One word? When seven would do…

Not at all sure I can see the point in this but in the style of the album title of a band I quite like ‘Everyone else is doing it so why can’t we’ I’ll give it a go.

A quietish morning here with plenty of chick hanewndling and some making of birthday cards for my brother who is 31 today. I can’t quite believe that actually, I know that I’m 33 so clearly Frazer must be 31 but he still feels like my ‘baby’ brother. 😆 I read something once that talked about how our siblings are our history, how no matter where we go in life they are the ones who truly know and understand where we came from. Growing up Frazer and I were not especially close, our age gap was the wrong way round for our friends to mix in the same circles and heading off to single sex secondary schools meant we didn’t even know each others mates but there are good and bad memories that I have from childhood which Frazer could share with me and no one else alive could. We still have in jokes, he is still the person I think of every Christmas Eve when I watch Davies and Scarlett get all excited about Christmas and remember how Frazer and I had our little Christmas Eve rituals. I remember the things about him that used to wind me up when we were tiny, which counter he would choose when we played Monopoly, how it was only daring each other to do try harder that spurred me on to jump off higher diving boards, swing higher on the swings and run faster, jump further and climb higher. So many of the ‘when I were a lass’ stories I tell D&S feature ‘Uncle Frazer’ and I recall the times when it was him and I against the world, my parents, the mean kids at the park, the babysitter. I watch Davies and Scarlett replay all the old sibling games that I remember doing with Frazer and know that that relationship is one of the trickiest, most precious and special ones there is. I’ve not actually talked to him in person today, we did call round to my parents twice but he was out both times. His birthday will have been marred by United not winning the FA cup but I hope however he celebrated it he has had a bloody good day.

We’ve been doing lots of handling the chicks and lots of letting them have free run of larger areas of the lounge today. They are really fast when they run and flap their wings. 🙂 I had some cuddles with all of them on me which resulted in them pecking at my freckles which initially tickled and was amusing but actually quite hurt after a while and one of the moles on my neck was almost bleeding after several well aimed pecks!

Ady did a couple of runs to the tip which means we now have a lovely big clear space in our garage and we all went to collect a freecycled hamster cage with the intention of making it the chicks next home. Upon collection we realised it wasn’t actually any bigger than the storage box we’re using so we’ll refreecycle it and keep looking for something bigger for them.

We had lunch and went over to meet up with Chris and Julie at a localish village fete. It was not fantastic to be honest with very little there in the way of things to do / see. It was held in the grounds of a posh private boys boarding school so I amused myself by looking at the proudly displayed work of 10 year olds studying life cycles of caterpillars and butterflies and thinking that we covered that two years ago :). The children mostly amused themselves with the long jump pit. Ady has a new camera (for work, when my one broke he told them he needed a new one so I now have his pretty purple canon and he has a new Olympus one which has this nifty little six photos in quick succession so you can choose the best one, which means we have filled flickr with very slightly different from the pictures before and after shots 🙂 ) .
We left there and had a bit of a walk into the downs before coming home again, via Mum and Dad’s (still no Frazer so we didn’t stop) with more chick free-ranging in the lounge, tea, haircut for Davies, bath and Dr Who before packing children off to bed.

And now I’m off to bed too – swimming lessons first thing followed by some carbooting and a fairly lazy rest of Sunday.

yep, first things first, winner of the name the fifth Goddard chick competition is Claudia. Adult votes were more inclined towards Kiev or Nugget but Davies and Scarlett were unanimous in their decision of Rhonda. Of course, much though we might pretend we can tell the difference between the three yellow chicks we can’t, so currently Freddie, Punzel and Rhonda are pretty much interchangable. Feathers is very distinctive with his single wing and is rather smaller than the others, which means Wobble is unique too for now. The decision to keep any hens is pretty final, we would keep one cockerel only so I hope there is only one among them as rearing extra ones to eat is above even us ;).

I’ve worked today, it’s been a good day aside from being told I’m too nice and need to work on my bitching 😆 I heard today that there is a plan afoot to use a mobile library van as a touring winnebago and set ourselves up as prostitutes should the library ever look in danger of closing. Everyone has roles, some of them are on the administrative / cleaning / driving side rather than ‘active service’ but I was told I could go straight into money making and to give some consideration as to my ‘speciality service’ to discuss with them next time I’m in 😆 Workplace discussion of which borrowers are likely perverts, who should win The Apprentice and what films to borrow next abounded, the day went pretty quickly. 🙂

I got home to find both my parents here, chick worshipping 🙂 I actually thought our plan to keep chickens would be categorised alongside some of our more wacky decisions such as not sending our children to school, confessing to having two tents, getting £60K odd into debt and not going to university but no, they are fully supportive of this idea and Dad was casing up the garden in search of likely sites for a coop while Mum was trying to persuade the children we only need four chickens as there is four of us and she should have the fifth one (honestly, she was the same when we got Malice and Candle trying to persuade me she should have Candle instead :roll:). I let them all have cuddles, which I think they’d been desperate for but restrained themselves, Mum had brought posh M&S biscuits so that was nice. 🙂 Dad left, Ady came home, Mum left, we had a bit of a free range session with the chicks let loose in the lounge (lots of chick poo and cheeping!) and the children went off to bed.

We were supposed to be camping with Chris and Julie this weekend but various contributing factors meant it was cancelled so a pretty quiet weekend lies ahead with not a lot other than chick bonding on the agenda. Perfect 🙂

This morning started ridiculously early for me at 6am when the children woke up and discovered 3 chicks and had started even earlier for Ady who left around 430am to go to places like Birmingham. We were up, dressed, breakfasted and at the newly opened down the road Petsmart or Pet City or whatever they’re calling themselves before it even opened at 9am. We had a bit of a wander round there looking at rabbits, hamsters and various fish before getting the cat food we’d gone in for and chatting to a very consciencious worker about stick insects, guinea pigs and reptiles.

We came home and did more hatchwatching and chick worship with constant updates to Ady on the road about progress as it happened. I’d promised to ‘do stuff’ with the children today so at their request we played codebreaker for a while and then I offered to do some baking with them. Davies wanted to make biscuits and Scarlett snickerdoodles, so we made both. I assembled sugar, butter and flour infront of Davies with the scales and just told him ‘weigh out 6oz flour’ which he did, then I helped him a little with the butter and he rubbed it all in before being told how much sugar to add and weighing and adding that himself. He then did most of the rolling and cutting and placing on the baking sheet with occassional ‘what could you do differently to stop the mixture sticking to the board, the rolling pin and your hands do you think?’ type comments from me. He opened the oven himself, put the sheets in, swapped sheets about, took them out of the oven and moved them onto cooling racks all with total calm and maturity. Very proud 🙂 Scarlett supervised the weighing out of sugar and butter telling me when the scales said the right amount and did the creaming together of that with fairly minimal help, I added the eggs and flour, she did a fair bit of the mixing and then I finished it off and dropped balls of mixture into sugar and cinnamon for her to roll and put on the baking sheet. She also had a go at putting them from the baking sheet to the cooling racks when they were done. I remember being desperate to do baking when I was a child and aside from it simply not being something my Mum did for fun (I do recall assisting in the 1000s of mince pies made every December once she bought her first sandwich bar business, but I would have been 7 or 8 by then and helping was limited to brushing the lids with milk) she probably would still be stood over me waiting to take over and do it ‘properly’ now if she watched me bake let alone encouraging me to challenge myself and do stuff with responsibilities. I learnt loads about baking from a teacher at school who was really old fashioned and alongside teaching us all how to iron a shirt properly and brew the perfect cup of tea would delight us each week in Home Economics by walking round our little kitchen areas and proclaiming one girl the ‘queen of the quiche’ or ‘madame of the pineapple upside down cake’ depending on what we were making. 😆 I mixed up some red icing and spread it over the biscuits then the children had a bowl of decorations each to overload them with.

I got all the dirty washing done, all hung out and at least half of it brought in again dry, so that was a result. I didn’t get any further with decluttering but as I’ve certainly not sat around on my arse all day today I won’t be beating myself up about that. 😆

We had lunch, the one winged chick finally broke out of it’s shell – it’s since been named by Ady and answers to the name of ‘Feathers.’ I wanted ‘Blair’ or something else suitable for it only having a left wing but as I’d already named one Feathers it is :). We all gathered round a little later for the final egg hatching, which I caught on video again so Scarlett got to witness two hatchings as well which was great as that main event was a big part of doing the whole thing. The incubator has been cleaned up and is going back to Bruce tomorrow, whatever happens from here on in we certainly won’t be hatching any more eggs this year.

The children played for a while with the toy animals and then wanted to do some drawing. Davies wanted me to show him how to use the spirograph we picked up at a car boot sale a while back but we then got engrossed in sorting out the pen drawer instead. Scarlett proved to be a demon pencil sharpener, whizzing through a big pile at great speed, while Davies and I chucked out all the not working any more felt tips and the broken crayons. I started scribbling to test the pens but then we got onto writing words and Davies went and got some stencils so we did a bit of writing words down and spelling them out and Davies asked me how to spell various words and then drew pictures of them to illustrate his writing. Oh and he played with a compass loads, making pictures from circles.

Then followed one of todays shouty episodes of which there have been a few. Frankly you don’t get me out of bed at 6am and keep me in a house all day with only sporadic adult company by way of chick hatching updates to Ady’s mobile and not have shouty episodes really 😆 but we overcame it all and I sorted the children’s tea out – Scarlett wanted eggs and toast so clearly no issues with where our food comes from and the eating of other potential ‘Punzel’ or ‘Freddies’! 😆

Ady arrived home and we all piled in his car and drove across the town to the blood donation venue as Ady and I had both had invitations through from the last session. We should have booked actual appointments rather than just arriving in a 2 hour window really as we sat for about half an hour trying to keep the children fairly quiet and amused by playing I spy and then trying to keep straight faces while trying to make each other laugh. This time I was not mutilated in the first test and was able to give blood no problem. The children did really well while Ady and I were incapacitated lying flat on our respective beds, going between the pair of us, gathering stickers from the donor aids proclaiming ‘My Mummy gave blood today’ and ‘My Daddy have blood today’ and generally charming everyone there into getting them biscuits and squash meant for the donors. They were both pretty interested in the whole idea, curious about all the medical bits and pieces and determinded to give blood themselves when they are old enough. Ady’s blood flows very quickly and as we were sitting having juice and biscuits afterwards we realised his shirt was starting to soak with blood where the needle had been having soaked through the plaster so he had to be re-plastered while I was being told off for lifting a heavy water jug with the blood-letted arm to get Davies a drink. We both seem to be in one piece still now. 🙂

It was gone 8pm by the time we got home but as we wanted to give the incubator back and the chicks are all fluffed up and ready we’d decided to transfer them to their new home which of course the children wanted to be part of. Currently they are in a plastic storage box with sawdust, water and chick crumb food with one shelf of our camp kitchen over the top and the brooder (light and heat) lamp resting on the top and they seem very happy. I’ve had an email from a freecycler responding to my plea for a cage offering a hamster cage which might be better so hopefully I can collect that tomorrow. Candle is *very* interested in them so we’ve decided to keep them in the playroom with the door shut by night to prevent her terrorising them or injuring herself on the brooder lamp and then back in the lounge in the day so the children can observe them as much as possible. Chick number five is currently being addressed as ‘competition’ so no doubt we’ll be deciding on a name from all the suggested ones sometime tomorrow and annoucing it.

Children finally went to bed, Ady and I had baths and ate a very late dinner infront of Grand Designs. Hurrah for Friday tomorrow!

Welcome Freddie, born yesterday evening and named by Davies

Punzel, born during the night and named by Scarlett

Wobble, born very early this morning and named by me

This is number four, born after a very, very lengthy breaking out at lunchtime today. The reason for the struggle might well be that he appears to only have one wing. Not at all sure how this will effect him but he’s fiesty enough so far and fluffing out well, Ady will be naming him when he gets home

And finally, just hatched is number five. Our third yellow chick. Davies and Scarlett invite suggestions for naming him/her, the name we like the most will be chosen for this little chick, ideas in the comments box please 🙂

Second black one has hatched, he (sexing appears to be something we can’t do properly for ages so I think they’ll all be ‘he’ for now) took a really long time to come out and looks slightly smaller and weaker than the rest but all externally correct. The two yellow ones are fluffing out nicely and looking very very cute.

I’ve been looking online trying to get ideas of a good place to keep them for now, a hamster cage seems to be a good idea but a quick trip to the pet shop this morning (Candle had no cat food and was showing rather more interest in the chicks than I was happy with so we thought we’d better get her some food pretty quick!) suggests they are not within our budget for a couple of weeks disposable use. Will bung out a WANTED on freecycle for now. A shallowish box / drawer would be ideal if we didn’t have Candle to consider, the idea of being reliant on children closing doors to keep her out of the same room as them is a little too risky I think.

This morning we’re all up very early, so far we have Freddie (yellow), Punzel (yellow) an unnamed black chick who is mine to christen and number four is another black one in the process of hatching. Egg number five has cracks so by lunchtime we should have our full hatch. 5 out of 6 not bad given the first success rate of nil.

Later today we’ll transfer them into a box with a brooder lamp, some food and water and start hatching (boom boom!) plans about what to do with them. And no jokes about cranberry sauce at the back there just yet! 😆

noisy, noisy chick 🙂

It’s been another of those days today, I’ve decided it isn’t hormones, it’s cabin fever, wet play syndrome. All the time I get out for a couple of walks a week I seem to be capable of being nice to people most of the time, when I am trapped, mentally and physically inside with people 24 hours a day regardless of how much I might love them and regret carrying out the urges to do them physical harm should I succumb to them I fight an almost constant internal battle with some sort of anti-hero who lives inside me and hates everyone :lol:.

Today has been one of those series of small incidents coupled with a feeling of constantly being slightly behind which has left me with a pounding headache, a list of crimes against compassionate and caring motherhood stacking up against me and a pretty big desire to stand somewhere high and very visible with a loudhailer and yell ‘FUCK OFFFFFF!’ at anyone who had any inclination at all to want anything from me. So there.

NB this would not be a good time to talk to me about tables.

This morning I woken by Ady getting the extra tent out of our wardrobe ready to be packed up. I won’t rant about the fact I’ve been asking him to do this for a fortnight because if I weren’t such a lazy cow I’d have done it myself. The parcelforce man came twice to collect it and was sent away with me telling him it wasn’t ready so he asked me to just phone them on the number on the card when it was ready and he’d come and collect it then. Do you think I can find the card? Nope. Do you think I’m even 100% sure it was Parcelforce anyway? That’d be nope again. I’m going to have to contact the tent seller again, explain that I still have the tent and they need to contact their courier and ask them to come and collect it, again. All of which will no doubt create further confusion given that English is not the first language of the people I email.

Next I couldn’t find my phone holder. I have a special clip which attaches to my phone to clip onto my waistband. I use this when I’m at work wearing a Library Skirt which unlike my jeans doesn’t have a pocket to put the phone into. I do this for two reasons, one is that I am contactable at all times. I know there is a phone in the library, I know that whoever is looking after the children has the phone number of the library but I remain convinced that unless I am carrying a communication device about my person at all times I am being neglectful and as such the law of the universe dictates I will be punished by doing something dreadful to the children which I don’t learn about until it is too late because noone could contact me. The other reason is so I can use the pedometer counter inbuilt into the phone. Couldn’t find it despite pulling the sofa out, setting a reward for it’s safe return to the children and searching in all the usual places (as in, I know it is not in either of the two possible places I might have put it therefore I know it has been moved by someone else. Grr).

The search for the phone clip put back the search for items I needed to return to the library. I did a quick scout round the house gathering items and shoving them into a cloth bag ready to take to work. Which I then left on the sofa.

I’d intended to walk to work, Lucy was here nice and early, the rain wasn’t raining, but the search for the phone clip which made the search for the returned items late made my leaving for work late which meant I had to drive.

Work was fine. It was madly busy as Wednesday mornings often are. Wendy (senior library supervisor, I really must blog about all my colleagues properly, I have much amusing material to share!) had decided today would be a good day to teach me more stuff so I was shown all sorts of new things which may well have been interesting and informative were I not already building up to a headache, worrying about where I’d left the cloth bag containing about £100 worth of cds and dvds from work and where the hell the phone clip might be. Instead it just made my head spin more. As did the woman who was fretting about a psychology paper she was due to hand in tomorrow and kept cocking up the settings on the photocopier for and needing help when I was trying to do something else.

Other things which drove me to the brink were the children doing the three’s a crowd thing with Rebecca for about an hour when all I wanted to do was catch up with Lucy who had bravely taken four children to the park for the morning while I’d dealt with fools in the library all morning so we were both in need of caffine and adult conversation. Lucy and The Rs left taking five carrier bags of my old paperback books which were filling nearly two shelves on the bookcase and I know now working in a library with shelves of books I’ll never manage to read that there is zero chance of me ever bothering to read books I have on my shelf for a second time no matter how much I enjoyed the first read, so that’s more stuff out of the house. 🙂

The children then got the hama beads out despite me advising them not to and very predictably they ended up all over the floor. It was an accident but I did shriek quite frighteningly at them, they then spent HALF A BLOODY HOUR messing about clearing them up to the point where I did it, threatened to throw the whole lot in the bin and stomped off to cook their tea. Davies had to take the packaging of his dinner to Badgers as they are doing something to do with recycling so his request for peanut butter toast had to be denied :lol:. I finally calmed down after a large rant at them, they apologised, we all promised to have a better day tomorrow and peace was restored at last.

Scarlett then realised she’d not been quite as effective at her new independence (hope you’re noting that spelling 😉 ) of bottom wiping as she’d thought so she needed a bath which I’d just dumped her in with instructions to ‘wash thoroughly’ before realising we needed to leave for Badgers five minutes previously but Ady wasn’t home. He arrived, Davies and I left with Scarlett still in the bath, I dropped Davies off, went to the nearby CoOp for a big bag of humbugs and had an hours peace in the car reading a book. The rain had started raining again by then and I decided the trade off of being soggy wouldn’t be worth the joy of a walk.

Once home full excitement was brought forth by the first hatchling. It’s called Freddie as named by Davies who was still awake so came back downstairs to witness the hatching. Freddie will stay in the incubator for about another 24 hours until he is dry and fluffy before moving to a box with a brooder lamp to keep him warm and some food and water. One of the eggs still has no cracks, two are looking further along so I’m hoping for maybe one more hatching before I go to bed and the last one is cracked but not doing much. Ady and I have both confessed to pondering on ways to keep them but we’ll have to debate that a bit more sensibly before making decisions. We’ve got the space but not the cash to home them really, although all that stuff on ebay currently might fund an eglu? We’ll see….

Still can’t find that bloody phone clip though, miracle of new birth is amazing but doesn’t ease the frustration of mislaid articles.

Things are happening 🙂

Four out of the five eggs in the incubator currently look like this:

and you can hear them all cheeping!!!

I did well 🙂

I listed 38 things on ebay, two already have bids on them 🙂

I finished the book – haven’t started the next one yet but now the ebay pile is out of the way I can dedicate my time to reading the remaining four books in three weeks 🙂

Some washing is now dry, there are two loads of jeans on the line, true they have been almost constantly rained on since I hung them out there, in the rain, but they can’t get any wetter and it’s better than sitting there dirty, I’ll be one step ahead when the weather cheers up!! 🙂

Lucy and The Rs came round for lunch, which was nice but disturbed Davies and Scarlett who had been playing together really well all morning. They eventually sorted themselves out about half an hour after they left and have watched Charlottes Web together and played nicely this afternoon.

We nipped out to Sainsburys as we needed various items including fish food – (it was that or sacrcifice the smallest one and share it amoung the others) and as someone told me at MM yesterday that dalek cutters are reaching up to a fiver a piece on ebay I bought another 3 of the £1.49 boxes of cake mix containing dalek cutters – Sainsburys full stock and have listed just the cutters at a starting price of 99p each. Am entrepreneur 🙂 With spare bags of cookie dough mix and tubes of orange writing icing into the bargain 🙂

Ady passed his second mock exam HURRAH! 🙂 and is celebrating by giving his rice cooker birthday present a christening and cooking dinner tonight while I’m at reading group, and not only will I get my reading group glass of wine (only one though, it’s still pissing down here so I can’t walk in and have two glasses, I’ll have to drive 🙁 ) I can have more wine when I get home to celebrate mock exam success with him.

Off to put make up on and brush hair for reading group.

I thought I was giving blood today but I’ve just checked the letter and it’s Thurday instead. So I’m going to continue being efficient and productive instead:

Get some washing done – I’ve brought in the least soggy stuff off the line and as we’ve relented to turning the heating back on again it’s airing rather than drying. I’ve sorted all the laundry into piles and started the first load – even if it’s going to hang on the line it’s better clean and wet than dirty surely?

I need to finish reading a book for reading group tonight and try and make some inroads into the next one. We’re reading the short list for the Orange Prize – there are six books to read before the winner is announced on 6th June and we’re having a library event I’m not doing very well, so far I’ve read two of the books and have another four to go – doubt I’ll manage that in 3 weeks when none of them even look that appealing!

I really want to get my ebay pile listed, that’s my first task with regular breaks for reading, eating, drinking tea and quite possibly coming back here.

Kids are watching Watership Down and playing with the toy animals at the same time so they’re occupied.

I’ve put on my SuperNic T shirt and I’m off to do an hour’s photographing and ebay listing followed by an hours reading before lunch. I will be back (said with a flounce of my cape :lol:).

I did indeed head into the playroom after my last blogpost, pulled out all the junk from both sets of craft drawers, threw away 3 large carrier bagfuls and almost a full blue box of scribbled on pieces of paper, reorganised the drawers, had a pop quiz with Davies having showed him what each contained and tested him on their contents for future reference. I went through the pile of books sat on top on one of them, put some in the kids’ bookcases, some in the bookcase in the hall (one of my next targets for a declutter), sorted out the dressing up and then Lucy and The Rs handily turned up happy to take away various bits and pieces such as a pile of National Literacy books I’d got ages ago and had sat in the playroom with all their ‘standards’ and ‘keywords’ madness. Lucy and I chatted, the children all went and did their thing (trashing the rest of the house while I tidied one corner mostly :lol:), we fed them tinned food and I carried on being ruthless with my declutter. I ran Davies round to Beavers (she is so scary that Beaver leader lady – would she be called Arkala or something like that, or Brown Owl? Or is that Guides? There’s an AGM on Thursday which ALL BEAVERS MUST ATTEND so I might learn a bit more about it then but I shall be sitting on my hands not to volunteer to do anything as the letter states all the vacancies they are trying to fill which ‘anyone can do, no experience required, just 100 free hours a week to dedicate to it’ :lol:) and then ran round again and picked him up again an hour later. Ady came home, Lucy and The Rs left, Scarlett and I tidied up her bedroom, Ady and Davies tidied up the lounge and the children went to bed. I had a bath and laid there listening to them playing in their beds. I remember playing with toys in bed before I could read well enough to enjoy reading a book in bed, I had a little Miss Piggy and a little Kermit I used to make up games for hours with in bed.

I stayed up later than I meant to chatting online to Lucy and exchanging pictures of our children as babies and discussing whether a wetsuit is suitable wear for various occassions or not.

What looked like it might well be another day worthy of rants is doing rather well actually. I did shut the car door on my head in one of those random no idea how I actually quite managed it type accidents and actually saw little birds flying round my head for a few moments while getting petrol but the music was on so loud in my car that noone else noticed so that was fine. 😆

We’ve been to Magical Mondays, I’ve had at least seven cups of tea, eaten dalek biscuits, chatted, participated in the creation of a song and dance routine about ‘May’, sung mad songs all the way home and come back with assorted junk modelling creations of the children’s which I fully intend to declutter very soon ;). Davies ran around with the pack playing Dr Who and is now sitting playing a new X box game that one of the lads at MM gave to him while Tarly is stabbing an egg box with some coloured pins and chattering away to herself. I’m about to have yet another wee and then go and do something productive in the playroom – I aim to fill at least one bin liner with rubbish and uncover at least two square feet of carpet infront of the craft drawers where craft materials have spilled out and sort out the ebay pile into one area ready to try and get some of it actually listed today or tomorrow. My other planned tasks were washing (pointless bothering, the line is already dripping with week old washing that keeps getting rained on, the machine is full of half dried stuff that Ady started to tumble dry before we remembered that the tumble drier is actually broken and makes a dreadful noise like it’s being mechanically murdered and suggests it could blow up at any second, so although the bathroom is filled with dirty clothes they will have to stay dirty until the first dry day as I’m NOT putting the heating on just to dry clothes and I don’t want the house smelling of damp laundry for days as I drape it around the place either) and sorting out the coats and shoes in the hall which threaten to overcome people as they come in the front door and need culling to appropriate outerwear for the season only (again an all but impossible task currently – we’d got out spring / summer coats / fleeces but it’s still not possible to put the winter ones away at the moment).

Davies has Beavers later so I need to sort him an early tea too. Will be back later to report my progress :).

Yep, it’s another Lost Weekend.

Where do they go eh? Working every other Saturday afternoon is proving to be a total bugger and really hampering our social lives. I think we’re booked every single one of our ‘free’ weekends from now until September and Davies’ swimming lessons on a Sunday morning mean even the free weekends are tied to staying in Sussex. It’s all a bit chasing our tails at the moment, with a packed calendar and a great long list of things I want to get done but never seem to find the time for right now. I really could do with an eighth day each week or a self-cloning machine to enable me to pack Nicola off to work while Nic gets on with various other things :lol:.

I have about a half dozen potential blog posts composed in my head ready to get down sometime, a towering pile of things to ebay, four books to read for a Reading group event in 4 weeks (and it’s taken me about 4 weeks to read the last two so my average isn’t good so far) and a great big ‘to do’ list spiralling off from here into next week. I dunno, maybe if I had a table I could sit down at it and get myself organised ;). Anyway…

Yesterday morning is lost, I have no idea what I did other than ironing the hama dalek and tardis we’d made and making birthday cards for Ady with the kids. Davies did a picture of a footballer complete with football boots with spikes on – one of those odd things he just knows without me ever having told him – he didn’t know why though as asked me about that. There was a ball, a goal and a crowd and a Pompey moon and star sign at the top. He wrote inside ‘Happy Birthday to Daddy love Davies’ with fairly minimal help, just the odd ‘what letter comes next?’ on Birthday but he spelt Happy, to, Daddy, love and obviously Davies pretty much by himself. He’s been doing lots of copying writing lately – he sat and wrote loads of words off the pile of videos in the lounge on Friday and illustrated them – Chicken Run, Mermaid (copied from The Little Mermaid) and a couple of others. It’s funny how cyclic his interest is in reading and writing, he seems to return to the same point every few weeks, each time inspired by some different reason and each time go that little bit further with it. It was funny to see my Mum earlier trying to get Tarly to read the word ‘cat’ with no reasoning behind it at all other than we had some pencils and paper out and were drawing and just how utterly irrelevant it seemed. Clearly there was no reason at all for her to want or need to read that word in relation to nothing so she simply ignored the request and carried on with her drawing of a rainbow, concentrating on trying to get the colours in the right order :lol:.

Scarlett meanwhile drew a picture of a pony – she has this fab way of drawing things where she starts off with a slightly wobbly irregular shape – the same shape regardless of what the end picture will be and then she adds in the detail to make it what she was aiming for – so her pony got four legs, a tail, some ears, eyes etc. If it was to have been a cat it would have been the same wobbly shape but got whiskers etc instead. She then watched what Davies had written and copied each letter from his to write ‘Happy Birthday Daddy love…’ and then wrote ‘Scarlett’ with no help at all. There is little to choose between their letter formation – she holds a pen really well and forms very clear letters but without much inkling as to what they are or what sounds they make. Davies has been totally the other way, he learnt the letters first but has only quite recently been able to make clear representations of them. It will be interesting to see what their handwriting is like as adults and whether it differs greatly.

Anyway, there was some watching of Bedknobs and Broomsticks (mostly Ady and I as I recall while the children ignored it :lol:), we had lunch and then I went off to work (I drove as the weather looked dreadful and I didn’t fancy doing my shift in soggy clothes from being caught in a shower on the way to work) and Ady and the children headed off to spend a few hours with Chris, Jack and Maisie in some brother and offspring bonding time. Work was fine, I continued my Enquiry Desk training, including some excellent on the job training in dealing with a man who came in to confess to an accident with his rucksack, some red wine and a Wilbur Smith paperback, a subject enquiry on suitable text for headstones, help finding books on bullying for 2 year olds (2 YEAR OLDS!!!! BULLYING!!!!! :shock:) and some general gossiping with the other 4 staff I work my every other Saturday afternoons with, all of whom are really nice people to spend time with.

I arrived home about five minutes after Ady, Davies and Scarlett, who were very disappointed to realised Dr Who wasn’t on due to Eurovision so I read some stories to them before they headed off to bed with a dvd player each. Davies laid and watched Watership Down. I had no idea he’d taken that up to bed, I’d got it from the library for us to watch together, as I still get weepy when I hear Bright Eyes, but he was fine, said it was ‘a bit sad’ described the plot line to me very articulately and said he’d quite like to watch it again with me next time and was watching some Shaun the sheep to ‘cheer him up again before he went to sleep’ !!! Scarlett watched Aristocats.

I had a really crap nights’ sleep. I’ve been reading the latest Jodi Picoult book which has really played on my mind and disturbed me and I think some of my dreams were tangled up wth that subject matter (bullying, teenage gun shoot out in a high school, suicide, wasted lives over before they even begin) but I must have been awake at least ten times during the night tossing and turning. Scarlett and Candle were both in our bedroom by about 6.15am and although Ady got up first I still couldn’t sleep so I got up too. I woke Davies just after 730am as Scarlett was desperate to give Ady his couple of gifts from us and we had to be out of the house at 9am for swimming anyway.

I’ve been rather hormonal (read a complete bitch :oops:) today generally with the whole world and his wife pissing me off just by breathing so there was a small incident at swimming to do with some mislaid socks that I rather overreacted to but Davies did really well. He so needs to have some of what he’s learning backed up with some time in the pool so we may try and go one evening or if our planned camping trip is called off next weekend due to shitty weather we might stay after next Sunday’s lesson and have some time in the water. He is trying really hard but could do with some time to practise and have it reinforced a bit but trying to go with Scarlett as well during the daytime would defeat the object.

We came home, I baked a birthday cake and then we went over to my parents where Ady was given a pretty good haul of gifts and we had lunch. The men watched football, I went and played on the piano with the kids for a while, sat and watched football for a while and spent some time teaching Scarlett how to do headstands (without practical demonstrations – I feel my body weight might just break my own neck were I try tricks like that :lol:) and wondered on how to teach handstands without practical demonstrations – anybody up for that at Kessingland? 😆 My Granny joined us which pretty much tested my hormonal state to it’s limits – and infact I did end up swearing infront of everyone but we’ll leave that little gem tucked away with bad examples infront of the children and everyone rolling their eyes about me behind my back 😳

We came home, the kids were packed off to bed, we tried to order a chinese takeaway only to discover they are shut on Sundays so we gave up and had crumpets and chocolate for tea and I’m about to follow Ady up to bed and try and catch up on some of that precious sleep I missed out on last night. Photos on flickr – Davies brought his camera along and set us all up for group self timers, explaining at length to my Dad and Frazer how to do it and rather impressing them both with his knowledge and there are some nice ones of Scarlett enjoying a match game of paper, scissors, stone too.

43 tomorrow!

I did a bit of a slushy post – I know, not like me really 😉 – last year so if your Saturday night is cold and lonely and you want to read a bit of my sentimentality feel free to go and look at that. This year is rather more low key, other than seeing my parents we don’t have proper plans for tomorrow yet – all very weather dependent really. He has a box of chocolates and an ebay Pompey top to open in the morning along with £20 to go and spend at the Pompey shop in their end of season sale sometime next week and some made cards from the children which they did today along with a cake I’ll bake in the morning.

I’m reminded every single day in millions of little ways why I married Ady, there was no one else who could have persuaded me to have children, no one else I’d have jacked in my plans to go travelling for in favour of settling down at 19 and buying a house instead, no one else I’ve ever asked for forgiveness, no one else who’s ever offered it. No mirror will give me a more beautiful reflection than that which I see in his eyes when he looks at me, no one else have ever known exactly where all my buttons are and the right ways in which to press them, no one else makes me laugh so loud and long, no one else makes me melt with a single look, no one else makes me feel like I’ve come home just by holding my hand.

If I live to be old I hope it’s by his side, taking his hand and jumping when he asked me remains the single best decision I ever made, whatever our future holds it doesn’t matter because it’s ‘ours’ and I wouldn’t have it any other way. We’re not about big dramas, slammed doors, raised voices, ups and downs, we’re nto about grand gestures, hearts and flowers, moonlight and roses. He is the person I know best in the whole world, yet still I learn something new about him every day, he is the person who knows me best, yet still he wants to learn more. The only promises we’ve ever made to each other we have kept, currently the ‘for poorer’ one is holding true ;), our dreams, hopes and plans are shared ones and as we ride life’s rollercoaster together there is noone I’d rather be holding hands and screaming with along the way, noone I’d rather have my name matched with and no one I’d rather sit alongside in the photo at the end.

Happy Birthday Darling. I love you very much. xxx

said in the style of Alan Patridge.
For all you tableists out there our day started yet again with D&S foraging for their own breakfasts before after Ady left at some ungodly hour and then coming and joining me back in bed for tickle fights. We got back up again and I sorted the kitchen out having dispatched the children to tidy their bedrooms up having had a bit of a tantrum about the state of the house generally. We reconvened once that was done and got ready to go out with Lucy and The Rs.

They arrived, we had a small Crocs-a-like photoshoot on the Very Pink Indeed bench in the garden and then we headed off to Paradise Park. On the way there was chatting about how Doctor Who characters sucking life out of their victims wasn’t so odd given how we humans feed off others emotions and what the taste of blood is like and whether your own blood has a taste or not compared to other people’s. I think we may have scared Lucy and the Rs with this actually given Davies, Scarlett and I were all confidently discussing having tried other people’s blood :lol:. We also discussed why the downs are made of chalk which very handily was answered by some information inside Paradise Park so that was good. Every time we go I witter on about how the children are slightly more interested in the posters and information up on the wall. This time Davies was very interested in the barometers and weather stations so we talked about that for a while and various posters were read out by me with Davies deciding he’d ‘got his dinosaur talent back’ and happily naming every one he saw. 🙂 The usual circuit of round the cacti garden and then into the amusements for a play and lunch followed by a walk round the gardens. The children had a great time and Lucy and I managed a fair old bit of chatting too, which was nice, I feel like we filled in some of our missing years today – one day we’ll fill in all of them. :).

We came home and the children played and dressed up while we chatted some more and then they left, D&S had tea while watching ‘Totally Dr Who’ then Ady came home, I read a pile of books for bedtime stories, drank some wine, wrote a snotty blog post over on Monster & Teeny, drank some more wine and am now waiting for Alan Sugar to come on Jonathan Ross.

assessment on correctional management and executive leadership development

therapy

a NOS

to collect and distribute a variety of information

physical address

to have a static address

to be reset to default values

to be compatible with the Wi-fi standards

to provide a clear statement of the purpose of the database.

Hmm, works less well with Nic really, particularly as most of the hits had ‘the Nic needs…’

google game seen at making it up.