T-Bird Anni Rides Again

I used a bit of dry spagetti to hold th head in place on a chick yesterday and this morning it was not good!  the spagetti had (of course) absorbed some of the moisture from the clay and expanded pushing the head and body away from each other.  So, don’t use spagetti as pegs!!!  Will try coctail sticks next time (and see how good PVA is at sticking the bits back together today!)

Guess who has a "new" frige?  Yup, that would me ME!     Not only that, it’s bigger than teh old one (which was always a fraction too small so stuff got stuffed in rather precariously at times) and it only has a small freezer bit which gives me the perfect excuse to get an under the work surface type freezer adn have seperate units rather than a combined one where you are stuck with our current quandry of a working freezer with an insulated cupboard on top of it.  Hopefully this one will last a few years thus spreading the cost of replacements better than needing to buy a combined unit every time one half of it breaks.

Other than that today I made a few more ADC chicks for the Easter baskets the craft ladies are making (getting this toa fine art now!) whilst Aprilia played with probably the brightest red play dough I’vev ever made - it was fabulously red!

Aprilia has decided that she is going to give up suckign ehr thumb for Lent (after me deciding I was going to leave her to it!!!)  and insisted on us getting some Stop’n'grow from the chemist to help her.  She has made a distressing discovery about that stuff - the taste doesn’t stay on the nails…. if you put them in your mouth, the taste gets on your tougue and stays tehre for an hour or so afterwards (where’s taht barfing smilie when you want him??) 

Our fridge has died.  The freezer is still chugging away but the fridge bit on top of it is now nought more than an insulated cupboard.  I’ve thrown away just about everything in it (because it’s now been dead for a full 24 hours and I’m not taking any chances on things like meat!) and I’m using the camp fridge for the milk (thank goodness for being totally camp gadget mad!!)

So, cosmic supply company, I need a fridge, preferably cheap and not too big as it will need to slip into a small kitchen.  Not getting combined again as this is the second time now that the freezer has still been going great guns and the fridge dead (although to be fair, this one is over 10 years old so I suspect I have had my moeny’s worth from it!)  No doubt I’ll be in teh market ofr a replacement freezer afore long but I’m putting that off for as long as I can (because I would like a big one so I can batch cook a bit more!) 

I got some of the air drying clay  (ADC from now on, I’m to lazy to type that every time!) that Merry sells for the craft ladies the other week and I’ve now played with it sufficiently to make some sweeping statements comparing it with Fimo…

The ADC has a consistancy something akin to play dough, it’s very light and soft so would be nice for little hands I think but like play dough you can’t do really fiddly stuff.  Fimo is a stiffer texture and weighs more, it’s more the texture of good old fashioned plasticine and it better at more fiddly stuff.

 To stick different parts of a Fimo model together you just gently push them together, the ADC needs to be wetted a little first - this is a hit and miss operation til you get the hang of it - too much water and the bits slide off each other, too little and they don’t stay stuck, and gentle pressure applied for a second or two.  If it was something that really mattered I think I would be raiding the spagatti packet to use little bits as pegs to hold stuff in place properly.

You need to keep the ADC carefully wrapped up to stop it drying out although you can massage water into it to revive it if it gets a bit dry aparently.  Fimo  can be left out for ages without worrying too much (it does seem to dry a little but not enough to stop you using it)   

Once it’s done and baked/dried the two are very different.  The ADC pales slightly so you get charcoal gray instead of black, dusky pink instead of red (not good if you are making ladybirds!)  whereas the Fimo stays true and vibrant.  The ADC is incredibly light when dry, almost like funky foam or polystyrene in texture, and if it was stuck when you finished making it, chances are it’s still stuck on when totally dry, even if dropped.  The Fimo is quite weighty even once baked, I’ve had a few bits that looked nicely secure when "raw" that fell off once baked and if you drop it, there is s good chance it will fall to bits (but nothing a bit of superglue won’t cure!)

So which do I prefer?  Cough, don’t shout will you?  BOTH!  The ADC would be fabulous for things like card toppers or fridge magnets, things where the lightness would be a real advantage, and also I think for pencil toppers as they won’t make any extra weight to the pencil although you would need to glaze them first otherwise they may well disolve if the child decided to see what they tasted like!

Fimo is way better for proper models though, it’s just more solid and workable.  And it comes in more colours.

I’ve sent off my first level 2 TMA, it’s several weeks early (not due til 16th March) but then I started the course several weeks early adn I keep coming back to the TMA and picking at it, fiddling with it and gererally risking "improving it worse" if I don’t stop it.  So, 1 last read through, 1 last check that every last quote was referenced, 1 listen through with the screen reader to check I had written what I thought i had and not something else (not taht I would ever do that you understand!) and off it went into the great unknown that is the OU’s eTMA system.

So if some time round the 16th of next month I start getting all irrational it’s just because my TMA will be due back anytime after that and I reserve the right to totally fall apart at that point  

my car has sounded like it’s got dustbin lids under it for ages now, I’d intended to take it to the garage when the Red Cross money landed (but it didn’t so I’ve just been hoping the exhaust didn’t fall off anywhere too public in the mean time!)

Anyway, Duke peered under there today and guess what?  It wasn’t the exhaust, it was some heat shield that reflects the exhaust heat away from the boot so not terribly important but terribly noisy when only held on by 1 bolt and therefore boinging about under there!

So I have extra money in the budget for next month (which could just fall through my fingers at the Education show of course!)

 In other news, I have had to almost physically prise Aprilia off the PC to put her to bed tonight!  Why?  Because one of the games on Study Dog that used to reduce her almost to tears a year ago is now so easy it’s FUN.  I am so glad I put level 1 on "By mistake" for her to play with before installing level 2! 

Well, this was supposed to have been posted yesterday but somehow got "lost" and ended up in drafts but just for completeness here it is! 

apart from getting confused by the OU (and Helen, I’m sure you are right but it’s rather cunfusing when you are allowed to sneak off and tell someone something that may help them but not tell them openly..!) what have we done?  Um, well, there was a long bath in the middle of it all in order to try out a new snorkel and mask (obviously, one has to test these things!), I remember that bit, and some stories and she did lots of handwriting (getty whosit) during music group practice and planned her entire day’s meals!  It seemed to be based around eating every piece of fruit in the house I think!  There was also an outrageous amount of bouncing, giggling and rolling round starkers on my bed "fending off" my attempts at tickling her after her bath.

Good day, tiring, but good.

And thanks everyone for the nice comments, it does me good to hear nice things and I really do apreciate it.  In fact you are a wonderful bunch and I wish I could give you all a big hug to say thanks!

AS seen on Stepping off the Path (which you may or may not already read!)

Allowing Parents to BE parents 

"Most parents and guardians do not need the ‘opportunity’ to work, they need the ‘opportunity’ to rear and nurture their children.

If we really want this generation to grow up as fully rounded and emotionally intelligent human beings we need for parents to be allowed to parent, rather than become people who give them breakfast and put them to bed exhausted from lining the Chancellors’ coffers.

Support my petition to give financial help to families where one parent wishes to raise their own child until nursery age, and to support the family rather than business by eliminating the need for ‘wrap-around’ child care."

Obviously it would be nice it 1 parent can then continue to stay home until hte child is old enough to come home from school or whatever independently rather than needing the dread before and after school clubs but hey, baby steps! 

Okay, I’m confused, and whilst there’s nothing new there really I feel the need to share my confusions with the world in the vain hope that setting it down might help me make any sense of them…

1) There is a number of forums provided by the OU, specific to their courses.  People "go" there to discuss the course, moan about how hard distance learning is, how they will never get the next TMA done in time etc and also to support each other and ask questions. 

So someone asked a question about a specific text.  it was a text that was to be looked at for a TMA but still the question didn’t directly relate to the TMA and she was almost as wobbly about it as I get sometimes so I answered the question in about 2 sentences, hardly going to fill her TMS’s 750 word allowance up for her now was it?  Or even answer the question that the TMA asked, just helped her to understand the piece by pointing out that the course book had said that this bloke was prone to writing toungue in cheek.  

The post has been pulled from the forum because it would help her to complete the TMA and was therefore in infringement of the forum rules.  I would, however, be okay to send that message to her privately.  So, erm, leaving asside the question of do we therefore think that at "real" universities they don’t discuss assignments in the canteen and bounce ideas off each other?  Or that at the next tutor group I go to there won’t be discussion about this particular point?  It’s okay to "share" and therefore "help" someone privately but not to pass taht same information on to the person who didn’t have the courage to pipe up that they didn’t get it either by making it available to the whole group on a forum specifically put there to support people through this course?  I really don’t quite get that!

2) still with the OU here!  I’ve got to go for a "formal assessment" so they can start the process of letting me do my end of year exam on a PC (so the poor marker can read it!)  So I got the phone number of the person I needed to book in with and a form that if you read it is definitely meant to be filled in after the event.  Clues like "How DID you travel to your assessment?" and "Where WAS your assessment conducted?" (or something like that any way) kind of suggest that it’s already happened doesn’t it?  But this form came with a note to say fill it in as soon as you have booked the assessment and get it back to us so we can arrange payment.  So I phoned to check and was told "yes, we get a lot of people asking that, fill it in now so we can authorise the assessment"  Does this not tell them something?  If a lot of people ask this question then maybe, just maybe they need to look at the form with a view to changing it?

On a brighter note though, I’ve just got audio tapes of all my set texts so I can put my feet up and listem to them instead of doing that thing where I need to either read everything twice because I sort of lose track every few paragraphs or read it out load (which drives Duke mad!)

I’ve done a lot of that today, and not particularly in relation to the Baden-Powells. 

It all started with a letter from the LEA containing a positively glowing report about the visit, it was somewhat akin to what I used to dream about getting on my school reports, you know, lots of things like "Child X is highly motiviated to learn and knows how to achieve sucess" or in this case  "Mrs T-bird spoke enthusiastically about Aprilia’s education programme ane was clear about her aims and how to achieve them"  Although I did wonder if she was talking about us when she said taht we provide a "Quiet, calm environment" for her to learn in!!!!  Huh? was she in our house?  Or just in denial about how bad it was???  that got me thinking, obviously she was more than happy so why on earth do I insist on stressing about it?  Why am I worried that some weeks we do barely anything (forgetting the weeks when she romps through half a workbook in one go of course!)  Why is tehre this stupid niggly feeling that someone is going to come and tell me she’s not performing well enough and will have to go to school?

Then there was the video clip posted up on Making It Up about how education focuses on far too narrow a skill set (to use educational jargon) and how stupid that is.  That REALLY made me think about my wobbles with her reading and writing.  So i ddn’t even suggest she did any today, instead we did crafts and let her be just as creative as she wanted to be. 

She watched Blue Peter curled up on the sofa, snuggly in one hand, thumb of the other hand tucked in her mouth and I got to thinking, what right have I to take away the simple, childlike pleasures and to push her to growing up?  I know, her teeth are going to be wonky, but then is that really the end of the world?  Is it going to affect her life expectancy or just give her a bit of a wonky smile? and so what if she likes a fluffy toy pressed into her cheek?  Is her overt enjoyment of the wonderful tactile sensations of a soft furry toy during the day any worse than me secretly cuddling toys in bed until Duke evicted them when he moved in?

She went off to thinking day this evening so full of excitement, dismissed me at the door (then shouted me back for a cuddle!) and came out 2 hours later absolutely full of herself, full of the exciting things she had done, how she had made friends, how she had been a proper little full of life girl.  

I must have doen something very right in a previous life to deserve her.