Languishing…

This blog is not happening, for several reasons. Mostly, I think that my muses are getting to old to be written about by me: their antics and personalities, their reputations, etc, etc.

I would love to write about my challenges with pre-teens, and about how well they are learning to deal with THEIR challenges. I am so proud of them. I love them with all my heart!

I am proud of how Max has come into his own now that his brothers are out at big school. Max has great friends and he plays the guitar with total COOLNESS. You should see his face when he sings. The next Jon Bon Jovi, I tellya! I just want to hug him all day. He’s growing up so fast…

Chas and Sam love that I write, and often suggest topics… but they never suggest that I write about them. This week, they got new waterproof backpacks and Chas insisted that I write a review. He hung over my shoulder and told me all about the Awesome Backpack of Awesome and he is LONGING to float down a river with it!

For that review, and all future writings, head back to http://thingsivefoundinpockets.blogspot.com/ where reviews and ramblings will continue to happen.

Cuz there’s nothing to see here, really.

VERY IMPORTANT: Please sign the petition at http://www.gopetition.com/petition/39310.html

 

Still Alive…

Hello! We’re all good here. For this week’s book reviews, go to The Other Pocket.

 

Breaking the Cycle

It’s getting Autumn-ish here, with a definite nip in the air. Chas and Sam had to ride to school in the rain yesterday morning, all rainproofed and snuggly, which they found exciting. Long may the excitement last…

I’ve got all kinds of stuff happening at GNM Parents and on the other Pockets I’m going on about breastfeeding.

In old lady news, Margo is feeling cross and bored, but last night she was to go out to the symphony and she cancelled, because you know when you reach that point that you just can’t be bothered? Poor Margo, being ninety-three is not fun. Today I’ll try to go with her to some old friends for tea… just need to get a playdate after school for Max. He is Mr. Popular so that shouldn’t be too difficult!

I’m catching Margo’s mood, and feeling like WHYYY do I have to cook? I’m sick of cooking. Day in, day out, we cook, and eat, and poop. And wash the dishes and clean the toilet. Many times a day. Geeeze! Can we just break the cycle, people?

So yeah, that’s all here.

The Weekend in Heaps of Stuff

Well it was a rainy Saturday, so we took the chance to do cool crafty stuff!

Yes folks! Chas’ project is a CAR with a motor and four-wheel drive. Note the mega-awesome carved balsa body, the cogs and thingies.

Max’s project is a school one: a Tudor house made of cardboard. I helped with the roof, AND got very enthusiastic and made a person out of a sock and other interesting ingredients. Max still needs to do some more work on the outside walls of the house.

Sam’s project is a sketch animation, and you can see the finished product on YouTube. DO check it out, he worked so hard on it, and got the timing perfect!

Have you EVER seen such a great creative mess?? Me neither.

First Day at School

First day of school: Dawned bright and sunny. Sam lost one locker key within 6 minutes of getting it, and all day long older boys gave the new boys wrong information (“Science lab 12? That way! And tighten that tie young man… tighter!”) (Dad, I bet you’re having flashbacks. If you write a post about YOUR experiences I’ll give it to the boys and they won’t feel so hard done by! Email me!) Heavens opened after lunch, and the Bond Twins had to ride home in freezing rain.

Creative Commons Image, courtesy Wermibug

Extra curriculars after school till 1700hrs, starting next week, and the boys are doing football, archery, kickboxing, fencing, etc (oh, plus cricket and more football and choir and band practice at lunchtime). Ergo, they will not be getting home till well after 5 every day but Monday. Thank goodness for hot school lunches. (High point of the day!)

And yeah, they had homework.

Bedtime has been bumped up to early and the TV is unplugged. Bring it on.

School!

I’ve never been happy for the holidays to end before… I think that being in a new place, and the boys being kinda grown up, have made us ready for routine again.

Anyway, I’m seriously glad that Monday is nearly here. So are the boys!

Looking handsome aren’t they? Respectable, even. Don’t be fooled.

Max is the only one at primary school now, and I think he’s glad to have the place to himself.

In other news, there’s a GIVEAWAY over on Things I’ve Found in Pockets, the new Terry Pratchett book ‘I Shall Wear Midnight’. Yup, it’s out here. And it’s GOOD. Go check it out. Yes, the old site is being revamped. Who knows what evolutionary process will happen there? You have a say, so get over there and let me know.

HEYYYY! Long time!

I haven’t been writing much here… I’ve been so busy, and I’m trying to get all organized before school starts so that I can get to writing with earning money in mind. Send good vibes! Lately my writing has been all SERIOUS, all about ‘packing a healthy lunchbox’ (next time: Omelettes!) and how there’s ‘no need to make an appointment for bumps and babies groups!’

Which is great! I’m having so much fun with this! Apart from the stress of responsibility and deadlines of course, which I have to get used to. Still writing at GNM Parents every Tuesday, too.

So, what with all that and being on holidays with hordes of visitors and sunshine and NO child free time, there has been very little blogging. The times I DO want to blog, it’s about HOW MY CHILDREN BEHAVED IN THE SHOE STORE, and THEY ARE TOO BIG FOR THIS TO BE CUTE and all. Really. If you saw a two-year-old lying on the floor in the shoe store waving his legs in the air all ‘LOOK at my new shoes? Can I wear them home!?’ you’d smile, right? But a lanky pair of adolescents? Nuh-uh. I was pissed off, actually.

I would totally tell worse stories about them, but I promised not to embarrass them on the internet any more now they’re all grown up. And yet, they can still embarrass me in Clarks.

And next week, they will go to school looking all fab, with ties straight and shirts tucked in and new shiny polished shoes, and they will behave like fine upstanding gentlemen because I’m not there to embarrass.

There was a little boy in the shoe store today, and I looked at him and said ‘Did you ever think that big boys like that could be so NAUGHTY?’ He shook his head, speechless.

I think we are ALL looking forward to school now. Enough with holidays. Chas and Sam are excited to start all kinds of new activities and have decided they want to do fencing, on top of everything else. I think they are thinking that stabbing at each other with swords every Tuesday evening at school would ROCK.

Schroedinger the snake is doing well and growing, still existing/not existing in his terrarium as it pleases him.

We’ve been doing knot-tying, macrame, braiding things to make rope, using kitchen string and hemp in different colours. Everywhere you look, there is a knot tied to a chair. We are knot experts.

Chas has been doing the Rubik’s Cube. I have been messing it up. He can’t do it in one minute yet, but he did meet someone IN PERSON who can do it in under 30 seconds. Pretty awesome! (I can mess up a Rubik’s Cube entirely in just three seconds. A record!)

We went to the library and brought home a huge heap of books. I will have to do two trips to take them all back.

We’ve watched waay more TV than ever before: top gear, robot wars, ray mears’ survival series, the big bang theory, star trek, DVDs. TV will be covered up with a throw or something from the first day of school, BANNED. Life will go on.

Just in case anyone was really wondering, we DID do the experiment “Does Peanut Butter Remove Lice Eggs As Effectively As It Removes Bubble Gum” and the outcome was “No It Doesn’t”. Which was disappointing. Sam thought we’d be rich for sure. Even if you RUB the peanut butter VIGOROUSLY onto the offending hair, the lice eggs will still be there once you’ve washed out the peanut butter.

We did not look at the peanut butter with our microscope afterwards, because hairy peanut butter and lice, it was just too much for the scientific team.

We intended to try different substances in our ‘Lice Egg Removal’ series of experiments, (bubble gum was a contender…) but alas, we are now lice-free. The boring, tried and tested methods of treating, re-treating, combing through etc are foolproof.

Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, my life is not dull. Never worry that I might be just sitting here, longing for something to happen. But assume that at any moment, something IS about to happen, and whatever it is, it will not be pretty.

Things I’ve Found in Pockets

SAND! Lots of!

Train tickets

Bus tickets

Receipts for ice cream

More sand

Sweetie wrappers

Lists that have been washed and become a paper lump.

Summer is almost over! It’s been so good, and we have seen many of the peeps we love most. This week it rained so the boys (and their visiting friends) did macrame. It’s cool because it’s all surfer-ish and knotty and pirates SURELY did macrame on those long journeys. We have cool beads made of bone.

Macrame dudes aside, it’s been awesome. The sun shone in a very beach-town-summery way. The boys are all brown and strong from hiking, wrestling on the sand, climbing and biking. The house is a bit of a mess, but today I started Operation Sort It Out.

School soon, with suits and ties and serious stuff. Haircuts have been had (early, thanks to the Great Lice Crisis of 2010).

Warm memories will keep us through the coming winter months. I’ll be finding sharpeners and bits of chalk in our pockets.

What’s in your pockets at the end of Summer?

Anniversary!

It’s been ONE YEAR since we moved to the UK!

I’m celebrating by having a very normal busy day, including taking one child to the printers to get the Newsletter out. (Worthy of celebration in itself!)

HOWEVER, this weekend is the Bournemouth Air Show! The whole place will be partying with us! Those mad planes will be flying right over our house from Thursday till Sunday. Excitement!

Lice, the Universe and Everything

We are WINNING the battle against lice! Not only that, we are enjoying the battle! Okay, I’m exaggerating the enjoyment part. But today I found a teeny baby louse and Chas said “Gimme!” stuck it to a piece of clear tape, and set up the digital microscope and they spent a happy hour watching a magnified louse wriggle and wave its legs around. Back-lit, we could see THROUGH all its organs and stuff, including BLOOD pumping around.

We all hate lice even more as a result. They are gross.

When I was inspecting Sam’s head at bedtime, he asked why the eggs don’t just fall out when you comb through. I explained that they hold on with mega awesome glue. He said that all we need then, is a glue-dissolving substance – and suggested that since peanut butter is really good for getting bubble gum out of hair (it IS! we have much experience. works like a charm.) perhaps it might work for lice egg glue? So tomorrow, when we do our egg inspection, IF anyone has any, we’re going to plaster them with peanut butter, by way of experiment.

We’ll let you know the results. If all goes my way, there will be no eggs to experiment on… but there WAS that one tiny louse today. Where was it hiding? Are there more? AAARGH, ITCHY!!!!

Imagine, when a friend called today and said ‘Coming over! Put kettle on!’ I had to say ‘NO! Quarantine! Lice!’ How boring is that? Chas went into the garden and watched baby spiders hatching. He said they flew away! Chas always knows where anything interesting is, in the garden. Sam and Max played and played. We all watched a Harry Potter movie again.

Not a bad day, actually!

For the story of that photo above, you can go to GNM Parents for the usual Tuesday Brilliance. Next week, a sensible article about eradication of lice. Stay tuned!