I want my dog back

I am sitting here trying to control the panic I feel when I am gripped by missing Harvey.  He was my little sidekick, and I gave him away.  Can't even describe how much I hate myself for it.  Got to try and keep a lid on my own misery until I get used to him not being here.  It's all my own fault.

Don't it always seem to go

that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
About 18 months ago we adopted Harvey the Jack Russell from the Blue Cross.  I have never had a dog, and was quite unprepared for the adjustments I personally needed to make in order for him to fit into our lives.  He attached himself to me as his 'person' and I felt stifled and irritated with him most of the time.  He was a tie and an emotional and physical responsibility I reached screaming point with many times. The stress level I was feeling and subsequently passing onto Mark and Oliver was something I realised we could not live with indefinitely, and so yesterday, we took him to his new home - a nice family who live in Newton Abbot.

This has been a completely horrible weekend.  I never believed that that bloody dog could be so missed by his absence.  All he ever wanted was to love, and to be loved, and I fell way short of the standard.  I failed him.  My misery is compounded by the unhappiness Mark clearly feels, and the sudden waves of sadness and tears are feelings of grief, which I never expected to experience.  I thought of him as the bane of my life, when the reality was, he was a loving part of it which I stupidly took for granted.

I used to think of all the things I could do if I didn't have Harvey.  Now I am just consumed by the pain of all the things I will never do again because I don't have him. 

Such regret.  So sorry.

Et voila!

Not quite the done to death 'ta dah' - but boy, am I feeling just a little bit smug today!  It has taken me four months to do, and it is the first real proper hobby I have embarked upon, stuck to and finished something 'real' and usable.  Hurrah for me. 

The granny stripe blanket - 87 stripes (a teeny rebellion in the final number there), edged with a deep shell of my own tweaking.  To fit our king size bed, and to drape artfully around the sofa.  Ahhhh.  sigh. 

We have had Halloween since my last missive: 

He was Darth Maul, for the non Star Wars aficionados.  And the annual pumpkin mess amid much cutting, scraping, puffing, panting and swearing. 

Would show you the bonfire night (Guy Fawkes night for the puritans) pics, but they are so crap, it is embarrassing.

There was a resources day with the home-ed group yesterday - a good idea,  where people bring in the things they use as educational aids/materials.  Always interesting and encouraging.  I have come away feeling freshly enthused.  Have felt like that about home-ed quite a bit lately.  I have bought a couple of sketchbooks for Oliver and I to use together.  I have read several times that it is a good idea to work alongside your child, so they will follow your lead in methods/means blah blah.  I am no artist, but think I am quite capable of expressing myself visually well enough to encourage Oliver to do the same.  We shall see. 

Tonight Oliver will be attempting to swim 800m during his swimming lesson, which I am impressed with.  I love watching him swim - he now looks like a real swimmer when he streaks up and down the pool doing front crawl.

it never rains, but it pours.

Well, it's pouring now, that's for sure.  It's half term this week and it's been raining heavily all week.  Personally, I love the rain - it keeps people inside their own houses and not outside in the great blue yonder annoying me, and I love the cosiness of indoor life anyhow, so win-win for little old selfish me....

It isn't too bad for the boy though too, since he likes a fair few indoorsy things too.  We have started to play Gin Rummy together (is that how you spell it??? never had occasion to write it down before) and it's a pretty cool means of getting him to write figures and add up disguised within a game heh heh heh.  Also starting watching our way through Lord of the Rings again, but he has got twitchy and nervous about it (again) so we have stalled halfway through the Two Towers, annoyingly.  All that viewing allowed me to crack on with my big granny stripe blanket, and I am happy to report that I am on stripe 81.5, so a completion date is almost in sight.  I have had to order more yarn (which I do sooooo love to do) to carry on with Oliver's stripey too, and I reckon his is about a quarter ways through.  Think his will be around the 75-80 stripe mark. 

Last weekend saw my little angel head off to cub camp for a weekend of cubbyness and independence.  I think he enjoyed himself - he had a hard time coming to terms with the fact they didn't have the promised disco on Saturday night and instead had a camp fire, but apart from that I think it was a success.  These times away from home, and particularly away from me, are good for him, but I often have to close my eyes and breathe deeply and swallow hard when faced with the misery of his absence.

And so to finish, some cub snaps taken 'en camp':

hooky love (just for you Kim, tee hee)

Before I forget, here is my latest show-and-tell blanket, colours chosen by Oliver:

I had serious misgivings over these colours, and fought bitterly for a multi-coloured stripe.  He originally wanted just three colours, but grudgingly conceded to add in the blue.  I thought it would be very dull.  Shows what I know. And it is for his bed after all....



The granny stripe for our bed is 20 stripes away from completion!  Tres exciting.  Then it's just all the ends to sew in and three or four rows all the way around the outside to finish off.  Onwards and upwards.

Oliver continues to enjoy the social aspects of the home-ed groups he attends, and seems to really enjoy the tutor-led subjects - spanish and science.  These are small groups and I think he is getting alot out of these.  There is talk of a french group starting, using conversation, games and songs mostly, so think that would be great too.  At home he gets on with maths and english stuff (english less willingly, I must admit), but I am trying hard to work on spelling and writing by getting him to work on presenting english in a different way.  His cousin (of the same age) produces the most brilliant handwritten magazines and books on subjects she is passionate about, and inspired by this, he did actually spend time creating a comic strip type story with speech bubbles, which is fab.

I do have other blitherings to share, but really feel to lazy to tappety-tap anymore.  I'll leave you with a pic of Oliver and the first of  his daily activities.  Bloody Pokemon cards.  These are my personal pet hate of toys - loose cards.  I like them stored in boxes, in types.  Oliver likes them stored around the house in random piles and strewn across the usable floor space.  ha ha.  bless.

A breath of French air

Zut alors, nous avons arrivee home.  Excuse the shocking french, I have just spent ten days using shocking french to communicate in lovely Brittany with the locals who then speak back to me in perfectly fluent english.  I am ashamed.  But not too ashamed to have enjoyed the slow and simple pace of life in the rural backwaters of Finistere.  I shall let the pics tell the story of our hols....

LOVE that overnight ferry crossing.  Cool, quiet, dark cabins, clean, crisp sheets, the gentle sway of the boat as it bobs across the channel....

We were lucky to have a pool at our gite, but this is Oliver attempting to get in - in a wetsuit, so it was a tad chilly....

The view across the front garden to the Chapel of St Margaret.  Embarrassed to say I didn't even cross the road to go and take a closer look at this. 

Here are the boys playing boules in the front garden.  Or petanque, whatever it's called.

The old walled city of Concarneau.  This is where I decided to be tres french, and order a crepe with 'Andouille' for lunch.  I thought Andouille was a local sausage-y thing, but when it came it looked not unlike compressed innards and smelt like pig.  Yukarooney.  I urge even thinking about it.  I will try and find a picture to share my discomfort with you.

Mark and Oliver looking relieved that they didn't order the Andouille.

A spell of unseasonal good weather saw us at Pentrez Plage.  It is such a fantastic feeling splashing around in the surf with the sun on your back.  It so takes me back to holidays as a kid in north Cornwall. 



Don't think you are supposed to feed the Giraffes grass from underneath the fence, but they seemed to like it.  As did the Wallabys, who seemed to have a hankering for acorns....

As did the Otters.

If you happen to read about the sudden unexplained demise of animals in a french zoo, then do let me know.  An autopsy may reveal an excess of visitor-fed foliage and I want to be ready if a google search should lead the investigation my way......

Look at that for a castle.  Trevarez - it is really quite breathtaking.  And it boasted this very E. Nesbit water feature in the garden:

On the last day we visited Oceanopolis in Brest, which cost a fortune and felt very not worth the money.  Nice fish though.

To be fair, they did have sharks, penguins and seals.  Not all in the same tank, I hasten to add, but I still think it was a big cost for not much.  We then headed over to Roscoff to kill a few hours before the overnight sailing home.  I expected Roscoff to be a big bustling scummy port, not unlike Plymouth, but I was massively pleasantly surprised.  We parked (free of course - in Brittany there is no avaricious need to rip people off for stopping on a few feet of land for a couple of hours) near 'centre-ville' and then trundled round the corner to an olde worlde network of streets and shoppes in buildings which had clearly been standing for hundreds of years. 

We went down one little side street and found it to back out onto the sea where we spent a jolly half hour skimming stones.

Yep, I was on this holiday too - that's me that is.  Hitherto unseen in holiday pics. That walkway jutting out behind us was good - you could walk quite a ways out over the swirling waters below and look back to the town.  Very nice little stroll after our last supper en vacances. 

So with the moon rising over the prettiness and quaintness of Roscoff, we boarded the ferry home to Plymouth, where, as we drove through at 6.30am there were people falling out of still open pubs and clubs carrying drinks and looking like the dregs of the earth.  I was deeply ashamed of the image this would portray of this part of the country, and truly feared for any foot passengers who were brave enough to walk off the ferry and into deepest darkest Plymouth.  The comparison with Roscoff was not a favourable one.


On this cheerful note, I will leave you for now.  Lots more to say, but fed up with typing now. 

Laters.

So, here we are then, the start of the Autumn 'term'.  That is, some things that we do kick off again - Cubs, HE group, regular education at home (?!)........  I love Autumn.  I love that wintry feel which creeps in around late afternoon - that nip in the air that says the cold is a-comin' and the smell of bonfires gradually creeping into the chill of the night......oooh, lovely.  I love the wrapping up warm, the cosy afternoons, dimpsy evenings and life in the great indoors.  The falling leaves make it harder to spot the dog poo on a walk however.  You can't have it all.

Current crochet progress:

on my 58th stripe of the granny stripe blanket:

and I have completed 5 big squares for another blanket:

I have had to order in another 'yarn' pack as I will be running out soon - oh frabjous day.

Oliver back off to Cubs:

He didn't get 'Seconder', which he was expecting to get (literally second in charge in the pack) since his 'Sixer' (head pack honcho) had gone up to Scouts and the current Seconder moved up to Sixer.  Instead they moved Oliver's close friend into the pack and made him Seconder instead. Gulp. I could hardly sleep that night (I didn't find out til I arrived home from work late) for worry and anger over Oliver's upset.  It seemed so unfair.  Through a couple of emails to the Cub leader, understanding was restored, and although the position remains the same, Oliver was happy with his leader's comments and I am happy that he is OK with it.  More than anything though, I was pleased that Oliver's disappointment was focused on him not getting the position rather than on the fact his friend did get it.  That seems wholly sensibly proportionate to me, and I recall that as a child I think I would have been eaten up with jealousy and bitterness in such circumstances so I am so happy Oliver is not of that ilk.

Mark has decided after seeing a nutritionist to try a period of wheat and dairy free eating.  First a pricey shop at the local weirdy food store:

Muesli is homemade by my own fair hands (toasted and everything, I'll have you know) and in addition he must have homemade vegetable soup daily.  Fliparooney.  It requires a fair bit of thinking ahead, although I enjoy the challenge of cooking good, wholesome stuff.  I am very interested to see if he loses weight, because if he does - I'm in for that.  It doesn't seem too beyond the pail.

What else, hmm. I managed to pick up Gastritus earlier in the week and endured two days of stomach ache and headache.  It really doesn't look too unbearable written down, but boy, the last few days have been well miserable.  Thankfully friends and family have been able to ensure that Oliver hasn't been too badly affected by my maudlin weeping and wailing and taking to my sickbed, and he has got out to do his normal things.  Thanks to them who know who they are....  And actually, that is a big bummer for the HE family - if you fall ill, you are stuffed.  No shunting your kids off to school and falling into bed for the day, getting a fellow school-run-mum to take your offspring home for fish fingers and chips til the hubby finishes his day at the office.  Phew. Another load off....

As I say, you can't have it all.

Laters.