One word? When seven would do…

I’ve missed my vocation in life you know. I wasn’t meant to work at the library or any of my previous occupations. I was not supposed to be at home Educating my children. Oh no. My calling in life was clearly to stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Wincey Willis and John Kettley and bring you regular weather updates from Sussex. I was supposed to be a meteorologist!

So today, just for a change it has not done this
it has done this instead which was nice.

After a phonecall from Ali to say they wouldn’t be coming over today after all 🙁 I decided the weather was just too nice to stay in all day so after shoving more washing on we headed into town to move money about in bank accounts, which needed doing one day this week anyway, so saves a rush job later in the week. We had an hour and a half on our parking meter which should have been loads, and having exchanged texts with Lucy to call round and visit them on the way home I thought my time keeping was going to be pretty good for once, but somehow time vanished! We only got two people commenting with ‘I bet you hate half term’ to me when the children were, well, being children really. To which I was able to grimace and say with total honesty, ‘yep, I hate school holidays’ which of course I do, but not because of my children ;). We picked up various bits and pieces, things like fleeces half price and super snuggly pjs for Davies ready for camping, oh and pac-a-mac style waterproof coats for them both. I recently realised that both the children’s pjs are halfway up their legs and Scarlett is wearing 2-3 years and Davies is wearing 4-5 years so I got Tarly a couple of pairs of shortie pjs in age 5-6 on the basis she can wear those for a couple of years and I’ll get some more for Davies when I next see some cheapy ones. We continued our search for a sunsuit for D and waterproof trousers for them both but to no avail. And then I realised while we were queuing in a shop to pay that our parking ticket had run out five minutes previously so we dashed back to the car.

A quick stop at the supermarket to get some lunch on the run and then round to Lucy’s house via my house to peg out washing on the line. We had a lovely couple of hours round at Lucy’s with Rebecca, Davies and Scarlett playing mostly outside without any real adult intervention required and Richard joining them as and when. Richard is really into Toy Story atm which is quite charming for me as it was the film which Davies was obsessed with when he was two and kickstarted his love of all things animated, particularly Pixar – including taking him to see Disney on Ice where he shook Buzz and Woody’s hand when he was 3 and the Pixar exhibition at the Science Museum last year. He used to sit and watch that film back to back four or five times a day and it was real interactive viewing too with him laughing and gasping at the action, chattering away to anyone else in the room about what was happening and reciting some of the lines along with the characters. He hasn’t watched the film for well over a year if not longer and in the style of the film his Buzz and Woody toys lay under the bed discarded (altogether now, ‘when somebody loves you, everything is beautiful…’) but watching Richard all captivated by it today took me right back. 🙂 Yep, I’ll even get sentimental about other people’s children’s obsessions! 😆 Lucy and I managed a fair bit of chatting which was nice, we spend a lot of time together but rarely manage to actually finish a sentence without interuption let alone a whole conversation!

We came home and I had a falling out with Candle, the cat. She really hates the chicks being here and as ever her method of protest about something – us going away for more than one night, lots of people in the house, new babies (when we had them!) is to go and poo somewhere, preferably on the clothes of the person she is pissed of with, or even better on their bed if she can get in the bedrooms. Hence we keep the bedrooms shut at all times nowadays. Anyway she’s been pooing in various places over the last 10 days since the chicks were born and I got home to find the house stinking as it was warm and all the windows were shut. I grabbed her, took her to the poo and then flung her out of the front door. Which is pretty much what I always do when she does something wrong – take her to it, shout at her and then put her outside (to think about what she’s done 😉 ). I was really pissed off and chucked her slightly harder than usual and she disproved the cats always landing on their feet law :shock:. She looked at me with utter confusion and I slammed the door and watched her shadow slink away feeling sick that I might have really hurt her. I didn’t want to go straight after her as I was fairly sure she was ok, just shaken and I was still really cross, so I went and cleared up the mess and got the kids’ tea on before going outside to find her. She was hiding under the garden bench looking very sorry for herself so I called her and she came and followed me back in the house, jumping straight onto my lap and has been very affectionate all evening, whereas normally when she’s done something wrong she will avoid us for a few hours. Anyway no harm done but it was a horrible feeling thinking I’d hurt her through anger having lost my temper.

I’ve been doing lots of hanging out on chicken forums, mostly US ones and am slightly dismayed that I appear to be turning into a classic US Homeschool Mom – one of the forums which I found purely by googling about chickens, chicks and eggs (and believe me you need to be selective when you are googling the word ‘chick’ :roll:) has a huge great thread about homeschooling and how it seems to go hand in hand with chicken ownership. I’ll be swapping recipes for cookies and making corndolls and pinnys next! And there was me thinking I was alternative – I’m just a cliche after all! 😆