And we're off!

8.35am

December the 1st.  No day in all the year yields such promise of joy to come.  Today is the day that Christmas - the season of goodwill to all men and twinkliness - begins.  I just want to hug myself with glee.  Well, I would if I didn't have an early trip to the dentist to look forward to.  I hate going to the dentist, always have.  I have tried, with some degree of success I might add, not to pass on my unadulterated terror of the man in the white coat to Oliver, so check ups are always an exercise in deep breathing and inane smiling and using my tight, high pitched voice I reserve for such bottom-clenching occasions.

Have decided to put the time up that I am blogging, since I have clearly got something wrong with my settings as it appears I blog at weird times like 3am and suchlike (I so don't).  I am sure putting it right is easy, I just haven't arsed myself to try yet.  It's on the list with getting photos onto my blog. 

This morning Oliver has eaten his first advent choc - a proper choc from a proper wooden advent box, I might add, not a shite one from a shite calendar with a shite picture on it.  I apologise if you have a particular leaning towards the shite choc calendar - each to their own and all that.  I just have a hankering for the advent days of auld, when each day revealed a glittery illustration of Yule in some form, not a chemical and sugar injected brown lump of pseudo choc.  (sorry again).  So Oliver still has a colouring from Activity Village to do (thanks Corinna and Julia - not a sarcastic thanks by the way!) and a little piccy from his standy-up advent window to do.  Poor little bugger will be worn out by Christmas before 9am on the first day ha ha! 

My Christmas journal officially begins today - I have had a couple of false starts and last night saw me flying up to Tesco gripped by panic that I had no actual 'journal' set up to actually 'start' with today.  I have since got a hold of myself and ordered a clear plastic A5 ringbinder from ebay for £2.99 which will, WILL do the job perfectly.  So I can get on with it, unhampered by making covers and the usual poncing around.  In Janice World (it's a confusing place to be) it looks a bit like Ali Edwards' December Daily.  In the Real World (a scary place to be) it will probably look more like Elmo's jotter from Sesame Street.

Anyhoo, off to have my gnashers inspected.  Gulp.

Edited to add: I have just popped in to Blogger and looked at my settings.  Seems I was set onto Central Pacific time on some island in the caribbean or somewhere.  Back to jolly old GMT in London now.  Tootle pip.

pockets of sadness and a creeping of yuletide cheer

Still feeling pinches of deep sadness.  Thank you for the kind comments on my last post - that's really nice. 
Today I am going to start Christmas.  I don't feel very Christmassy - largely due to feeling bloody miserable I suspect, but Oliver has his Cubs Carol Service tonight (early this year) and he has a reading to do.  This is very exciting for me, being that type of proud parent, and he will also be receiving his cub silver award from the district commissioner (who?!), which he doesn't know about - so he will be extra chuffed.  So, because of the inevitable singing with joyful voice tonight, and because Mark chucked down the Christmas decs from the loft at the weekend, today the tree will go up and we will have crossed the threshold of Yuletide blessings....

Even though I am two days earlier than normal, and this is waayyy ahead of the rest of my friends,  romans and countrymen, Julia 'I can't be doing with Christmas' Pollard has stolen a march on me and been and gone and Started.  Christmas.  First.  Wow.  Get her mantlepiece.  I am, of course, jealous.  I have no mantlepiece at all. Sniff.

I can't even blog you a pic of the finished decs later, as we have a new computer following last week's minor explosion of compu-innards and Lordy knows how to cyber-transfer pics from my memory card into this baby.  No doubt Mark will know, if I can persuade him to assist.  He hates my bloggy love affair - he blames it for the demise of the last computer.

I have taken the plunge after years of being a bit scared of it - and taken my first steps towards joining the local WI.  Oh yes - I shall be knitting macrame baskets from my knickers before you can say 'pass me the pinking shears Marjorie.... '  An update on that after Thursday.

And this morning I have 'done my roots' and I think that this particular (crap) brand has just dyed the rest of my hair the same colour as the roots, and not the other way round.  Why I am even surprised at this eventuality I really don't know.  You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  Bet I will be able to macrame a basket from knickers soon though tee hee.

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.