One word? When seven would do…

And still are even three and a half hours after usual bedtime. 🙄

Had a really nice day today, as indicated in my earlier post things are good for various Friday/payday related reasons anyway so that started the day on a cheery note.

The children played this morning while I parcelled up some ebay stuff and sent Ady off to the post office with it. He went off to work and I persuaded the children to get dressed and we went into Lancing. I had a couple of library books due back and wanted to renew a couple more. I also wanted to get a couple of ‘classics’ that I never seemed to have read at school like everyone else and wanted to see whether they deserved their ‘my favourite childhood book’ tag from so many people including a couple at my reading group. The local library didn’t have any of them so I ordered them in and the children chose a couple of books each. We dropped my watch off to get a new battery and called into the bakery to get some cakes to take to Ali’s.

We listened to Will Young in the car both ways, turned up really loud with the children doing a fine line in in-car seat car dancing and me beating time on the steering wheel :-). I found out that James Blunt is playing Leeds Castle in July on the same basis as me and Ady went to see Will Young last summer and had a lovely afternoon / evening at. It’s actually a very child friendly venue and drugs references aside the children love him too, so a couple of good months of CV work and I might well think about tickets for us.

Had a lovely time at Ali’s. I witnessed the opening of the brand new packet of pasta and watched all lunch preparations closely to ensure she wasn’t secreting chick peas in my pasta quills ;-). The children did lots of stuff as always proving any worries about educational development unfounded by barging in on a discussion in the kitchen about how physics would be taught to ask what some figurines were made of and whether they were china as Davies thought or metal as Scarlett believed. And why they might be so light if they were metal and happily accepting our explanation of paperclips being metal but also light. Also some discussion of size in relation to weight too.

There was chat about perspective, as mentioned already on Ali’s blog. In relation to the space hoppers at Ali’s which now we have our own, which are larger, appear smaller. I likened it to going back to infant school as a grown up and realising how small the playground really was after all, and when my Dad picks them up to his height and the world looks very different. It was them demonstrated by Davies who drew a picture of Wallace, Gromit and a car with them all inverted in size from their normal stature which he explained by the larger ones being close to us and the smaller ones further away. He then made me look out of the window to see chimneys on faraway houses to demonstrate further. I think he’s got that then! 🙂

Ali has blogged about the rest of the day there so I won’t repeat but it was lovely as always and there was lots of drawing, painting and writing went on. Also nice to see how Davies is so comfortable there that he speaks to Ali in the same way as members of our family with utter confidence and naturalness, he’s been the best of himself today. 🙂

We left later than planned so played Eye Spy on the way home to keep Tarly awake and when Ady phoned I passed Davies my ohone to answer and relay the conversation – lovely to have an older child at times like that! Davies announced today that he can count to 24 and then proceeded to count well into the 30s. He stumbled on 13 but after that was flying – he has previously not got anywhere near 20 🙂 I then listened to him in the back of the car teaching Scarlett to do it too.

After a tidy up session at home we went to Blockbusters which has changed considerably since the last time I went there (probably as a teen :oops:) and I rejoined. The children chose Madagascar as their film to watch and we browsed the shelves of 3 dvds for a fiver for a week for future reference (I normally pay £2.50 for one at the library every couple of weeks so this is a far better offer and a two minute walk from our regular soft play haunt so something we’ll probably do quite often I suspect). Then we came home via KFC where we collected a ‘Mum’s Night Off’ bargain bucket and came home to watch and eat. It went really well – Scarlett was possibly most excited about the pepsi (she adores fizzy drinks but they are a very rare treat) but Davies tried everything and loved the chicken. Then we all ate ice cream out of the tub with the supplied plastic spoons before the children got into their pjs and snuggled up on the sofa with me for the last bit of the film.

That ended two hours ago and despite it being 9pm and Scarlett being very tired we honoured our promise of sleepover in Davies’ room. Ady has been threatening to bring her back downstairs to her own room as they have each been down at least four times for toilet or drink breaks, there has been much giggling and stamping about – plenty of it in relation to move it, move it! – and lots of general horseplay. But I have insisted they be allowed to see it through and if they are tired tomorrow then so be it. If we don’t let it happen this time then it will be all the more fraught with nonsense next time. I am now sitting on the floor between them, Scarlett has gone to sleep in seconds and Davies looks to be not too far behind – not very surprising given it’s gone 11pm now – but at least we might be in for a lie in in the morning I guess! 🙄 So Family Film Night – the first one a success and about to be introduced as a first Friday of the month regular feature – and all for around £15!

and if you share the dips then you should probably share the great big uppy bits too.

It’s Friday 🙂

It’s Payday for Ady 🙂

It’s Payday for me too 🙂 🙂

I’ve earned enough this week to pay for the food shopping for the month of April 🙂 🙂 🙂

We’re off to The House Of Lentils 🙂

I made nearly £30 on ebay selling outgrown kids clothes on auctions ending yesterday and Ady has just come back from the post office having gone to post items I’d charged £18 p&p for having only spent a tenner 🙂 (which I would feel bad about but I think packaging materials and going to the PO is fair enough to add 50p or so to each for, and given some of the items only sold for their 99p reserve I’m quite happy to have made a bit extra on postage anyway!), so that’s £40 altogether 🙂 🙂 🙂 With the couple of cheques I’m waiting for as well it will pay for the Kessingland pitch. 🙂

That’s all!

But I’ll say it anyway! 😉

A good morning, I finished my 3 CVs on a deadline for today and just as I emailed them across the post arrived with a further six in it 🙂 So hurrah for work!

Ady’s presentation was today and went very well, he impressed the people he need to impress and was all bouncy and happy about it. 🙂

My Mum (the other person who’s ‘work’ I had helped with) also had her training session which went well too. She’s been tasked with some crazy hypothetical taking on the renovation of a delapidated hotel with a budget of £0.6m next which I imagine I will get called in for assisting with. I think someone at her workplace has been watching too much The Apprentice tbh!

I told the children I would do something with them this afternoon if they let me work in peace this morning so they did some geomags, some drawing and I got out a kit for making 3D pictures by colouring in the background and then adding die cut animals using little cardboard tabs. Davies did well on it but was after constant cheerleading which was slightly wearing when I was trying to get into the mind of a 23 year old who wants a career in the music industry on the basis of 3 years unemployment after a 3 year career as a kitchen porter but did a week’s work experience in a record company when he was 15 🙄 Crazy thing is he’d probably do well and earn more than I ever did. Had a freaky moment too when I recognised the name of the consultant who’d assisted the candidate in completing the application form only to realise this was because I’d written her CV for her 6 months ago. I looked it up and discovered she’d had personnel experience so she obviously got taken on by the Working Links people as a result of going there looking for work.

We walked round the shop to buy milk and I read Scarlett a Poppy Cat book about six times (luckily a board book with only five pages!) but I never did really do much with them today as I got sucked back into making a head start on the next batch of CVs. I also had a very lengthy phonecall with the lady who is starting a load of lessons and bought in tutors of HE children locally. Julie is getting involved and although I have said it is not our thing I had agreed she could contact me to talk through some of the information I got last year about fundraising and grant applications. It was a long phonecall and she is inspirational in her belief in what she is doing and her full on committment to her children and their education. I’m not entirely sure I agree with all she was saying, particularly in relation to autonomy but she was so passionate it would have been crazy to debate it with her really. And she is not wrong, she is just not saying the exact replica of what I believe. She did make me feel slightly guilty about not being very available today though, particularly as D was desperate for me to do drawing with him and I didn’t. I’m torn between wanting to offer the best to the children and not wanting to sit on the floor ‘playing’ with them all day either, infact rarely if at all! I amjust not a sitting on the floor playing kind of person. Anyway…

This evening I went with my Mum to a Health & Beauty evening at the big conference centre along the road from them. It was really good actually, cheap entrance of 3 quid which included a goody bag with loads of trial size beauty stuff and a free ‘relaxing Clarins hand treatment’. Mum talked to the people on every single stand and booked a chiropractor appointment adn everything. I enjoyed being too poor to be tempted into expensive make up and body creams, crystals and tarot card readings etc and just soaked up the girlieness of the atmosphere and the man playing the harp (I kid you not!), oh and the glass of wine Mum bought me when we had a mid point sit down. 🙂 I got stopped by two people who knew me, one from school (was it really 17 years ago!!!!) and one I worked with about 10 years ago which was kind of nice, kind of sad that I am still in the same town and kind of odd as I would never go up and tap someone on the shoulder after 17 years and say ‘Hello, do you remember me?’ but there you go.

Tomorrow we are going over to Ali’s for naked spacehoppering and lentils aplenty and in the late afternoon / early evening we have a first for the Goddard’s planned in the way of a ‘Family Film Night’ – we’re planning to go and rejoin Blockbusters – I have a card but it is very old and in my maiden name, to show Davies that it is true about places with even more dvds than the library, get a film or two out, get a KFC bargain bucket, pop some popcorn and watch films together. Then the children have begged for a sleepover in D’s room so we plan to see how that goes too. So I may well not be blogging and hidden under a pile of Kentucky Fried Grease watching Mrs Doubtfire or Bambi or something. If I’m not back by Saturday send a St Bernard! 😉

I don’t watch a lot of TV really (Nick jr excepted) but among the shows I do like to watch it has come to my attention that two of them will be clashing from next Wednesday at 9pm.

Do I choose The Apprentice or Grand Designs?

On the way to Highdown Gardens we listened to Labi Siffre Something inside so strong on a cd. When I was at school my favourite teacher used to take us for dance and she would choose one of her own favourite songs and then the whole class would work together to create a dance routine to go with it, or we’d work in pairs and then all show the rest of the class at the end. I used to love those lessons and one of the songs I have really clear memories of choreographing a dance to is this one. Davies really likes it too – it’s on a compilation album we have and always tells everyone who’s in the car who is singing it. Today he listened to the lyrics a bit and asked about how something inside could be strong? So I spent the car journey explaining about emotional self and physical self. I explained how there are some crossover traits and then we mentioned various things like ‘bored’, ‘hungry’, ‘tired’, ‘sad’ and so on to decide whether they were emotional or physical. He quite liked this and we talked about how you could be physically or emotionally strong or weak and I have him some examples of people we know who are one or the other and how you would demonstrate them. Scarlett appeared to be listening too and then suddenly asked ‘Mummy? What are you two talking about?’ which made me laugh.

We then talked a bit about racism. We’d watched something on Class TV fairly recently about racism through history and briefly touched on it then, so I reminded him about that and then said that Labi Siffre was talking about being oppressed and held back and considered not good enough but that whatever people thought he was strong inside, emotionally, and would show them he could do it anyway. Then we turned it up really loud and he listened to it again to see for himself. All deep stuff! 🙂

Then we arrived at Highdown so they spent a happy two hours playing and running about. They did join in with two other little boys for a while but the younger one was pretty rough and was chasing the rest of them with sticks and spitting. Davies did bait him rather and he only looked about 3 so I think he was imagining it was all part of a game really, but when he really started laying into D with a stick I did shout ‘Oi!’ at him. His mother yelled at him and dragged him off 🙁 I did try and catch her eye to say it was OK and I didn’t think he was entirely to blame but they disappeared. So we then had a post mortem about behaviour and what was naughty and what was not and how Mummies should deal with it! Ah, nothing like parenting advise from a 5 year old! 🙄

They inspected worms, looked at fish, ran around, all fell over and got muddy at least once, sniffed flowers, ran screaming from the first bee of the Spring (isn’t that supposed to be the first sign of Summer or something?), they clambered and balanced on rocks and generally enjoyed being out of doors.

More on flickr. Got some really nice ones of Tarly today. 🙂

We left there when two out of four children had had enough and the other two were fading fast and our fingers had started to numb slightly. Very nice to see all the spring flowers and hear birds calling for a couple of hours though. Before we’d left Davies had been all excited about going, which quite surprised me as it must be getting on for six months since last we went there and he said all casually that the sun dial wouldn’t be working as it was cloudy today! Which really amazed me as I didn’t think he’d paid much attention to the sun dial there last time we went. He asked how they worked and I explained about it being a shadow cast by where the sun was in the sky and that shadows were formed by something being between the sun and the ground, such as people, casting a shadow. He nodded throughout and looked at me as though I was telling him something so basic he’d known it for ages, which I suspect I might have been actually! 🙂

We came home and he asked me to divide a page into boxes so he could do a story board to use his plasticine characters for, apparently it is ready now but I said it would have to wait for tomorrow now. They played a rousing game of running in and out of every room in the house, scared the cats silly and had a bath. Davies is still awake so clearly nothing is going to wear this child out. 🙄

Ady came home so we spent some time working on his presentation for a big meeting tomorrow and now he is reheating a curry and making rather lovely smelling bombay potatoes whilst waiting for me to go and do the rice so I’ll leave it there except to update that our frogspawn has hatched to tadpoles and some are already showing little buds where their legs will soon be forming so great excitement at life cycles in action going on here. 🙂

love was such an easy game to play… Actually that has nothing to do with yesterday but having used the title I couldn’t help continuing the lyric! 🙂

Had a really nice day yesterday, one of those one’s where you are so thankful for being a SAHM and being able to drink tea and eat cakes and chat instead of having to go to work! 😉

The morning was a bit of a blur as despite being up at about 7am and thinking I had ages to do everything I wanted to do we ended up being about an hour late for going to Lucy’s and I had thought I had enough time to stop in Lancing and get my watch battery replaced but I didn’t! I did manage to get two loads of washing out, two baskets of clean washing put away, two lots of frozen stew out to defrost for dinner, a couple of batches of chocolate chip rock cakes made (as promised to the children who were all upset about having to take the cakes made on Monday to Badgers instead of keeping them here and eating them all! :roll:) and the first load of emails sent out to advertise the new HE group.

We got to Lucy’s about 11.30am and it is a new rented house that they are thrilled with. It is quite lovely actually, about five minutes (child pace) walk from the beach and five minutes in the other direction from a nice park, quiet cul de sac road and a nice big lounge with patio doors to a small enclosed garden with patio and lawn area. Although it is smaller than our house and some of the layout is a bit odd I did find myself being very envious of the garden accessible to children without supervision aspect. Our garden is arranged all the way round the house (we’re on a corner) and if it were all grouped together in one patch would be a nice size but it has slopes and walls steps, and can be seen into from the road most of the way round so there is no way the children could be out there without me for a few years yet. As I am really not an outside in the garden type of person this is wearing for them and me. Our original plans for the house included changing the garage into a kitchen diner extension or even a conservatory, losing our current drive and making it a more enclosed ‘back’ garden which would have given us that but it is unlikely to happen any time in the next 82 years! 🙁

So I sat there happily recommending she get pavement chalks for the children to draw on the patio, some sort of child safe water feature so they can wash it off again, a sand pit and so on. Love planning other people’s houses for them. 😉 Davies and Scarlett happily set off to explore Rebecca and Richard’s bedrooms. They have both had birthdays in the last week so there were plenty of new toys to acquaint themselves with too. Rebecca although she seemed to enjoy having them there was not really playing with them as such but they can be an akward duo to infiltrate sometimes. We had lunch and they played a bit more and then Lucy suggested we walk to the park for a play.

It looks either newly kitted out or rarely used as there was a distinct lack of grafitti and broken glass kicking about. The equipment was a couple of sets of swings and one of those challenge type set ups where you have to get round all of the equipment without touching the ground. Davies was very good at the balancing and the using ropes and bridges to get around but couldn’t do the heights or the leap of faith type jumps. Tarly was excellent at balancing and risking big leaps and heights – so different those two! I had a go at a couple of things too and hurt my hands with the stupid monkey bars, which I couldn’t negotiate as a very slight and skinny school girl so why I thought I could hulk my weight across it now I really don’t know, but it was funny! 😀 We enjoyed a windy but sunny hour there and I gained a pocketful of daisies picked by Scarlett then we headed back to Lucy’s for tea, cakes, play and chat for a bit longer. We were both surprised to realise it was nearly 5pm so we headed for home where the children had strawberries for tea and carried on some game with plasticine.

Ady arrived home followed closely by my parents who were over for dinner, Dad and Ady put the children to bed while Mum and I finished her training preparation for her session tomorrow and drank wine. 🙂 We had dinner – the first time my Dad has eaten stew since he left home 50 years ago having sworn to never eat it again (apparently he pretty much lived on stew as a boy made either from rabbits which they caught or old non-laying chickens). He did eat it all and said it was ‘alright, not bad’ but I don’t think he’s about to start having it on his five week meal planner anytime soon! 😉 We watched a taped couple of episodes of ‘The Way We Were’ which led to long discussions about who was the little girl in the Birds Eye advert where the ‘pod went pop!’ with me insisiting it was Patsy Kensit and Mum insisting it was ‘the woman on the TV’ who we eventually worked out was Julie Peasgood. Much googling ensued before deciding as they both seemed to be credited with it in various places we were both right.

They left around 11ish and we went straight to bed.

This morning the children have played with the megablocks and still are doing so in their pjs. I’ve got a couple of loads of washing out and watched some TV with them. We watched a cartoon version of Mr Bean which prompted some discussions about art galleries, baddies, statues of nudes and trying to work out what might happen next.

I’m about to persuade them to get dressed and sort out some lunch and then we are going to Highdown Gardens to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie and have a couple of hours walking round / getting fresh air / burning off energy so they’ll sleep!

I’m a Genuine Director!

About You:

As a DIRECTOR, you combine an unusual openness and passion for beauty and style with confidence and a down-to-earth sensibility that allow you to realize your vision.

You are practical and pay attention to the details that others tend to miss.

By focusing on what is real and concrete, you achieve more than those who always have their heads in the clouds.

When it comes to what really matters in your life, you are confident in your ability to succeed.

Having beautiful things in your life gives you pleasure and satisfaction – you have a keen eye for style.

Even when problems present themselves, deep down you know you will overcome these challenges.

When routines get too familiar, you become bored and start looking for ways to spice things up.

You are open to new types of experiences – you are not afraid to take a risk on something new.

You have a highly developed sense of taste – you know what looks good on you, in your home, and in the world at large.

Your independent streak allows you to make decisions efficiently and to trust your instincts

You have a strong sense of style and value your personal presentation – friends may even seek your style advice from time to time.

Generally, you believe that you control your life, and that external forces only play a limited role in determining what happens to you.

How You Relate to Others:

Your outgoing personality, your preference for order, and your cautious appreciation of others makes you GENUINE.

You aren’t afraid to occasionally be the center of attention. You are comfortable and confident in social situations.

As a charismatic kind of person, you tend to be energized by other people and enjoy their company.

When other people are upset, you are able to think about the situation rationally, without getting too caught up in their feelings.

At times you find it difficult to understand where other people are coming from, and wish they could just see things the way you do.

You are a strongly principled person who believes in right and wrong. This helps you make decisions easily when it comes to moral issues – you don’t have to waste time hedging on important values.

In your experience, people tend to get what they deserve. Because of this, you work hard and try to follow your principles in your day-to-day life, knowing that you will be rewarded for your efforts.

Well I got it all done. I did the CVs and had confirmation of safe receipt and promise of more on the way. I made fairy cakes but decided black and white stripey icing was a touch ambitious and if not instantly recognisable as badgers could go very wrong, so I went with yellow buttercream sprinkled liberally with 100s and 1000s. Very popular they were too. 🙂

We went to the Wizard store and got some plasticine which amused the children for ages. I think D has gone as far with making W&G models as he can now – I guess the next stage is to try and get some of the wires used underneath the plasticine and arm him with a camera and editing software! 😉

The rain stopped in the end too. It’s been really, really windy here today and it blew the clouds away. Washing is still flapping wetly on the line but at least two of the three days worth of continual rain must have been whipped out of it by now.

We watched our Spider video and sang along to the songs.

My Mum called round and arranged to come to dinner tomorrrow night so I can help her with that training prep. ready for Thursday.

Ady got home early enough for him and Scarlett to come to Badgers with us. It was the end of term and those who’ve been there all term were presented with their badge and a certificate for passing ‘caring badger’. Davies was given a certificate for ‘being a good badger and joining in nicely’ which he seemed suitably chuffed with. He had to join in with ‘parade’ (lining up!) and I bought his uniform ready for next term. You pay £19 and get a polo shirt and jumper and then as they grow out of it you just swap it in for the next size up, so that’s not too bad. He will need black trousers and black shoes though. This would have been more of an issue as they used to only wear their uniforms once a month but it was decided tonight (with a little prompting from me and Ady :oops:) that they should wear it every week. So I’ll be getting D some cheap black, once a week for an hour wear shoes and a pair of black trousers too. We’ve agreed that when he goes back after Easter I will wait in the room next door rather than going in too so that’s a positive start in getting him happy to go in alone (and means I get to sit and read a book in relative peace for an hour too 🙂 )

Tonight we’ve watched Phone Booth. We got it free with something else once and have only watched it once. I quite like films like that – lots of tension but no massive amounts of violence (and yes, of course I know there was violence but nothing dwelt on or dramatically enhanced it).

And now, I’m off to bed!

There I am. Gone!

Had a very nice, people filled weekend. Saturday morning I was out early to get some food in for the weekend then when I got back Dad and Ady went out for logs. I did a spot of baking 😉 and got some washing hung out – which clearly cursed the weather as it has literally not stopped raining since about half an hour after I did so and is still raining now.

Then Alison, Chris and children arrived for the day. Reading went up, the children all disappeared but I know they watched W&G, Care Bears and Drop Dead Fred and that they made mothers day cards and dressed up, played with Floam and painted lots of nails. Ady did cooking, me and Alison roamed the house to find child-free spaces (spending about an hour in Davies’ room before we were flushed out!), there was a rather hilarious weigh-in and it was all very nice. 🙂 Thanks for coming guys!

They left and we changed all the clocks and decided to adpot BST slightly early so went to bed!

Yesterday morning I was woken with a cup of tea, a pile of celeb gossip magazines (the only thing I am really missing from my old extravagent lifetime), some chocolates and a couple of home made cards from the children. Then they all trooped back downstairs and I laid in bed for about half an hour reading. I used to love doing that for hours pre-children, being awake but just staying in bed. Now I don’t get to stay in bed enough asleep, let alone awake! 😉

I lazed around for most of the morning and then got myself and the kids dressed up to go out for lunch. We went to one of our favourite restuarants in Brighton Marina, which on a lovely sunny day is a great place to be. The traffic getting into Brighton was dreadful and it took an hour for a 12 mile journey 🙄 We took the top road which is high and was dense with fog which amused the children, it crosses Brighton racecourse at one point and there must have been racing as the turf had been laid across the road which was odd to drive across – by the time we drove back it had been removed. Mum and Dad had driven in along the seafront where the traffic was even worse so we were all late getting there.

We had a lovely meal, the children behaved well, the food was nice, we got free wine and although the tables are very close together so you can’t avoid getting slightly involved with the people on the neighbouring tables the atmosphere in there is good enough that it feel more like a big party anyway so the loss of intimacy is fine.

We’d planned to all go back to my parents’ for the afternoon but their heating has packed up and their house is freezing even when it is working (big rooms, high ceilings) so they ended up coming back to us. They had my granny with them too, so Ady continued his host role making teas and coffees all afternoon. I made some air drying clay characters with Davies and did some drawing with both the children Dad dozed on the sofa and Mum and Granny spent ages playing with google earth on Ady’s laptop 🙄

I’d been rather looking forward to a quiet evening and we’d planned tea of a roasted chicken to make into hot sandwiches having planned to leave my parents around 7pm to get the children home to bed. I did get some peace by sitting first on Tarly’s bedroom floor while she went to sleep and then going upstairs and doing the same in Davies’ bedroom, by which time it was 9pm and clear they had settled in for the evening. Mum had brought some cakes over with her so we opened a bottle of champagne, ate tea and all watched Planet Earth. Then we put on one of the earlier episodes we’d recorded and then we watched Globe Trekker and finally after lots of theatrical yawning from me and Ady they all left at around 11.30pm.

Today I have a couple of CVs to do which if the children do as promised and leave me in peace to do (they are currently watched W&G for the second time already today and playing with geomags) then I’ve promised to take them to the Wizard store and buy them some plasticine to make characters with. I need to get dinner on (bolognaise planned to cook in the slow cooker) and rustle up a ‘plate of food’ for Badgers end of term party toda. I have a half formed plan of fairy cakes with some sort of stripey icing to look badger-esque, will photo them if they turn out well – or indeed eat them all myself if they don’t 😉

Should probably get on with it really…

To you all 🙂

Eagle eyed readers this morning might have caught a post about ebay before I decided what to do and deleted it. Basically I listed 5 pairs of Scarlett’s outgrown (age 2-3) knickers. When I wrote the listing I felt strange about describing them as ‘worn’ but put it down to my own paranoia and went ahead. Last night I got a potenial bidder question asking if I could email more photos of them. This struck me as slightly strange – after all it was five pairs of pants for 99p, your basic toddler knickers, described fairly comprehensively and I wonder what’s to look at really, so I checked them out a bit further. I found they had been a member for a couple of weeks and their feedback showed they had previously purchased two items from the same buyer. Both were cds of digital photos of ‘busty 18 year olds in their school uniform’ about which I will not air a judgement, and of course it is possible that someone who ‘uses’ such items would have a toddler in need of pants but I just felt rather uncomfortable about the possibility that they didn’t. So I’ve ignored the email and pulled the item off sale.

Then tonight I get another question. This time in relation to a brand new pack of pampers swim nappies. Never been opened and listed in full with size and the weight guide printed on the packet. The question?

‘will the item fit my 3 year old son?’ 🙄

Ady suggests I should email back with a fact finding question such as ‘what colour are his eyes?’ I am inclined to suggest they refine their ebay search to a set of bathroom scales to weigh their child. Any other ideas? 😀

I was doing something online the other morning and got totally sidetracked by something that popped up and did an IQ test. It was one of the tickle ones where you get a taster and then they try to get you to buy the ‘full report’. Which of course I didn’t (I’m frugal now, y’know!). So today I got an email saying ‘our sponsors want to pay for your full test results. Click here’ so I did. And guess what, for casting my eye over the page and not ticking any of the boxes to say yes please and heading straight for the no thanks box I got my full report. And it says I’m clever! 🙂

Pretty good day today. There was enough of a hiatus in the middle to hopefully ward off the evil curse of a crap day tomorrow (breath a sigh of relief oh visitors 😉 ) but maybe it was retribution for such a poo day yesterday. 🙂

Ali has very handily passed me a bit of work which she will no doubt laugh hugely at me for saying but I actually quite enjoyed doing so I got some of that done first thing, opened the post which contained a letter from a creditor to say they are stopping interest and charges, for now anyway and 2 CVs to be written. Reminder to self – BUY A LOTTERY TICKET FOR TOMORROW, YOU’RE ON A ROLL LOVE! ;-), I booked the hall for the new Home Ed group and took a phone call from someone who is definitely coming along to the first one with his two boys so I will get cracking on getting that publicised next week. I’ve joined a local group leaders yahoo list as recommended by June somewhere and been getting some good advice and ideas from that – not to mention being slightly star struck by direct dialogue with Mike F-W! 😉

I forgot to mention how into make up Scarlett is at the moment. She often sits with me in the morning when I ‘put my face on’ and either helps me with mine or puts stuff on herself (which I do have a rumbling bad feminist mother feeling about in some ways but I do keep correctly her when she says ‘now I am pretty Mummy’ after applying eyeshadow that actually she was pretty if not prettier before without it :oops:). Anyway I returned a previously confiscated box full of nail varnishes and hair mascaras to her yesterday so she sat while I was doing my ebay listings painting my toes for me – about five coats all different colours 🙄 and she added a further two coats to them today. So I now have mermaid tail style irridescent toenails (with glittery stars) and she spent ages putting purple sparkly streaks in my hair too! :-).

We popped out with a list of stuff to do, return a library book and get a few new ones – slightly scuppered by me only taking my ticket which already had about 12 books out on it so we had to put about half our selected pile back, get a new battery for my watch which has been working on a very intermittent basis all week – except I hadn’t put it on my wrist so couldn’t do that, get something for my Mum for Sunday – failed!, get some cotton wool and redeem a Boots voucher that’s been kicking about for ages for some new nail varnish – managed that :-), go to the book shop to get some of the WBD books as the library had a pile of the vouchers to take – I got the Harry and the Dinosaurs one and a Viking one but that was all they had left. I tried to get a couple of Dora colouring books but they were 99p each and the tokens can only be used on books costing £1.99 or more. Davies did get a W&G sticker book though and we got the £1 off that. I needed a few householdy bits from Woollies so we got those (oven mitt and some rings with pegs on for drying things like kids socks) and then we came home. I managed to barely contain them round the shops and in the library using a combination of that tried and tested behaviour modification – bribery, threats and whispered angry voice! 🙂

On the way home they redeemed themselves and once back in the house they put W&G on TV and sat doing the activities in the sticker book together – things like spot the difference and so on. Davies has been counting everything today and verbally playing with numbers so autonomous numeracy and literacy have ruled here for him this week 🙂

I did the rest of the work for Ali and then made a very half hearted start on one of the CVs by which time Ady was home. So we all sat together and watched all of W&G disc 2 with all the extras, story behind the characters, interview with Nick Park etc which Davies really enjoyed. I sat and read them a load of library books – Tarly was more into ‘That’s not my dolly and got restless with most of the more interesting ones but she did join in with Quentin Blake’s All Join In which was nice. I love Quentin Blake books 🙂 Davies recognised that the pictures looked the same as one of his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory books so we chatted a tiny bit about illustrators – I have one of those Come Look With Me art books which I think he would enjoy stashed on a bookcase, must get it out next week. We read The Paperbag Prince, which Davies loved and spent ages spotting things in the fab illustrations, Slam which was a real success; it’s a book with virtually no words all about consequences and you sort of follow it yourself – I think he might sit with that one a few more times actually, and an Eric Maddern (who I adore) book about The King With Horses Ears which he retold to Ady after only one listening.

They went off to bed and I relaxed in a bath with a glass of wine and Upper Forth At Malory Towers and now I’m allegedly cooking dinner but secretly blogging in the kitchen! 🙂 I now have an ebay rant to compose so this will soon be knocked down the page! 😉

Aside from my dual victories of perfecting a John Wayne walk and single handedly using a week’s supply of loo roll for your average family of four in just 12 hours I have been involved in the following:

Listing a whole load of stuff on Ebay making use of their 10p listing day. Some of it is stuff I will actually be quite sniffly about packaging up and taking to the post office so I hope it either doesn’t sell at all or at the very least doesn’t just go for it’s 99p starting price (stuff like Tarly’s Boden boots, her outfit she wore on both her 2nd and 3rd birthdays, her two summer Dora outfits from last year. All very cute but there really is no point in hanging onto them is there).

The children have done all sorts of utterly autonomous stuff, for which please feel free to read that I have neglected them all day! 🙂 They watched a dvd called An Easter Tale, which we bought 2 years ago so is getting it’s third annual spring airing. It has the sort of songs which instantly eat back into your brain again despite not having heard them for a year so it will be June before we stop humming those I suspect. 🙄

They did some drawing and some jigsaws, Davies and I played battleships for a while – we’ve yet to finish a game but that is more to do with never being Tarly free when we try, they played with the k’nex and then the geomags in a long and very complicated game about W&G with cameo appearances from various of Scarlett’s soft toys called imaginative things like ‘Tigerry’ for a stuffed tiger, ‘Elephanty’ for a stuffed elephant, ‘Chicky’ for a stuffed chick – you get the picture!

Davies answered my mobile phone when it rang and I was hanging washing out – first time he’s done that. It was Ady, which he knew as my ringtone for Ady is a recording of him saying ‘Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello’ but still quite odd to have him walking out into the garden to me chatting away into the phone and then saying ‘here’s Mummy’ and handing it over. 🙂 Sure that fits into life skills or something somehow!

Then I took a phonecall which I snuck upstairs to take away from the children during which they came to report each other for various crimes and ask me to get them apples to eat. They also constructed a farm using soft toys and fences made of videos. There was a blue geomag panel pond and a petting corner. So I spent some time admiring that before they allowed it to be dismantled by which time Ady was home.

Tomorrow I have nothing planned although I have things to do like returning library books, getting a new battery for my watch so hopefully I will be able to venture out of the house!

but if I’m not it’s because my need for these is so great I have retired to bed wrapped in towels and nappy cream, or I’m busy between the toilet and the shower. 🙁

There is a company called Working Links who specialise in getting long term unemployed people back to work. The company I work for write competancy based CVs for Working Links clients. They also do private professional CVs too but it is mainly Working Links ones I have been doing.

The clients fill out a fact finding form which is then used as the basis for their CV. Because their employment history can be patchy, missing chunks or non existant we focus on their skills and qualities rather than their career to date. A lot of the clients do not have English as their first language or are simply not able to put together a CV to reflect their skills in a coherant or well presented manner.

An amount of it is creative writing to a point, striking a balance between the believeable and the truth and designed to get them a foot in the door of whatever industry they are seeking work in – usually catering, retail or manual work. Having worked in catering, retail and recruitment in the past I can easily identify which of their skills and life experiences are likely to be relevant to a potential employer and play them up, but of course outright lying is not an option.

I’ve done a couple of CVs for private customers through them too – there was a woman who’d worked in retail but having had two children she wanted to retrain in childcare and was looking for a nursery placement while getting a NVQ so I had to show how her skills would be transferable from one to the other.

I quite enjoy it actually, it’s the aspect of working in recruitment that I most enjoyed when I did it and it fits in really easily with being attached to my laptop most of the time 😉 They have started to do odd days in the Working Links offices interviewing clients direct to fill out the forms for CVs and that is what they were interested in me doing if I could sort childcare out. I think it would be very ad hoc but I’d really enjoy it if it happened.

You know I don’t have a sister, I’m not so close to my mother, I didn’t do great on the friends quota at school and throughout my working life I was mostly the manager working alongside blokes on my level with other women as ‘staff’. It is a very recent phenomena to me to have female friends and actually enjoy the company of other women. I used to look in wonder at other women who loved their gossiping, their endless chats on the phone, their catching up with every area of each other’s lives and so on. Now I am loving every minute of the female friendships I have; I like the ‘kitchen chat’, I like the ‘sistahood’ of it all and every so often I really enjoy the common ground of being a wife and being a mother and having licence to get it all off my chest knowing that it will not be taken as indicative of problems in either of those roles but understpod as the things which piss us all off about our children / partners from time to time…

Bear with me, I am actually going somewhere with this! 😉

This morning Ady and I did some more work on his presentation while the children did drawing and watched Class TV. Davies did some writing copied off the DVD remote control ‘power’ and ‘enter’ and then with a bit of help (as in o and w make an ow sound and e and r make an er sound cos we’ve not covered that really) he sounded both words out. He’s doing lots of copying words at the moment, his writing is very good and if he’s written it he is quite happy to attempt to read it for some reason!

Then the children and I headed off to Soft Play and Ady went off to work for a bit. And I sat at soft play, while the children ran about for about 3 hours having a whale of a time, chatting and gossiping with Julie. As with any relationship there are things about Julie which I often roll my eyes about but I am really enjoying having a ‘sister in law’ – we’re not blood relatives but our children are and although Ady and Chris are pretty different they do share enough genes to have their similarities which we enjoy discussing! 😉

So the children ticked all sorts of boxes including befriending some bloke who was there with his small daughter and had the child magnet gene that some people have. He was a natural and led an army of small people in all sorts of crazy games, singing songs with them, chasing them and making them scream with delight and running a sort of mobile creche service – excellent! 🙂 So my two were more than happy to be part of his gang which was great.

We had lunch and then went back in for another half an hour play before coming home. Ady had planned to be home for 3pm too but rang to say he had to go and visit a local garden centre for work so would we like to go with him? The children were up for it so he collected us on the way and we went and spent a lovely hour walking round a garden centre. We looked at plants and flowers, smelt and identifyed herbs, walked round the instore pottery painting cafe oohing and ahhing and ended up in the pets area looking at fish, small furry creatures and a few reptiles. All hugely educational and actually quite a nice end of a day with an unexpected snatch of family time.

I’ve got nothing specific arranged for the next two days – I’d kept them free awaiting confirmation on a tentative arrangement so I’m planning to do various stuff at home with the children which will either be lovely or have me planning to sell them on 10p listing day on ebay tomorrow! 🙂

Ady allegedly worked from home today. This really involves him trying to do what I would do while I attempt to do his job in return, which today was a powerpoint presentation using the sort of language I was slating a couple of days ago ;-), although in justification at least all of the audience *will* know what all the words mean in this case.

So the children pretty much amused themselves this morning and as promised I got out some air drying clay for Davies. He did make an excellent start at creating Wallace but I went out at lunchtime and when I returned things had gone slightly wrong so we’ll gloss over that and come back to it again tomorrow. 🙄 Not at all sure what they got up to this afternoon as I went off to CV lady’s flat for some training.

The training was all straightforward stuff and pretty interesting coming with the promise of lots more work in the pipeline so that was good news. She seemed pleased with my assurance that I can easily manage 20 CVs a week and sees no reason to not be providing that amount moving forward. This is very good news – 20 CVs a week would get us out of our financial mire in very quick speed 🙂 . In the course of the conversation my previous career in Recruitment Consultancy came up (I did it for about a year, about 9 years ago) and she suddenly asked if I would be interested in working in one of their offices occassionally interviewing applicants and taking their details from them to write CVs. I said that childcare allowing I most certainly would and she was quite excited about that propsect too – so that’s all good news. 🙂

I left there and phoned Ady to come and pick me up – Dad had taken me over there as parking is a nightmare where she lives in Hove – and started to walk down to the seafront and along it. I guess it was a good half an hour before Ady got to me which despite being cold and windy was actually very nice. I don’t remember the last time I got to walk at grown up pace without holding anyone’s hand or carrying heavy handbags or ensuring that no one runs into the road.

We came home and did a bit more of Ady’s work then it was time for me to go out again to the library for Book Group. I’m really glad I’ve stuck it out actually as I’m really enjoying it now. The book for next time is An Evil Cradling which looks pretty grim – anyone else read it?

So all about me today really 😉

Could easily do a TMI post here about the state of my stomach, cramping and the soundtrack to my day being the flushing of the toilet, but I’ll spare you! 😉

Last night I got an email from the woman who joined me in running WAG for the end of last year. You may recall that while I liked her a lot our views on Education and pretty much life in general were fairly oppposed. We remained amicable but it was clear that once WAG ended we had not enough in common to remain in contact really. So I got this emall from her – as part of a circular email to various local HE folk – to say that she is about to launch a new local Home Ed’ centre’. Totally not what my potential new group will be, totally not someting I would be interested in attending and actually not something which will in any way compete with or clash with my new group. But bad timing just the same. I have sent a reply wishing her all the best with her new venture, explaining that I am in the throes of lauching one of my own and offering to advertise her’s both at my group and in my standard reply email to new HE contacts via EO. Whilst I am unlikely to attend her group and I would imagine she would have little interest in mine it is not beyond the realms of possibility that other people would be interested in both and of course the more choices and options for local HEers there are, the better.

I’ve been reading some more of Home Education Journal today, pondering a thread on a forum I am on and I am still inwardly digesting the post of a week or so ago on Green House By The Sea about curriculums and the standard. Along with another politically ‘hot’ topic I have been thinking about recently and an amount of frustration with myself for not doing *something* with some of my skills I am feeling a little itchy of foot currently. Not sure where it will lead really and it might just be a changing of the seasons thing but I feel a certain sense of inevitability about life being on the cusp of change. Hopefully it will be a caterpillar to butterfly style one eh!

The children have done lots of art and craft type stuff today. They played with their Floam, plasticine and then Davies asked for me to make some playdough which I did. He made some very good characters from W&G. He directed the colours I made and in what volume and then he put loads of thought into them and came up with figures which were really rather excellent. I did take some pictures but they were too blurry. I only had virgin olive oil instead of the vegetable oil the playdough recipe calls for so whether that was the cause or some other unknown the playdough has dried out and cracked so I’ve had to chuck them out, but in a spending frenzy way back last year or even the year before I bought some buckets of air drying clay from ELC which have never been opened so I’ve promised he can have some of that tomorrow to make some real characters to keep. I’ll mix up some more playdough for Tarly to play with while he does that though, otherwise we will end up with a vast collection of air dryed ‘wormies’ from her! Then they tidied up and did some drawings together before finally tidying that up and getting the geomags out for the afternoon. Davies also did some Zoombini-ing with Tarly as a captive audience for a while today too.

I’ve been fairly redundant parenting wise so between toilet visits I’ve put away all the clean washing, filled the line up with 7 – count ’em 7! – loads of washing, most of which is also now dried, cooked some chocolate chip rock cakes and got a slow cooker dinner on before lunchtime. I’ve cleared my inbox of emails again, booked the venue for a 3 week trial starting after Easter for the new group, designed a logo for the group (I’m calling it WOW – Worthing On Wednesdays), booked in an Activeo event for April with the newsletter team, photograped a load of outgrown Tarly clothes ready to list on ebay and been generally otherwise efficient.

At 4pm Dad arrived so I chatted with him until it was time for me and Davies to go to Badgers. They had a community Police officer there tonight, called Mandy. She was great actually, let them all try on her hat, hold her stab vest, look through all the various things stashed in her pockets on her belt, have a flip with her pocket notebook and finally they all filed out to the carpark and had a sit in the squad car. 🙂 Davies loved it and joined in loads with the talking. I was really proud of him actually, despite not quite getting the hang of putting his hand up (;-)) when he did speak it was relevant to what was being discussed, he had a proper point to make or question to ask and then he was quiet and listened again – more than could be said for all of the children! The leader woman asked me all about HE and complimented me on Davies lots before asking if I’d consider the Assistant Leader’s role. I declined, for now, as part of the reason for taking Davies is to eventually get him happy to be left there and to let him develop himself with other coping mechanisms than me in the room whenever he gets out of his depth. So I don’t think making myself a permanent and involved fixture would be such a great idea. Shame though, as having to be with loads of children aside it would be something that would interest me! I said I might reconsider it in a term or two if he was settled.

He came home full of it clutching his giveaway items of stickers, a pencil, a policeman glove puppet, a road safety activity book and some colouring sheets of police cars, helicopters and motorbikes. Next week it is the end of term party and presentation of badges – he won’t get one obviously as he’s only been twice but the leader – Lisa said she’d think of something to keep him included in it, which I thought was great. They are also inviting siblings and parents to next week’s as there is to be a party after the presentation so providing Ady is home in time we’ll all go and bring Tarly too which I think Davies would like as he’d get to ‘show off’ the place to Ady and Scarlett. 🙂