T-Bird Anni Rides Again

Don’t try this if you have sensitive hearing!

Created by Train Horns

I’ve just tried to post a comment on this latest article about home education, which, fair enough does end on a positive note, but does have some inaccuracies within it but come up with a small problem.  Even after joining LiveJournal in order to be allowed to post, it still wont’ let me!  I’m cross i am!

I go off to Rainbows at roughly the same time there is a shift change at the local Police Headquarters.  I try to leave just a little before 4 to avoid most of the chaos but don’t always manage and anyway, it’s a bit of a trade off between being really very early for Rainbows for the sake of an easier exit off the estate vs being in good time for Rainbows and getting peeved about the volume of traffic.  Today I would have been in good time, but as I stopped half way accross the main road to join the traffic (there’s a central reservation type thing so that you can get half way then throw yourself into the traffic when you see a gap) I sort of lurched forward with a rather loud bang.  Now, being a dizzy bint I thought I’d stalled (despite foot still being on clutch   ) but then realised that stalling isn’t loud :wall: So, pulled through the traffic to the side of the road, got out and sure enough my car’s rear end has been re-modelled   The lad that hit me fessed up and repeated that it was all his fault and how sorry he was several times (to the point I was beginning to worry about concussion!!) and we swapped details.  No one else stopped although several people must have seen it happen.  Did I mention that the traffic is from the Police HQ?  Does that not speak volumes for our caring Police force?

So then I was late for Rainbows.  But never mind, I was still there before my parent helper who rushed in all flustered and apologising a few minutes after me, having been stuck in traffic.  Rainbows went well, we were doing Thinking Day stuff which I’m going to save and use again as it’s pointless re-inventing the wheel when non of this lot will be still with me next Thinking Day! In fact I’m trying to ammass a stack of ready to go meetings on various themes but I’m sort of hampered by lack of storage space really…

Duke came and looked at the car and declared it to be a fair bit of damage - door is buckled, there’s paint gone all the way down to the metal along the impact line, the lower hinge appears to be stuffed as the door drops a few inches when you open it (makes closing the back door a total pain as now I have to lift it up and push at the same time), rear bumper is cracked, the wrap arround bit of bumper on my side is cracked all the way down and the sill is bent in, thankfully the hugely difficult to get exhaust missed the impact otherwise I’d be really very very hacked off, although I may still get to that state if any of the bits are equally rare as hens teeth (NEVER EVER buy a brand new model of car because after 12 months they will change the design just a bit and yours will be obsolete and ridiculously hard to get replacement body bits for!)

This evening I braced myself to start sorting out the insurance, phoned Direct Line who took the details and said "no problem, you will get a phonecall within 2 days to sort out when you want it taking for repair and what hire car you are getting"  so that was nice!  Aparently we don’t mess about getting multiple quotes these days, it’s just dealt with.

And all of this was made oh so much easier to cope with because Aprilia was at Nelly’s so wasn’t in the car and in fact is still at Nelly’s as she’s decided to have another go at a sleep over but this time she’s in a different room from Nelly so I’m hoping that she will therefore sleep! 

we were at an LEA orgnaised home ed get together in the monring where several of us mobbed a "potential home educator" who was going to see out the rest of this school year but considering not send her son to secondary school.  I suspect he didn’t go to school this morning…. or ever again…..I’m not sure that one of the LEA people didn’t help her write the deregistration letter!

In the afternoon we were busy but I’ve no idea what we actually did, then it was violin lesson and Aprilia progressed to putting fingers down to change notes.  Twas a simple thing for her when shown by a teacher, she just wouldn’t beleive me wehn I showed her and declared it too hard!  So she’s all fired up on that again now.

Today I have mainly sneezed and coughed whilst doing housework at half speed (nowt new on that then)  We did maths and English (sorry, numeracy and literacy) via various games and she played on Brain Assist on DS so I declared her educated.  Education was furthered by her watching The Hairy Bikers on DVD after tea although she was nearly "over educated" on that, thankfully I distracted her whilst the talked in a rather earthy manner about the dish they were served in Vietnam (the genitals of some beast or other….)

Now I’m wondering about planning a different meeting for Rainbows tomorrow, one that doesn’t involve me talking much if at all at any point, and preferably one taht requires me to sit and smile benignly from the corner of the room whilst the little darlings get on with something deeply profound and educational at the other end of the room.  Weeks like this I REALLY wish I had another Guider to help me out!

but really, what posessed me to do an OU degree? 

Sigh, you will bear with me on this won’t you? 

I’ve just not got going with this one, I do usually go all gun ho at the beginning but this one has had me wobbling from day one.  I’ve not got the set texts on tapes, just the course books so the utterly huge volume of reading (full novel every 1-2 weeks plus the course text to go with it, and you are supposed to read each text more than once, first time to get familiar with it, second time to really study it) expected in the first half of the course (the second half is much lighter on teh reading) is down to me, well, okay, you know I’m just not going to do that don’t you?  But all that hunting on LibraVox has taken time and it’s not the exact versions and doesn’t have the right page numbers obviously.  Niggly but being of wobbly nature it creates a sort of inertia, I know that I’m a slow reader so I wait for the tapes only to find I don’t get the stuff I need and rather than just getting on with it I wibble.  tut. 

So, now TMA 1 is due on 5th March and I reach for the books to find what format they want this year (every course seems to like stuff presented differently, drives me nuts but at least if they are nicely prescriptive you know what to send) and find…. nothing.  A bit of vague wooly stuff about waht they don’t want but you have to plow through the "sample TMA" to see what it is they are after.  Hmph.  Nother minor niggle I know but just more to make me bothered about the whole thing because I like a bit of clear guidance. 

And of couse I’m paranoid about getting delayed with the TMAs because this year I don’t have the facility to send TMAs via the web which gives you right down to the last seconds before the deadline to get it to the tutor, I have to post it, meaning I need to post it at least 1 day before the deadline.  Now, most normal people would therefore just get on with it and be sure to be done in time.  Me?  Time pressure makes my brain freeze. 

REally, what on earth posessed me to want to do a degree         Oh yeh, to show people I can and to show Aprilia that if I can she bloody well can too.  Better get on with it then… off to curl up with the MP3 player of Pride and Prejudice then…Normal service will resume soon

This morning we had kung fu, Aprilia’s normal teacher was away on holiday so the kids had the adult’s usual teacher and we had one of our senior members who also does lots of other combat sports and decided to make use of the nicely padded play area and do a bit of jujitsu with us for a change!  I was pretty surprised to see I can still remember how to break fall 20 years after giving up judo (got fed up of being black and blue, I was rubbish at it but did enjoy it!) I seemed to be the only one not going "oof!" on landing   I’m not used to being better than anyone on a Saturday morning, I’m usually that daft woman they all humour and who makes for an interesting training partner by reason of being much closer to the floor than them and making them aim their punches much more carefully and defend against much lower attacks

From there we went to the library because we forgot yesterday, and traded up to the next Harry Potter audio book and got home to find 2 lovely bright orange wallets on the doormat - our first audio books from Calibre - which was very exciting although Aprilia’s randome allocation weren’t as thrilling as mine, I’ve set her up with a requested reading list which should mean that the next ones are more to her taste although I do want her to get random books too so she gets to encounter a few different authors.

Then this afternoon I swapped with Duke at Oulton adn sat drinking tea all afternoon doing very little, ah, bliss.  We swapped because Duke was supposed to be on call with Red Cross tonight but found out that they had given him the wrong date but never mind I got a quiet afternoon and Aprilia got some Daddy time.

And this evening we have sat very comfortably with laptops watching telly.  Very pleasant day.

We are meeting up with some peeps tomorrow at a play place supposedly in Chester tomorrow.  This was the reason for the ear defenders as it’s half term which means noise and noise means stressed girlie but she wanted to go because it is suposed to be really good.  She was much excited about the whole thing and wanted to go and see what it was like before the meeting up which I figured was a good idea as new place AND new people may be a bit too much for her, so off we went. Well, it’s not in Chester, its the other side of Chester, in Flint which is Wales (adn I didn’t have my passport with me   )   and it’s not entirely being true to it’s website either.  They claim that they don’t do junk food and witter on about organic and fresh and so on which appealed to me.  So, I was obviously imagining the sugar free squash then was I?  And because the squash was sugar free I had to buy an expensive juice drink for Aprilia as they dont’ sell cans (she’s safe with 7 UP, it has real sugar in it not nasty artificial stuff)  They do sell Walkers crisps but not chocolate or cheapy biscuits, just organic posh choc and expensive cookies that didn’t really strike me as being all taht fresh.  But the play frame looks good and she seemed to like it well enough.  She didn’t much like the clientel mind you, she really doesn’t quite know how to deal with "normal" children’s behaviour (pushing, shoving, being mean etc)

We have sampled quite a few grippies over the past couple of years trying to find something that helped Aprilia hold a pen right and to make holding a pen more comfortable for me.  LDA do a mixed pack with

a short chunky little thing which flares my fingers out a little too far (well, okay, it probably puts them in a perfectly good position but it doesn’t feel like that to me) and which totally baffles Aprilia

a longer slimmer one which puts fingers in the right places and is reletively successful for Aprilia but if you use it on a hexagonal pen you can still feel the ridges which is one of the things that really "bothers" me (think  nails dragged down backboards for degree of botheredness)

and a squidgy triangular one which is rather lovely and fits Berol pens perfectly (the other 2 will only fit normal pencils cheap disposable sized pens)  but for some reason just doesn’t seem to float our boats when it comes to actually writing with them

The LDA pack also comes with a couple of those triangular pencils which she does rather like and are decent quality pencils.

Then I picked up the mixed pack that Crossbow put together.   This has a lot more choice in it and comes in a dinky little plastic box which instantly won favour as being a handy place to store all these odd little bits of plastic rather than them migrating all round the house like the contents of the other pack did as they didn’t come in any sort of container!  This pack has some really odd looking beasties in it.  They don’t have their own pages on Crossbow, all the grippies are on this page.

 the Triangular grip (and jumbo version) are hard plastic triangles, which neither of us liked

a similar but "softer" version is the Air grip which is a more flexible plastic and was quite passable, wouldn’t like to write an essay with it but could certainly happily jot notes with it and it doesn’t look so wierd that if anyone borrows your pen they will look at you like you’ve escaped the funny farm.

the Stubby is very like the short chunky one from LDA

the Solo is a bigger version of the above which I found much better as it doesnt’ flare you fingers out so far but wasn’t *quite* what I was looking for.

 the comfort one is just a nice foamy bit of stuff to make your pencil feel a bit softer under your fingers, doesn’t alter your grip at all but if it’s just down to not liking the hardness or whatever of a pen or pencil then these are lovely.  And again, no one will look at you like you’ve escaped the funny farm.

Teh ridged comfort is (in my not terribly humble opinion!!)  utterly horrid, but then ridges and edges are utterly horrid as far as I’m concerned so that’s hardly a surprise. 

Then you get the Ultra ones.  These are really wierd looking critters.  You would definitely get funny looks using one of these as a "grown up" but then, I wear funny glasses so why not have a funny pen grip too?  Your fingers sort of drape round them and there are no sharp edges etc.  They are made of really stretchy silicone stuff which means they will fit normal pencils and Berol type pens (wich a bit of soap to ehlp them slide onto the pen) unlike most of the rest of them.  The only complaint Aprilia had was that they felt a bit sticky at first but a quick wash cured that. 

the "normal" ultra is reletively small and just supports your fingers to just past the first knuckle to shape them round into a good grip.  they stop Aprilia trying to cram 2 fingers on the top of the pen (because the second finger just can’t reach round the "bulb" of the grippy so just curves naturally down underneith) and stop her clamping her thumb tightly against the side without flaring them out or looking awkward. 

The large version is huge and pretty much supports the whole fingers.  I liked it but it was too big for Aprilia which is fair enough, she is smaller than me and it "fitted" me perfectly. 

the cross-guard ultra is possibly the wierdest thing I’ve ever seen!  it’s the same basic design as the normal sized ultra but with a sort of T-bar added to the top that your thumb and first finger snuggle under.  Aprilia described it as like being hugged.  She really, really likes this one, as do I, but I will say that unless the person using it actually likes being compressed then it will probably be utterly awful as it really does snug down onto the fingers but as Aprilia seems to need to be squeezed and compressed at times it really hits teh spot for her.  So that’s what we will be getting for her to use for now but I’ll be keeping hold of all the other ones as I fully expect her to want something different in a year or so!

the ear defenders arrived.  now, when I say they are PINK, please don’t think for a moment that I am exagerating.  They are PINK!!!!  And she loves them, and they fit her perfectly, much better than the cheap from Halfrauds that she’s used in the past with mixed success, and they are really very effective and and and… oh, must get out more if a pair of ear defenders can get me this excited!!!!  Trouble is now I want a pair too!!!!  No, I don’t need them (although it could make studying in noisy play barns a possibility) but hey!

Other news today, Aprilia has decided that she doesn’t want the coloured glasses, she would rather stick with overlays.  This was after I accidentally let slip how much they will cost (really must look over my shoulder before imparting such knowledge to other half)  Considering we regularly lose her normal specs (thank goodness for spare pairs!) she is just too worried about losing really expensive ones or worse, leaving them on the floor for Daddy to stand on (and yes, that has happened… more than once!) So, much as I know taht the specs are better for me than overlays ever were, it’s her decision, she likes to have the line to read along and she likes the comfort of knowing that really, they aren’t too expensive so when they get mangled she can just get the next one out of the packet without fretting about cost.  I feel a shade guilty that she even has to consider that as an issue but will admit to a small amount of relief as it means the OU money can go on other things (books for my course maybe??)

 Plans for the rest of the day include her making "pizza" for tea (we don’t have tomato puree on it so it’s not really pizza is it) followed by fruit salad so she will finish the last bit of her Cook advanced (and so we have a really scrummy yummy tea, it really is one of my favourites)  Then there will hopefully be a bit of learning stuff and a bit of craftying stuff and a bit more tidying up in her room as somehow her room is the only one now where anyone is getting any little bites.  I did wonder about just shutting the cat in there for a week but maybe a thorough clean and mist with tea tree would be a better option!  And I need an early night as Whiskers woke me up with demands for stroking at silly o’clock and I didn’t get back to sleep (and she didn’t get stroked either!!!!)

just watching this now… prize quote so far, speaking as if it’s some strange archaic idea "reading and writing were considered seperate skills"  No, really? 

Lots of sweeping statements and not a lot of how reading actually does make us "modern", bit like the one the other week about why reading is so important which really didn’t break any news either.  Not quite sure waht I was hoping for but certainly less fluff!

But anyway.  Today has been a good one in teh main.  Expensive, but good.  Having bought pink ear defenders and "hello Kitty" speakers so she can listen to MP3s without messing with headphones I then went for tyres.  £140 later I had a full set of new, legal ones!!!  Whilst still reeling from that I did the shopping and then went and lay down in a darkened room to recover

This afternoon was a small dyslexia event locally which the LEA lady had invited me to.  I declined the seminar part as they were both aimed at secondary age facilities although aparently I should have gone to the assistive technology one as it was very hands on (or as Coral put it "lots of stuff to play with") but I did spend some time talking with various people and came home with various "grippies" for pens to see if anything was going to get her to hold a pen more happily (a really odd looking one has won great aproval) and some "egg timers" which have been a big hit as somehow racing the timer to put stuff away is much more fun and "only" having to do puzzles for 5 minutes is much less daunting than having a set number of questions to complete.  Hoping that the novelty of timers won’t wear off for some time.

this afternoon she read to me, did several simple sudokus and multiple pages of times tables.  Oh, and rediscovered her floor and her bed which seemed to have dissapeared under masses of clothes and cuddlies.  so, yes, a good day!