Arse the sequel

just cos I like the title! Oh and cos Michelle won 🙁

In the style of an about to fired Apprentice contestant I was a victim of my own efficiency today.

The chilli seed incident was because I was that prompt at getting dinner on I managed it before I’d even got my lenses in (I did managed to use salt and handwash to scrub the fingertips of the two fingers needed to insert lenses and get them in without blinding myself in a chilli related incident.

The workload which threw me out today was cos I’ve managed to build myself a reputation for being reliable, quick to react and able to pull good work out of the bag at short notice making me first port of call for a rush job CV.

The rushing around still pegging washing out five minutes after I was supposed to have left the house was because I managed to get three loads of washing done this morning and ready to go on the line.

The reason we were running about hanging out washing and eating lunch in the car on the way was because I have set up a Home Ed group.

Of course none of this says much for my organisational skills but hey! 😉

So this morning the children pretty much entertained themselves this morning. There was drawing, playing with blocks and cars and the car mat, there was using the muddlepuddle bookbag to transport books up and down the stairs, there was Discovery Kids watching and then there was a lengthy and protracted game of ‘babies go on holiday’ which involved dressing up, space hoppers, back packs, coming to me for the hotel room key and plenty of leaving me to get on with my work 🙂

Group was excellent. I’d made a very last minute (as in I told Julie 😉 ) decision to have an underwater theme. Peter and Sue (the grandparents) brought possibly the best toy I’ve ever seen outside of a soft play centre which pretty much occupied the group for the whole of the first hour and then some. Our couple from last week also came, as did Julie and I and a contact I’ve been exchanging emails with for a couple of weeks came along too. So we had five families and ten children. All seemed up for coming again next time and of course Lucy will be back then which makes six, Julie and I have had contact from another person who is very interested but on a course at the moment on Wednesdays and everyone promised to spread the word today. Feeling very positive about it all at the moment 🙂 I brought some paper to do underwater pictures and was hugely impressed that Tarly chose to draw a very obvious sun as ‘a reflection on the water of the sun’ – blimey 🙂 And Davies did starfish, deep sea divers, seaweed, a seahorse and the sand at the bottom of the sea. They both very cheerily ran around yelling and participating in the games with the inflatable thing and then sat and did some excellent underwater collages. Davies decided he wanted to tell a story with his picture and ended up with an audience of the five children and three adults left as he told a long story about a diver going to the bottom of the ocean and finding a lazy fish. He then dug deeper and found lava at the centre of the earth and then suddenly he came out of the water and saw a kangaroo as he’d gone all the way through the planet and come out in Australia. Blimey!!! I think all three adults were fairly amazed at that one and I was very proud 🙂 He also pulled off a beginning, middle and end to the story as he went along.

Back home Tarly was challenging and Davies was lovely, I did some more work and read them a story each – Scarlett chose a very abridged version of the Disney film version of A Little Mermaid (I remember reading a version of the original in a book called ‘stories for seven year olds’ once) which she listened to and then paraphrased back to me beautifully. Davies chose a Dr Seuss library book which I read to him while S took the nail varnish off my toes and repainted one foot – D then painted the other while I went back to my work – going to get them trained in head massage and back rubs next 😉

Ady then took over the children’s bedtime and tidying up while I went upstairs and finished my work off. And he cooked the rice to go with what turned out to be the hottest chilli ever while I watched The Apprentice (sorry Sar, don’t know what happened at the end there). Predictable but disappointing result there.

And that was today 🙂