T-Bird Anni Rides Again

Excited child+tired mummy=? 

We are on the countdown to Bounce and Brownie camp.  So she is excited and wants the time to go faster and her plan for this to happen it to run at life at the speed of light.  This is exhausting to watch!  Let alone when she tries to drag you along with her! 

Unfortunately the technicalities of camp preparation seem to be passing her by.  For example, underwear.  She has many, many pairs, alas today when I asked her to count 8 pairs into her bag she saw fit to tell me her underwear drawer is empty and has been now for a few days (so, yes, she’s been going commando!)  This is odd really as the washing bags are all empty too.  A brief investigation of the floor seemed to clarify where the problem lay and I flew into a grumpy strop about how unfair it was that she couldn’t even manage to do just that one little chore of placing her dirty clothing into one of the 3 washing bags directly outside her bedroom door.  It wasn’t pretty.

I took myself off into the garden to check over the Hobbit Hole rather than further savage my rather contrite child.  I had been planning on taking the little tent and had already satisfied myself that I knew where the poles, groundsheets, bedrooms and pegs were for it, I even went to the effort of replacing some of the guylines with better, longer ones to reduce the flappiness, I am always convinced that flappiness is a prelude to flying away, I have no evidence to support this but still, I don’t like flappy tents, especially ones I am trying to sleep in.  However, I have just found out that the toilets on the site close at 11pm and I’m not fond of al fresco wee-ing unless it’s an emergency, so I’m taking the portapotti.  Which means I need to take the big tent as I really don’t fancy sharing a bedroom with the potti!  I had forgotten how down right heavy the Hobbit Hole is!  I was briefly tempted to just go and buy a lat tent and go with the original plan of small tent but with an outside loo (!) but then I decided that actually, a tent with enough height to safely cook inside may be an attractive prospect if we get a downpour like this morning!

I’d hoped to let her vent off some energy at an event on the common this afternoon but alas all taht did was make me even more grumpy!  You see, it was billed as a family fun day and most of Winsford seemed to have turned out for it which is lovely apart from teh fact that they really hadn’t planned on much of a turn out by the looks of it.  There was 1 very small bouncy castle, 1 bouncy slide and an inflatable football game.  Then there were 3 people doing face painting, slowly.  And another 3 wrapping embroidery thread round bits of your hair.  The queues for everything were huge.  There was also the "main stage"  (the only stage if we are being honest!) which seemed to have been soundchecked for a significantly larger event, perhaps in the next town, or at the very least a convention of very deaf music fans.  I lasted just over an hour before insisting that we left.  To be fair she didn’t argue the point so either she can tell when I’m really not to be argued with or she was similarly peed off with it. 

Oh, and the cat woke me up at 6am by purring down my ear whilst getting comfortable on the warm bit of bed Duke had just got out of. 

So now I’m going to go and sulk with chocolate and a long cold drink and hope that tomorrow is better, or at least console myself that by teh end of tomorrow we will be nearly there, Friday being a day taken up with going to get my birthday pressie (a full tank of fuel) from mum and dad and then packing the car ready for the off. 

Hi, thanks for your comment, I’m pasting it here cos I only allow comments through for people who I actually know or at least whose blog I read (I had to ditch a blog once becuase of someone who looked like a genuine commenter but turned out to be a spammer, spoils it for the rest but there you go!)

Hi

I would love to know where you got the pattern for your kung fu trousers? i do kung fu with my sons, and we need to upgrade their uniforms 9the 14 year old is now three inches taller than he was a year ago) but we have changed schools and they WANT us to make our own uniformas, rather than buying them from somewhere and marking them up 200% and then selling them to us. i am in South africa so I was wondering if their is a pattern number? Simplicity 2001 or something, that would be kung fu pants?

 

The pattern I have is for a ladies suit, it is Simplicity pattern number  6656  BUT it doesn’t have the extreme ease allowance round the seat of the trousers that a commercially made suit would!  Also, the jacket is shaped to fit the female form so you would need to mess with it to fit your son (but as I needed it to be made to fit my very curvy form it was exactly what I needed!)

If you are looking for a *proper* pattern then I suspect you can’t go wrong with this one for the trousers (and make a wrap over Gi-style top if that is acceptable for your school) and if you need a proper Chinese jacket then this one would be perfect.  If we both start to get serious about Kung Fu I would probably buy those patterns but I’m not spending £30 on patterns and shipping to the UK at this stage!  I love the idea of the embroidery designs within the jacket pattern though, it does make the pattern very tempting!

Or of course, you could also check out what is available on EBay! 

well, at the time this was declared by my very generous offspring, I was in fact beyond cool and had dipped into down right chilly cos the sun had gone in, the wind had got up and I was still in my cossie the paddling pool with Aprilia watering the garden by the simple expedient of flailing around to see who could splash highest and fastest.  The next door kids thought this was somehow not apropriate behaviour for a mother!  I feel it is entirely apropriate as it was either that or do the housework, and whilst housework my win the attentions of neighbour mum, I find you start to not notice mess a lot faster than you start to not notice your child!

I bought a paddling pool yesterday to celebrate the fact taht we now have a garden fit to use one in!  It’s whale shaped with a tail that curves up over the top of it which provide endless oportunities for bouncing, leaping and sliding.  At one point there were 5 little girls in it which really was several too many!  There was also pre-camp shopping and a small ammount of packing done, mainly to ensure that she doens’t get any camp clothing grubby between now and Saturday morning.  I need to nip to the Guide shop this evening to get her First Aid badge as she has now passed that after a very light hearted but thorough testing by Lola and of course that has to be sewn on before weekend!  Then the gilet can be packed too.

Day was slightly spoilt by me being struck down with a migraine at tea time and needing to retire to bed with a succession of cold wet flannels over my face whilst waiting for the coctail of drugs provided by Duke to start working.  Mind you, I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t the thunder storm finally breaking that cured me!

Tim pointed out when I made reference to the St John having new uniform that it was one of those "here, let us take all your money to redesign your image for you" things.  So here is a picture of one of the many new outfits they will have inflicted on them.  Bear in mind your average volenteer is closer to my shape than the perfect 10 model in the pic and that they will need to be able to bend down in those trousers….. poor sods, gone are the days when the Red Cross could moan that it wasn’t fair how smart "The Opposition’s" uniform was!  We can’t decide (as a general concensus amongst the forum where it was posted up) if they designers thought it was for a NASCAR team or a new look for Asda.

Can’t post pics here, they seem to be protected in some way but here’s the link…

http://tinyurl.com/6dpplg

Between sewing all her badges onto the new uniform (I know, she could do it herself but I’m quicker and I wanted it done so I could pack it!) and making a jacket and trousers for me to see if a pattern was okay for making me a Kung Fu suit from, I ‘ve had a busy sort of day!  The Badges were sewn on in an aprooved (by Her Ladyship) manner so as not to look random adn I will admit that actually it does look smart compared to a sash dripping off her shoulder.  The jacket fits fine for a normal piece of clothing but isn’t right for what I really need it for so I’m glad I used really really cheap fabric to trial it with, I’ve not got round to finishing the trousers off yet, I got distracted in the middle of it all by the Horse Whisperer, which being on BBC had no adverts for me to whizz into the kitchen and sew through!!!  The upshot of the jacket I made though is that now I know  I need to add in a bit extra accross the back and a bit of extra depth in the sleeves, both easy jobs, I can make one for training in a nice tough fabric that will fit me properly and still cost less than buying one.  They only cost £13 but add on postage adn the fact taht I will have to shorten the legs significantly and possibly even send back the first one as no one can actually tell me how wide these things are and pay for yet another lot of postage each way….. it will be worth it honest! Then I’ll be "All the gear and no idea"  

when Aprilia started Brownies, she looked at all the options and decided what she liked.  She chose the smart-looking sash for putting her badges on rather than the more functional bodywarmer (or "gilet" as they insist on calling it) which is the other option for putting them on - you aren’t supposed to sew them on any other bits of uniform.   Her choice, not swayed by me cos actually I had no preference over "smart" vs "functional" but aparently she is deeply offended by randomly arranged badges on the gilets as displayed by most of the girls in her pack!!!!  (somewhat rich really coming from the girl wtih the randomly arranged bedroom but there you go!)

However, now she has 6 interest badges it’s occured to her that you can only fit about 14 onto a sash before it’s full, front and back!  Which, considering she is on a mission to get the lot (eep!), is a bit of a problem   Now obviously you can then start hanging them over the edges of the sash for a serated effect but that then makes things like special badges hard to jigsaw in.  And then, horror of horrors, she found out taht she can’t take the sash to Brownie Camp.  So now we have the gilet after all and I’ve got some sewing to do!

my uniform trousers are, by Red Cross standards, a fair fit.  by this I mean I can fasten them without there being a danger of them firing the button across the room if I relax and they don’t slice me in two.  I did ahve to add elastic to the waist so they don’t fall down but I can live with that, and I needed to chop several inches off the bottom of them cos it’s not their fault taht I’m a shortarse now is it.  Trouble is, for all that the waist was baggy, the legs are somewhat of a drainpipe cut which is fine for wandering about in, sitting down in and driving in but really definitely not fine (as I found out the hard way last weekend) for squatting down to deal with someone on the floor in!  If I were a bloke I’d be speaking in a very high pitched voice!  So, I decided a small adjustment to the undercarriage was in order and added in a nice little gusset.  But I’ve not quite got enough matching fabric to make it long enough for the widening to reach as low down the leg as in needs to so although I now have a very roomy middle (which no longer hangs quite right), it’s still way too snug just above the knee unless I remember to hitch them up as I squat which is just not practical if you ahve your mitts full of first aid bag!  I’m now contemplating unpicking all that and putting the middle back to how it was and buying a meter of something similar to add in a strip at the outside edge down both sides….  Life would be so boring if I was a perfect size 10 now wouldn’t it!

 It could be worse though, the St John have had a new image ready for them to provide first aid for the 2012 Olympics.  I can’t find the pictures now, think they are on a site only Duke can access (saw tehm lst night on his laptop) but oh my…… day glo yellow baseball caps anyone?  And beutifully tailored lines/sculpted polo shirts…. perfect for poster boys, not so perfect for your average shaped volenteer….. aparently the troops aren’t happy (and I can’t say as I blame them!)

was sent on a mission to M&S yesterday as they had a sale on kid’s clothes.  Came home with 3 "school summer dresses" reduced to £1 each, but because they were school wear they were also 3 for 2 so I got 3 lovely dresses for £2!!!!

For those of you who don’t know a lot about my past, this isn’t going to make a lot of sense, and I’m not about to fill in the details.

When I was told, a long long time ago that eventually time would heal old wounds I felt patronised, and misunderstood, surely this was me, scared for life, damaged goods.  But it does appear that they could have had a point you know.

When I last did martial arts it was agreed taht certain moves would NEVER be practiced on me because they produced a rather exagerated "fight and flight" reaction in me which was unpleasant to say the least for all concerned, not least the poor sod training with me and the thought of grading fights in Judo were enough to keep me as the longest standing yellow belt in the history of the club (hey, I LIKE yellow, it suits me okay? )  When one of a bunch of people I was with at a race meeting "pounced" on me from behind for a joke my arms flew back in a morro type reflex on hyper-drive and I blacked both his eyes… to his credit we are still friends now!  And so when I started Kung Fu I told Aprilia I may not take part for long as well, Mummy is really unfit you know, and a lot older than she used to be and it may not be suited to her but I’d give it a go just for her and if she liked it then I’d just fetch her and sit and watch if I didn’t like it myself.  So it came as rather a surprise to me really that on Saturday morning I ended up laughing about the fact that I was going to have a lot to explain to Duke as my neck looked like I’d got love bites after practicing escapes from strangleholds and head locks for just under an hour and I’d not significantly damaged any of the people I’d trained with in the process!