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

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..

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

A tale of two..

A daughter's night..

"Mum, can I stay at S's house tonight please?"
"Who is S? I don't think I've ever heard of her before.."
"Oh yeah, she lives over the other side of the park, we've been friends for a week or so."
"Umm, no love, sorry. I'd need to speak to the parents and stuff, not tonight, maybe another time."
"That's just not fair. You never let me do anything."
*hangs up phone*

Daughter then thinks, "Ah, sod it. I'll go anyway.. what harm will it do." And doesn't inform her parents of this plan. Daughter plays on friends Wii, has pizza and chips for dinner. Tell friend's parents that it is perfectly acceptable if she spends the night. Stays up till 2am giggling, joking and having fun. Daughter allows mobile phone to run out of battery and remains completely uncontactable. All night and until 1pm the next afternoon.

A mother's night...

8pm and no child home. She should have been home by 6.30. Where the bloody hell is she?? Ring mobile phone for the 50th time, "Welcome to Orange Ansaphone..." nothing. 9pm.. no child. Father starts walking through the park calling for her. Nothing. 10pm, no child. Father starts driving around the town fruitlessly looking. Nothing. Mother starts to panic. Finds old mobile and starts calling friends. No one has seen her, no one knows where she is. 11pm.. call police. Police start looking, but have no idea where she could be. Mother now screaming inside and watching out the window, but nothing. Father still driving round town.

1am, no child. Nothing. Father still driving, checking people leaving nightclubs, walking through the park and checking ditches. Mother hopes that child is just being a selfish teenager and that she has decided to stay with the nameless friend.

3am, Mother wakes from 30 mins sleep... no child. Starts cleaning and ironing in the hope of finding something to do.

8am, police call announcing they will do a check of friend's mobile number (located on old phone, but switched off when rung) and see if they can locate address.

9am, Police ask for photo of child to circulate round all stations and police officers. Mother breaks down in tears whilst trying to find a nice one and trying not to wonder if it is the last photo.

1pm, child brought home by police.

A daughter's night..

"Mum, can I stay at S's house tonight please?"
"Who is S? I don't think I've ever heard of her before.."
"Oh yeah, she lives over the other side of the park, we've been friends for a week or so."
"Umm, no love, sorry. I'd need to speak to the parents and stuff, not tonight, maybe another time."
"That's just not fair. You never let me do anything."
*hangs up phone*

Daughter then thinks, "Ah, sod it. I'll go anyway.. what harm will it do." And doesn't inform her parents of this plan. Daughter plays on friends Wii, has pizza and chips for dinner. Tell friend's parents that it is perfectly acceptable if she spends the night. Stays up till 2am giggling, joking and having fun. Daughter allows mobile phone to run out of battery and remains completely uncontactable. All night and until 1pm the next afternoon.

She's 13 years old. And so sodding sure of herself, and so selfish. It simply didn't occur to her that we would worry. Not one single thought to let us know where she was. She didn't think.

Of course, there were some comedy moments - who knew that touch screen mobiles were so sodding difficult to work? It took me an hour to work out how to find the contacts screen. I never did figure out how to add a space inbetween words on the text messages. (That wouldn't send cos the phone was broken, grrr)

Couldn't log into her computer as it is password protected. The password hint was "So we go
Up up - do the jump" which google informs me is something to do with LazyTown Live. I tried every single LazyTown permutation, nothing.

So, upshot.. didn't sleep all night (she did) didn't eat (she did) smoked an awful lot (she better not have done) but she is home, alive (for now) and well (again, for now)

And I have had an unpaid cleaner today. Who has washed up, put everything away, cleaned her room, done half the ironing, watered the garden, washed the floors and hoovered upstairs. I have played Mafia Wars on facebook to remove some of my aggression.

K x

Urgh.. nice

I'm a fairly nice person right? Tonight I have allowed the puppy to sit next to me on the sofa and sleep. He is stretched out happily, relegating K to the chair that he is too tall to sit comfortably in... and what is my reward? The gentle lick of a puppy's tongue as I type, the warmth of his little body against my leg? Nope. Farts. Yep. The puppy is flatulent. And OMG does it stink! I keep having to take short little breaths.. urgh. Have tried covering his bottom area with a cushion, but the smell is still escaping. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

Just briefly tonight as I'm tired, and lightheaded from not breathing, a little story..

My, umm, Aunt's husband (who I last saw when I was about 5 and don't know at all, but have to be informed of all the gossip) has just found a lump of some sort and the doctors are worried it is cancer.. The following is a transcript of a conversation my other Aunt had with him.. *

*Names have been changed to protect identities

Aunt Helen "Hi Bill, how are you? Doing ok?"
Uncle Bill "Not so great, Helen, but I'll be fine.."
Aunt Helen "So when are you going in for your autopsy then?"
Uncle Bill "What the hell? I may have cancer and you want me to die??"

I think she may have meant "biopsy." It's now the subject of a family row, with Bill not talking to Helen, Bill's wife Jane moaning at my mother, Helen's husband Tom complaining to my father.

What a time to say the wrong word, huh?

K x

(Another leak from the dog.. I can't breathe.. the air is all hazy.. must be some sort of poisonous gas..."

It's been a while again

I can't work out why I keep forgetting to blog. I just know that it gets to 11pm and I remember. But by then I have lost the ability to turn the TV over, let alone think up fun and interesting things to say.

Even now I have nothing. Oh, maybe I do. We have a puppy (we had two, but my parents swooped in and stole one..) See the face of pure evil..

Yes, he is a Jack Russell. Yes, he does delight in biting my feet. No, he won't sleep at night on his own. I spend half the night lying on the conservatory floor with my head in his basket in an attempt to stop him whining. It doesn't tend to work. G is completely besotted with him. No actually, G was completely besotted with him and then had to pick up poo and the novelty wore off. Lal and Max (oh, that is his name... Max"the puppy in"amillion - chosen cos Lal can say it) are partners in crime, wreaking havoc on the garden..

Lal is coming along nicely now. No, he isn't a stew.. but you know.. he can almost speak. I appreciate the silence really. Or I would if it weren't punctuated by screams.

G is a teenage delight. She still loves Cadets, and loved being away on Dartmoor with them for two weeks. Except for one garbled phone call in which I was lovingly informed that she was "on manoevers and is hiding in a field, but my position is lying in a pile of sheep shite." Apparently they learn nice language at Cadet camp. OH.OH.OH.OH. You'll never believe it.. the morning after she came back.. she made her bed, tidied her room and cleaned away her breakfast plates. AND washed them up. She's been back 10 days now, so she has remembered to forget to do any of that now, but it was nice while it lasted.

G, showing how appreciative she was of being taken to a huge play area with massive sandpit.

She looks happy, no? Enjoying herself? Not bothering to constantly text. *sigh again*

What else? I can think of nothing, but promise (I do, Hayley, I do.. I'm sorry!) to write again tomorrow night.

K x

"In 350 yards, at the roundabout, turn left"

So.. Take That. Brilliant, wonderful and fab. G loved it and boogied away whilst randomly screaming because other people were. Lady GaGa as a support act was appalling, apparently she makes her own clothes, I wasn't surprised. Oh, and the roving cameraman had an obsession with her legs and treated us to long shots of them.. and her seeming lack of knickers. Delightful. G says that my wish that I had taken a book in with me shows that I am officially old. *sigh* Well, she'll catch her death of cold walking about like that. And was it really necessary to scream the words out?

Oh, and we also realised why K had been able to get us tickets. We were basically seated in space. Take That were ants to us. 4 rows from the top of Wembley.

I spent the first 20 minutes we were there trying to tie the back of my shirt to the chair. I felt like we were about to recreate that scene in Titanic at any minute - you know, the one where the boat bobs and down in the water for a while and that one man sort of cartwheels to his death? Yeah, that scene.

So yes that. OH. And I forgot. We owe our presence at the concert to a very special someone. No, not K. It's time to meet the newest member of our family. And she is wonderful. Suzie SatNav. And her perfect directions, and endless patience when I ignore them and think I know best. K says he'll be taking her off me soon though. It's over the top to use her to direct me to the shops, which are all of 375yards away - I'd never have known the exact distance without Suzie. I love her. And the little button that says "home" so I can always find out house. I love her.

In Lal news... the oddity is becoming far worse. Now, he will only eat the heads, arms and body of Gingerbread Men. The floor is littered with abandoned legs. Seriously. It's like some sort of scary massacre around here. Amputeed limbs all over the place.

He is still insistant about his car theory. Did I mention this before? Probably around the time of the bus trip saga.. but it's moved forward from there. Now, no cars are allowed to stop ever. Even if they weren't moving before he saw them. It was a 10 minute screaming fit this morning as a British Gas van had the temerity to park across the road from us. You have to feel bad for K.. Lal loves to watch for him coming home from work, from the playroom window. As soon as K's car appears on the drive, Lal sinks into a puddle of depression.. "go car, go."

Umm, I was woken this morning to the pain of Lal's school bag being repeatedly smashed into my head and the "School.. NOW" sound coming from the boy.

I have some sort of obsession with Michael Jackson - even though I didn't much care about him when he was alive - and his memorial service had me sobbing uncontrollably. In front of K and G who remained entirely unmoved by the whole thing. I just keep picturing that little girl..

And finally, I am defrosting the freezer at the weekend, so we will be using up the frozen food this week. K and G had yorkshire pudding, mixed veg, spicy chicken and spring rolls for dinner tonight. I had frozen pizza that must have been in there for a year. It was only slightly cardboardy. Desert is ice chips.

K x