T-Bird Anni Rides Again

Deary me, I just bid on a violin, totally expecting to get sniped and didn’t   Not as exciting as StringBean’s blue and flowery one but then it is only £25 including postage (and I had £9 in my PayPal account doing nothing) so  she can content herself with decorating the case with stick-on flowers!

So, Sarah, this string ensemble at camp then….. I think I’ve found Frere Jaque but if you could just confirm what key we are playing in….. otherwise it could sound even worse than potentially it may do anyway with my darling little virtuoso!  Oh, scratch that, just looked over at Helen’s blog, will faff about with starting on the A and the D string on my toy and see which I think she will do easiest then brace myself for the arrival of hers! 

We saw a huge bird on the way out today, it had moved to the next telegraph pole by the time we passed on the way home.  Sadly it was on a stretch of road with nowhere to pull over adn take a better look but it was either a buzzard (I know we have them round our way but the markings didn’t look quite right) or a female sparrowhawk (pretty unlikely given the location but the markings are a dead ringer!)

Other than that today we have installed a leaky pipe system so taht our runner beans won’t suffer when we are away like they did last year!  They had practically died by the time we got back from last year’s camp so we got very few beans.  This year they will be watered drip by drip for 2 hours every evening so hopefully they will thrive!  We also put some by the strawberries so I’m hopeful of great things with them this year too (yum!) 

Well aparently we do!  Or at least we do when Aprilia has been out runnign with the pack pretty much all day and therefore needs a certain amount of Mummy Time before bed can be considered!  I can live with that   And I can live with her fumbling through a set of sight words and suddenly exclaiming "hey, all these words are in Green Eggs and Ham aren’t they!"  yes dearest, they are, now I wonder why taht is then….

if you’ve never even heard of the flower you are?

"You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that."

Well I’m working on the being proud of myself and my accomplishments, does  being proud of my wonderful baby count in there  

The perfect tea cosy (well, okay, a perfectly over the top with olde worlde charm tea cosy!)

and no, I’ve still not done anything on my TMA  

I hve until the 18th of May to write 2,000 words.  So far I have about 200 in the form of a mind map plus a few scribblings in margins etc.  So today whilst my darling daughter played out on her bike I have had the perfect oportunity to carry on with it yes?

So what have I done?   let me see…. 

3 loads of washing fluttering in the breeze,
2 complaint letters ready to send to endowment companies as soon as I find the stamps,
1 letter confirming to the Red Cross that we will be responsible for Aprilia whilst she is at class with us and that we are happy for her to be used in demonstrations under our supervision etc,
1 letter to a credit card company saying thanks but we don’t need this any more so can you cancel it
1 letter to the training dept at Red Cross detailing the bits of my dyslexia assessment which are relevent to future training needs (like letting me see OHPs before lectures and letting me do exams in a side room so I’m not distracted)  Actually they are pretty good anyway but if I make it official then if anyone new takes over there’s no misunderstandings or sudden shocks….
Jelly made ready for tea time
Mushrooms fried off ready to mix with a can of chunky chicken to make chic and mushroom pie (I know, hardly haute cuisine but Duke likes it)

Now I am going to tidy up my desk because it says in the OU how to study guide that you need a clear, uncluttered space to study in.  That should bring tea time I think…..  

yesterday was not our best ever day.  To be fair, it was no one’s fault in particular it was just one of THOSE days.

I wanted to put in some pea seeds (under cloches to keep them safe and warm) so forked over the soil and twisted my back which I’d already managed to put in to spasm the previous evening by sitting lopsided crocheting for too long.  So there I was, clutching the fork for 5 minutes wondering how on earth I was ever going to move again and wondering if I should just call the knackers yard now and have done with   Much deep breathing and a nice stiff elasticated support belt (you know, those things that ladies with wobbly pelvises get issued with) later I got the peas in and the cut in half pop bottles over the top to protect them. 

Swimming seemed to ease out some of the kinks and then whilst I headed for the shower I asked Aprilia to fill up the bird feeder as they are scoffing it at a fair rate at the mo.  2 minutes later she was in the bathroom describing in great detail the small creepy crawlies  surging out of the seed bin.  When I wombled downstairs to look I realised that they were weevels and then it dawned on me that I have an open bag of oats in the kitchen (big sack like Barbara fetches to Melrose!) and of course bags of flour in the cupboard.  Not any more i don’t   So no more flapjacks, choccie oaties or porridge til I go shopping again (have already done this week’s shop) but at least I have 1 bag of each type of flour safe as tehy were in the tupper tubs, just the "spare" bags have had to go.

And I’ve misplaced my specs (again!!) but before I misplaced them I sat on them and 1 lens popped out and was a pig to pop bck in.  Thankfully they didn’t seem to be pushed out of shape too badly but I do wonder if they have sneaked off to lick their wounds in private somewhere to teach me a lesson

And the suspense waiting for my latest TMA to come back is killing me!  The due date was a week ago, she’s had it now for over 2 weeks as I got it in early and last time I got it back the day after the due date.  I don’t want to launch into TMA 3 until I’ve read her comments on 2 in case tehre’s anything I need to do differently but I want to put it to bed and move on so taht I don’t start losing momentum (any more momentum than i alaredy have anyway!) and get behind.  There are no "reading weeks" in this course at all so if I fall behind I’m stuffed!

On the plus side though…..

Aprilia read a bit more again and is fired up to finish  a full set of books as each set "erns" her a fairy book.  As Daddy is half way through the set of Wether Fairies, she *needs* the gem fairies ready for him to read after that!

The runner beans are settling in well and have started scrabbling up the frame which means I need to crack on and put some strings onto the frame for them to really get going up.  maybe tomorrow….

 The swimming pool was lovely and warm and much swimmng was done.

 The sun is shining, my darling child is entertaining herself and I have absolutely no plans for the day so we can take it very much as it comes.  I suspect  I should get dressed though…. just in case anyone comes to the door!

I’ve been saying I’d take Aprilia to Stockley farm for weeks but something has always happened on the Wednesday to stop us and that’s the only week day it’s open.  But today the sun was shiney, we had cash (Duke got paid partly in cash just to be sure he had something to keep us going until the latest cheque decides if it wants to be all bouncy or not) and no prior commitements so I told her that if she did her chores and her normals then we would go. 

So she worked hard on normals, sat perfectly still for stories, asking inteligent questions here and there and read several pages of desperately boring CVC word based "story" (we still haven’t quite mastered long vowels but I hve plenty of CVC booklets to wade through whilst we wait!)  After that she  put away all her clean washing and gave me a pile of stuff for the charity shop that she has outgrown.  Then she "helped" me plant out the runner beans round the bean frame and gave teh sunflowers a decent burial in the compost bin as the wind had battered them just a bit too hard and snapped every last one of them off below the first set of leaves   We’ve still got Teddy Bear sunflowers though so I’m hoping they will be sturdy enough.  We’ve also got last year’s packet of Giant sunflowers somewhere so I can still have another go.

That brought luchtime very rapidly then we headed off to hte farm.  The next 3 hours were spend coo-ing over fluffy little lambs and calves, digging in the sandpit and playing in the play barn.  She fed a lamb and helped the farm hands feed the pigs which was a bit of a bonus as we just happened to be walking past the pen at feeding time so were invited to come and help.  All in all a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

When we got home I had a slightly surreal conversation on the phone with Dad who was asking if I’d managed to fix the SatNav.  Last time they borrowed it they said it stopped talking to them which was rather odd as it talked to me all the way too and from Jax and Tim’s at the weekend perfectly happily.  On further questioning he said that it wasn’t that it wasn’t saying anything at all, just that all it kept saying was "Turn around when possible" so they carried on as it was still showing the road they were on so it must have been the right route.  Now, is it me or if your navigation tool told you to turn around would you keep going regardless or actually turn round?????  Sigh, I suppose it’s all those years of arguing over maps, must hve done some permenant damage to the part of the brain that responds to verbal directions  

a little while ago I bought a big pack of sight word flash cards with cartoons on to help make associations with the word and so help remember it.  We were doing really, really well with the first set, she was enjoying it, even asking to do it etc.  So how is it that I’ve lost the ****** things??????????  I have spent the entire day today gutting the bedroom as I thought that the last time I saw them was when we were playing with them on the bed so they may be up here.  I was supposed to be plotting out my next TMA as mum and dad had Aprilia for the day but no, I was spring cleaning, and to no avail (well, obviously not to no avail, I do now have clear floor in the room and a lot of clean laundry that’s been piling up all neatly put away but that’s not the point is it :-X)  I am absolutely and unspeakably pee-ed off with myself and may even sulk for a while.

Now, what’s the betting that if I order a new set (about £30 with posting) that the first set will magically turn up again….. 

 UPDATE

Cough, shuffle, blush……

(whispers) found them!  In the basket with all the "school" books   You see I was looking for a brown jiffy type bag and they were in a white Tyvek type USPS bag nestled down under all the other detritus that gets stuffed into the basket.  Ah well, I have a much tidier bedroom and it did provide a very good diversion from studying