T-Bird Anni Rides Again

We have a Christmas tree in the living room, complete with lights, decs and tinsel.  I’m almost certain I said that this would happen AFTER the living room got made presentable, not during the tidying process, so how is it that the place is still in chaos and I have a gorgeous, bushy, vibrant REAL tree in my living room????  And a new set of decs to go with it (little wooden toys, the sort I lovingly look at and never buy because really they aren’t cheap and our artificial tree had enough decs to fill it already so I didn’t need them) which Duke picked up and gave me the "I’m not negociating on this one" look (you know, the one I turn on him fairly regularly and which, every now adn then he returns…..)  It’s a bright, happy, festive corner in my chaotic living room, it’s givien us a full day of family happy time chosing it, buying it and decorating it but really, I mean, it’s not even Advent yet, let alone Christmas!!!!!  Sigh, the cat had better not try climbing this one like she did the fake one last year……

And I finished A Christmas Carol with Aprilia at bedtime tonight, so that’s it now, it’s officially nearly Christmas isn’t it

Duke’s mum has a real fire.  It’s the only heating she has in teh house (the "central heating" ie 2 readiators are also run from the heat from the fire) and some years ago when I asked her what she wanted for Christmas she said "oh, I’d be happy with a nice big bag of sticks".  The next week I noticed taht our local petrol station sold them so I bought the biggest bag they had, gift wrapped it, lots of bows and ribbons, big "Fragile" notice on it (well, the paper would rip if it wasn’t carefully handled) etc.  I got her something else too but kept that hidden….. So we presented the gift with much fuss etc and she was ridiculously pleased with it, more pleased than with the "proper" present we had got her!  So now every year, as well as something "proper" she gets the biggest bag of sticks I can find.  This year Duke has taken it a stage further though, Oulton Park had to fell several trees and there’s enough wood to keep her warm until this time next year even if we suddenly plunge into and ice age I think!

Not long after the morning’s posting Duke arrived back from Oulton as the day had been cancelled due to fog so we got an unexpected family day!  We did a bit of Christmas shopping and have to report that credit crunch or not, the shops were BUSY!  Didn’t find the GloE bear wanted by a certain Little Lady (got it off Amazon instead, remind me why I battled through shops when Amazon will post stuff to me???) but did spot Boarders doing 3 for 2 on audiobooks so stocked up (Tom Sawyer, Wizard of Oz and Gruffallo and Friends) which will vary her bedtime snoozing company a little not to mention making long journies more pleasant, we like a good book in the car!  So taht’s her bought for now and Duke bought for, Dad is getting Traid Craft honey and sweeties at his request (last year he got a single jar of honey in with his pressie, this year he’s getting a 6 pack…..) Mum was getting hand dyed embroidery thread but alas the shop has gone bump so I’m struggling and Duke’s mum will get the now traditional bag of sticks (it’s a long story) and something else but not sure what yet, what do you get for an 80 year old who rarely goes anywhere and has enough crafting supplies to last her several life times?

Aprilia has promised to read the next of the Sonlight readers this week on teh promise of a vanity case she spotted in the toy shop.  Have to say it was really very lovely (folds out and has a mirror, lots of kid friendly make up, nail varnish etc) and if I wore make up I’ve probably love something like that with more grown up stuff in it!  After that we are back to the standard Fairy book bribes!  Actually, in the deepest recesses of my brain I vaguely remember making a deal for that case last time we were there and I do suspect it may have been for more than just what she’s offering to do for it…. hmmmmmm

but other than that I feel great!

Getting up for Kung Fu in the dark when it’s chilly isn’t fun but the lesson was very good and having the right  clothes now means that I’m not spending half my time hitching a worn out pair of joggers up and my sweatshirt down which is handy really.  Aprilia got to play with staffs today, I’m not letting her lose with a broom handle - that girl is lethal!  We got to practice harder stuff than we have been doing as aparently we are all getting too good at the "easy" stuff.  Actually it sort of took me by surprise how easy some of the stuff is now that seemed really hard to coordinate a few months ago, it would appear that I do, in fact, know my left from my right after all!

We aquired a little-ish pop up tent yesterday for Aprilia which she is now curled up in reading along to an CD/book set that has been in and out of favour a lot recently.  She is starting to really want to do this reading thing which I suppose means that we are getting somewhere!  The pop up is so that she can have a bit of a shelter if she has to come to Wombwell with us, usually she stays in the ambi with us but taht’s a bit awkward if we then have someone to treat so having her own space right next to us will be good.

I’m toying with putting the heating on but then I could just get back into bed and cure the cold and tired in one fell swoop couldn’t I…. only another hour and I could justify it as a siesta   Am supposed to be blitzing the living room so we can find space for a tree but it’s warmer up here than the living room!

Yesterday it was officially declared "nearly enough to Christmas" by dint of the fact that Aprilia watched Muppet Christmas Carol.  This sparked Duke to go and find the proper Dickens version which he checked from time to time to confirm that the Muppets were actually sticking to the story very well.  Obviously at this point Aprilia decided she wanted me to read it to her.  Funny kid, laps up the complicated and rich language of Dickens then asks for a Rainbow Fairy chaser….. I tend to forget that she still likes stuff for her own age because she enjoys the "grown up" stuff so much but there you go!

We have read a full week’s Sonlight in the last 2 days, the history is stuff that’s interesting her at teh moment so she’s happy to listen to more of it and the read aloud - The Wheel on the School - is one that she’s enjoying so rather than stopping mid-chapter like the schedule says we should, we are rattling through full chapters.  I like it when she gets all interested, the days go by so much quicker!  She’s also read through 2 weeks worth of the first Sonlight learning to read book (the Blue one for those taht know about these things)  Only 2 more "lessons" to go and we can finally put it back on the shelf, 18 months after opening it…… (there are 8 lessons in there altogether, each supposed to take a week……)

Cat and house are now free from uninvited guests by the way, and I have gone through next year’s calendar and marked on "treat cat" at the beginning of every month!  No way am I risking that again!  Aprilia is still really suffering because she scratched the tops of most of the bites so they all got sore and inflamed and she’s now covered head to toe in plasters to stop her doing it again.

Next week’s plan is mainly to blitz the living room to get it as tidy as the carpetted areas of the house (which were all blitzed so we could safely set candle traps) as Aprilia is desperate to get Christmas decs up.  I shall refrain from commenting about putting decs up this early and how hacked off I will be with them before Christmas day let alone Twelth Night becuase if it makes her help me tidy up I’ll put up with tinsel everywhere!

my very belated birthday pressie from Duke has arrived, a nice new Kung Fu suit (the original pressie was supposed to be a new silicone baking tray but despite Duke’s best efforts he never managed to find one)  Now, Aprilia’s is supposed to fit up to 160cm height and is a "budget" suit which tend not to be so generously cut and it *almost* fits me (I bust out of it a little…..) so I figured that one for someone 180 cm high would be spot on, nicely baggy and allow for a few extra mince pies…. trouble is it was ordered from a different supplier because I wanted a slightly different style (so at a quick glance we don’t get the wrong ones on!!!) and it’s not quite the same cut….. I mean, it’s an okay fit and will allow for a bit of shrinkage but not if I scoff all the pies it won’t!  Sigh, looks like that diet and fitness thing is looming after all then….

it appears to be breaking out all over the internet.  Never mind, I’m sure it will all blow over and we will go back to being perfectly happy to reduce our brains to mush watching TV, call our festivals whatever the heck we want to even if the original meaning of them is lost, deliberately changed or isn’t even part of our own set of beliefs and be quietly resigned to the fact that non-Catholics send their offspring to Catholic schools cos they are better than the local state ones and that Girl Guiding doesn’t allow atheists to be full members (cos they can’t make the full promise which has a bit about loving their god in it) but in the mean time I’m so glad I have a delete button on my keyboard!

 I too am grumpy.  But taht’s because I tried too hard at Kung Fu yesterday and I ache in places that I had forgotten I even had.  Being achey in a house with a small child who throws themself at you is not condusive to an even temper.  She has just sent me to my room to calm down….

Duke isn’t grumpy exactly but he is asking silly questions like "where am I supposed to put all these sweaters now they are clean?" adn not expecting answers like "well, if you have too many to fit in the 2/3 of the wardrobe taht’s yours then ther’s always the charity shop!"

Sigh

Well, obviously I slept later than I would usually without someone with cold hands coming and putting them on me to wake me up but…

other than that I

• sorted Duke’s socks, he has a lot of pairs now rather than a drawer of random socks.  It was alarmingly therapeutic
• sorted his underwear out too, and evicted several teeshirts from the drawer which could explain why it was so hard to fit his smalls in there!
• pulled out and sorted out all my clothes
• found our P60s and photocopied them so I could send off my application for next year’s OU course
• scanned the next non verbal reasoning paper and printed it bigger
• washed and pegged out multiple lines of washing
• cleaned the sink, drainer and kitchen window ledge  
• put a bag of clothes and the knitting machine on freecycle, the clothes are ones my mum gave me but really, I’m just not a viscose floaty skirt sort of gal, the knitting machine we really don’t have space for much as I would love to keep it.
• hunted unsuccessfully for the top to my water sprayer which I wanted to use to spray the carpets with soap and tea tree oil because the thought of using that awful overfragranced Bob Martin stuff again abhors me and Duke only did the bits he could see (so most of the carpets ie under beds etc didn’t get treated…)
• discovered that neat tea tree oil is instantly fatal to small jumpy bitey critters, shame I don’t have enough to douse the whole house with!

Prairie Poppins over at Handmade Homeschool has started a new feature - a quote adn a question.  this week it’s

“A multitude of small delights constitute happiness.” Charles Baudelaire

What small, common things delight you?  Have you stopped to notice them lately?

Now, I shall gloss over the fact that I thought that Baudelaire was a name fabricated for A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Actually I’ve been thinking about the little pleasures in life recently so this seems like as good a time as any to have a proper ponder on them, hmmm, I don’t have a catagory for ponderings on this blog, that’s an oversight….

It’s not a small thing but one thing that always utterly delights me is driving over the Woodhead (but then if you read my blog you already probably know that!)  It’s such a wonderful landscape and watching the seasons unfold month by month along that road is one of my reasons for enjoying making that trip!

Washing that has blown dry outdoors is one of those silly little things that makes me smile.  It smells so much fresher than drying indoors.

Looking at my "baby’s" sleeping face.  i mean, she’s lovely to look at all the time but there’s something about a sleeping child isn’t there?

Getting into a bed that is freshly changed, all fresh and new and lovely!  Makes wrestling with the duvet cover worthwhile!

The smell of corned beef hash simmering on the stove when I come in from Rainbows, it’s one of my all time comfort foods and Duke cooks it most Wednesdays.

Camping.  Okay, not a small delight but something as simple as pitching up our cheap, leaky Argos tent in the back garden and sleeping out there with Aprilia is something really special.  I suspect actually it’s a lot to do with the fact that we snuggle up with the book basket and have a monster story session and a bit of a girlie giggle and then I get to snuggle down next to her and watch her go to sleep.  Those moments are precious, she’s growing up fast.

Freshly baked cakes, or cookies, or scones, I’m not fussy really, just as long as it’s fresh baked!

Walking barefoot on grass

having time to read for pleasure, and having my wonderful specs that make it pleasureable not painful

The smell of fresh mown grass

Waking up refreshed from a good night’s sleep

My soft feather pillow, a recent indulgance but really really wonderful.

Friends, those I see regularly, those I see irregularly and those who are only names on a screen.

lots of other things too, may well come back to this one

No, really, I think she does!  Not only have I shut her out of the bedroom for the last few nights leaving her with no warm feet to sleep on but I’ve been vacuuming which makes an awful noise, and tidying up to leave her with less lovely piles of soft clean clothing to curl up on and brushing her and then today, just when the indignity of it couldn’t get much worse…. I go and squirt something cold and wet on the back of her neck….. she won’t come near me now!  Am hoping that between the overly scented powder that I’ve put on the carpets to kill what’s still there and the highly recomended flea drops we should be clear soon!

And currently spread all over Aprilia’s very clean, fragrant floor is the contents of my bribery drawer which has spurred her to work really hard this morning!  First she did the second half of a "non verbal reasoning paper" having taken several wailing attempts at doing the first half last week, it would appear that she needed a while for that bit of her brain to wake up   She’s worked through a full Stile Number book (pretty easy but involved reading number words and spotting number sequences etc which she’s not confident with although perfectly able to do) and 2 week’s worth of Sonlight’s blue reading book (which will mean nothing to most of you!) which has been sitting round for far too long.  It’s deadly boring you see…. but now that reading is beginning to click she can at least see that all she needs now is practice and then she’ll be rattling through those damned Fairy books that are ammassing on her shelves.

She’s currently having a bit of TV time which may signal the end of any structured bits for the day or could just be a bit of a rest before she sets to again.  I need to scan the next non verbal reasoning paper so I can print it off for her - it’s a bit small in the books, scanning it means I can increase the size by about 1/3 which makes all the difference when it comes to spotting differences etc. and means it can go onto yellow paper which does dreadful things to my eyes but is wonderful for her.  and I need to order some more reading rulers for her, the one and only yellow one that she has is getting mighty scratched, I’m amazed she can see any words through it!