T-Bird Anni Rides Again

If you knew that your child, and 4 other children in the same Rainbow unit, was not going to make it to the first meeting back, would you mention it to the Guider?  Or just mention it to the parent helper the day before, in passing, and leave it at that?

Only, you see, if I’d known I was only going to have 4 girls I would have cancelled the meeting and enjoyed the sunshine.  But anyway, it’s quality not quantity that counts and we had a good time anyway! 

I’m sure other stuff has been happening, has definitely been some learning stuff going on but can’t quite remember what (probably a Bond NVR paper or two, hey, it’s compulsary at the moment isn’t it?) and some gardening stuff but not at the kind of pace I want due to the rain and a delay on getting the brush cutter fixed (Duke finally managed to sort it this evening, so guess what I’m doing tomorrow afternoon….)

it was decided that, due to Duke not actully being out today, we would "do something as a family"  and cinema seemed to be favourite.  So we shelled out ££££££££££ to go and see Monsters vs Aliens in 3D!  Almost twice the price of going elsewhere to see it in normal format but you know, I suspect it was worth it just for the added wow factor.  Unlike the old 3D films, Duke could actually get the effect with the new technology (or is it because he now has specs that at least partly correct the apauling imbalance between his 2 eyes….) so he was a happy boy too.  I have to day, I think the film would stand up perfectly well without the extra effect, it’s a good family film, but the 3D really made it fabulous.

Today we also sowed peas and comfrey on my patch and Duke planted spuds in tubs on his patch.  We need to sort out where the runner beans are going sooner rather than later as they are all getting going nicely now and I need to remember where I put the carrot seeds so I can get them going too! And he needs to mend the brush cutter so we can discover Aprilia’s patch…. it’s currently under a load of brambles that the electric strimmer can’t cope with.  She has no idea what she wants in her patch, and this year I suspect it won’t grow a lot as it’s pretty poor soil, so we are thinking thick layer of manure, weed supressant matting and a random selection of big pots with flowers and herbs for this year and then see how it looks next spring!

Duke inherited a nearly new phone off Rick (hmmm, really I should work out a fake name for him, doesn’t seem right having a real name mixed in with all our fake ones!) a little while ago which meant that the phone that he inherited off Rick a few years ago was going spare (yeh, I know, we have some really good friends!)  Considering that mine is limping along with a dying battery, I jumped at it and have spent the day playing with it, trying to work out how it all works!  I like it… but I want to tart it up with a new fascia or two.  You see, there are 3 I really like, and they are sooooo cheap and if I had a few different ones I could dress it up depending on where I’m going and what I’m wearing…. OH Lord!  Somebody stop me!!!!!  Next it will be matching phone sox and little dangly things hanging on it……

We were out late on Tuesday (Red Cross stuff) so Aprilia slept late yesterday and was droopy.  She’s got a bit of a cough and although she’s not *poorly* she’s not really *well* either, it’s probably a growth spurt, it ususally is…..  Anyway.  I left her to droop for the morning, mainly listening to HP5 on audio book (gotta love Mr Fry)  and playing DS games and was just about to start trying to chivvy her up when she strode into the room fully dressed.  Aparently she had realised that "if Monster arrived by surprise and saw me like that he wouldn’t be impressed"    She also tidied up her bedroom sufficiently that if said paragon of home educated cuteness should happen to arrive they would have space to play.

And in case anyone is wondering…… Monster lives about 6 hours away from us…… so yeh, his mum could just happen to be passing really couldn’t she????  Sigh, I think we can officially confirm she has one huge crush on that boy.  

Over the past 2 days we have finished the very last of Sonlight 1, romped through a revisit of "A year of Miss Agnes" plowed through half of The Gladiators of Capua (Roman Mystery) plodded through half of a Letts Revise Maths book (she wasn’t convinced about the fractions but I think we got there) and rattled through half a Stile Maths Numbers book. 

All of this was done in the garden.  In the wonderful spring sunshine.  Whilst I got sunburnt knees  which are still a little tender!!!!  And yes, I am now using the Factor 50 which I had confidently assured Aprilia was really not necessary in April

I’ve also rotovated my veggie patch, re-planted my rhubarb crown (it split, Aprilia’s part of it is still in a tub waiting for us to sort out her patch properly, that could be today’s job actually), lovingly tended the seedlings in the greenhouse and written about a quarter of my next TMA.

Photos should follow once I can find the cable to download them off the camera.

Today’s plan is more of the same, there was an invite to a craft place for the day but really, why on earth would I want to pay money to be indoors on a sunny day when I can sit in my back garden for free and push on with learning stuff without any whining from SAD child?

I’m a bit off balance just now and grip is slipping in lots of ways but I’m just about hanging on in there.  This may go some way to explaining the randomness of this blog!!!

Today I took out some of my frustration on some poor inocent weeds that were  in my veggie plot.  Now, if I had been thinking, I would have taken before and after pics, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t so you can’t see just hwo vicious I got!  I did feel a little better afterwards though, and I do now have quite a bit of bare soil to rotovate manure into ready for my veggies!

I also dried 3 loads of washing so we all have clean clothes!  Phew!  Oh, and did the shopping that I just could not face doing on Friday so we now have such luxuries as milk and bread although I don’t have a lot of idea about menus for hte week as the rest of the shopping was alarmingly random.

This evening Aprilia has again insisted on maths before bed.  She rattled through another full section of the book, on place value, with only one major difficulty - the concept of "before" and "after" seem to be slightly alien to her.  In fact, on further investigation, many of these "time scale things" seem to have passed her totally by.  This is one of those times when she totally floors me.  But it does explain why she struggles so much with sequencing and with the passage of time in general, they really do not mean a thing to her.  Hmmmm.

I also realised yesterday that if one needs smaller jeans then, in all probablility one needs smaller smalls!  This was a step in logic that had totally passed me by until I had to run down the side of a race track and felt an alarming degree of drooping going on…. and was instantly grateful that I wear trousers on duty not a skirt…… ps: 

despite never having done anything like a "literacy hour" on a weekly let alone a daily basis, and despite the fact that she needed to have the paper read to her (which is allowed, it’s not a reading test) Aprilia "scores" a level 5c in "language" using the leveling paper used by the local secondary schools.  This is what they would expect of an 11 or 12 year old.  Yeh, I think home ed works, don’t you?  I "scored" a 7c by the way, which is sort of A level ish standard which is pretty good considering I never did understand such gramatical concepts as the harder questions on the paper expect you to answer!

When I claimed yesterday that Aprilia had feigned illness all day yesterday, it would appear I was accusing her falsely.  She had D&V in the night but felt much better this morning, whereas, of course, I felt like death having had to sooth her troubled brow all night in between listening to Duke snore like a warthog whilst I tried to snooze….. I can recomend Peltor ear defenders for escaping such decibels although it does make it harder for your poorly girlie to wake you up……

But anyway, today we have done various workbooky bits, I have done a bit more of my course adn she has covered herself and the bathroom in lurid pink paint. 

Oh, and she discovered that kitchen cosmetics can be quite fun, I made a body scrub and "honey wax", then she "helped" me inflict agony on myself by waxing my legs.  By helped I mean she kept sticking her finger in the "wax" which is made from honey, sugar and lemon juice, and declaring it to be very tastey!!!!  And suggesting that really I shouldn’t stop at the knee but carry on up because I may just be wearing a nice summer skirt and forget to wear underwear and if my skirt blew up everyone would wonder why I had hair "there" and not on my legs….. I pointed out that, unlike here, I NEVER forget my knickers in the morning!!!!!!!  (and omited to point out that if I had forgotten them then really it’s not going to matter if I’ve had a full Brazillian or not , people are still going to need councelling…..)

Well, not surprisingly Aprilia didn’t make it through the night at Nelly’s, she was home before 9pm though which is better than dragging me out of bed like last time!  I’m a bit at a loss for how to deal with all this really, she’s getting more "homesick" as time goes by, she’s had sleepovers in the past with my mum and dad and with Nelly quite successfully and last year’s pack holiday, as the youngest girl there, she settled to sleep every night and barely came near me at all.  Over the past year though she’s found it impossible to stay at Nelly’s (usually saying that it’s because Nelly doesn’t shut up at bed time but this time they never even got to bed, she just decided she couldn’t do it) and this year’s pack hol she was on the home sick list and was one of the hardest to settle every night, was the second most cuddle demanding child there and was generally quite unsettled despite me being there.

Ah well.  She’s feigned illness for most of today, being droopy and disinterested but not looking remotely ill.  I think she just wanted a totally "down time" sort of day, so I bobbed in and out, did loads of stuff in the garden, did housey stuff, finished listening to Ode Less Travelled (which is very good but should come with an X rating!!!) and moved onto the next bit of my course. 

Also battled with various bits of oddball technology.  You see, I have a very wonderful Palm LifeDrive, like a PDA but with more brains, a second hand mobile camera phone, a steam-powered Dell laptop with a broken CD drive but without in-built Wi-Fi or USB and a Vista PC. The Palm won’t dock with Vista, it’s obsolete and Palm aren’t planning on making a driver to allow Vista to play with it so I dock it to my laptop.  But really you should have an internet connection whilst docking the Palm so it can update but I can’t because I can either have the WiFi card in the slot or the USB card in the slot   I’m looking at getting a USB WiFi thingie so I can do 2 things at once!!!  And the second hand phone is an oddball too because it also being obsolete, it doesn’t have a Vista driver and I can’t download a driver to the laptop although if I can ever get the external CD drive to work I could install one.... meanwhile, I have 70ish pics on my camera phone… it won’t talk to the bluetooth on my Palm (known issue, resolved for later Palms  ) and doesn’t have a data card of any sort to save them to.  Sigh, life would be so easy if I had all new stuff, but really, I do love my Palm, there isn’t anything like it for anything other than very silly money, the laptop cost me nothing, it was a cast me down from a mate, the phone cost £5 several years ago and is perfectly servicable and the Vista PC was the OU provided one and some of the software on it will only work on Vista.  So I’m "stuck with it" really! 

Never mind!  In the grand scheme of things, it’s hardly a big problem if technology doesn’t play is it?? Life goes on as they say!

Aprilia has been at Nelly’s all day and is making an attempt at a sleep over tonight on the grounds that she can slurp melatonin laced hot chocolate and hopefully actually SLEEP!  I’m expecting a phonecall in another 2 hours……

This has left me with some free time.  Yes, I know, aren’t I the lucky girlie!  I’ve nearly finished listening to The Ode Less Travelled and have pootled about generally in the garden.  Then Duke came home and dragged me kicking and screaming to the garden centre and *forced* me to buy strawberry plants, seed potatoes, onion sets, some asparagus shoots (not to enjoy this year sadly, it says to leave it alone this year to establish), various seeds and bags to grow the strawberries in.  Just need to get growbags now and I’ll probably get them delivered to save my poor car!

I’ve made the decision to container garden again mainly this year, from experience, spuds are much better in bags than in clay, as are carrots.  Onion and asparagus appear to need well drained soil too so they need tubs and lifting strawberries off our cold clay soil does seem a good idea!  So, the plan is that I’ll put last year’s compost onto the soil and then lay weed matting down for this year and pop tubs ontop, then at the end of the year I’ll chuck the contents of the tubs on top of the compost, rotovate it, add in this year’s compost (which, I know, won’t be fully finished but never mind) and cover it back up again in the hopes that next spring the beds will be in a reasonable state for most things although root crops will have to stay in tubs for a few more years methinks.