And finally…

because I really am blogging for history today 🙂

Finished all my CVs in the end – hurrah, that’s over £40 earned in one afternoon 🙂

The children Xboxed, geomagged and played with the toy animals today – I think Davies was finally all gamed out as he actually voluntarily put the xbox aside to play with Tarly after a while this afternoon.

When Ady got home I nipped out to Sainsburys where I bumped into my Mum and arranged for them to come for dinner later in the week. Home again briefly to drop shopping off and collect my book for reading group. It’s national poetry week or month or something so we’d all been asked to bring our favourite poem. I furiously copied the Jenny Joseph one I’d shortlisted and decided to go with before realising that was a bit crazy been as I was going to the library, which is full of books, which is very likely to contain one about poetry. 🙄

Sure enough it did so I sat flicking through a Nations Favourite poem of the century book which added at least three new favourite poems to my list. 😆 Adrian Henri’s Without You being a bit of a new one, which I might even have chosen to read aloud had I not been ashamed of not knowing whether Henri was just pronouced ‘Henry’ or if it should be ‘on – ree’ like the Arsenal vavavoom bloke. 😳

We were discussing Nick Hornby’s Long Way Down tonight, which had been one of my suggested books and opened up lots of really interesting debates so that was good. I was slightly nervous about whether it would be odd being there in the company of the woman who interviewed me – and is indeed my future boss, but actually it was fine and although it was not mentioned there was a definite warmth which was nice. 🙂 Also we decided to have mulled wine and mince pies for the December reading group with lots of mad suggestions as to how to mull the wine in a library eventually deciding a slow cooker was the answer, which made me feel very reassured that actually I’m going to fit in just fine 😉

Home in time to kiss the children goodnight, cook dinner, blog for history and get a text message from my mate Dayve to say he and his partner have set the date for their civil partnership ceremony of Halloween. Excellent! 🙂

Probably the only thing….

more worthy of a toast that a dead celebrity – is the birth of possibly the most eagerly anticipated baby apart from our own 🙂

So not only worthy of a toast, it also merited a self timer shot of us making the toast – true welcome to the world Goddard style 🙂

First Ady tests the lighting with a ‘not posing for the camera this is serious’ shot

Next he sets it up – but we’re not zoomed in on enough – aside from showing I have already put ‘comfy clothes’ on including a slightly stained T shirt, it also shows various miscellaneous crap around us

Next the zoom is TOO MUCH with only a corner of me visble – demonstrating that I have also taken my make up off aswell

We’re so close to that elusive perfect shot when Tarly, smelling the wine from her bed, comes crashing in demanding she toast the baby too. She is allowed a dummy soaking sip – on the condition she smiles for the camera while dunking

At last we manage it. Welcome to the world Jasper, massive congratulations and well dones to Layla, Si and Claudia. 🙂 Cheers!

In my house…

A: I need to make a phonecall guys, can you try and be quiet for a little while?
D: (looking up from a very noisy game with S involving plasic dinosaurs and lots of ‘Rarrhhh’ing) Actually you should go out of the room because we can’t be quiet. We’re playing a game.
A: starting to look outraged
D: And actually Daddy, we are supposed to be noisy. We are playing. That’s what children do!!!
Me: PMSL
D: And it must be true Daddy, we heard that from Mummy, didn’t we Scarlett?
S: Nods smugly and agrees
Me: continues PMSL
A: Leaves the room with an air of defeat…

Procrastinating wildly…

Cos I have four CVs which are due back tomorrow (at the latest!) and I’ve only done one so far, I’ve got book group tonight and will be back at a film week film again first thing tomorrow morning so I really need to get them all done this afternoon. So naturally I am spending lots of time faffing around online after every few sentences. 😆 I’ve done the most tricky though and made a rather sad life story sound like an improvement opportunity rather than a need for years of therapy (despite my personal feeling that that is what the individual needs far more than a part time driving job…).

Yesterday after blogging Ady and Chris arrived, the children were all fed (some with less hassle than others – some exhibiting in full glorious technicolour with dolby stereo surround sound just how challenging their current behaviour is :roll:) and we came home. We arrived back about 10pm -ish, Tarly had fallen asleep before we even left Reading, as predicted ;-), Davies had stayed awake chatting about nonsense all the way home 🙄 but fell asleep very quickly. We had a bath and dinner and a rather late night.

This morning we went to see Over The Hedge and as Ady was WFH this morning he was able to run us there, hang around parked up doing some reading revision for his course this afternoon and then bring us home again. Usually the cinema at the marina shows film week films but this week they are all at a different cinema in the centre of Brighton which has no parking. I looked at bus or train to get us there but we’d need to leave really early for either and actually the cost is still way more to pay for me and Davies for train or bus than even Brighton’s extortionate parking costs and petrol. Tomorrow we’ll have to drive and park though but Thursday Ady might be able to run us there.

I thought the film was okay, not the best of the computer animated choices but certainly not the worst (that title still is well and truly earned by The Wild I reckon) and the children really liked it. I thought it had elements of Toy Story in the friendship / new kid on the block impressing the ‘kids’ and pushing the usual leader’s nose out of joint type plot line. I do like Bruce Willis though, even when you can’t see him so that was a definite plus :-). The showing was specifically set up for disabled attendees so there were lots of children in wheelchairs and lots of disabled children generally. Davies and Scarlett chose to sit at the front as usual (which is fine by me, I’ll take legroom and no annoying kids infront of me over a fantastic view of the screen any day :lol:) so we were talking about why they couldn’t just ‘park’ wheelchairs anywhere and needed to keep the aisles free incase of evacuation. Which led to spotting the emergency exits, the fire extinguishers, the manual hose reel, the emergency lighting etc. Curiously they didn’t really ask for any detail on why any of the children might have been in wheelchairs or behaving in unusual ways. It is something we have talked about fairly casually in the past so I guess they havn’t developed any further curiosity yet.

We came out to the wonderful text to say Jasper had arrived complete with photos so we huddled round my phone cooing at his picture while waiting for Ady to collect us and came home for lunch.

Ady has now gone off to college, Davies is playing Xbox, Tarly is watching him (having spent ages washing her hands, making her own sandwich and pulling over a pile of videos – honestly it’s like having an 18 month old baby again sometimes 🙄 except instead of being my attention she is seeking with her behaviour it is Davies’ :lol:). And I promise not to come back until I have done another whole CV…

I’m trying to link to something and clearly one of the words in the link is a banned one 🙄

it’s geocities dot com /peter underscore bone underscore uk / software.html

Yep, that worked – so it’s all the above without the spaces – stick man 🙂 Excellent fun.

Blogging from a distance!

Yesterday we left the house before 9am – utterly unsociable for any day of the week but particularly a Sunday. 😉 We were heading Reading way for the celebration of Elijah’s sixth birthday which was marked with a pottery painting party. Quite the quietest childrens’ party I’ve ever attended even if I did have to bite back the urge to snatch the pottery off my children and paint it myself – both through control-freakery and cos actually I was jealous and it looked good fun. 😆

There were 13 children in total and they ranged in age from Tarly at 3 to Poppy and nearly 10 and were all utterly absorbed and interested in painting a small animal each (Tarly chose a cat – the pottery woman insisted on calling it a ‘kitty’ but it was a cat 😉 and Davies did a dinosaur), then they all got to paint a plate aswell. Really looking forward to seeing the fired and glazed finished items actually.

That done the children all went outside to play for a while and were called back in again for food. The Clarkes, who had been here for the weekend headed off and the other party attendees drifted off too. Ady left, needing to get back for work tomorrow, Layla and Simon and Claudia came and went and came and went in various combinations and Gamma and Gaffer were here too. It was a lovely day finished off very nicely with a lovely Indian takeaway, plenty of ‘pink wine’ and a rather pleasant lack of having to do a great deal of parenting ;-). D & S went to sleep very quickly around 11pm, although I did sing to them for a while so they dropped off (sorry Chris – hopefully it was lulling and quiet rather than ear busting thrash as usual :lol:) then Alison and I sat and chatted awhile.

This morning I woke first as I had been super-paranoid that we would all oversleep and miss our original reason for being here today which was going to see Monster House for film week. It was not on anywhere locally to us and it was the one film Davies particularly wanted to see so when I saw it was on in Reading it seemed the ideal chance to go in a group. Davies and Tarly slept in the double bed bottom bunk of the triple sleeper and it was really cute to see them all snuggled up together in a tangle of limbs in their sleep. Over the next hour or so everyone else got up and somehow we managed to get on our way to the cinema on time.

Monster House was pretty good I thought. Rather scary – enough to chase Layla, Si and Claudia out again 🙁 Tarly would have gladly left too really but was glad she stuck it out (she had no option) as it did have a ‘happy’ ending. Davies sat on the very end of the row so I had no chance to gauge how he was feeling but he said he really enjoyed it and I guess he would have scrambled over to me during the film if he’d felt in need of a cuddle. 🙂

Home again for lunch, chatting, x boxing and game cubing, playing pussy cats and puppy dogs, being a croupier in full evening dress, drinking lots of tea and general low key pleasantness. Ady is on his way back here after work to take us all home again and tomorrow we are back at the cinema in Brighton for Over the hedge.

PMSL


You Are 0% Shy


You aren’t shy at all, in fact, you’re probably quite outgoing.
You are comfortable in almost any social situation, no matter how difficult.

Okayyyyy


You Are A Realistic Romantic


It’s easy for you to get swept away by romance…
But you’ve done a pretty good job keeping perspective.
You’re still taken in by love poems and sunsets
You just don’t fall for every dreamy pick up line!

Now this one is a shock!!!!


You Are 52% Capitalist, 48% Socialist


While you are definitely sympathetic to a free economy, you also worry about the less fortunate.
Wealth and business is fine, as long as those who are in need get helped out too.
You tend to see both the government and corporations as potentially corrupt.

Quiz for a friend….

Who just sprang to mind instantly when I saw the quiz title! 😆


You Are 54% Angry


Generally, you are not an angry person.
But you’re easily frustrated and enraged. You have one heck of a temper.
And because of your anger, you tend to feel resentful and even spiteful.
You already know how to quell your anger. You just need to do it more often.

Two things….

Sat very sentimentally viewing the slide show of my flickr self timer shots and some old ones from 2001, 2002 and 2003. Ah, what great times we’ve had and what great, great times are ahead. 🙂

And I got this off an email list I’m on – naturally it made me smile also:

Ode to Dr. Seuss
>A grandchild’s guide to using Grandpa’s Computer
>
>Bits, bytes, Chips, Clocks.
>Bits in bytes on chips in box.
>Bytes with bits and chips with clocks.
>Chips in box on ether-docks.
>
>Chips with bits come. Chips with bytes come.
>Chips with bits and bytes and clocks come.
>
>Look, sir. Look, sir. read the book, sir.
>Let’s do tricks with bits and bytes, sir.
>Let’s do tricks with chips and clocks, sir.
>
>First, I’ll make a quick trick bit stack.
>Then I’ll make a quick trick byte stack.
>You can make a quick trick chip stack.
>You can make a quick trick clock stack.
>
>And here’s a new trick on the scene.
>Bits in bytes for your machine.
>Bytes in words to fill your screen.
>
>Now we come to ticks and tocks, sir.
>Try to say this by the clock, sir.
>
>Clocks on chips tick.
>Clocks on chips tock.
>Eight byte bits tick.
>Eight bit bytes tock.
>Clocks on chips with eight bit bytes tick.
>Chips with clocks and eight byte bits tock.
>
>Here’s an easy game to play.
>Here’s an easy thing to say.
>
>If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
>And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
>And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
>Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!
>
>If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
>And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
>And your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash,
>then your situation’s hopeless, and your system’s gonna crash.
>You can’t say this? What a shame, sir!
>We’ll find you another game, sir.
>
>If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
>Says the network is connected to the button on the mouse,
>But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
>That’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
>And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
>So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
>Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
>Cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang!
>
>When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk,
>And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc,
>Then you have to flash your memory and you’ll want to RAM your ROM,
>Quickly turn off your computer and be sure to tell your mom!
>
>The End.
>

Didn’t win the lottery….

So I guess the magic only works for those who work for their living 😆

Had a lovely lie in this morning but still woke tired due to more vivid dreams – oh and possibly that bottle and another glass for luck I drank last night 😳

Davies played X Box all morning, Tarly sat and spectated or played around him. She had a bit of a bash at the marble game at Ali’s yesterday and had already slightly improved in her control of it from the previous time. She still doesn’t quite get the idea of a game but she has at least mastered getting whatever it is on screen she is controlling to do what she wants it to do. She has got a Hello Kitty and the Barbie horses game stashed away for her birthday so I guess we’ll be drawing up some sort of X box rota in December 🙄 I walked to the post office to post a parcel stopping to smile lots at our neighbour ;-). I wore my new DMs though, without socks (will I ever learn) so I have big blisters on my heels and had to limp all the way home again. 😳

We had lunch, I cooked some flapjacks and then we headed over to Chris and Julie’s for the afternoon. Chris was in the middle of painting the fascia with saddolin on their new extension so we left him to it and went for a walk with Julie and all the children in some nearby fields. There were massive hay bales in the field so we all had a go at sitting on top of them before walking back. The children sat and played (noisily) while we drank tea and then we came home via McD’s.

A fairly quiet day all round really. I’ve been really trying to exercise my new ideas with Tarly and so far so good 🙂 I’ll blog about it all more maybe next week and I have some library books to read about positive parenting and some websites to further explore, but coupled with some really interesting chats with various mothers the last couple of days I am feeling very positive about dealing with potential challenges in a good way.

Away tomorrow and then we are booked in for four days worth of films for film week next week but I will be back! 🙂

Well it is Friday….

Which is my excuse for already being on the last glass of a bottle of wine, which the wrong side of dinner doesn’t make for the most lucid, well typed or inoffensive of posts really! 😆 But the breadmaker is playing up and didn’t mix the dough for the garlic bread properly so dinner is all delayed, hence the premature drunkeness. I imagine the carb fest of lasagne and garlic bread to come very soon will send me into a coma and that will be the end of me tonight! 😆

I’ve noticed I’m using lots of exclamation marks lately, apologies to anyone that irritates.

We’ve had an unusually prompt day here today. I had a list of things I needed to do before he headed over Ali’s way including going to the post office to send two parcels, drop Em’s left behind tupperware at Lucy’s. So I was ultra efficient and out of the house before 10am. But there was no queue at the post office and it was a super speedy drop off of plastic containers at Lucy’s with a brief gloat about my luverly DMs and then we were on our way to Lewes. Where we arrived a full half hour before the ‘usual’ time. And actually from prior experience even arriving dead on time can be foolish – which is fine cos I never normally manage it. (would have put an ex. mark there but managed to avoid it :lol:)

So we drove round Lewes for a bit, I had a vague plan to stop at a supermarket for chocolate and crisp offerings but the only supermarket we came across had no free parking – and I’m buggered if my frugal lifetstyle extends to spending a tenner at Waitrose to get free parking 🙄 so we drove into the town centre via the crazily narrow streets and then back again. We drove to the local shop where I got the required chocolate and crisps and then to Ali’s where we were still nearly ten minutes early.

The children were particularly entranced by the neighbourhood cat, Delilah (and yes, Ali and I couldn’t resist a ‘why?’ ‘why?’ ‘why?’ comedy moment in relation to her) but we were still ringing the doorbell probably a full seven minutes early. Freya did stirling work in shouting out the front window to us that ‘MY MUMMY IS IN THE SHOWER AND SHE CANNOT LET YOU IN!’ (justified E M I felt there?) to which we were fully prepared to sit on the door step and await Ali’s availability entertained by the lovely Delilah. But no, Ali let us in anyway in steamed up glasses and damp patches on clothing.

We had a lovely few hours there with the children variously eating, playing X box, playing with stickers and magic sand, putting on ‘lipshine’, the Gears!Gears!Gears! (E M’s courtesy of their marketing, not me) and generally enjoying each others’ company and getting on with it. Ali and I did lots of chatting, and of course I wafted my vibes around and she got a call offering work just before I left. 🙂

And I’m sure there’s loads more than that, but frankly I’ve had too much to drink to remember it!

Susumama

Again!

Lucy and I are going over to see the cool Susumama woman when she gets back from a buying trip. I’m getting a few more bits and I have a back order of Jax’s to collect. Does anyone else want anything? Email me with product codes and descriptions if you do 🙂