Spot the film?
Sigh… Fran has been a complete loony today, which has been a little on the irritating side. A bit of a reversal to the child of 2 years ago who used to drive me, screaming, up the wall. Just wall to wall whingy voices, wailing, screeching, temper-y, won’t settle to anything nonsense – and its driven me nuts, not least because i know its just a reaction to a fairly tough week and so screaming at her is only going to make her cry, which i really don’t want. But to be honest, getting her to behave like a member of the family i don’t want to chain to a rock and leave for the serpent to devour, has been just a bit too much like effort. At the risk of prolonging a metaphorical bit of classical imagery too far, it’s been like pulling hens teeth, sowing them and discovering you have an army of annoying identikit children instead of the army of SuperNanny’s you were expecting.
Of course, it didn’t help that Max and i consumed several bottles of wine and stayed up till 2am setting the world to rights. Which was lovely and undoubtedly the best way to watch the film “Duel” which fortunately appeared to be squeezed into about 6 mnutes of gloomy cafe sitting/car driving, so far as i can recall. Enjoyed Peter Kaye more. (Max was just glad i was prepared to watch anything comic, most so called comedy these days has me screeching and bellowing in 10 seconds flat. The Fast Show started it and it just got worse from there.) Anyway, we drowned our dead rabbit woes, bonded with Button while trying not to get too attached, talked out Josie’s birth (which was a good thing as we’ve not really referred to it since the weekend she was born) and generally discussed our future. Our future, i suspect, hangs more on me making a success of my two emergent businesses than anything else (so no pressure!) and tentatively includes the possibility of looking into fostering in the very distant future.
Without doubt the most amusing bit of the evening was trying to catch Button (should have done that before the wine because, whatever state we were in, she was NOT the worse for a couple of delightfully blackberry-ish white wines) and me getting into bed and then realizing i had forgotten to bring Josie upstairs. Ahem. We have a fairly strict policy normally of one of us (read me) staying pretty much sober in case of emergencies but i think something must have gone to my head last night. (I did lose 5lbs this week, does that count?)
We are a bit housebound because we don’t have a car till tuesday (the pipe that was leaking and got tightened needs replacing) and its heaving it down so the kids all have cabin fever. Maddy sat with me for ages doing her maths book and writing; she has added “i” to her letters now so she is getting there. Her maths was great, she was totally enjoying it and in the end i called a halt after 8 pages. I don’t want her to overdo it. Fran on the other hand was a nightmare – stupid answers, daft reading, fidgeting, wailing, saying she “can’t read, can’t write, can’t add 3+8” – she’d begged me to sit with her but in the end i just told her to b*gger off! So then she cried and begged some more. I just found it all a bit much today. We did manage to finish her Dinosaur sticker book properly and do a nice DK Kings and Queens one – i sat with her for that and we ended up having some good discussions on the Civil War, Henry (amazing how much of that she has forgotten) our current Royal Family, parliament and various other bits and bobs. Its a nice sticker book, we got it at Windsor Castle last year with a couple of others.
I read some Grandma’s Attic last night and a story about Edmund Ironside. Seemed to go down well. The Grandma’s Attic is quite twee and very, very “godly” but i just ‘adapted’ the end a bit to make it fit our slightly more laid back approach to such things. I truly can’t bear “after i was saved” as a phrase (and urgh, i read some things the other week that nearly drove me mad “my friend, who is unsaved” and “perhaps these people affected by the tsunami will turn from their false gods and be saved now” – argh how patronising) – however, i don’t mind substituting “after i learned to be good for God” or something instead.
Oh dear, this is my second rant of the day – i had to have a school story, modern day publishing rant over on Read Merrily earlier too. And don’t even get me started on the final demise of the camera.
Troy or Master and Commander? I need a night off sitting staring at my computer and not doing any of the jobs i should be doing.
