T-Bird Anni Rides Again

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!

Brownies started back today.  She’s been counting down teh days for weeks.  I forgot.  How rubbish am I??????

In my defence, we had a busy morning and Duke was late home so I lost track of time.

this morning I had her at the doctors as she has a large mole that has suddenly started itching.  She got all tearful about the whole thing whilst we were waiting, didn’t want to go in to the Dr, was frightened about what he would do etc. Thankfully he thinks it’s okay but wants to keep an eye on it.

So, in celebration for it not being a full leg amputation job  I took her to soft play for a while before going to the library, grovelling for being a day late and paying my 13p fine!  Then we found they had 2 more HP audio books in stock and grabbed them and I will remember to take them back on time……

This afternoon she listened to the dulcet tones of Mr Fry whilst I hunted for interesting but easy tatting patterns, I found a lot of very lovely stuff but not sure how much of it is for her and how much is really for me!

By way of educational stuff, SL is still ticking over, Mrs PiggleWiggle has been added to the great book list so I suspect there will be very little of SL 1 to sell on when we finish (no shocks there really)  She was actually interested in the history page today, it was Stonehenge which is something vaguely relevent, up til now we have been in the Middle East (cradle of civilisation and all that) which really hasn’t floated her boat but at least it’s only a quick read.  She did a 10 minute test in about half the required time amid much giggling and then a page of Stile where she reminder herself that reading is getting easier.  I do like Stile, just wish I could lay hands on the Maths part at some point before it becomes redundant by dint of being too easy for her….. In fact, I’m tempted to get someone else to order it for me and see if they have any more luck!  We also finished MuddleEarth which was fab, I’ve really enjoyed it and she wanted me to start it again straight away!

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!)

When I ordered the Fimo etc from Merry I forgot something very important…. bear in mind that the Fimo was for making keyring fobs with Rainbows (finger print impression ones for their dads for Father’s Day) you would think I’d remember to get the keyring bits too wouldn’t you?  Well, no, actually, you all know me far too well to think I’d do that…and my local craft shop don’t have enough of them, I don’t now have time to go up to HobbyCraft as Aprilia is due home from a sleep over some time in the next hour and once she’s home it would make it a huge mad dash (it’s 3/4 of an hour each way, 10 min dash across a garden centre to the shop itself and no guarentee they will have them once I get there…)

Looks like the dads are getting fridge magnet fingerprints this year then! 

becuase I seem to use titles on a theme of best laid plans and all that way too often round here so they obviously deserve their own section!

Scarce had I finished the last blog than I got a phonecall from Dad, Aprilia had tummy ache and needed mummy right now.  So off I flew to collect a droopy, scarlet, close to tears child.  Mind you, she was in a stuffy room, way hotter than we hvae the house and mum had insisted she fasten her cardi as aparently it looked silly unfastened and a teeshirt is not suitable atire for this early in the year.  Funny you know, within 5 minutes of being home, divested of aran weight (ie really warm) cardi, she started to perk up.  She’s had tummy ache on and off for days but has today said she is a little constipated so I force fed her fruit and gallons of water all afternoon to hopefully cure taht one!  It also turns out that mum has been bullying her again.  She got a book out for her to read and didn’t give her any help at all, just kept saying break it down into bits, which really upset her.  I’m glad I didn’t know that until after we had left otherwise I would have probably ended up being struck off the will again.  Aprilia is so very, very close to gaining a bit of reading confidence adn if that bully has f-ed it all up again I swear I will not be responsible for my actions!

So, no studying.  Not much crafting done either.  ho hum. 

But on the plus side, we did stories and a page of Stile where she showed off by reading the words inside her head and doing the whole page in about 10 seconds.  Not that she can read or anything……