Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

Couple of good days here again. The girls have been heavily into the borrowed copy they have of High School Musical and along with them dancing and singing and strutting their stuff, i’m horrified to find i’ve started singing the tunes too Is it me, or does the lad in it look like he ought to be in the original line up of Bucks Fizz?

The reason for this is that F&M (a collective abbreviation, lol) are doing  the show at their Easter Musical Theatre workshop and they wanted to know it beforehand. They’ll be the younger ones there thoguh again, so i doubt even Maddy will be out of the chorus, but no doubt they’ll survive not being the 2 main leads However, they’ve been watching it on the singalong version and it did have an interesting side effect; Maddy came to me with “no” and “know” written on a piece of paper, demanding to know exactly what the meaning of this anomoly was. I was happy to oblige - and even happier knowing she must be reading along well enough to have managed to spot something that didn’t make sense to her. Result

Josie impressed Claire by bringing 3 biscuits into a room, one for her and one for each of us. Apparently this means she’s a mathematical genius (though how Claire would know, i can’t imagine )

Amelie can read P&J 1a and b, perfectly effortlessly from whati  can see. Slightly alarming to see her having absolutely no difficulty with it really, though it just can’t be ‘raspberry’ reading because she doesn’t know enough letters. But the concept, the shapes of words, the pattern of sentences all seem to be there and certainly her recall for the words is rather good. Maybe this is how most kids can learn to read and my eldest 2 have just been unusually uphill and late (i totally know how ridiculous that last sentence is, just humour me!)

Fran finished Charlottes Web the other night and hurtled down the stairs in floods of tears So my girl Apparently it wasn’t the end of Charlotte, so much as the babies flying away that made her cry. She woke up crying about it twice in the night but seems to have overcome it now! She’s now reading The Worst Witch, having not found anything similarly weighty without too small a print size otherwise available on the shelves Afterall, we only have about 8 million books here….

Yesterday she and i did some maths together after she hit a hitch on EC - it involved working out a percentage discount on a price. Going through it, which she got but i’ll find more practise for her, i was amazed (again) by how many mathematical concepts fly around in your head in one simple transaction; fractions, halving, doubling, percentages, decimals and even the weighty issue of reading it all well enough to understand that the answer is the piece you’ve taken away(the discount) and not the more obvious figure of what had been paid. We drew a LOT of diagrams during that

She’s been carrying on with French, i’m trying to take a more active role in Maddy’s guitar lessons (basically fine, slight stress this morning when i pointed out that stopping, lying it flat on your lap and spending 2 minutes finding the 2 notes didn’t in fact constitute having learned a tune well enough to move on!) Mum knows a Suzuki cello teacher who lives fairly nearby and i’m debating that. Will have to discuss it with Sarah!

Emma has done some project work with the girls this last 2 days, putting together some basic Islam stuff. I hate this, get really finicky and want to do it for them, but they find it helpful  and i know it is an approach that works well for them in terms of absorbing and visualising info. BUT i’m going to have to admit defeat and knuckle down to getting some half decent presentation and effort out of them. Fran doesn’t stop to think and it’s basically my fautl for not being prepared to grit my teeth and sit by her to help. ARGH. back to that next week. Still listening in, Emma did a great job covering stuff with them, so all good really.

She also did maps with them yesterday, including looking at a book i borrowed from Helen and covered keys and scales with Maddy. Came in very helpful later over a map of Islamic populations. And then they all finished off with a game of Cadoo while i sorted some stuff out.

Had to get everyone out by 2pm and was unusually ready on the dot; then realised i hadn’t seen my keys for a week. Hunted frantically, to no avail, eventually rang Joe who is up here visiting their Gran ( ) and he went and got Max’s key for me. This meant that i was 2 hours late leaving, except that i never had to wait for Max’s key because immediately Joe retrieved Max’s, i looked across the room, saw a basket of toys and thought “they are gonig to be in there, aren’t they?” And they were :wall: Why? I have absolutely NO way of KNOWING !

Claire arrived at 10am today, about 30 seconds after i had woken up and remembered she was coming to see us! Oh, she brought Charlie too That was approximately the last week saw of the children.

Task of the day was this - i retook my Beedible pictures and i’m REALLY pleased with them. I think they look pretty good.

We had quite a lot of fun naming them all too; take a look

other than that, nothing. Rather unfairly, given we already knew this month was going to be rough on a personal level, we’ve had bad news about a relative today and i’m guessing the next few weeks are going to be very miserable. Ho hum.

Ahem. I hate quizzes with too many appropriate words in them.

You are George Orwell Paranoid and Cynical. You are able to understand society and the human psyche quickly and easily. You are depressed a lot of the time, because you are clever enough to see what is really going on in the world. Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

And no, i don’t mean the bit about understanding society

(Or as Maddy called them, Beads of Pray, which i  rather liked)

Very enjoyable morning, with a house filled with an assortment of people. Mummy Flower was here with Baby Flower, who is beginning to like me and smiles at me now, an infinite improvement on howling with horror. She’s adorably clingy to her mum really, in the way that speaks of a really positive relationship between 2 people; MF and i were discussing it and as she remarked “but she sees lots of people, i just don’t know why…” i thought (again) what a disservice we have done ourselves as a nation to have unpicked close family relations, constant familial contact and a basic confidence in our mothering. How odd (not of MF, of us as a people) that we have so undermined our parenting that people have begun to feel that an 8 month old might be behaving oddly if it just loves to be held and cuddled by its mum. My parenting has changed a lot over the years - i was no attachment parent at all to F or M, but i’ve loved my closer relationship with A and J and it has reflected back very positively on the older ones too. I’m glad that the mummy model they will remember will be one who hugs, cuddles, kisses, loves and is happy to be close all the time. So the conversation with MF was great in lots of ways; lovely to be able to say “you are doing great, it’s normal” as a voice of experience too

Plus i’ve adopted two more people who call me Aunty Merry - bringing the count to a speaking/’not yet speaking but think it 6 girls’ There is SUCH a girl thing in this family!

Emma was here, playing, fielding small children, making lunches, reading with people and generally being about 8 pairs of hands and Sue turned up with Mini-Violet too, so it really was a handful. And actually, i could just about have own all of them, if i’d got pregnant when Josie was about 6 weeks old so it felt a bit of a cautionary tale as to what 6 small children COULD feel like! (No, no, no, no, no! Just SO much mess! So much FOOD! SO MUCH NOISE!!!!)

The most exciting news was the Mini-Violet’s mummy, therefore Mummy Flower’s sister and Sue’s daughter, Max’s cousin and Baby Flower’s Aunty (confused yet? ) has just signed a lease on a riding stables fairly near by Exciting on a million levels; great for her, good for their whole family as they all love to ride and with luck, fabulously good for us too as a place to leanr to ride and get outside doing stuff. Woohoo! (Hannah, it’s in a small town north-east of you )

If anyone local is interested, they are having an open day on Easter Monday, so let me know if you want details

After that, i looked up some stuff on Islamic prayer beads and the girls made fimo beads, then threaded them on. I have to say we ran out  of energy and string before everyone had threaded 100 beads, but it was fun and we tried out using them properly. 99 words for Allah? Eeek, i’d never remember them all. This afternoon we’ve sat and read the Islam section of “What i Believe” and made some more learning plans, talked about Ramadan, Halal food, pilgrimage, Islamic dress (Maddy: “Do Muslims still exist then?” Merry: *batters child over head* ) washing at the Mosque (Maddy: “I remember watching the man washing for us; he sat down and did a poo while he washed his feet!” Merry: “Erm.. no Maddy, he was just sat down on a marble seat” )

Otherwise, normals, playing and nice ordinary stuff. Plus Fran has discovered how to read for fun and last night i caught her still up reading at 11pm!

Max and i have been wondering recently exactly the extent to which some sort of smear campaign is being conducted against HEers, prior to the, perhaps inevitable, legislation to control us all. It seems like a succession of stories come out, radio interviews with LEA officers, articles etc all slanted against these well meaning but deluded ranks of HEers who inadvertently harbour criminal child abusers in our ranks. At best, we have a narrow definition of education, find it hard to keep going after a couple of years, or our children are unlikely to cope with social situations. *yawn* Max said last week he watched something that dragged up a 10 year old case of children abused while HE’ed as a reason for us needing to be kept a tally of and inspected. Conveniently, the story made little effort to point out that these 2 HE’ed children were apparently in foster care and it was the foster mother who kept them locked naked in a room for a year. Presumably that meant they WERE being monitored, but no one noticed

Nevermind that they couldn’t find a more recent or more relevant case.

One wonders then, when we need monitoring as a majority for the sake of a minority who may, or not, exist just exactly how the powers that be can explainclaims like this one, seen today on the BBC.

I probably don’t stand up nearly enough and shout about the injustice of bullying, something i experienced for the majority of my junior schooling. Not just simple taunting, but physical bullying, bullying aimed to humiliate me and exclude me and bullying that simply wasn’t handled well enough by any of the people who were supposed to take care of me.

Bullying, the fear of bullying, was my main reason for keeping Fran out of school; i really didn’t want her to be subjected to the unrelenting campaign that i experienced, intended to make be feel different and worthless and unwanted. I’ve never been good at standing up for myself, though i have got tougher over the years, but it is still a weak spot that people can - and do - exploit. Some people can sniff out that characteristic from a mile away and even now, they can still spot it in me. I wanted to be sure my child was strong enough, that her skin was thick enough, that she had the words and the clarity (quite literally as well as figuratively) to defend herself before she had to deal with it. i wanted to know that she was able to say “and your point is….?” before she had to deal with the idiocy and smallmindedness of others on her own. You might call it hiding her away; i call it good parenting. I learned the hard way that if you are undermined from early enough, you don’t develop a thick skin by default. Some people handle it, some don’t. i didn’t.

So this quote, on the BBC today, fills me with some comfort -

The idea that bullying is in some way character building and simply part of childhood is wrong

Barry Sheerman
Education select committee chairman

We need more people to be making this clear; you do not need to be knocked about and roughed up to learn how to defend yourself; what you need is an inner strength that makes you strong enough to shrug and turn away, unscathed by the comments. Simply being slugged on a daily basis doesn’t teach someone to box; it might teach them to run away fast, but that isn’t necessarily a great character trait either. Being laughed at daily doesn’t turn someone into a comedian unless they were already talented at that; it turns them into a person who believes themselves to be an object of derision - if they are clever, talented, they might well learn to turn it back into humour, but being laughed at daily sure didn’t turn me into Victoria Wood. I’m not a great believer in the “it made me tough/made me funny” hard luck turned good stories; i think those people were always going to come shining through and the kids who hang themselves in despair at daily torture were never going to rise above it, their sense of failure only made greater by feeling they should be able to overcome it.

When i was perhaps 7, my mum held up her hands and said “practise hitting me, then you can hit her back” - but i knew there was no point, i wasn’t capable of doing it, however much i practised. I was too afraid, i knew i would be the one who ended up in trouble, i knew i would just antagonise them enough to get hurt worse. Being in school for 14 years didn’t teach me any of those “learn to deal with it” skills; i learned them as a mum and a woman and really not much before. Even now, i have to step back at times and force myself not to go on the defensive.

When Ffran was 4, a boy laughed at her speech and her chin dropped. 2 years later the Rainbows made her feel uncomfortable and she trusted me enough to tell me and be sure i would sort it out. You can’t sort things out at 6, that is why people have a mummy. Now, at nearly 9, it rarely happens, but when it does she is simply sensible enough to explain once and then if they can’t get over it, she can make a value judgement and decide if she wants to be with that person. I’ve never seen her turn tail from something because someone makes her feel bad, she’s never left a group because she can’t handle the people there. All that progress without a school in sight to toughen her up and teach her ‘real life’.

A while ago, i looked up the name of my bully on Google; she is now a lawyer.  I sincerely hope she works for the good guys.

Lol - daft title. I was visited by a rep, the children talked to their pets, Fran still has itch-itis and we all got on with some cultural and mathematical repetition of past topics

Let’s think…

First thing we all had a snuggle and a chat and i attempted to make up for my awful behaviour to Josie in the night which requires someone to call social services, i think. She must have been asleep next to me, snuggled up as a spoon as it were, and i was dreaming that i had a heavy bowling ball on my arm and that i was trying the flick my arm in a fashion that would push it off. Only the bowling ball, as it turned out, was Josie’s head and i rather successfully tossed her out of bed in my sleep She’s forgiven me, i think

Since i’d parcelled on Saturday, i only had a few to do this morning and that was over pretty quick. Then Emma arrived and we sat down to talk over a few things for a while; once we’d done that, she took Amelie for some reading, while Fran did her normals (EC, reading, French) and Maddy did some EC and some guitar. Emma and Amelie sat down to do some reading together and from the sound of it, Amelie sort of made it through P&J1b

I idd a quick tidy, Emma fed everyone and then i got ready to entertain the rep who deals in most of the craft kits i’ve recently started selling. Funny how these conversations work; i’m generally asked to describe my business, how i started, where i’m going and i do find it really crystalises how i feel about it all. And today, it felt good (though a good orders day helped, but saying that to someone earlier immediately killed it dead!)

The rep was nice and i expanded the range i’m going to stock a bit, though not masses and most of it will be for my rapidly increasing Amazon sales. She also sells a range of card topper stickers (which i rather loved) and gave me some for the girls when she left. They are going to love the kits i’ve ordered; some nice little educational type ones in there.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Emma was helping the girls with some colouring books that i’d printed out, doing a variety of familiar stories from an Islamic point of view. They all made a Noah one and Maddy added her own very Maddyish slant to it, which nearly made me burst when she showed me

Yes indeedy - Maddy, by way of the stickers, added an Usborne-esque “find the bear” activity - feel free to look at Flickr for the other pages Isn’t she just priceless????!!!!!

They also explored geometric pattern, thanks to a unit i printed out, which was great and our pattern blocks (Sarah, i found two more books, i thought i only borrowed two from you but obviously not!)

Really annoyingly, i know we have several pads of colouring in patterns and we definitely DID have nice Brightminds versions too, though i might have sold them in my last resources cull; could find ANY of them today, or any decent printable ones either. You’d definitely think people would have tessellating printables somewhere wouldn’t you?

After that there was a whole load of playing and capering about in the sun and then Fran and i went for a ride together when Max got back. Not a bad day at all.

I’m definitely up for suggestions for our Islamic project; ways to go, things to look at, sites of interest - please send them my way

Ams had an okay night and seems a good bit better today, thank goodness. She got woken up by Josie at the unholy hour of 6am (old time) who i eventually persuaded back to sleep with huge quantities of milk of varying types. I lay in till much too late, no idea why i was so tired really, but i could have gone back to bed within 2 hours as well

The girls have been doing “jobs” for us, to earn their theatre arts outfits. I’m loathed just to shell out £50 on more dancing stuff and shoes, when we already spend so much, without them having some input into it, so we agreed that they needed to do a series of jobs, paid at 50p a time until they had each saved up the requiste amount of money in kind. Each of the big two have a chart, they can’t do the same type of job more than once a day and the jobs can’t be ordinary things like helping to cook or tidying up mess they have just made. However, clearing the table and sprucing up a room, putting the top floor to rights properly, garden or kitchen jobs and washing sorting etc do count. They’ve got a long way to go though I’m in no rush, given it will be more things to lose and shout about but apparently they have to have them to do an exam they want to take.

Fran and Maddy have done more Zookis (Fran uploaded hers on to CBBC) and they’ve spent a lot of time playing Chess, either on a board or on the lego chess game. Amelie has been moderately droopy but has enjoyed lots of stories and Playmobil and Josie has just been gorgeous, though she hasn’t lost her slightly odd “can i?” or “did i?” or “will you?” inflection that she’s been sporting for a week or so!

I’ve been busy yesterday and today setting up a sale on BM which, combined with a decent offer, will hopefully rake in the sales i need over the next 10 days or so. After a conversation i had with Em last week, i’ve also been considering music for the girls and myself a bit more; debating cellos still, but SO expensive, thinking of violins (Amelie wants to learn violin) and deeply tempted by purple flutes on ebay for myself. I’ve not played in ages and wondered if i might enjoy it more as an adult than i did as a child. Maddy is keen to have a go of it anyway so i might get some fun out of that. I’d love us to be a music-y household.

Fran and i spent a long time lying on the floor using her French materials today; she started a vocab book, we discussed genders for nouns, began the sticker dictionary (useful dictionary work there in general), played with flashcards and went through the greeting and naming pages of the book. Like the Usborne stuff a lot, very easy to use. She enjoyed getting some one to one time too and i really think that languages might be good for her; talking to J&J the other week, it occurred to me what a “do-er” she is, so fidgetty, always talking, always moving, dancing, ready to be at something. I’ve a feeling that studying something that requires speech, interaction and the dynamics of the opportunity to actually go and use that knowledge abroad (holiday plans, not exchanges!) might be just her thing. Later on, she and i took a bike ride out too and had a real giggle and lots of races. She’s very fast, beats me hands down a lot, even with my bigger wheels! I got her on stamina at the end though

This evening Fran and Maddy sampled the delights of “playing out” - they spotted the close kids outside and i suggested to Maddy she go out and join in; she went like a flash and Fran went too. they had a ball, which was great for them - and i was really happy for them and barely watched out of the window at all.

And now for next week. Tomorrow starts a month of the very worst kind of “on this date last year… x number of years ago…” types of anniversary for me, combining two of the worst events in my whole life. One particular date actually manages to be 2 anniversaries all in one go - i’m assuming it is going to be a really shitty month. The atmosphere here seems glum, not least because Max’s gran is really quite ill again, but it just seems like it is hard to be happy, even thoguh the sun is shining. It almost makes it worse that i get through the winter only to get triggered by spring This time last year i was conceiving an accidental baby; i can’t really imagine how i’m ever going to get through a March/April again without wanting to burrow into the ground and never come back up. Oh to go back and change history; if i could just go back to this time last year, or a few days earlier and take better care of what i was doing. If only; what luxury it must be to have only grief and no guilt and no shame and all the rights to be sad in the world. How i’d beg for that.

Oh well; on the upside, Jax helped me fix BM so the checkout is now covered by an SSL certificate (and i managed to implement the change without killing anything; always good.) I’ve had a rubbish weekend of sales and the end of the tax year is only 10 days away but then i can get on with planning new things to do and i’ve got a couple of weeks of reasonably interesting things planned for the girls. AND now the clocks have changed, i can cycle every night. It could be worse.

When Max was little, he had a game called Kingmaker that he and his brother played. Joe still has in fact and i think i’ve played it once with them, but both Lou and i were pregnant and i have a feeling we both fell asleep. Anyway, it’s a game of intrigue amongst royalty and nobles and one of the playing cards in it commands you to “Marshall at Castle Rising” - every time we go past Castle Rising we say it, or think it, or remark that we must visit sometime soon.

When we left Hunstanton we fancied a stop off with the Beans somewhere, since we only had an hours drive home, so after we had stopped off at the “prettiest craft shop in Norfolk” we did indeed marshall at Castle Rising and after some sustaining apple turnovers in the car park, we headed in, pausing only for cheerful banter with the gatekeeper, who was very understanding about my lack of EH card (due to it being lost somewhere i think!) I paid for 2 handheld things to listen to, refused to get one for Amelie on the basis that she never uses it and therefore ensuring that she listened to every bit of it via borrowing the other twos devices. Not ideal given how cold it was, but worth the subtefuge!

Castle Rising is a phenomenal piece of engineering really; the defensive earthworks are incredible and i’d guess a fair few people died in the making of them. We walked round the top (no mean feat in the wind and with 6 flighty children in tow!) and to be honest, i’m not sure you’d survive a tumble down the outer edge of one of them. It can’t be far off a 100ft drop and virtually sheer; you wouldn’t stand much chance of grabbing hold of anything on the way down. It prompted a reasonable discussion with all the kids about what you’d need to overcome to attack. In fact, as Helen and i remarked as we left, if you turned up on the offensive, you’d take one look and think “we’re going to die.” And i imagine you’d be right.

The commentary centred on the wife of Edward 2nd, who was exiled there after her part in the death of her husband (him of the red hot poker up the bum fame - not a great way to go). It isn’t a bit of history i know much about, but i would like to and i’m off to Amazon this evening to hunt up some good books on the era. The commentary was nicely done and all the rooms were really well described. It was rather high though but i just about coped with board walks and children leaning against perfectly safe high up cast irn grates! I did lose my cool at the well though!

SB came up with the rather excellent “this is where the chaplains wept” (slept) and Fran informed me in the chapel that Isabella worshiped Allah, though i really don’t know where she got that!

There was some fairly welcome respite in the one still whole room near the top and it was distinctly gusty!

Anyway - it was a very pleasant stop and it always makes me happy to see the kids keen to listen and learn in such an informal but positive way when we go round places like that. Plus i got to add to my list of bizarre places to breastfeed but adding a windswept, freezing, 2nd storey, runined medieval chapel! Josie had a meltdown and i was very glad of still having the required optional extra feature ready for immediate download

Photos all courtesy of the Beans as my camera had expired by that point, thanks to me forgetting the essential little piece of cable again!

Friday evening took us speedily back to the more prosaic round of dancing and theate arts for the last time this term and now we get short respite from such things. Hurrah!

She’s just scratched herself to bits though as the rash that she got on Wednesday has dried up and gone really tight and nasty. She’s creamed and nurofened and fretfully asleep in my bed and i’m staying out of the way so as not to disturb her. I wish i could work out what it was that was doing this to her though, i just feel i must be missing something really obvious

Must get her back to the doctors next week; she’s come such a long way from the dried out, papery looking little scrap she used to be and i hate seeing her struggle with itchy, blotchy skin again. I know plenty of children have far worse eczema and allergies, but it makes me sad to see her struggling so much to put a brave face on when it is making her miserable.

She’s such a sunny, loving little person. And she makes a great portrait

This is cool - a hama bead Flickr tool which i saw over at Disco Dots.

You can find it here and i have a feeling i’ll be playing with it lots to help make new patterns!!!!!

it’s Jade Goody in miniature!

We had a fairly pleasant family weekend, mostly involving large quantities of house cleaning, while Max kept the children out of my way. Amazing how much you can do when you aren’t perpetually interupted and children don’t immediately undo your work. By the time Jan and Jonathan arrived on Sunday afternoon, i was feeling almost houseproud And when they did, everyone dropped instantly into playing/reading/tea drinking/gossiping - and in Jan’s case, shopping Unfortunately, Monday managed to string a simple few jobs on BM out into an all day event thanks to my internet connextion/rubbish IT system but Jonathan assisted ably. They left, we didn’t get away till 4 and left in a heave of hail too, but the journey was short, sweet and simple. I still managed to take a wrong turning though despite knowing the journey like the back of my hand. Arrived to find everyone else in situ, lots of lovely husbands to help me carry my stuff up to the Sycamore room (i was quoting bits of Romeo and Juliet in my head all week thanks to that!) and instant tea/dinner/wine etc etc. Children disappeared and actually, i can’t remeber anything else about Monday except that i think i got laughed at a lot in the evening

Tuesday we loafed, watched the children racing about in the garden in the hail drank tea, ate our body weight in cake, i cooked macaroni cheese, i took a quick walk out to the chemist with Fran and Joey and Joey nearly got blown away. It was INCREDIBLY windy At one point Fran and i lost hold of her hand in a gust and she got blown off the pavement and into the road.

Wednesday we visited the sealife centre; i really don’t rate it much as an attraction if you pay full price, it’s very small and not good value, but Nic had organised a group rate for us and at that price it was considerably better. Kids really enjoyed it, Joey adored the fish and the seals and the older ones loved the touch pools, the penguins, the hospital and the rays.

Thursday involved considerably more loafing and a lovely walk out with the SOTP’s and the Beans. Kids had a ball on the beach, adored the rock pools and generally blew out some cobwebs. We’ll gloss over Josie walking up to an interested group looking at a jellyfish and determinedly stomping on it. What a vandal, i was horrified!

Really enjoyed the snippets of time i got with my kids, Fran and i made a sew together ballerina, they did loads of colouring, weren’t involved in the love notes except as messengers so far as i know   danced a lot, sung a lot and adored having their hair braided. I think Fran was a bit lost without a good friend, she’d really looked forward to Gwenny coming with us but the plans went wrong for that But she was mostly okay; i’m always surprised that she and Maddy spend so little time together when we are away and when we taught her Landlock, she was very happy indeed!

So; a good week, nice to be near home for a change. Thoroughly enjoyed the company, so thank you to all, especially Nic for organising it and the various people who gave me a hand as ever (particularly Ady who reprised his wonder husband role) and even more particularly for me, Chris and Helen, who really are spectacularly lovely friends to me and always practically absorb me into their marriage for the week   You really are lovely friends and spending a week with you is just great. From the endless cups of tea, to the special cake cooking for my daughter, to the moral support and the dispensation to allow me to tease Chris and do a bit of nagging to let off steam, you just couldn’t be better

Allie has been writing about her reaction to an article which included this rather fabulous quote by Dr Philip Dixon, director of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers Cymru.

“Home educators…have a very narrow definition of what education is.”

Now, perhaps it is just me, but forgive me for a moment. Most home educators have been educated in the school system, am i right? If so, just whose fault is it if they have “a very narrow definition of what education is”? Could it be, perhaps, that it might be the fault of the system that educated them? I mean, after all, by Mr Dixon logic, school is where you learn everything, so therefore school ought to have taught them the definition of education, one would have thought. And modelled them a nice positive version of broad and balanced education while it was at it.

And if that is true, then they ought to be perfectly placed to educate their own children, because they know exactly what education should be. And if Mr Dixon is going to disagree with that, then presumably he’d have to agree that in fact education in schools doesn’t teach you everything you need to know, in which case, i can’t necessarily see a good reason for being there.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr Dixon.

If a girl spends a long time dreaming about Gary Lineker, is that a bad sign?

never send a newsletter to 800 people and then walk away from the laptop. I came back to find Josie playing on the keyboard and people receiving it 5 times! WAIL. And i hate sending out newsletters.

Now to decide whether it improves it or compounds it to send out an apologiy. SOB. I am so changing to new newsletter software.

I’m feeling rather pleased with myself, although whether this will impress anyone except Jax, Daddybean and possibly Tim, i have no idea. However, i have just successfully spent the evening installing a version of a shopping cart on to a spare website so i can play with it. As someone who, until recently, screamed for help over the merest thing, i’m glowing with self-satisfied pride. I even read the instructions and everything. Then i followed that up with finding, altering and implementing an overseas shipping rate on BeadMerrily, which should help rather a lot. Shame i stand absolutely no chance of worknig out what exactly it is on BeadMerrily that is forcing the SSL certificate padlock to stay unlocked though. Sadly all notion of hunting for scripts behaving recklessly is quite beyond me

Nonetheless, a good job done. I’ve even done two small models for my secret project, which feels rather pleasing too - and i’m inspiring the girls and they are inspiring me, so that is good too. Yesterday they produced a rather fab troll, fairy and replica of a stage complete with curtains, roof, backdrop and actor Thank heavens for wholesale prices.
Fran and Maddy had Brownies where they had a visit from the Raptor centre, with birds of prey - and now want to visit. Beans? Shall we go sometime?

Yesterday passed in a haze of modelling, playing, singing and reading - very peaceful day indeed. Today Max was home and i spent the majority of it getting the car MOT-ed, fixed, retyred, re-MOT-ed and so on. Hunted for a new dishwasher, but decided to wait given the afore mentioned MOT costs and then went to the doctors for a once over. He and i came to the mutual conclusion for me to stay on my low dose of pills; actually i think he thought that i should move up a dose, but i think i’d rather feel like i have a moderate quantity of actual feeling, rather than being dosed to the eyeballs and not caring about anything. i seem to have settled into a more-or-less copeable with level of sad but okay, sometimes angry, sometimes at peace, sometimes just wretched sort of thing. It isn’t wretchedly depressed, nor is it buoyantly happy, but perhaps i stand more chance of processing things and moving on if i can actually feel them. I don’t want to spend my life on pills, but struck rigid with grief, guilt and shame isn’t much cop either.

So we’ll see.

Max and the kids have Bamzooki-ed, cycled, walked, played, tidied and played with rabbits - they seemed to have had a nice day - and i quite enjoyed 4 hours sat drinking free hot chocolate, playing Animal Crossing and reading my book. I’ve finished Magician again now - i think i might actually be ready for a book i haven’t read before. That’ll be the first time in a year.