised again. I said that perhaps a breastfeeding policy would be a good idea, and he nodded and scurried off.

Nobody said anything more about it

The problem is that if I’d been someone who was less confident about breastfeeding in public, I might not take my children out with a baby - or I might stop breastfeeding. I’m perfectly capable of telling someone where they can shove their complaints, but lots of mums aren’t. And so after the movie, I asked one of the staff if the manager was available. He wasn’t, but I left information about a scheme which runs here - a scheme in which a business or leisure centre or whatever agree that babies can breastfeed anywhere in their premises that they’re allowed to be, and get listed on the scheme’s website and get stickers for their doors to show that they are supporting the scheme. And I emailed the chain the cinema is part of, suggesting the scheme to them too.

I would love it if that teacher returned to the cinema to find that it had become part of that scheme - as a result of her complaint.

When I reported the episode on Brightkite etc, someone I know suggested that I should apologise to the teacher for exposing her children to one of the more lovely aspects of reality

One more movie tomorrow, although it’s more for the older kids, and as Scratchy has the day off, he’s going to take them and let me stay at home with the younger ones. And then he goes off to Canada for a week, to see his mum. We arranged his trip to coincide with half-term because I figured the various evening activities would be off for the week - thereby minimising the taxi-ing required - but I discovered this morning that both ju-jitsu and Air Cadets will still be on - which will make next Monday evening interesting, as I’ll need to pack up all six children to leave three of them off in two different places at the same time, then take the youngest three to collect two of the others, then somehow get Barney home after 10. If I can’t arrange a lift for him, I’ll pay for a taxi. And on Saturday, I have to get him to a nearby town, where he has volunteered to spend three hours testing a life-raft. I asked if that meant he’d be getting wet and he replied, “Only if it doesn’t work properly!” - but he’ll be taking spare clothes just in case.

Anyone know where Jack’s coat is? I only sorted the coats out on the weekend, and he’s already unable to find it.

Oops, I forgot to publish this after I wrote it. But with the magic of Wordpress, you’ll never know

I keep writing blog-posts. Unfortunately I mostly only write them in my head, so here’s another random-stuff-we’ve-been-doing post.

Lots and lots of laundry, as I finally made it through all the kids’ clothes. Somehow Toby has only two pairs of trousers which fit. I also went through all the coats to see what would fit through the winter, and found some hats shaped like animal heads, which I’d long forgotten about - Toby was thrilled with these, and when we dug out the giraffe-head one, he was absolutely speechless with delight. When he’s not speechless, he’s often very amusing. He pointed to a picture and told me, “Look!”, and when I replied, “Yes, a sun!”, he gave me a scathing look and said “It’s not a sun! It’s a planet!”

Louie continues to change every day. He rolled over both ways a few days ago, though hasn’t repeated it - but then he spends most of his time either in someone’s arms or tucked up close beside me, so he doesn’t have much opportunity. He likes it when Barney talks to him, and is doing lots of “talking” himself, but when George is playing with him, Louie likes to be sung to. Mika is a particular hit

One of the pcs in the dining-room died - right after we’d finally bought a new monitor for it. Looks like Scratchy and the boys will be rebuilding that then.

And I’ve been talking to the Open University - but for Barney, not me. A few weeks ago we asked if Barney could take one of their maths short courses. He’s already worked his way through the course textbook, but he wants to do it “officially”, with the end-of-course assessment etc. The first person I spoke to said they would never allow someone as young as him to take a maths course, and when I informed her that he had a friend who’d taken the same course at about age ten, she just kept repeating “I find that very hard to believe” - but when she put me through to the right person, that person was very positive. We’ve heard back from them now, and they think it will all be fine - they just want a reference (which, because they want someone involved in the education system, is coming from the exams officer at the school where he sat his French GCSE, rather than my friend who knows him very well and used to be an OU maths tutor, but anyway…) and they want him to come in for a chat - that’s been arranged for the end of this month. I really hope it’s all okay, because apart from OU materials being much better than any other textbooks I’ve seen, they also might allow him on one of the Level 2 French courses - we’d assumed that wouldn’t be at all possible because there are residential schools involved, but the woman we spoke to said they might be able to arrange something for him - which would solve the problem of where-to-go-next-in-French

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s been a busy few days, making up for lost time while we were sick, and trying to get back into some semblance of a routine - lost completely over the summer while I wasn’t up to running the place. As mentioned, we went out geocaching; afterwards the kids made most of sunny weather by staying at the park for as long as possible, but Louie had had enough, so I brought him home and we had a peaceful hour in the house before everyone else came back.

Tuesday night saw Jack back to Beavers (having missed the week before due to being ill). I can honestly say that I like every one of our current Beavers - sometimes you get a kid who you really wish didn’t come, but ours are all terrific right now. Some of them were quite challenging at first (I’m thinking of one in particular here, who was horrendous at the beginning - I couldn’t take my eyes off him for a second! - but he has settled well and enjoys it so much that he is cooperative and charming now!) I daresay we’ll get a few new kids over the next few weeks, and we have a few who will be moving up to Cubs shortly too. We’d a good meeting, making paper monsters which stood up (sort of), and we played games, and then at the end I chose the “most monstrous monster” - no prizes or anything, but the boy who made the most monstrous one was happy

On Wednesday morning I attempted to get everyone out to the library, but before we knew it, it was lunchtime, and then before we knew it, it was mid-afternoon, and I decided not to bother. My hospital notes finally arrived - full of inaccuracies, most of which don’t matter much but a couple of them really need corrected. They confirmed that I was indeed jabbed all over while I was unconscious in attempts to insert IVs (I knew because of all the needle-holes and bruises they left!) There’s no pathology report on the fibroid, and I’ve asked the records people to investigate that, because I was told that it was definitely sent to the pathology lab, and it’s something I do want to see. There’s very little from the consultant obstetrician - just a copy of a discharge letter to my GP (who’s never even clapped eyes on me) and a note, made after he visited me the day after the c-section, that I was an “ungrateful patient” - I suspect he expected lots of grovelling and licking of boots, whereas what he got from me was “yes, I understand why it was necessary, but it will take a while for me to get my head around it”. Reading the notes has felt like - well, a bit of an anti-climax, really. They haven’t provided any more information than I already had, and they haven’t filled in any of the bits I don’t remember. I think I was expecting some kind of closure from getting the notes, but I mostly still just feel numb.

On Thursday morning I announced that I was leaving the house for the library at 9.30 and anyone who wasn’t ready could sit in the car in their pyjamas. Strangely, everyone was ready to go when I was! Before going to the library, we stopped at a nearby churchyard to look for another geocache. We didn’t find the cache, but we did find lots of interesting headstones, many of them from the nineteenth-century: a stone put up in memory of three brothers, one of whom was buried there while the other two were buried in the US and Australia; another marking the grave of a woman in her 20s along with her three-year-old and ten-month-old children (three different dates of death), then, years later, her husband and his second wife; several headstones with the name of the family our area of town is called after; and one for a man who’d been Lord Mayor of Belfast. The oldest headstone we were able to read was for someone who died in 1801, but there were lots of others which were so worn that the words were no longer legible, and which are almost certainly older - the church itself was built in the 1180s - yes, the eleven-eighties! - around the same time as the Castle, and by the same person. Who needs books and classrooms to study history?

At the library, we returned lots of books and discovered that the grumpy librarian was on duty again, so I waited until she took her coffee break before I went up to talk to someone about two books which had been returned but were still on the computer system as being borrowed by us. Their computer system is a disaster - it regularly refuses to let me log in, it has all the boys’ records linked to mine but sometimes won’t let me see what one of them has borrowed (while letting me access the other records), the search often doesn’t find things that are in the library (or even showing up as borrowed by me!), and it regularly tells me I’ve borrowed things I’d never heard of. Last Tuesday it showed a book on Barney’s record that he’d never heard of, but didn’t list one of the books he had borrowed, and my own record was even worse, with none of the five books I’d borrowed showing up, instead listing nine copies of the same book - one I’ve never heard of…

Friday was quiet, but Saturday found me cooking up a storm - maple baked beans for dinner, served with bread and with brownies for dessert - all home-made from scratch. On Saturday morning, Barney and George and I studied geometry - planning a new table for the kitchen. We have a sort-of-breakfast-bar table-thing in the kitchen - the cupboards and counter come out into the middle of the room, with an octagonal table stuck on the end, but with a bit cut out of it to make it fit around the end of the cupboard - and the table is table-height, rather than countertop-height. It’s a very workable system, but unfortunately doesn’t fit more than four comfortably, so we end up eating in the conservatory (when it’s warm enough) or the dining-room (when it’s tidy enough) or with some of us standing up in the kitchen holding our plates. So we’re experimenting to see what the best solution would be, and I think the easiest and most effective thing to do would be to get a table or piece of countertop cut to replace the current table-top. Same fitting-around the cupboards, but bigger. It doesn’t need to be a lot bigger to increase the perimeter by quite a bit, so it won’t take up a lot more of the room, especially if, instead of adding more chairs, we add stools for people to sit on.

Hence one of our errands today was to Ikea, to investigate countertops and tabletops and stools, amongst other things. I finally succumbed and bought Toby one of their mini-Poang chairs. I had Barney, Jack and Louie with me, while George, Freddy and Toby had stayed at home with Scratchy, but we all met up for lunch and watched the planes landing and taking off as we ate - half of the restaurant walls are made of glass and overlook the runway. The original plan was for Barney to stay at home today - his choice - while Scratchy dropped me off with Jack for an appointment with a homeopath, and then for Scratchy to go to the Asian supermarket before coming back for us - but Barney was so incredibly grumpy and horrid to everyone this morning (and yesterday evening) that I decided he wasn’t to be trusted at home alone. So instead I had to take my car and find a parking-space in one of the most difficult areas of the city, and then go to the Asian supermarket myself. Meanwhile George was having meltdowns at home *sigh*. After our appointment, on the walk back to the car, Barney and Jack collected conkers, but it was the only bit of the day when Barney was at all pleasant. He was back to hormonal and grumpy by the time we got part-way around Ikea, and stayed that way all the way home. Jack listened to nothing anyone told him all afternoon, and Freddy had a tantrum because he wasn’t allowed to sit in the front seat of the car on the way home! By the time dinner came around, I was ready to send them all to bed hungry, but instead Barney was sent to his room to decide whether he wanted to spend his days at home with the rest of us or at school where we wouldn’t have to put up with him. Having decided he’d rather make the effort to treat the rest of us civilly, Barney has gone to Air Cadets this evening, while George and Freddy are at ju-jitsu. Me? I’m going to bed!

We’ve been geocaching. We don’t own a GPS or a sat-nav or anything, but we weren’t going to let that stop us

Cold…

Still cold…

Getting warmer:

Oooh, burning fingers!

Wahey!

It was good fun, and I think we might have to consider asking Santa for a sat-nav system so we can actually do it properly. We know the area where this cache is hidden, and managed to establish its location fairly accurately by zooming in on the Google satellite image - but I suspect that won’t get us very far for most of them!

If you don’t know what geocaching is, have a look here for info.

*cough* Excuse me while I *hack and splutter*

The lurgy got us good. Scratchy was sick last weekend, and by the time he was getting better, it was Monday, he was back to work, and the rest of us were getting it. Fevers, coughs, sneezing - a houseful of it. Barney went off to a Battle of Britain thing with Air Cadets, but the rest of us spent the entire weekend at home. Monday too found us sitting around the house feeling sorry for ourselves. Someone phoned from the speech therapist’s office to say she had to cancel Toby’s appointment on Tuesday morning - I’d phoned a week earlier to cancel it, as it was booked for the same time as our dental appointment. Another one has been made for the end of the month. And Jack, gazing at Louie, said thoughtfully, “I wonder what his favourite colour will be when he grows up?” Ah, yes, the things we all wonder about - what our children will do for a living, what kind of person they’ll be, will they have their own children, and what their favourite colour will be.

On Monday evening Barney chose to go to bed rather than Air Cadets - he said he didn’t feel ill, but was finding it hard to cope (with us being sick, he said, but I suspect it was more like himself being told off). Freddy did go to ju-jitsu, but George was feverish and went to bed. Right before Scratchy left with Freddy, he brought me a cup of tea - and I still can’t believe what I did with it. Remember my expensive cup of tea last week? Well, this one tried to compete. Yup, I managed to pour another cup of tea all over my laptop. Scratchy pulled the keyboard out immediately, in the hope that we could dry it before any damage was done, but he also pulled off a clip that holds a bit of it in, and so when he tried to reassemble it later, he couldn’t. Tuesday morning found me waiting at the laptop repair place for it to open, and sheepishly saying, “You’ll never guess what I’ve done…” The bloke was very restrained and didn’t laugh. And fortunately it didn’t require a new keyboard this time, so it wasn’t nearly as expensive. Still, I do hope this isn’t one of those things that come in threes…

I’d have been in bed on Tuesday morning had it not been for the laptop thing and the dental appointments. We got to the dentist’s with time to spare, and sat in the waiting-room watching television and wondering why on earth anyone would ever go on one of those talk-shows. They’re so dysfunctional that it makes us look positively boring. We all had our teeth checked - even Toby was willing this time - and no treatments were needed, although Barney was reminded of the importance of cleaning well and Jack was found to have a little bit of deterioration of the enamel - no decay though, and it’s a milk-tooth, so with luck it will be falling out before it gets to the point of needing anything done. Our dentist is really lovely, and the kids actually want to go see her, and argue over who will go in her chair first. I found it quite difficult being in the chair - the lights reminded me of an operating theatre, and that isn’t a good thought for me right now - but I managed to handle it, just about.

On the way back home, I felt some little buttons on the back of my steering-wheel that I hadn’t noticed before. It turns out I have controls for the stereo on the steering-wheel. I had those on the Peugeot (although on the front of the wheel, which is why it never occurred to me to look on the back of it!), and I’d missed them when it went. Now I’m wondering what else I’ve missed. I know I still haven’t figured out all the CD-player bit, nor am I entirely sure what the switch on the rear-view mirror is all about.

On Tuesday, Barney went off to St John Ambulance Cadets, but Jack wasn’t even nearly well enough to go to the first Beavers meeting of the year - he was actually grey at one point - and I’m going to have to organise a GP visit for him, as the inhaler he got from the hospital back in April is almost finished. I hate to think he might actually have asthma, but it does look very much like it I went off to Beavers though, hacking and sneezing and taking Louie and a programme with me, and the other Leaders ran things while I cuddled Louie. When I got home, I witnessed a new gold standard for optimism - and from an unlikely source - when Scratchy offered me a cup of tea

By Wednesday morning, Barney too had succumbed, and spent the day feeling feverish and horrible. Again, it might have been a pyjama-day but for another appointment - having noticed how grubby the sofas were, and having realised that I wasn’t going to have time to clean them myself anytime in the next, oh, five to ten years, I decided to pay someone to do it. The cleaning-guy came on Wednesday morning, and removed an amazing amount of dirt from the two sofas, as well as an even more amazing amount from the floor-rug. Once he’d left, we had lunch and then we all went to bed/sofa/floor-with-blankets in my room and watched movies. George and Freddy were well enough for Cubs, but there was no way Barney was going to make it to Scouts. And on Thursday he was in big-time adolescent mode - he never gets his own way, everyone else gets treated better than him, his life sucks, etc. By Friday he was largely recovered, and asked why I was still sick when he was better - hm, yes, well, maybe life does suck.

We’re mostly better now, and even managed a bit of skool on Friday and yesterday. Jack’s still breathing a bit heavily, and I’m still coughing a lot, and Louie has a runny nose (although I’m hoping he’s missed out on the worst of it. I think we’re all hoping for a more pleasant week this week. Keep your fingers crossed for us - and for my laptop keyboard

We aimed to leave the house by 9 o’clock this morning - or rather, I aimed to do so; nobody else seemed to have any intention of being out before lunchtime. We walked out the door at 9.33.

Why would we leave the house so early? (The schoolies can stop laughing - it’s early for us.) Well, several children needed haircuts. There’s a barber-shop in town where the guy does a good job reasonably cheaply, so that’s where we go (unless I do it myself). The only problem is that he takes his time - which is not a bad thing, I suppose, but he takes half an hour per customer. It doesn’t seem to matter how old his customer is, or how much hair he has - it’s always half an hour. And he doesn’t make appointments - it’s first-come, first-served. So if there are three other customers waiting when you arrive, you can assume you’ll be leaving the barber’s chair at some point between two and two-and-a-half hours in the future. If you manage to get there first thing in the morning, the odds of being the first or second customer are good, so it takes less time.

I was going to leave Barney there with Jack, because Jack was the shaggiest child, and also because he cut off a hank of his own hair a week ago. But when I thought about the whole waiting-for-them thing, I decided to leave George, Freddy and Jack there, with dire warnings about best behaviour ringing in their ears (the last time I left them there, they were asked to wait outside the shop because they were messing about so much). And I took Barney, Toby and Louie with me to do some errands.

I got a parking space just across the road from the bank, and reversed into it - and noticed lots of smoke moving upwards past the driver’s door… There were no warning lights on, it had been driving fine, no odd noises etc. I opened the bonnet/hood and all looked fine there (as if I’d know if something looked wrong, but anyway). So I went to the bank, and when I came back, everything still seemed fine. The car started without any more smoke, and I drove off, intending to find someone who could tell me whether this was a get-it-serviced-soon situation or a get-it-towed-now one.

I did one errand before returning to collect Jack from the barber, and asked the barber if he knew of a mechanic. He recommended his own - just a couple of miles away. Jack’s hair wasn’t finished yet, so I headed to the mechanic without him. The mechanic looked around and under my car, tested the brakes, had a look at the engine, made some noises…and announced that he reckoned I’d collected a plastic bag. The smoke had been the remnants of the plastic bag burning off. Bring on the plastic-bags tax, I say. It would make more sense than penalising larger families with higher road-tax anyway.

Back for Jack, leaving George and Freddy to continue their best-barber-shop-behaviour, and the rest of us went to the library. George and Freddy walked to the library to meet up with us - the first time they’ve been unsupervised in town. We spent a pleasant hour in the library despite Toby falling face-first onto the corner of a table, and despite the return of the grumpy-knickers librarian I’ve written about before. Today as I browsed holding Louie, she picked up the sock that had fallen off his foot onto the floor and said “You lost this” with a disapproving look. And when we were getting our books issued (by another librarian) she came over and asked if she could help. I handed her the book that Toby was borrowing, and she issued it with a “oh for heaven’s sake” look. I do think she’d be happier if nobody came into the library at all. I heard about another even worse librarian this week who’d closed the library because the computers weren’t working, and when told by a family that they were there for the books, said they could come in but she wouldn’t turn the lights on because it would only attract more people

(Before anyone thinks I’m down on librarians - I’m not! Most of ours are great - and I used to be one myself, so I know there’s a wide range of people in the business!)

While we were there, Toby was wandering around; I asked what he was doing and he replied in an off-hand tone, “Just looking for a book.” Uhuh.

What else happened this week…oh, I had an extremely spendy cup of tea. It wasn’t very costly to start with - what’s the cost of a single teabag anyway? - but when it leapt out of my hands and all over my laptop keyboard, it suddenly became quite a lot more expensive. I did hope the laptop might recover once it was taken apart and dried out - in my experience Toshiba laptops take quite a bit of abuse before they give up - but the keyboard was a goner. I was lucky enough to find a small local company specialising in laptop repairs and so my laptop went to visit them on Wednesday while we all went to visit friends. I hadn’t realised how beat-up my old keyboard was until I saw it next to the new one and realised that once upon a time it, too, had had keys with textured surfaces. They’re all flat and shiny now!

We’d a Beavers parents meeting on Tuesday - the other Leaders weren’t sure if I was coming back, but I might as well, because it’s not worth coming home between leaving Jack off and picking him up. As expected, I’ve been asked to do the programming again this year. Beavers starts again on Tuesday, so this weekend will find me scouring websites for activity ideas.

Freddy and George went to ju-jitsu on Monday; George had a meltdown on his return because he was the last one out of the car and managed to get himself locked in. I thought maybe he didn’t realise that the driver’s door opens from the inside even if it’s locked, but he told me he didn’t even know if the other doors were locked or not He thought he’d be there all night - even though he knew that Scratchy would be going out again later to collect Barney from Air Cadets

Scouts and Cubs and St John Ambulance Cadets were all back this week too. By yesterday, there were lots of tired grumpy children - they’ve got too used to lazing about over the summer. I think we were all ready for the summer break in activities, but I also think the boys are very ready to return to them now. It’ll be easier once they’ve been back into the usual routine for a week or two - I hope.

I know, I know, it’s a bit of a shock - a post arriving only three four days after the previous one (assuming I get this post finished tonight - it’s entirely possible I’ll still be writing it on Monday… got it done on Sunday!) - but there you go. I blame the weather. I know there’s no reason why the weather should affect the frequency of my blogging, given that it’s just the same right now as it has been for weeks, but I’m blaming it for everything else, so why not? I was tempted to turn on the central heating on Thursday, but I couldn’t bring myself to accept that summer might be over, given that it never seemed to have started. But I resisted, told anyone who complained to put on a sweater (and socks! - is it only my children who don’t wear socks unless absolutely necessary?) and let the body-heat of six children warm up the room.

We’ve been doing a bit of skoolwork this week: mostly English - learning about punctuation and writing stories and suchlike - and history. History wasn’t my thing at all when I was at school; it was years before I realised that I was actually quite interested, but that the way it had been taught in school had completely put me off. Slavedriver that I am, I even sat the boys down to some studying this yesterday afternoon - mainly because they were starting to bicker, and I could see they needed a bit of guidance in what to do for a while. We even sat at the dining-room table, the surface of which hadn’t been seen for nearly a year before this week. Between pregnancy-and-not-feeling-very-well and then the end-of-pregnancy-and-not-feeling-very-well, I hadn’t put anything away properly in a very long time - and nobody else does it! I put both pcs back in the dining-room too, and I want to get a long narrow desk of some sort to put them on, so I went off to Ikea this yesterday morning in search of solutions, but it didn’t provide any. Most of the laptops still live under a sofa, although it’s a different sofa these days - our neighbour offered us hers. It’s in perfectly good shape; it just doesn’t go with her new decor. It goes with ours though, and we can certainly use the extra seating, so we had to make some space in the living-room. As a result of that, we also refreecycled our Mac (i.e. we acquired it via Freecycle and now we’ve disposed of it by the same route). It was collected yesterday on Friday morning by a lovely woman who arrived with her two-year-old son and stayed for a cup of tea - and who confessed to still nursing her son and seemed relieved to discover I was even weirder than she was. I mentioned my blog, and she asked where she could find it, so M, if you’re reading this - hello! and *waves*

Huge pile of post this morning yesterday; I think they’ve been saving it up all week. There was a letter giving us another speech therapy assessment for Toby. We do very few medical-type appointments, so of course this one has been conveniently arranged for exactly the same day and time as the dental appointment I made months ago for all of us. There was also a pile of envelopes from Film Education - I’d booked several films for National Schools Film Week, figuring that it would be the same as the last couple of years, and we’d not get tickets for some and others would be cancelled - but we’ve had confirmation for all of them. We’ll be square-eyed (or wide-screen-eyed) by the end of the week.

Jack cut a chunk of his hair off yesterday on Friday. He’s blaming Barney, who apparently put toothpaste in his hair - don’t ask me why. As I said in my previous post, it’s up and down and up and down with Barney at the minute. He phoned his “French family” last on Friday night; they were away through August, so he hadn’t had a chance to tell them about his French GCSE result - in fact he hadn’t even told them he was doing the exam, because he wanted it to be a surprise. We’re glad they’re all well

We’re around the table again this morning (really today this time), doing things like making databases and mindmaps. Toby is at a pc, playing a Tots TV game about letter shapes and sounds. And I’m about to print off instructions for origami throwing stars - an activity I’m sure will go down well