A few random things, because I feel the need for an update but last night The Daddy came home with not-one-but-two bottles of wine and then somehow after drinking the one it made perfect sense to drink the other, except the second one was a white and I have started to realize that white wine makes me feel less than good. Also, I may well have drunk more than my fair share of it and then worn thermal PJs on what turned out to be a very warm night and woke up this morning WISHING I WASN’T HAVING TO WAKE UP.

Dehydration is a killer and not a promoter of incisive thought, and the only rapid solution for me is to guzzle vast amounts of Gatorade. I happen to quite like Gatorade, but there was no way I was fitting in a special trip to the supermarket today so, *sigh*.

I suddenly realize that I don’t exactly promote myself here as the picture of health and vitality. Please know that behind the scenes I sometimes even eat fruit and vegetables and am a “Yoga Master”.  At least my Wii says so, during my six-weekly workouts, although it occurs to me that it also has the T-Bot convinced he is an ace at bowling when in real life, let’s just say he is very familiar with the gutters. But right now, I’ll take it.

At the moment I am drowning in parcels. Coming in, going out, of all descriptions. Family, you have been very  generous, and I can’t wait to see the kids faces on Christmas Day. I am so sorry I have to repay you by not managing to get your Christmas cards and in some cases, gifts, to you before the day in question. Um, Happy New Year? And truly, sorry…

I also did most of my Christmas shopping for the kids online this year and those boxes are arriving. I am secreting everything in our linen cupboard for now. (Look at me, all la-dee-da, pretending I have linen, rather than a motley collection of old towels and mismatched cotton bedsheets). Exactly how stupid am I? I forgot to remove the “linen” first. So that cupboard is fairly groaning and also I can’t find a towel without waiting until the kids backs are turned and hurriedly pulling everything out.

I am still getting Christmas orders, which makes me happy, and they need to get turned around and shipped out as quickly as possible also. Did I mention that the staff at the Post Office know my children well? Some shipping I can do online, but with my current setup it is not always possible. I need to change that, urgently. But sometimes change is such hard work.

Something else which makes me happy: tonight the T-Bot and Baby Sister are “camping out” in the T-Bot’s room. I put their mattresses down on the floor and they pretend the room is a tent. They went through a stage of wanting to do this quite regularly, and then T-Bot grew up and wanted to read in bed before sleeping, instead of snuggling in to tell ghost stories. He also realized at some point that little sisters are a pain. But he was in good mood tonight, and willing to tolerate her sharing his space. She went to sleep with a big smile on her face.

We are really getting into our stride with school, and now that we have a routine, of sorts, it is becoming more or less second nature. I am willing to admit, though, that it was a mistake taking Baby Sister out of “school at school” (as it is now called) on Mondays. I thought she could join in our activities but in reality, between her and The Wictor, T-Bot and I can never find a quiet moment to get anything done. So I decided that we will do what we can on Monday mornings, and then have science hour on a Monday afternoon.

This week we tried some activities from our Usborne Book of Science Experiments: we made a worm farm out of an old apple juice bottle and put pieces of cement and mortar chipped off the house into a glass of vinegar (scary, what vinegar will do to mortar in just a few hours). My favorite activity though, was a real crowd pleaser. We dropped raisins into a glass of Sprite and watched them go up and down, up and down, “like that man who tied balloons to himself and floated away” (T-Bot. What have they been watching now? ). Then, as usual, I got out the balloons. The Wictor discovered that if he threw his balloon onto the lawn over and over it would oblige by popping, and then he could whine for another. Baby Sister just wanted to bat her balloon and make it float. And the T-Bot made an artificial lung with his by putting it on the end of his Airhogs rocket launcher and pumping air in and out.

I know, that all sounds quite impressive doesn’t it? Come visit me on another day, when I will still be in my pyjamas at 11am.

Courtesy of The Daddy, official proof that Bling is dead.

(Photo from Jalopnik )

I’m not sad. I am kind of an understated gal myself. Maybe one day I will come back into fashion.

What do you think? Would you drive it?

Last night The Daddy arrived home and I greeted him with “I had to make a sandwich. I was about to pass out”.

His reply: “Why do you do that to yourself, won’t you ever learn?”

I took offense at that but instead of reminding him in a reasonable and adult manner that I do not have a canteen at my house serving such delicacies as BBQ beef, stir fry chicken and sushi, washed down with copious amounts of Odwallas, I let loose with a tirade about how my web sites look like cr*p, the design is out of the 90s and whoever designed them should have been shot. Or something to that effect.

Ahem. It really doesn’t pay to annoy the Chief Technical Officer. I spent the rest of the evening wrestling with my own stylesheets and swearing copiously.

However, The Daddy is probably a saint or something, because (although he still won’t fix my sites) he didn’t bear a grudge. Generally he doesn’t bear a grudge, and that is probably why I can forgive the fact that he never buys me flowers.

That’s right, never in the last 16 years together has he bought me flowers.

But that is about to change!

Well, technically it is not, but next week on my birthday I will be getting flowers, thanks to The Daddy, even if I do have to choose them myself. And all because one time The Daddy took the idea of recycling to a whole new level to procure me flowers. I wrote about it here. I won. How could I not?

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I thought long and hard about publicizing this, because I really didn’t want to expose The Daddy to ridicule. And myself, by association. But it is  … kind of funny. Before writing this post I asked The Daddy if he would mind his dumpster diving skills were revealed to an even greater audience. He just shrugged, and said he didn’t see a problem.

If you know The Daddy you will probably understand.

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If you don’t you will probably misunderstand, but that’s fine too

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And now, time to go choose my flowers! With big thanks to The Daddy!

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Oh, and … ahem … The Daddy? Could you please fix my stylesheets now?

More photos, today. If you are a cynical, cold-hearted person, just look away.

We started out drawing on our hands because we were learning to spell words with “TH” in them. On the spur of the moment I decided to provide a visual aid by writing “thumb” on the T-Bot’s thumb. Then he wanted all the parts of his hand labeled, so I did.

Which is how he came to draw on my palm (yes, the childish podgy paw is actually mine).

I am not going to pretend that the T-Bot is the most normal of children. If he was a toaster you couldn’t plug him in out of the box and then he would probably burn your toast, just for fun, before flicking it 3 ft into the air.

But he does have a really sweet temperament.

I don’t think I am going to let this boy leave home until he is at least 26.

There’s a reason I never diet. I don’t function when I am hungry. Low blood sugar just makes me into a kind of ghostly non-person, floating about the place but not really existing in any dimension.

Being fully aware of my condition you would think I would make sure to keep food in the house for myself and to eat it at regular intervals, wouldn’t you? Of course! That’s what a sane person would do! Sadly, although I make sure my children are fed and watered following a strict timetable, I tend to neglect myself. There is always something more important. And then time passes. In a kind of rapid haze.

This is how I came to skip breakfast this morning. Unless you define two spoons of sugar in an enormous cup of black coffee as a hearty breakfast. Luckily, I had thought to prepare a lesson plan for the T-Bot’s school day in advance, because if you want something done, you should never give the job to someone who hasn’t eaten.

Case in point: some time later I wanted to microwave my lunch, which happened to be pork and rice left over from last night’s dinner. But when I took it out of the oven it was shrivelled and hard, like a piece of old bark. In my befuddled state I decided I had typed an extra zero and set the cooking strength to 500% instead of 50%. (See what I mean? I got to thinking my microwave was magic!).

So, with lunch nuked (literally) I had to scrabble around in the back of the cupboards searching for something that wasn’t kids food, ie something yummy. Lunch: two pieces of toast with nutella.  Yes, that is technically kids food. But yummy. I meant to also eat an apple but didn’t. I will have another think about my colon tomorrow.

I’m not quite sure my energy levels were restored by that feast, as I seem to have spent the rest of the afternoon working furiously and accomplishing basically nothing.

I got a call from an old friend. Interpret “old friend” how you will. During our last conversation I announced I was homeschooling and she managed to run through items 2, 4, 6, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19 and 24 from this list (link courtesy of Eryn) and mix up my son with another, teenage boy she knows who was suspended from school for looking up girls’ skirts. And then she never called again. I never called either, because, well… see above.

I think I managed to get through this conversation with dignity, mainly by saying “uh-huh” and “oh?” until she hung up.

After picking up Baby Sister from school  I took everything out of the garage and gave the kids free reign. So of course they decided to fill and use the wading pools and I was too busy fantasizing about sushi to stop them. Before you say anything, it was 80 degrees out there when they started. By the time they got out the temperature had dipped just a little, so I cranked up the heating and sent them to warm up in front of the TV.

At which point they exclaimed “TV! Oh! Is that what it looks like? What a wondrous box! Why have you kept this invention from us until now?”

… I bet I really had you there.

My husband came home and declared himself very very tired. We are currently sitting facing each other, on our respective laptops, each waiting for the other to crack and go start dinner.

I will totally win this one.