Otherwise blah…

A couple of days at home here with lots of not a lot going on.

Yesterday there was lots of X boxing, geomagging, Tarly did some painting and I got loads of washing done. My Dad came over in the afternoon and sat with Tarly while I took Davies to Badgers. He and Tarly have a really nice relationship, very similar to that he and I had when I was a little girl and she has now gotten used to his teasing and either teases him back or just tells him to stop talking rubbish rather than getting upset like she used to.

Davies went in to Badgers on his own again with my just seeing him across the road. I still sat outside in the car but as I’ve mentioned before I am actually quite keen on this idea as I like sitting in utter peace and quiet reading my book and people watching passers-by from the hiding place of my car. When I went in to meet him he was having a great time and is so clearly part of ‘the gang’ there now after a full term and a bit. They are doing Communication Badger work this term and had been writing and learning various ways to say ‘hello’ in different languages. Davies had done some really nice copied writing which he had illustrated with a picture of Gromit (naturally! :lol:).

Ady had been to Birmingham for the day for a trade show and arrived home around 7pm so it was a late night for the children. We watched Shaun of the Dead, which I think we were probably the only people I know who had not already seen it. Thought it was a pretty good film actually. Our two months free dvd rental is drawing to a close but we have definitely made full use of it watching at least 3 films per week.

Today has been a very shouty day, which retrospectively was probably far more about me being intolerant and impatient than the children doing anything particularly wrong. They played with geomags and happymais and a new version of their long running holiday game. For about 2 years they have played a long and drawn out imaginary game where they pack their bags and go on holiday. This used to take the form of them packing clothes, toys and food up, sitting on the stairs while one of them drove before arriving at their hotel where I would be called upon to be the receptionist and issue them with a room key. As our lives have changed from the days of travelodges and hotels so their game has evolved. They now pack up their clothes, toys and their tent and sleeping bags, drive there and then set up a tent to camp in for their holiday. Their tent is created from cushions and fleece blankets draped around the furniture. They have been requesting a ‘sleepover’ in a tent created in Davies’ room so they have been promised that on Friday night.

I had some parcels to send so we went to the post office where we waited in the queue for ages. Our little local post office is also a newsagents, sweet shop and sells cards, stationery and various convenience store essentials too – very similar sort of set up to a few post offices we looked at the possibility of buying a couple of years ago. It has two counters – one for post office business and one for everything else and is frequently a bit chaotic in there with a massive queue at one or other counter and no one at the other. Today the couple who run / own it had their 10 month old jack russell puppy there which enchanted Scarlett and interested Davies who kept a safe distance away while urging Tarly to cuddle and stroke her. Tarly adores dogs so I know I have managed to shield her pretty effectively from my phobia. Davies however has either picked it up or inherited it and is rather more cautious of them. We left there and whizzed to Sainsburys where I finally made my first purchase of economy toilet rolls. We have always bulk bought from Costco the more expensive quilted brands when they are on special offer and had well over six months supply stashed away in our wardrobe. It ran out this week and we are not in a position to buy anything other than the value brands to replace it. Actually I never realised quite how cheap the cheap stuff is – 80 pence for 12 rolls! 🙂 And it’s not so bad…

This afternoon I spent ages fighting with ebay’s turbolister. After two uninstall and reinstalls I gave up. I have tonight realised that flickr uploadr is having the same problem of not recognising and being able to hook up to my account so I wonder if it’s something about my computer which is playing up / has the wrong settings perhaps. Consequently I had taken pictures of a whole pile of clothes ready to ebay but they are all still sat in a pile unlisted.

Davies had made a baby elephant from Happymais last week which he realised looks a lot like the baby elephant from his Wallace and Gromit Project Zoo X box game. So today he made a cage for it from Happymais with a long vine to hang it from. And a Gromit. (Merry I have photos, will download them and add to your group as soon as I get flickr uploadr sorted again).

By the time Ady got home I had had enough of being anyone’s mother or wife so to quell the urge to just yell at everyone to ‘fuck off and leave me alone!!!!!!’ I set off for the library an hour earlier than I needed to be there for book group. Borrowed a couple of very easy read chick lits and settled down in a quiet corner to start reading one of them. Bliss. 🙂

A deaf and rather elderly woman who comes along arrived first so we had an odd conversation with me having to face her directly and shout – which makes it odd to put inflection into your voice somehow and I end up really shortening what I want to say and how I say it (I know, surprising isn’t it that I can be concise sometimes 😉 ). She was under the impression I am a teacher – although retrospectively she may have just been confused as one of the other women is a teacher, and when I said I was not she asked what I did do then? I’m quite pleased to have come across as someone who does ‘do’ something at least 😆 so I bit the bullet and explained that I am sort of a teacher as I home educate my children. We started a conversation about it which was cut short as the others arrived but I suspect given the volume I was talking at so she could hear me that most of them heard enough as they came in that my cover is blown :lol:. Ah well, the anonymity was nice while it lasted!

The book being discussed was ‘We need to talk about Kevin’ on my own recommendation, which was good. It opened up all sorts of really interesting debate and view points. Particularly from the older generation who clearly blamed the mother, a couple of us who believed people can be ‘born evil’ and the men who far from blaming the mother feel that mothers generally take and accept blame and guilt rather than have it forced upon us by society. All really interesting stuff – I could have stayed debating all night quite happily.

I was surprised, for some reason at just how dark it was outside – it was about 8.15pm and already completely dark. Our town is not particularly rough but I am pretty cagey about walking anywhere alone after dark. So I walked very briskly debating with myself what I was most scared of the propsect of – a lone man with dreadful sexual assault acts in mind, a mugger after my watch and wedding ring and bag containing my purse and mobile phone, a gang of youths, armed with video phones ready to capture my ‘happy slapping’ to text message to all their friends or one of the dogs which people seem to walk loose off the lead after dark and feel that saying ‘oh he won’t hurt you’ as their canine friend leaps up at you like some sort of reconstruction of Cujo will reassure you. I decided the dog fear was the most real but in the event I made it home unscathed by any such dramas.

Tomorrow we’re off out with Lucy, R & R which will be nice, so I really should go to bed as Lucy is easily my most prompt friend and is sure to be here dead on the dot of when I told her to arrive. I remember when I used to manage that…