Tuesday 29 September 2009

Park?

Firstly, and most importantly.. tomorrow, dumb dog aka attack beast aka Max gets his final lot of injections and can finally be taken for walks. Thank God for that. There never was a dog more in need of walking than he. But of course, now start the excuses.

K - The man who bought the dog without consultation and then abandoned the care of said dog to me..

Excuse 1 - Doesn't get home from work until 7.30 and it's dark then.
Excuse 2 - Is very tired when he gets home and hungry and needs food and rest.
Excuse 3 - Thinks that raising the dog will do G good..

and that leads in nicely to:

G- The girl who loved the dog for precisely 29 minutes until she had to pick up a poo

Excuse 1 - Can't take him on a morning walk before school as she has to straighten her hair and that takes at least 33 minutes and if it's not done everyone will laugh at her.
Excuse 2 - (when advised she could get up earlier) She needs at least 10 hours sleep a night and if she doesn't get enough is unable to concentrate at school and will amount to nothing later in life.
Excuse 3 - 13 year olds are not legally allowed to walk dogs unsupervised. (This is unproven as Google refuses to back this up)
Excuse 4 - Mum does nothing all day anyway.

*watches steam rise from top of own head and imagines actually doing nothing all day* Ooh, I can hear Hawaiian music now, and I'm lying on a hammock. Ok, I'm not, well obviously.

And that leaves me. Colour me surprised. So now, in the mornings, I will get up, get Lal up, G up, sort out breakfasts. Get Lal dressed and ready for school. Remember not to just shove a jumper on over my pjs and get dressed properly. (Or if having fallen asleep on the sofa the night before, remember to get changed out of yesterday's clothes) And then take puppy puppington for a walk.. get back, get Lal to nursery.. etc etc etc.

Hands up who knew dog care would be my job? G can't walk him at night when she gets home as it will be dark, and you know, there's the law preventing 13 year olds... yeah, that one. *sigh*

And actually, *sigh* again.
Meh, I'll sort it out, I can with hold computer time from G, and sex from K. I wonder which one of them will break first.

G had a non pupil day today and cleaned and hoovered her room. Seriously, she did. 3 seconds after she'd done it she asked if she could go out, but she did it, so off she went. She was home a little late and before I could say a word, asked if she could take Lal to the park. Awww. He *loves* the park.

40 minutes later I got a desperate phone call as she couldn't make him turn around. He didn't want to go to the swings, he wanted to go to the Skate park a mile away. And she couldn't stop him. There was nowhere I could get to in the car to stop them, so had to allow the skate park trip, where there is a car park, and went to pick them up. Imagine my surprise when I met them,and G was surrounded by her friends. None of Lal's friends were there.. wasn't that lucky for her?

Oh, finally, I knit now. To be fair, my knitting is almost unrecognisable as actual clothes, but I spend a lot of time doing it. A lot of time. I keep falling asleep at 1am, mid stitch. So yeah, expect to see a lot of my lovingly hand knitted family Christmas presents on ebay come January. If I don't give up and pay someone to knit them for me..

K x

Friday 25 September 2009

Displays of terrible parenting.

Ok, so I am a bad parent. I know that. I have no illusions. I like to lie to the children over mostly inconsequential things - G thought for years that people were kidnapped from car washes and forced to work in Sainsburys, the empty cars in the car park were my proof. She also thought that lamb wasn't meat from baby lambs, but a foodstuff discovered by the Earl of Winship in 1308.
So, little, ordinary things.

But today I surpassed myself. I taught my son, my 2 years and 8 months old son, a complete swearing sentence. It's his only sentence so far, despite his advanced years, but you know.. at least he's not entirely mute. And he can say it without prompting now.
Ok, the tale goes.. we were playing our game, the "Can you say?" game, where I say "Can you say car, truck, bus etc" and he repeats them back.. it always has a random, "Can you say tickle?" in there, upon which he says it, and I tickle him. He hasn't quite worked out that if he doesn't say it, I won't do it.. I had got as far as, "Can you say...." when the damn dog bit my foot, quite hard, and I completely forgot where I was, and loudly, with perfect enunciation, exclaimed.." Fuck *off* Max.." And then my dear, innocent little boy replied.. "Fuck *off* Max"

Nooooooo.. no, no. Just because I said, "can you say.." I wasn't finishing it with that.. I was finishing it with pillow. Just to make matters better, Lal's friend at nursery is called Max. Guess what Lal told him to do when he got to nursery this morning? I had to stand in the corner and write lines. And I now need to try and teach him another sentence. Balls.

In other words, Lal can now say Fire Engine. His nursery worker asked me this morning if Lal had been experimenting with cannabis.. huh? What? It's just that he says it "fie engeen" complete with relaxed voice and slight head nod, like some Rastafarian after a particularly good bong.*

Oh, and also, G apparently needs glasses. Not for all the time, just for reading, looking at the board at school, computer, tv.. so everything she does then. She is not amused. Braces, and now glasses. She says she's the before picture in all those American teen comedies where the ugly duckling gets the Prom King at the end of the film. But it'll be years before she looks even half way decent.

Max the puppy starts his first playgroup next week - Puppy Socialisation Classes. For goodness sake. What has the world come to? The dog now needs his own space on the Family Timetable calender in the kitchen. Gah.

Ok, got to go.. he can get upstairs, but can't get back down again and gets so upset by the fact that he can't get down, he piddles in K's shoes. Might leave him up there actually...

K x


*no idea if that is a good analogy, I'm going by Tv impersonations..

Thursday 3 September 2009

A couple of things that made me laugh...

Do you remember when...?

It took five minutes for the TV to warm up?
Nearly everyone's Mum was at home when they got home from school?
Nobody owned a purebred dog?
When a shilling a week was decent pocket money?
White dog poo in the street?
You only had to be home when the street lights came on?
Your Mum wore stockings that came in two pieces?
All your male teachers wore ties
Female teachers had their hair done every day and wore high heels?
You got your windscreen cleaned, oil checked, and petrol pumped, without asking, all for free, every time?
Cereals had free toys hidden inside the box?
It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents?
Schools threatened to keep kids back a year if they failed……and they did?
When a Ford Capri was everyone's dream car?
No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?
Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a… “
Playing footy and cricket with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?
Stuff from the shop came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?
When being sent to the headmaster's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited you if your parents heard that you had been sent to the headmaster?
And with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savour the slower pace, and share it with the children of today?
Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat!
But we survived because their love was greater than the threat.
Send this on to someone who can still remember Laurel and Hardy, The Famous Five, Secret Seven, Biggles, the Lone Ranger, Phantom, Roy Rogers and Trigger at the flicks.
As well as summers filled with bike rides, cricket games, Hula Hoops, tiger nuts, Frozen jubblies, visits to the beach and lemonade powder.
Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?
I am sharing this with you today because it ended with a double dare to pass it on.
To remember what a double dare is, read on.
And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care.
How many of these do you remember?
Sweet cigarettes, pogo sticks, marbles, Home milk delivery in glass bottles with foil tops
Newsreels before the movie, Sandshoes/Desert wellies, Four digit Telephone numbers
Press button A then button B, 45 RPM records, Hi-Fi s, Metal ice cubes trays, Roneo paper
Spud guns, Ford Capris, Twin Tub washing machines, Izal (germicated)toilet paper
Reel-To-Reel tape recorders, Houses made of cards,Meccano Sets, Anglo/Bazooka Joe pink bubble gum, MoJos/black jacks/fruit salads, Two bob for a gallon of petrol
Do you remember a time when...
Decisions were made by "eeny-meeny-miney-mo"?
"Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest?
It wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends".
The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "boy or girl germs".
Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a catapult.
There were no Saturday morning cartoons with 30-minute adverts for action figures.
Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles.
The worst embarrassment was being caught playing doctors and nurses by your parents.
Putting playing cards in the spokes that transformed any bike into a motorcycle?
Taking drugs meant the Polio injection in school or Nitty Nora
Water balloons were the ultimate weapon?

And:

Why is it that people say they 'slept like a baby' when babies wake up
>every two hours?
>
>
>If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?
>
>
>Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are
>flat?
>
>
>Why do banks charge a fee on 'insufficient funds' when they know there is
>not enough?
>
>
>Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but
>check when you say the paint is wet?
>
>
>Why do they use sterilized needles for death by lethal injection?
>
>
>Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?
>
>
>Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest, but ducks when you throw a
>revolver at him?
>
>
>What is the speed of darkness?
>
>
>Are there specially reserved parking spaces for 'normal' people at the
>Special Olympics?
>
>
>If the temperature is zero outside today and it's going to be twice as cold
>tomorrow, how cold will it be?
>
>
>If it's true that we are here to help others, what are the others doing
>here?
>
>
>Do married people live longer than single ones or does it only seem longer?
>
>
>Do you cry under water?
>
>
>How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a
>good idea to put wheels on luggage?
>
>
>Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars
>to look at things on the ground?
>
>
>Did you ever stop and wonder......
>
>
>Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, 'I think I'll squeeze
>
>these pink dangly things here, and drink whatever comes out?'
>
>
>Who was the first person to say, 'See that chicken there... I'm gonna eat
>the next thing that comes outta it's bum.'
>
>
>Why do toasters always have a setting so high that could burn the toast to
>a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?
>
>
>Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?
>
>
>Why do people point to their wrist when asking for the time, but don't
>
>point to their bum when they ask where the bathroom is?
>
>
>Why does your Obstetrician, Gynaecologist leave the room when you get
>undressed if they are going to look up there anyway?
>
>
>Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They're both
>dogs !
>
>
>Can blind people see their dreams? Do they dream ??
>
>
>If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests? (This one kills me !!!!)
>
>
>If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables,
>then what is baby oil made from ?
>
>
>If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons ?
>
>
>Why do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same
>tune?
>
>
>Stop singing and read on . . . . . .. . . . .
>
>Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet Soup?
>
>
>Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at
>
>you, but when you take him on a car ride, he sticks his head out the
>window?
>
>
>Does pushing the elevator button more than once make it arrive faster?



What doesn't make me laugh is my very bored husband taking apart a car engine on our kitchen floor. Whilst being "helped" by the dog and Lal. Hmph.

K x