Arsing computers

The usual round of morningy stuff (make breakfast, drink tea, hang washing out, put more on, let chickens out and feed them, collect chicks from indoors and put them outdoors for the day, persuade children to get dressed and etc.) and then I settled down to finish my CV while the children played with geomags. I cleared my whole inbox and was about to shut the laptop down when it suddenly lost it’s wireless connection and stopped working.

So I spent the next 3 hours or so battling with the router and settings and getting increasingly pissed off with the laptop, the router, the children, the cat (she kept treading on the keyboard) and life in general really. I battle daily to rein in my natural impatience and intolerance but lose the battle big time with stuff like that. I’ve finally got the internet connection back up but can’t get wireless to work so I’m having to sit on the floor next to the router with cables. What makes it worse is I’m sure it’s something incredibly simple really it’s just that it’s completely outside my ability to fix and that makes me doubly cross.

The children pretty much got on with it without me; Scarlett put on a Barbie show for Davies in her bedroom and then they created a camp in his bedroom with draped blankets. I did apologise for my grumpiness and they did feel very sorry for me and my broken computer bless them.

At 3pm we headed off to swimming lessons and were early again. This time we went in and got changed and went into the pool early though and had 15 minutes in the small pool where the lessons are before they started. There is a small slide in that pool and they both had a great time chucking themselves down it until the lifeguard told them off for going head first. This little boy who was there with his mum in his armbands and floatie suit was all agog at them saying to his mum ‘wow look at the big boy and big girl mummy!’ which made me smile :).

Then it was time for Tarly’s lesson so Davies and I got out and went into the big pool leaving her there.I didn’t watch but she said she had a good lesson and did some good backstroke. Both kids’ lessons were observed this week by the swimming instructor leader woman, presumably to gauge who should be where next term. I’d been hopeful that Scarlett would move up after Christmas but actually I’m not sure she will. Davies and I swam some lengths and he went off to investigate the deep end under the diving boards. They are shut until his lesson starts which is a shame as he is desperate to go off the lower board and he would be fine to jump off it. We then messed about for a while with me chucking him about and then played ‘it’ in the water which had both of us in fits of giggles trying to chase and get away from each other. He just about managed one quick go on the slide when it opened before going to have his lesson.

Scarlett came to join me in the pool then and we had some playing of it and she did some good swimming before begging me to take her on the big slide. I hate the slide (water up my nose which gives me a headache and has me tasting the pool for hours afterwards) so she plucked up courage and did it herself. About 15 times!! 😆 She was literally clambering out and dashing back round to do it again and again. She got told off for runnning and then told off for coming down on her tummy and I had to really plead with her to get out because I was getting freezing just hanging around watching her. We watched the end of Davies’ lesson and then came out.

Home for a bath for them, chicken bedtime and dinner for them with me continuing to tinker with the laptop inbetween until Ady came home and I headed off to Reading Group. I was there fairly early and got chatting to a German girl who comes about HE. She was very interested in it and had loads of questions so as other arrived so we carried on talking with everyone eventually joining in. It was quite interesting to hear some different questions to normal along with the usual ‘what about maths?’ ‘but how do they socialise?’ and ‘how will they get qualifications?’ and whilst I probably wasn’t on top form I think I did an okay job of being put on the spot.

The book we were discussing was 1000 Splendid Suns so that made for some interesting chatting and talking about the world in general including politics. It was a good group of people with a couple of new faces and some interesting viewpoints. Mike and Rose were there so we made plans to have them over for an evening in the new year which should be nice :)..

Home again for a lovely curry and a bath which hasn’t quite washed the smell of chlorine off me – it seems to take at least 2 hairwashes to get rid of it 🙁 and we watched Three and Out while in the background I have spent time on some further tweaking of network settings and still not fixed the bloody thing!