musingsponderingsandrants

Parenting, profundities and humour

Author: sarahsmale

Hmm... about me...well three kids, a husband (not acquired in that order)... and a love of punctuation...
Project Management — October 20, 2015

Project Management

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Actually that was my face...
Actually that was my face…

There is currently a big black cloud on my horizon. Not literally, although after I put my washing on the line earlier it did go quite dark, no I mean metaphorically.

And the reason is the impending Year 6 Local Environmental Issue project. A forty page plus project on a local environmental issue of your choice. Quite self explanatorily.

Last year when Eldest was in Year 6 we got through the winter term relatively unscathed. Rugby took its toll and in early January his Senior school entrance exams loomed. Although the school were at pains to point out that they were just a formality.

And so he went back to school in January on fine form. Looking forward to the football term although not those exmas. And then on that first day back the school emailed out a letter.

The letter outlined the project that needed to be undertaken during the next term. At first I was confused, did they mean after Easter? Then it dawned on me that the letter was late and should have come out before the Christmas break.

And my heart sank.

The letter pulled no punches. It explained that parental involvement would be necessary. As the project required site visits and interviewing and photos. That in itself was quite refreshing. At least they were being honest about the level of work I would have to do. Usually schools seem to believe children can produce, say, the Taj Mahal out of matchsticks unaided. Ha. Ha. Ha.

In some ways I was glad for the fact that the letter had been issued late. And therefore we had remained in blissful ignorance over the seasonal festivities.

No such luck this year as Middlest hurtles his way towards the same project.

I am never really sure what such pieces of work are for. Or who.

I agree that children need to learn to manage larger pieces of extended work. They need to practise time management. Be able to plan in sensible chapters.

Unfortunately mine are some way off being able to do this independently. And so guess who ends up doing most of it? Well guiding them to do it but you know what I mean.

Not only that but they are supposed to use their humanities lessons at school to progress the project. And so in order to ensure they don’t spent those valuable hours sharpening pencils and chatting to their mates I am left lesson planning too.

And then there is the topic. I shot my best bolt local environmental issue wise last year with Eldest. I now need to think of another issue that around 40 pages of work can be produced about. Along with a photo journey and an interview and site visits. Without too much colouring in. Middlest hates colouring in.

Asking my ten year old to come up with an idea for such a project is laughable. I have asked him a couple of times if he has had any thoughts. I get a sort of blank, quizzical look. I guess one could take it as a shocking lack of knowledge. Or just be realistic; that the average ten year old wants to cause his own environmental catastrophe by owning every plastic gun in the known universe not write an extended piece about it.

So I have been wracking my brains since last year to no real avail. I have come up with the recycling journey of a yogurt pot or the impact of the new bypass near by. Neither are filling me with excitement. And both involve me in speaking to the council to get access and information and facts. Which requires me to do something before Christmas. The clock is ticking.

Had the project been about something Middlest was passionate about, say elephants or the wider environmental and conservation issues surrounding elephants, he might be more engaged. But no it has to be local. Not many elephants round here. That site visit would have been more fun too…

Or it could be a history project which would get my juices flowing and therefore by default his. And we could visit castles and I could once more coo over medieval plumbing (still find that fascinating…the forethought to build drainage through those thick, thick walls, mind blowing). In fact for me it could be any other sort of project really; history, geography, art, politics etc. Just not the same one as last year.

But, no, we are stuck with these parameters. Yawn. I spent six weeks plus of my life living, eating and breathing the last ‘issue’. Spending our weekends trawling round our local Community Forests. I like a woodland walk. I enjoy birds and wildlife. I like feeling that I am ‘contributing’ to such a worthwhile cause whilst eating organic flap jack. I just don’t enjoy having to do all that with half an eye on chapter eight whilst photographing every information board and surveying cyclists. And I certainly don’t relish having to come home and force a child to sit down and write about it. As such I have no enthusiasm left.

It is safe to say that when Eldest got 39 marks out of 40 (he lost a mark for his slightly ‘thin’ Conclusion…. by that point he had truly HAD ENOUGH) my heart sank a little. For now we need to replicate that this year. Or else Middlest will plead favouritism. Again.

I truly hope that in another two years when it is Youngest’s turn the subject will have changed. If not it will be severely tempting to recycle Eldest’s. In the name of the environment.

Footnote: After writing this I was inspired enough to e mail the Council. I got the standard ‘Our turn around time is 10 working days’ response. This is why I need to start now. Weep…

Keeping clean sheets… — October 15, 2015

Keeping clean sheets…

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cleaning

I may have mentioned before that I do not really enjoy cleaning. If I have not mentioned that before then just so you know I do not really enjoy cleaning.

I would like to say I enjoy the results of cleaning. And I guess that for the couple of hours before the kids come back from school and husband descends a clean room does look good. And then it doesn’t. Again.

Within seconds of them arriving home the kids’ stuff starts to migrate downstairs. I am sure at some point in my Geography lessons I learnt about ‘soil creep’. Nerf Gun bullets have the same properties. Although the timeframe is speeded up. Massively.

A clean bathroom is lovely. It is impractical, however, to ban one’s family from using the facilities for any length of time. And so that shiny tap is soon covered in dried on toothpaste, the mirror acquires a sheen of hair gel and the toilet is smeared with, well, poo. And that hour you spent in there earlier seems fruitless. I resent my husband shaving, my children excreting.

Conversely when I do clean I like to do a proper job. I move furniture. Clean skirting boards and door handles and architraves. Empty the waste bins. Dust and move all the ornaments, shine towel rails and mirrors, clean the windows (inside only I have a man for the other). Etc. This is why I do not employ a cleaner. Well partly I don’t employ a cleaner for fiscal reasons but also I don’t because every cleaner I have ever had never moves anything. They clean only what they can see. What is the point of that? That is why a cleaner comes round and says it will take three hours to do my house from top to bottom. Err no it won’t. So when I clean a room it takes me a while.

In upshot I have to force myself to clean. And so to ensure I do the bare minimum I have devised a rota. As I do like ticking things off lists.

As this house is somewhat larger than my old abode I have spread the chores over three weeks. This ensures that all of the house is cleaned (to my standards) once every three weeks. If a husband or small child does a ‘lick and a promise’ on a room at some point in between all to the good. And the rota also ensures that bed sheets get changed before they walk off and stick themselves on a boil wash. Although Middlest objects to new sheets. Unless they are line dried and put straight back on. He resents that I have washed away the smell of ‘him’ that he has painstakingly built up over three weeks. Unless it is replaced by an odour he likes even more. Tough you scum bag…

As an aside here I must add that I am braving all sorts of abuse airing the fact that I wash bed sheets on a three week rotation. I am a member of a parenting forum and the most hotly debated ‘threads’, aside from who can park in mother and baby spaces, are how often to change bed sheets. Some people do it daily. My god have they not heard of the environment. At least when the world heats up so much that we all die they can do so in clean sheets. I am sure that comforts those polar bears struggling to find enough sea ice to survive. When I am lying in my own filth I feel comforted by my carbon footprint.

Anyhoo back to the rota. I have tried to split the tasks up equitably. For instance I only schedule one child’s room in any one week. There is a limit to how many ‘special shelves’ one can dust in a week. Apparently my limit is one room. Then I give myself any easy room a week- spare room, utility room, study. I end up with 5 rooms a week and some degree of laundry.

I am on Week 3 this week. When I wrote the rota it was clearly Week One. And so I had closed my eyes to Week Three. Week Three is a git. Week Three contains Eldest’s bedroom- he is the eldest (quite obviously, I do really, really spoon feed you here) and so he has the most stuff on his ‘special shelves’. In fact the tut has leaked from his ‘special shelves’ to his ‘special book shelf’, ‘special chest of drawers’, ‘special desk’ and quite often to his ‘special floor’.

For some reason I though it would be wise to link Eldest’s bedroom to the family bathroom. The family bathroom is used by all those of a male gender in our household. I leave you to draw your own conclusions about the general scussiness of that room. I do not enter except on Week Three or when I need to extricate a boy who is late for school because he is ‘on the toilet’. Usually what he is actually doing is playing Minecraft.

Also on the list is the kitchen diner. Oh My Actual Diety Of Choice what was I thinking. The kitchen diner is vast and commodious. It also contains the kitchen (again evidently) and is our main living area. That Nerf Gun bullet creep always ends up there. Along with everything else. In order to clean it I first have to spend an hour clearing it. And then it is full of shelves and dressers and musical instruments and nick nacks on pianos. And the dining table. Which rests above its cache of old food items camoflagued on the beigeish floor tiles. It is truly awful to clean.

Add in the lounge (not a big job but newly decorated and so requiring of care with the vacuum hose) and the study (books, books, books, Lord of the Rings lego) and Week Three is a bitch.

Week One on the other hand is a breeze. I am looking forward to embracing Week One next week.

For now, however, I still have the hoovering to do in Eldest’s room and it is Thursday and Week Three started last Saturday.

I am going in now.

Wish me luck.

How time flies — October 13, 2015

How time flies

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cake

I am coming up fast on my six months bloggingversary. No, that isn’t a word, I made it up.

I can vividly remember sitting in bed one morning during the school Easter holidays and penning my first tentative post. That same day at a local country park I wrote my second. And by the end of the week several more had followed. And now my current tally is 80. Yes eighty. Who can believe it? Certainly not me.

I had opened a floodgate in my head. Words and ideas poured out. It is a good job for my readers that I discovered the ‘schedule’ button on WordPress and was able to moderate my publications to about three times a week.

And so over the last six months I have fallen into a bit of a pattern publishing on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Sunday mornings. This seems to work out quite well.

I worried I would run out of ideas. And sometimes, like at present, I get down to only one scheduled entry. And I worry gently. Then I remember that I am not under contract to any one. I do not have to post. I could drop off the airwaves and no one would be banging on my door demanding a refund.

I thought my life was quite small and uneventful. Writing this blog has made me see that even though most of my life is indeed mundane and routine there is humour and profundity even in that. And quite a lot of ranting…

What else have a learnt?

Quite often the entries I debate about even posting garner the most readers. I agonised about publishing Lets Not Skirt Around the Issue for days. I honestly thought such detailed information about my intimate medical and personal grooming issues may have turned readers away in droves. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Some entries I dash off in minutes. Some take me hours. And even then I sometimes have to rewrite the whole piece. And the popularity of posts bears no relation to how much sweat I have put into them.

I have different audiences. Fellow WordPress users like my posts about blogging. Facebook friends tend to prefer the humorous stuff about parenting. Some are very loyal and read and comment on every post regardless of topic. I am grateful to them.

And then there is my silent mystery audience. They find me from all over the world. Today someone has found my blog when searching on Google for ‘Sure Cool Blue Aerosol’. So I tried. Sure enough there is Aroma Moan on page 5 of the results. That kind of blew my mind actually. I am on internet search engines….Ok page 5 but still….

And so this blogging lark is a great learning experience. It will never lead anywhere. But I enjoy writing. I get a lot out of it.

Some days the housework doesn’t get done. But hey as my grandfather used to say ‘you are a long time dead’.

Reading between the lines — October 11, 2015

Reading between the lines

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books

I wanted to write a piece about books. I penned something yesterday and when I came to read it back just now it was not really that great. My writing has let me down just as I want to write about, well, the written word. Ironically.

And so I am going to try again. Deep breath.

I suppose it is true that it is impossible to be a writer, even one as amateurish as me, without having a love for reading.

In today’s world many, many things get in the way of book reading. The TV with its myriad delights, the internet, social media, work, too many children doing too many things, blogging and the like.

It is also true that the reading many of us do has changed. From lengthy novels to snappy titbits on social media pages, magazine articles, blog entries. The modern world is displayed to us in short, easy to digest slices.

I am currently reading a Hilary Mantel. Not the Tudor ones- which I read in hard back as soon as they came to my attention because that part of history is one of my secret passions, my shelves groan with such tomes- no a piece of contemporary fiction. I am enjoying it. But I only seem to find time to read in bed before dropping off to sleep and so I spend an in-ordinate amount of that short period of time flicking back through the pages to remember what has just happened.

Some novels are like that. They need concerted effort. And the only time I seem to have available for such effort is on holiday. Well that is not totally true. I could turn off the TV. Stop writing. Give up Face book. But I don’t.

It wasn’t always like this. As a child I would curl up on my bed and read for hours at a time. Especially in the school holidays when kids’ TV finished at 12 noon and there was no such thing as the internet.

Middlest has the bug too. Despite all those distractions he spends a lot of time reading. He is a complete book worm. When we can’t find him he is usually on his bed in a position very familiar to me. And I am envious of the time he has to be so engrossed in his books. When I go to his room to bring him down for dinner he looks up almost dazed as he drags himself back from Middle Earth or Sendaria or Hogwarts.

My others read too. But much more in the vein of ‘just before bed’. Middlest reads with a single minded dedication and tenacity that I admire. He gets fully immersed. It is something I remember fondly.

And the thing is it shows in his writing, which is amazingly eloquent for a ten year old, and his verbal language, and his vocabulary.

And so I think I need to rediscover my reading mojo.

For then this piece may have flowed more easily.

Stuff what I have learnt today — October 8, 2015

Stuff what I have learnt today

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keep-calm-and-learn-hard-7

So here goes. Some random stuff I have discovered today.

  • It is possible to drive to my kids’ school and back in under 15 minutes when on a games kit/ cello induced mercy dash.
  • If you turn up 15 minutes late to an exercise class you just miss the boring warm up and only semi important station explanation. Although I may discover tomorrow how vital that warm up is.
  • Deleting about 18 months worth of text messages will turn your phone back into a relatively responsive tool.
  • The shops are no longer full of orange hued home accessories now I have decided that orange is to be the accent colour for our newly decorated lounge.
  • It is apparently Christmas already.
  • Allowing the kids off music practice in the morning so they can get more sleep after a school induced late night will see us all falling out.
  • It is quite pleasant to write blogs in Costa.
  • Belgian chocolate tea cakes make that even pleasanterer.
  • My phone’s predictive text will predict good when I want home and home when I want good. Which makes that sentence really hard to get right.
  • One should keep an eye on boiling potatoes rather than ignoring them to write.
  • It is best to wait for the ceramic hob to cool down before clearing up boiled over water. Unless you like the smell of burnt J cloth.
  • Allowing Eldest to have a phone not only heads off games kit/ cello induced emergencies but also allows him to text me cute messages which make me feel better about the tiredness induced morning arguments.
  • I enjoy employing deliberate grammatical errors in my writing. Not sure why. Probably so I can claim any actual errors are supposed to be there. And to annoy pedants.
  • My reverse parking sensors are wildly over cautious. And I actually need gate post sensors.
  • Asking Middlest to be quick out of school will make us late for football training.
  • People are still wearing leggings that are see through enough to be correctly categorised as tights.
  • It is impossible to watch the final of the Bake Off a day late and not discover who the winner is during that day. And I don’t mind that much.
  • As much as I love Billy Joel he doesn’t cut it driving music wise. And I still prefer soft rock.
  • If I would like Youngest to practise her times tables I must threaten the removal of football training.
  • I can’t do bullets on my phone and will have to add them at home later before the scheduled publishing time. Home more to do at good I mean good more to do at home.
  • We can still name all the characters on In the Night Garden. And Makka Pakka is still our favourite. Isn’t that a pip?
  • I still don’t know when to use practice and when to use practise. So I looked it up. C for noun, s for verb. So I need to practise and get some practice in.
  • I care about accent colours.
  • That last discovery worries me most.

So there you have it. Just a normal day. One is always learning.
If you are my husband then obviously the Costa is not part of my normal day. Honest gov.

Have you seen my…? — October 6, 2015

Have you seen my…?

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image

We have a saying in our family. And it goes like this.

“Have you used your Lady Eyes?”

There are a lot of us in this house. Sometimes it feels like there are far too many of us. But the number of children I decided to have is maybe an issue for another day.

So there are a lot of us. And so we have a lot of stuff.

And it appears that it is my job to keep tabs on it all.

I spend a fair amount of my day mentally logging the position of many useful objects, most of which do not belong to me.

For instance my husband finds it really hard to keep track of his spectacles. They appear to be a mobile object despite having arms and not legs. Whenever he is home and I walk past them I make that mental note so that when the inevitable enquiry is made I can respond with a GPS location. Arm of sofa, window sill in bathroom, atop the laundry basket, on the patio furniture, beside the toaster. And such like.

Last Christmas I stumbled upon a fantastic stand for him to use. That is a picture of it up there. It is positioned on the window sill next to the front door. (And incidentally whilst we are there that is the place everyone should look first for any missing item. Just saying). And the stand helps slightly. He uses it when arriving home. Or when swapping from sunglasses to indoor glasses. But it hasn’t eradicated the whole problem. I believe a string around the neck is the only sure fire way. Or he could just wear them all the time…

And then we move on to my children. I suppose we must. The current items which cause the most issues are Eldest’s phone and Middlest’s I pod. In the case of the former we could ring it to find it’s location but unfortunately it is set by default to silent so he does not fall foul of the ‘no phone use in or between lessons’ rule at school. And Middlest’s is not ringable. We lost both yesterday. And then I found them almost entirely camouflaged on the black granite fire surround in the family room. I have suggested that putting their entirely black electronics on the hearth is maybe not such a good idea moving forwards. Especially when we begin lighting the fire.

When things are actually leaving the house the pressure ramps up. I seem to be the only person who does a mental check list when leaving a sports field. This weekend I had a ‘Lady Eyes’ fail.  We discovered this at 7.45am this morning when their school lift was revving on the driveway and Eldest decided he had better check his Games kit and found his Ripstop was missing.

The Ripstop is a compulsory item. A sort of semi-waterproof, pull over the head tracksuit top. There are three in this house. People scoff at my diligent name label sewing which I undertake annually each Autumn. They say I should use a laundry pen on the care label. They don’t have three sets of everything in very similar sizes to out sort from the laundry. A name in the collar is actually as useful for me, the laundress, as it is for keeping the kit ‘safe’.  I do not want to waste time hunting for initials on a care label on a side seam.

They all have red and black stripy games socks. I decided not to bother labelling them as it is quite hard to sew a name label onto something as stretchy as a sock. What a mistake. I often have 6 socks that look almost identical but are actually slightly different sizes hanging from my airer. I am sure I am probably ruining Eldest’s feet in the manner of Chinese babies and it probably explains the blisters Youngest sometimes gets after football training.

So anyway Eldest must have taken his Ripstop onto the field for his (very sunny) Rugby match on Saturday. And left it there. At the end of the match I did send him off for his water bottle which was clearly missing but as I hadn’t seen the Ripstop come onto the field and it was about 20 degrees it slipped my mind.

It will serve him right if he gets into trouble at Rugby training today. When heavy rain is forecast. I would laugh but it really isn’t that funny at £20 a pop.

Generally my kids do quite well at not losing their stuff. That is because I get very cross when they do. And I have a rule that if they lose something they will pay to replace it. I am training them early to do their own mental checklist. Obviously there is still someway to go.

I am also a name labelling maniac. I put sticky labels on everything. Including Eldest’s phone. Which he is surprisingly sanguine about. I put a sticky label on every one of the fine liners in the pack of 10 I bought Middlest this weekend. They cost nearly £1 a pen. I felt justified. A lot of stationary gets ‘borrowed’ at school. If stuff is labelled some other child cannot claim it is ‘their’s’. Middlest explained that actually each pen cost 99.90p. I retorted that I would allow him to merely pay 99p for the last pen he lost but £1 per mislaid pen up to that point. I think he got the message.

Compared to their school mates, and possibly because of my mercenary approach, they do OK. Already this term there have been impassioned e mails from other parents pleading for the return of black jumpers, entire Games bags with contents, mouth guards, blazers (yikes £75 a go) and odd shoes. The latter really worries me. How did they get home? Hopping?

When they come out from sports clubs in kit my Lady Eyes checklist follows a certain order:- Blazer, school shoes, mouth guard, other branded items, generic clothing of which I have a spare pair at home, generic items of which I have 5 others at home, black socks. I also try to remember to mentally note any lack of musical instruments but to be fair it is quite hard to miss that a cello is missing. If you see what I mean. The absence of a  violin my slip through the net however.

And so I am chief ‘finder/ retainer of all things’. Here are my maxims:-

  • Always put stuff in the same place.
  • Always label everything.
  • Ensure kids are on board by employing a mix of ‘mummy is very disappointed’ and financial penalties.

It helps. It hasn’t really dealt with the husband problem though. I guess he will get so short sighted at some point it will solve itself.

Just the four socks today...
Just the four socks today…
Lasagna… — October 4, 2015

Lasagna…

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lasagna

Today I made a new meal for tea. I am trying to widen my repertoire.

It is a risky business as I am never sure of the reception such ventures will get.

By scouring the internet I had managed to find a recipe for cheese free lasagna. I had managed to source gluten free pasta sheets. I could assemble the meal and leave it on automatic to reheat. Essential whilst I dealt with the ferrying that a usual Thursday evening entails.

It is true that some of the constituent parts may have fallen foul of someone’s dislike radar. Mushrooms…youngest, spinach….everyone under 12, crème fraiche…husband. I decided to risk it.

Youngest loves lasagna as long is it is ‘not too cheesy’. We have banned her from ordering it in untried restaurants. I am sick of having to swap my delicious meal for a child’s sized portion of oven baked pasta which has failed the ‘fromage’ test. This lasagna had no cheese. Due to husband. But that also played to Youngest’s foible. And so I decided she had to suck up the mushrooms.

As everyone knows spinach tastes of nothing when incorporated with other ingredients and is just there to provide colour interest and make mothers feel better. And so again I thought I could get away with it.

I just closed my ears to the crème fraiche.

Everything else should have passed muster. Sausagemeat, pasta, passata, mild chilli, garlic, a few herbs, some seasoning.

When I was assembling it at 8.30 this morning it smelt fantastic.

Cunningly I had made the off spring wait until after Youngest had returned from football training to eat. By which point it was a full two hours later than we usually dine.

Eldest would probably have eaten anything, literally anything, I put in front of him. Brillo pad en croute… Middlest had spent the 40 minutes it took the dish to bake standing in front of the oven door peering in. I had to physically restrain him from opening up that door to ‘check it was cooking’ on several occasions. Youngest had spent 90 minutes running around a sports hall.

And to top it all apparently it is one of Mary Berry’s grandchildren’s favourites.

And so I had high hopes.

Eldest shovelled his portion down. Middlest declared it was delicious. I was immediately suspicious. This usually means he doesn’t like something. True enough despite being apparently ‘starving’ in the immediate period before serving he was ‘stuffed’ after barely half a plateful…

Youngest peered suspiciously at the ‘bits of sausage’ declaring that they looked a lot like slices of mushroom. They were but I got away with it. I banned her from out sorting all that green, healthy stuff and she managed to eat her plateful. Albeit with little enthusiasm.

Husband didn’t enjoy it at all. To be fair it probably wasn’t so good after a second reheating. And I should never close my ears to crème fraiche.

So I am not sure if it will make another appearance.

Probably not.

And this is why we eat the same meals over and over again.

Girls Day Out… — September 29, 2015

Girls Day Out…

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IMG_4305IMG_4118IMG_1369

I think I may have introduced you to Youngest before. If you have somehow missed this please see I Know I Play Like  Girl  and Youngest.

We are very much alike in many ways. Except she can run 5k in under 30 minutes, score goals in football and throw a ball a long way. And I cannot.

In other ways though we are very similar. She is not at all girly. She does not want to wear jewelry. She is not interested in painting her nails. She doesn’t want to read about unicorns having sparkling adventures. She will not tolerate hair drying.

Although now I ponder on it she is probably this way because I am. But any way there it is.

Today we went on our annual clothes shopping trip. Every autumn she puts on a pair of trousers and they are somewhere around mid calf. And we realise that after a summer in shorts she needs new winter clothes.

When she was a baby and small toddler I loved clothes shopping for her. Before she could voice an opinion she did wear quite traditionally female clothes. Although not many were pink. I preferred red, white and blue. And she looked great in dark and bold colours.

And then once she got to Year 1 she decided she would call the shots attire wise. She refused a pinafore for school. It inhibited her running madly around the playground. So into trousers she went. She took it one step further in Year 2 eschewing the polo top and going for collared shirt and school tie. Not even many boys bothered with that.

And so clothes for leisure wear had to change too. She will not wear skirts. At all. Ever. I was slightly worried when she started her new Junior School because they insist on skirts until Year 6. She has been remarkably sanguine about that. But her line has hardened out of school.

She will wear a pretty frock. But only on holiday to a dinner and disco. I bought her a load for Greece, indulging my secret pretty dress fetish, she wore each one twice and then one of them again to a wedding. But now we cannot persuade her into one for, say, a night out. Without histrionics.

Historically we have relied on a certain large department store to come up with the goods winter clothes wise. She has had a capsule wardrobe of dark purple velour jeans, skinny denims, dark blue and purple tops, the occasional cream roll neck and a selection of fleeces. She was happy with this.

This year their selection was frankly awful. We are not interested in tops with ponies on or unicorns. We want long sleeves not short they are for WINTER. She is a rake and so has to have adjustable waists and the only pair of dark jeans she liked (bottle green) where elasticated. They fitted her legs but had about 5 inches spare round the waist. I am not sure who these clothes are made for. Very skinny legged children with fat tummies. Weird.

And so we trawled everywhere else. It was depressing.

My daughter does not want to wear clothes stating that she is a ‘Princess’ or that ‘Prettier girls have more fun’. Yes seriously. My god. I don’t often blaspheme but for the love of all that is holy why would you put a girl in that…. She doesn’t want handkerchief hems. She doesn’t want to layer in the manner of stylish ‘ladies’. She is eight she needs a top and trousers and maybe a cardy. She doesn’t want panda print smocks or jump suits with puppies on (?). I thought we had strayed into the pyjama department when I saw them but, no, jump suits, for eight year olds, with puppies on….my life. I may have mentioned before that she doesn’t like pink, in any hue. Except for that cycling top, she likes that.

We just want fun clothes in jewel colours, that co-ordinate and fit. We will accept sequins, but not if they form a ‘kiss’ on the front of her chest in a vaguely provocative way.

In the end we cobbled a few outfits together. Our final shop of the day yielded some decent stuff. Although we had to scour the racks.

She seems happy with our purchases. And I can relax for another year.

I cannot imagine it getting any easier. Sigh.

My sofa — September 27, 2015

My sofa

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image

I have mentioned my ‘irrational’ attachment to inanimate objects before, please see my entry My House if you feel the need for further enlightenment.

Recently a bone of contention Chez Here has been our sofa.

My husband wants us to get rid of the sofa. His reasons are purely aesthetic. It is old and knackered. To be honest it is probably beyond even shabby chic. And he would like to replace it with a smarter, newer model. Which makes me slightly trepidatious for the future…

I, for apparently totally illogical reasons, do not. Want to get rid of our sofa. I did part with the two armchairs which went with the sofa. And swapped them for two trendier, Scandinavian inspired, easier to get out of numbers. I liked my old chairs which I could curl up in. And they had great padded arms for sticking pins into when sewing. But I parted with them. They wouldn’t really have fitted in the Family Room anyway. The charity that came to collect them were very pleased. And so I have high hopes for their onwards adoption.

The sofa, however, presents me with even more issues.

It, along with those chairs, was the first piece of furniture my husband and I bought together. At the time, not that long married and having just upsized to our second house together, it was a large expense. And I still remember the thrill of that purchase. And waiting eagerly for it to arrive. Freshly Scotchguarded.  That decision to Scotchguard or not seemed to confirm my arrival in the adult world.

It was quite a daring purchase as the pattern was quite busy. And it was in a different fabric to the chairs. Yet we were living in a very bland house (my husband picked it- it was an ex show home on a newish estate and I dubbed it Beige Hell from the outset) and it fitted in perfectly. Adding colour and interest to the otherwise boring living room. When we moved down here we picked our new carpet to go with it.

I have always found it extremely comfortable. Apparently all my relatives find it terribly uncomfortable. And hard to get out of. I, on the other hand, like to curl my legs up and sit in the corner and it is perfect for that. And you can balance a cup of tea on the arm. When I am sitting upon it I feel enclosed and hugged in the best possible way. It does eat remote controls but I can forgive it for that.

My husband and I have our own ‘ends’. It is easy to sleep on which I found very useful in late pregnancy, in the early days with newborns and when I had pneumonia and couldn’t stop coughing and had to decamp downstairs. To avoid my husband getting no sleep either.

It is big enough for all of us to sit on. I have spent many, many happy hours snuggled with my offspring watching TV. From In the Night Garden to Horrid Henry to Strictly Come Dancing to Bake Off to Top Gear (yes really, not sure why) to Harry Potter, through every Disney film ever made (well maybe not but you get the gist).

I gave birth to Youngest on it. In the best and obviously last of my three birth experiences.

All my children have pulled themselves up to standing for the first time on it. Vomited on it. Wee’d on it. One has even poo’ed on it. Hmmm I may be re-thinking. And incidentally that extra fifty quid on the Scotchguarding was sooo worth it.

My kids jump on it. And sit on the arms. And eat on it. And, since our move, launch themselves over the back. Which is now available for launching over due to its position in our new house. And because it is so old we don’t worry too much. I think every home should have a piece of blobbing, slobbing furniture that no one worries about. That is poorly Middlest up there…slobbing…

So yes it is old. And slightly ripped. But I love it. For all sorts of reasons.

I need time to get over that. Before we go all Scandi…

Two Little Dicky Birds… — September 24, 2015

Two Little Dicky Birds…

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Here's looking at you kid...
Here’s looking at you kid..

I don’t want to descend into hyperbole but mornings here are utter and complete chaos. I am sure we are not alone in this. And I am also sure that many, many parenting blogs have covered the shouting, bribing, cajoling, temper tantrums and last minute panics in comprehensive detail. So I don’t need to go over it here.

When the kids have finally left for school with a friend or when I return from doing that same school run (we alternate weekly to save both our sanities) peace has descended.

I use the first half hour or so to drag the house back into some semblance of order. Washing up from breakfast, hanging up wet laundry, putting dry clothes away.

And then as many times a week as is possible I make my second brew of the day (there is no way I would survive the preceding carnage without my first caffeinated cuppa, in a big ‘morning’ mug) and sit at my computer to clear some admin. Of which there is a seemingly unending and ever increasing amount of.

This often takes me longer than it should. And the reason is the view.

We live on a large housing estate built in stages from the 1930s to the 1970s. As such I have no way of seeing rolling hills, snow capped mountains or fields of wheat. I do however have a view of my bird feeders.

My morning admin routine seems to coincide nicely with my birds’ first pass of the day.

I once went to Kenya and spent an amazing holiday on safari. It is truly one of the best vacations I have ever been on. One night was spent at Treetops (where the Queen found out she was monarch all those years ago) and my husband and I sat in a viewing gallery at floor height watching the comings and goings at the large watering hole, which is why the venue is there. The animals came in shifts. Starting with the smaller herbivores all the way up to rhinos and then moving on in the twilight to the carnivores. The animals apparently do this every day. Keep an order.

My birds are the same. They are creatures of habit. About this time every day I get my tits. The children think this is highly amusing… I am beyond their sniggering now. Large numbers of great, blue and coal tits descend and eat their way through vast quantities of sunflower hearts. Today, highly excitingly, there was a Black Cap hidden amongst them…I mistook it at first for a coal tit…but it wasn’t. My identification book is always to hand.

Lunch time is another ‘pass’. I hear the tell tale squeaking of my favourite bird before I see them. And my little flock of about seven long tailed tits arrive and cover the fat ball feeder. The other visitors look lumpen in comparison to their tiny, darting frames.

Shortly after this time I often get carrion birds (jackdaws, crows, rooks and magpies) who also like the fat balls. Once they have Hoovered up the remains left on the floor by the LTT frenzy they have to do a leaping sort of dance to reach the feeder as they are too large to hang.

The wood pigeons are less reliable. The kids have named them Barbara and Bob- Barbara sits forlornly atop the highest feeder looking puzzled, whilst Bob has developed a method of hanging by his feet off the handle at the top of the feeder and flapping his wings to keep his beak in the vicinity of the opening below- I am not convinced the calories he gleans are sufficient to cover those expended on such an acrobatic display.

In the afternoon my resident robin is often to be seen flitting in and out from the bushes to nick seed. He mostly comes when no one else is there. I also see green and chaff- finches and sparrows. I have yet to attract back the goldfinches which were so prevalent at my old house. But I am hopeful.

And then again at tea time the flocks of tits return for their evening meal. My children are sick of my shouting ‘LTT alert’ when they are eating their sausage and mash. I have a great view of the feeder from my seat at the table. One would almost think I had planned it that way.

And that is my birding day. Regular and reassuring. Calming. And a delight.

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