T-Bird Anni Rides Again

Today seemed to rush past in a bit of a blur.  There was "schooly bits" in the morning complete with some puzzles and a discovery that I have broken my previous record…. this time I got to week 19 before I got totally out of sync with the Sonlight Instructor guide and gave it up as a bad job.  Maybe by the time we hit "senior school" we will have cracked this whole following instructions thing.  We ahve really enjoyed the Greek Myths book which has been our story book for the last few weeks but now, intead of pushing on to A Year with Miss Agnes, Aprilia wants a return visit to Homer Price, especially the one with the donuts. I’m thinking of recording it to audio CD for her so she can have it as a bedtime book.  In fact I’m thinking of doing that for a few of her favourites and building up a bit of a better library for her, she’s grown out of the faerie story CDs now really and it costs a fortune to keep buying new ones, although dad does his best to remember to buy the Telegraph every time there’s a CD in it.

I also had to build a new desk today.  Duke has revamped his "office" and has lusted after my corner desk for long enough, he was going to get one for himself from Ikea but it appears it’s discontinued so in a moment of weakness I said he could have mine as when we revamp our room I want it a bit more bedroom-like and less office cum storeroom cum general disaster zone (I’ve mentioned this before I’m sure)  So yesterday I emptied not only the desk but all the stuff arround it onto the bed so taht Duke could run off with my desk, thinking we could then assemble Duke’s old one in it’s place and get stuff back off the bed before bedtime.  Didn’t work though.  I made do with an upside down crate so I could finish my essay (which was due yesterday, not today after all!!!) whilst I waited for him to be ready to give me a hand.  This is what it all looked like at this point.  i feel I have to point out that a lot of the stuff there is because, in trying to get his desk area just so, Duke had strewn a lot of the stuff that was previously stacked by his side of teh bed to find specific cables, gizmos and gadgets, but there is a lot of clean washing (usually stacked just by the desk) stray Rainbow books and more books than I have any right to keep on a desk!

By the time the corner desk was out of the bedroom and reassembled in his office and he had fastened various gadgets and gizmos to it, installed all his stuff on it and sat admiring the effect for a short while it was too late to start putting anything together for me.  So we slept on the sofa bed, which claims to be a double and once more we remembered that actually it really isn’t.  So today I put the desk together myself and managed to do it with remarkably few problems besides actually finding the bits (how can one desk spread itself out over so much house?)  I’ll get used to it I guess.  Trouble is, of course, that now he’s back to one job the revamp of the rest of the house is on hold so who knows when I’ll get this.  I sort of liked teh minimalist effect of the up ended basket but it was a bit hard on the joints to sit cross legged for the 2 hours it took to write the essay

Oh, and it was Rainbows, and I couldn’t think what we were supposed to do nor find the book we are using so I declared it a parachute game meeting, took them onto teh field and pretended that I’d planned it taht way.

And then, being as it’s Duke’s birthday, we went out for tea.  

All of which probably explains why today was a bit blured round the edges, looks rather busy now I look on it from this end  

Just realised it’s 11pm, the back door is still wide open, chairs are still in the middle of the lawn and the cat is still out, we don’t let her out at night cos we are mean and nasty owners (in her eyes anyway!) and think that balck cats are not things to allow to roam around after dark when tehy can’t be seen and risk being hit by cars!

Off to rattle the food bag out the back door then! 

This was a SuperBike weekend at Oulton so I was there on the overnight cover for 3 nights.  Now, usually this involves much sitting about drinking coffee, watching telly and gossiping (beleive me, if you think women can talk, you need to meet a paramedic.  they make me look positively withdrawn a lot of them!) then going to bed "with one ear on the radio" at about midnight once the folks have dissipated from the bar.  We may occaisionally get a scraped knee to deal with but that’s normally it.  This weekend we have had

1 "teenage girl syndrome"  (got all upset and hyperventilated - it seems to be a teenage girl thing)

1 pyrexic, projectile vomiting baby 

3 brawl injuries plus a further 2 not injured in another incident but needed a cuppa and TLC

1 indecent assault

1 spousal assault (who didn’t want to involve teh police but security had already called them and Cheshire has a zero tollerance policy so they refused to cancel the call, took a statement of anyone willing to give one and hauled the offender away for a night to "think about his actions")

1 choking incident which could have been very nasty had someone else not been very quick off the mark - he was at the far end of the site and it would have taken us too long had there not been a Good Samaritan handy

1 lady not looking where she was going and walked into something 

which all adds up to more incidents in one weekend that I have delt with in the other 15 or so sets of nights I’ve done over the past few years.

Then there was Aprilia’s friend from Rainbows who came round for a play date on Saturday when we pitched the "small" tent on the front, discovered taht half of it is missing (pegs, 1 ground sheet, 1 pod) somewhere in the garage.  Sunday she went on the return leg of the play date whilst I did 1/3 of my essay (due in tomorrow so I’d better get on with it!)  Monday she didn’t look too well so we got the sofa bed out and watched the entire MIHigh day thing on CBBC followed by last week’s Dr Who that we had recorded or at least, she watched MIHigh, I slumped next to her and napped most of the day and still managed a very good night’s sleep last night (ah, you apreciate your own bed when you have slept on an examination table for 3 nights!)  Today we JJ-ed in the morning and went for a walk to the park in the afternoon which restored some colour to her very pale face.

So there it is, all caught up again and if you are still with me at the bottom of all this I’m impressed! 

but 3 very busy nights have sucked my brains out so I’m going to sleep very soundly tonight (you may hear me snoring from where ever you live!) and see what I can remember by tomorrow!

Hlep! I’ve taken to housework in an attempt to avoid a TMA!  Someone shoot me now!

(edited to add…) Mind map done and transfered as an essay plan of sorts to Word.  Only 750 more words to find with 2 full days to find them!  So I make that basically putting some grammar around teh phrases and writing a conclusion.

And there’s not a grubby finger mark left on any door frames round the house  

Can’t access Googlemail!  It’s been down all morning as, it would appear, has Yahoo mail (co-incidence?)  Which is a bit of a pain as I’d planned on checking my mail one last time before dismantling  the desk (thus meaning nowhere to put the PC to use it) ready for Duke to run off with it and put up my temporary one until I can justify getting a decent one again.  He’s been trying to get one like mine for ages but Ikea no longer do it and to be honest, much as I love it to bits, it does sort of dominate the bedroom rather much (and provieds me with far too much space to dump stuff that would get put away if I din’t have anywhere to abandon it!) whereas it would look okay in an "office".  I want one that’s a "corner workstation with doors" sort of arrangement which means £230 and very lovely looking from Ikea or getting very second best fake wood from Argos for £100 and tacking on some sort of doors!  but I’d get free delivery from Argos and wouldn’t end up spending £££ on stuff we can’t possibly live without whist we are there!  Ah, the decisions i have to make

Arpilia has just tidied up her room in record time and without a whisper of complaint.  Why?  She wants to invite a Rainbow friend round to play and aparently her room is always "imacleanate" - I suspect because, being at school all day, she doesn’t spend so much time and energy getting it messy……  Shame her concern doesn’t stretch to the rest of the house as her mum’s bit of the house is also imaculate whereas, well, lets be honest, ours isn’t!  Which does mean taht really I should now be doing teh "crisis cleaning" bit but actually I’m hvaing 5 minutes peace.  I’m hoping parent will drop child off without stopping as once Aprilia is busy I can crack on with latest TMA but I can’t see that happening somehow!

Today we have shopped, including buying her a pair of "croc-a-likes" for £2 off the market which she is ever so happy about.  Then we gardened for several hours and although there wasn’t a lot to show for it we did at least get the first sowing of peas in.  And there was swimming, 2 "rations" of DS time for her (we have a timer, she likes to know when her half hour ration is up!) a visit from the BT engineer who agreed that the fault really was at the junction where it should have been fixed lsat time but wasn’t   and lots of generally just being.  I’m sure some of it was randomly educational.  I’m not sure which bits though!  I suspect I’m a traitor to the "stuctured home ed" brigade just now, but we are really, we are just having a "rest" from it for a while

Hlaf way through the RAinbow meeting tonight one of them told me that her brother was ill with a gastric bug and that she had it too but didn’t feel poorly.  Is it me?????  Or is it not considered a ****** stupid thing to do to send your child into a group of other kids when they have something that could make some of them really poorly?????????   If I’m ill at the weekend I will cancel next Wednesday on principle and let them all know it is because one (anonymous) child was sent with a bug and me and Aprilia are still in quarentine.

The really, really anoying bit is that now I don’t know if I can send Aprilia to Brownies on Friday.  She’s supposed to be being tested for a badge but it won’t have been a clear 72 hours and one of the Brownies is on chemo so isn’t well to start with.

But apart from that, it’s been a good day! 

I’ve been granted a "Daisy book" player through the OU which is great as it’s what I’ll need for my next course, as they stop doing tapes.  Trouble is the are buying me this one which is a hulking great desktop thing and more expensive than this nice portable one ( http://tinyurl.com/5vbkwd )which is what I asked for, would prefer as it’s more practical and will probably end up buying for myself at some point!

Wouldn’t mind if I’d not asked for a specific one or if what I’d asked for was more expensive but the portable is cheaper, does more and would mean I could put a small wallet of SD cards in my bag and head off out of the house nice and easiely.

Ah well, guess beggars can’t be choosers and all that!