T-Bird Anni Rides Again

The Good

Nice simple food, you just can’t go wrong with stew and dumplings!!!!!!  It’s one of those meals that just gets better the bigger the vat you make it in   And Christmas dinner was fab too, in fact it all was (special mention should go to the fact that Aprilia scoffed the "meat curry" too!)

Gallons of tea

Several tonnes of cake

Fabulous company

Lots of lovely children to entertain Aprilia

Cuddly babies

Secret Santa successes

The guy that did the Planetarium presentation who was obviously very passionate about his subject, could communicate that passion to all ages.

The Bad

The inability to settle in a strange bed which lead to tired grumpiness.

The traffic on the way home

getting a text from Duke to say he has to go to Holland again, and finding out the hard way that Aprilia can now read well enough to read texts, I’d intended to not tell her until we were home to avoid the inevitable sobbing until we were somewhere more familiar and "safe"

The Ugly…

Well, that would ahve to be the grumpy old git who savaged us for the inexcusable sin of not being local and thus not knowing where the planetarium is.  Having looked on thier "how to find us" page, I’m still pretty damned sure I wouldn’t find it without the lovely Ady talking us in.  To say something on the lines of "today’s first lesson is to learn to read a map" really was just insult to injury, because, I’m sorry, I just don’t have an A to Z for Chichester, there’s really not a lot of use for it in Cheshire you see… and, I’ve checked my UK road atlas and you ain’t on there.

So there we are, another year, another camp!  Thank you very much Nic for organising it all, cooking, brewing gallons of mulled wine……

this morning we were woken rather later than I’d planned by the phone ringing (and no, I’m not fessing uip how late I’d slept in!) and I was rather relieved to realise that Duke hadn’t opened the curtains downstairs as that was where the cordless phone had got left last night

But after that slightly awkward start, the day got on quite nicely really.  We started at Jungle Jim for a good long play, with Aprilia getting on very well with the new ankle supports which kept her happyly playing for ages without any wails of "my ankles hurt" so they get the thumbs up!

After lunch we "did school" with several chapters of Child’s History of the World, some Ginger Pye, a bit of Aesops Fables and so on, in fact, we got through almost a week’s worth in an afternoon, whilst she kept her fingers busy doing some crafty thing or other.  After that she Ed Cityed and Facebooked and administered fashion advice on how to make my new dress look better (a red satin sash was decided upon, which is now on order from a martial arts site….. well, where else can you get a ready made, nice long, red satin sash from

This evening was cleaning and then Red Cross and now Duke and I are catching up on stuff recorded from the TV over the past half a year or so…..

need to get the ranty bit out of the way first really….

EIGHT HOURS??????  Now, I know that 8 hours includes the person traveling to and fro, and their paperwork once they are back at the office etc but really, 8 hours????  What on earth do you talk to an LA inspector about for that long????

And don’t get me started on it being okay for parents to waste our precious time preparing our year in advance plans and other such crap rather than educating or caring for our families or the fact that they arrogantly assume that these annual inspections will instantly cause our children to get better GCSE results than without their interferance….. No, am stopping right there, it’s all already been said, probably much more elequently and besides, it’s all pie in the sky because if there is any justice in the world, they won’t get it passed into law before this bunch of imcompetents get voted out.

Moving on… I played out at Oulton yesterday whilst Duke and Aprilia had a quiet day at home, aparently she Ed City-ed a bit and did some other stuff (don’t have a shrugging smilie so please imagine one here)  I was very busy and you really don’t want the gory details!  

Today I had a bad sewing day, one downloaded pattern produced a very dodgy result which got lobbed petulantly into the rag bag and the (not very) little black number looked something like okay-ish when I finished it but wasn’t "hanging" quite right but figured a good wash would sort that.  Alas, although it did soften the fabric to a much better drape, half the ***** seams frayed out because I forgot how badly this fabric frays and didn’t do a good enough job on the sewing (bad girl, that will teach me to cut corners won’t it!)  I’m hoping it’s salvagable and that throwing it back tghrough the wash a few more times will beat it into submission without it falling apart!  It’s back to the drawing board for a dress for Aprilia though.  Aprilia, meanwhile, watched Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus on TV and proved to me once again that she can actually read reasonably confidently these days as long as there aren’t too many lines at one time.

I was speaking to one of the owners tonight where I clean and he has asked me to pull together my CV.  You see, he had asked me last week if i could go into the college where he works part time to give a quickie first aid demo for the kids and when he mentioned it at the college they asked if I would be interested in a part time position as their current first aid trainer is leaving.  Now, the thing is, I wouldn’t mind doing it, in fact it’s the sort of job I would quite like doing in the future when Aprilia is big enough to be left alone to get on with stuff (so teenager I guess) but she’s not a teenager is she.  She’s a rather over-sensitive child who is quite obviously too small to be left for a day on her own and definitely not in any way "ready" to integrate into any kind of flexi-schooling arrangement (unless I could find a Monte elementary school close enough by but even then I’m not sure I’d trust them to get it "right")  Now, obviously the answer is that she goes to Harley and Lola’s house and plays there, apart from the fact that they aren’t family so would need to be registered as child minders, which isn’t going to happen as they both smoke and I can’t ask them to jump through all the bloody silly hoops that child minders have to go through to register.  Or there’s Nelly’s family but then again no, because much as the 2 of them get on fabulously, she only manages it for  few hours, then she needs a break as Nelly’s aspie tendencies to in-you-face-ness become more than she can cope with.  Or she could go to some stranger who has all the right bits of paper but probably signed up to child mind babies and tots not big girls (and I’m not sure how she would cope with the noise of a houseful of babies and tots anyway)  Which leaves me with that "primary care-giver" angst of knowing that the money would make a huge positive difference to our lifestyle and provide a bit more security (where Duke works is so quiet they have resorted to competitive facebooking to keep boredom at bay) balanced against the huge risk of putting Aprilia in a situation where she will suffer in silence somewhere she isn’t happy with all the emotional damage that could do.  Bugger.

Of course, if I could just set her up with a laptop in the corner of the room everything would be fine, you see, I’ve discovered that she will spend hours learning if it’s on a screen!  Between Moshi Monsters, Education City and the financial and planning stratagies of various FB games, she’s stretching herself in all directions at the moment with very little input from me.  It’s not really the education I had envisioned for her, but it seems to be hitting the spot for her so who am I to interfer?

This morning we trailed round town finding details of children’s savings accounts available to her.  After visiting every bank and building society on the town it would appear that NatWest gets her vote as it’s the only one that will allow her to run her own account without me shaddowing her every step.

I also intended to buy myself something nice to wear for the round of Christmas parties etc as last year’s frock now hangs like a sack and it never occured to me that losing weight would make long-ish skirts turn into dragging in the dust skirts but aparently it does!  Needless to say I came home with (drum roll please…) 3 tops and 2 pairs of leggings…. for Aprilia naturally   But I have some fabric that I’ve been meaning to do something useful with for ages and an idea for a sort of forgiving of a size either way sort of dress. 

This afternoon we swam which seems to have done an excellent job of wearing her out  

First to answer questions from previous posts….

Helen, yes, of course you can pass on my thoughts on the book.

Jan, the course is Sports Massage.  After this one there is a Sports Injury one, a Remedial massage one and a couple of other ones I fancy too….. so much for taking a year out then!  To be fair, these are at a way, way easier level so all I’m doing it keeping in the study habit without having the stress levels.

Caroline, where have you been????? Have a look here….  

Moving on!   On Friday Aprilia managed to twist her ankle yet again, leaving her feeling very fragile and nervous of doing anything that may hurt it further.  Have investigated how to approach this and it appears that the best thing seems to be to provide masses of support to the wobbly joint for "high risk" activities (so that’s soft play, Kung Fu etc) and then a set of exciercises that gradually build the strength back up again.  So, excercises printed out and being done very gently and some ankle supports with springy bits that are designed especially for this kind of thing bought at half the normal price off EBay (gotta love EBay!) 

Yesterday we Kung Fued and came straight home then spent the day snuggling.  I think we both needed it.

Today I was at Oulton and managed to create mind maps for the first 2 assignments of my course, I’m assuming it gets more detailed as it goes along, if not then really, this isn’t going to take too long!

Aprilia has been "under the weather" for a few days now, not poorly exactly, but not well either really.  So she’s been indulging in rather a lot of Cbbc and Citv and even a bit of Cbeebies here and there.  Lots of nature programmes on at the mo so she’s had a fairly extensive "science" education this week

Where babies come from has also come up, thanks to the country-wide excitement over the birth of Jax’s little pretty miss.  I’ve got 2 books from SonLight about babies, aimed at differeent ages so I pulled them off the shelf.  She’s seen one of the books before, a few years ago but didn’t remember it, it’s aimed at children a little younger than her but seemed just right.  the one for her age didn’t engage her at all so I shall stuff that one back on the shelf for when Merry’s little chick puts in an appearance and we go through it all again

I’ve spent some time curled up with books that I don’t have a deadline to read by which has been pleasant.  Shadows of the Workhouse was a book given me by MIL who didn’t like it but wondered if it would interest me "what with you liking history and all that"  I loved it, but it did make me cry a few times!  It also made me laugh.  I’m sorely tempted to put her other books on my Christmas list!  And now, I’m a good half way through Oceans Apart of course, which is a lovely read.  I have always avoided "that sort of book", you know, boy meets girl, falls instantly in love, everyone feels happy for them…. bleugh…. but actually this is genuinely a lovely book and I’m almost reluctant to finish it as I don’t want it to end!!!!!  Oh, and I have a few Terry Pratchett audio books on the go too, gotta love Calibre audio books!

My new course books arrived today, it’s not as glossy as I’m used to with the OU but it’s good stuff and I’m itching to settle down to that too.  I suspect I may rattle through this one a tad faster than the OU ones, it’s very much read the section then answer the questions from the text with a side order of keep a scrap book of stuff related to the course and a portfolio of who you have practiced on.  Am sort of tempted to do the sports injuries course alongside it as they would work well together and give me a few more oportunities for stuff I could do with it in the end (and there’s a 10% offer on so I’d get it cheaper…..)  Grin, it’s no good, Im sort of adicted to this learning business…. I suppose it just took me longer than usual to de-school

Today I stood silence with an ex squaddie.  He stood quietly and a touch sadly, bare head raised in the rain.  He doesn’t talk about it to many, the nail-shaped scars on his legs speak for him.  But the mental scars aren’t so obvious, unless you really know him well.  We weren’t at a cenotaph, on a Church parade, but at the side of a race track, surrounded by silently respectful kids, many of whose parents showed them up by talking through it all.  To his men he was Sir or Colonel Morgan, to me he’ll always be Poppa Bear, or just plain Harley.

Standing with us, but many miles away, was Aprilia, insistant that despite already having attended parade earlier, that she and Duke stood with the rest of the country at 11am.

There is much said about "the youth of today" but today, many of our children have shown us just how right they can get things.

a nasty case of inertia has gripped the household recently resulting in no "reward chart" nonsense, and not a lot else either.  There has been….

the pop up tent in my bedroom (too cold outside!) in which we did fabric crafts.

facebook, yes, I know, just don’t go there…. but I do think there may be some educational value in all those darned games…. and it means she has unlimited oportunities to ply Uno (which I really don’t get so thus refuse to buy for her as then I’d have to play it with her…. mean?  Me?  you bet)… and she’s getting all sorts of things out of the various "ville" games, the planning and stratagies she’s developing is pretty impressive (although I do have to apologise to Jo for her stealing all your crops on the island thingie!)

brief flickers of interest in various Brownie badges, resulting in me spending hours finding stuff that really should not be that hard to find, and wittering about how useless the links on the Brownie badge website are.

and, erm, not a lot else really.

Whilst looking for the cover things for the trampoline springs, we notices taht some places sell tents that are designed to go on them but for lots, and lots of money obviously!  But then, we have a pop up tent which is a perfect size…. so we have popped that up and had SonLight in the bouncy tent for the last 2 days!  Funny how she will listen to hours of stuff if she can fidgit and wiggle but can’t listen to 2 minutes if she is sat "normally".  Just another reason why home ed works

Other good things in the past few days include being told by my boss that I’m "too good" and thus am getting a pay rise, no idea how much but every little helps and actually, being told I’m good is worth quite a bit to a daft sod like me! In a similar vein, I’ve been nominated for an award with the Red Cross, which I won’t be there to collect at the annual mutual back slapping event as I’ll be at the Christmas NicCamp (phew, being told I’m good is nice, having to stand up in front of lots of people is embarrassing…) And we have traced why our bank account was £700 worse off that it should have been - that would be Duke forgetting to put in time sheets for his casual work for the last 4 months then   So we are going to be in a much better position come pay day and may even be able to afford Christmas after all