but it’d only annoy Alison and like I said I can’t be arsed.
Today we had no alarm to wake us, instead I was semi roused and lay there, eyes still closed, sort of dozing and listened to the house waking up. Ady is Busy In The Mornings. Well frankly unless Ady is sleeping he is pretty much always busy really. And even when he’s sleeping he dreams of hoovering and polishing and things like getting rust spots off antique mirrors that have been obstinate for generations but have now been removed thanks to his industriousness. Or something. So I had an ear cocked to his bustling about before he went to work. Next to wake is Tarly. Sometimes she takes blankets into the lounge and watches nature programmes on telly from under a blanket, sometimes she comes and plays with the make up in my bathroom, sometimes she gets into bed with me and puts her cold feet right in the small of my back. Other times she goes and hangs out near Davies, who remains her most favourite person in the world even when asleep. That’s what she did this morning. I do recall Frazer coming to wake me up and sometimes getting into bed with me when we were little, much smaller than D&S are now and I also recall getting up to mischief in the mornings before our parents woke up and making them tea and coffee and taking it into their bedroom. Davies woke next and I could hear the low murmur of them chatting and playing before I decided the day had started and got up myself.
I put some bread dough on as we’d arranged to go to Tasha’s and as she’d made the soup I said I’d make and bring the rolls. In the end I put too much mix in and had to finish kneading and shaping it all by hand as the breadmaker protested. Davies and Scarlett had been directed to to room tidying by Ady so I spent the time catching up on the Wondering Wanderers blog and then baked the rolls, gathered together swimming stuff and knitting stuff and we headed out to Tasha’s.
The kids disappeared into Tasha’s house where they tell me they did DSing, putting on music shows for each other (I think one of the games they play with Toby is being in a band), running round with wands being Harry Potter characters and more, stopping to eat and then heading off to do more of the same. Tasha and I ate rolls and soup, chatted and did knotting yarn with needles type stuff.
Then on to swimming. Having not been since before I cracked my ankle I was rather out of condition – good exercise for my ankle infact although it is now protesting. I’d organised a half price admission for the duration of the Channel Swim I am doing. It’s 1073 lengths of the pool and I have until the week before we go to camp to get it done which will actually be quite a challenge and require at least one additional trip per week to the pool. We arrived about 15 minutes early but thanks to swimming a few lengths with each child and stopping to chat to another woman doing the same challenge (she had a swimming cap on with it on, I wasn’t wearing mine) plus it being tough not having swum for so long I just about managed the 50 lengths before the pool closed.
Back home I cooked the kids tea, Ady came home, the kids went to bed – I’ve been avoiding starting a new book as Ady had said he’d read with Davies but he’s not started yet so I will probably pick back up with a new story from tomorrow again, I do like reading to them at the end of the day for a nice reconnection half an hour of snuggling up together.
Whilst in the bath I pondered over which continents the north and south pole are in, vaguely knowing Antartica for the south pole, so when I got out of the bath I looked it up. I had not realised that only land is categorised as within continents. It is coming up with questions like that and not knowing the answer that makes me realise how stunting my education was – I went to decent state schools and achieved above average qualifcations by reliably learning all I was taught. I would consider myself fairly bright and certainly not a failure of the education system but whilst I recall asking fairly challenging questions of my parents in my early years I don’t remember even thinking about stuff to myself once I’d been in school awhile. I suspect having been told I was being delivered an education and that I needed to work I simply switched off that part of myself that asked questions and had a thirst for knowing the answers to things. I guess I had enough to keep me going keeping up with school and there was nothing left over for more. Jonathan’s post tonight about the tangents Home Ed days go off on captures perfectly for me that dealing with it as it crops up, realising you don’t know the answer and being bothered and motivated to go and find the answer, along with the next three answers to all the tumble-down questions that follow. Yes, google is an amazing thing and the internet makes it far easier to get this information within moments of the thought occurring to us but I know pre Home Educating my own children I would never even have wondered which continent a pole fell into, let alone been bothered to actually find out when I got out of the bath.
All of which might go some way to explaining how we got to talking about food groups, special diets and healthy eating last week at Badgers when we were supposed to be talking about kitchen safety and why I still haven’t even looked at what is on the programme for tomorrow yet and would rather wing it based on what the Badgers want to talk about under the vague banner of Hungry Badger tomorrow evening…
There was a time when you would have been prepared to put in a little effort to annoy me … *sigh* … 😉
Comment by Alison — 22 September 2010 @ 10:32 am
Have you seen this? http://www.schwimfree.co.uk/?WT.srch=1#home We bought a load of bottles at the cash and carry for 24p each. Much cheaper than normal entry to the pool!
Comment by Roslyn — 22 September 2010 @ 10:34 am