Redisovered: old blog posts

Digging around in the depths of my laptop looking for things to delete, I came across these old posts from my very first blog (2005) which never did flower into life – it’s still out there somewhere.

This is the journal of a home-educating, tarot-reading, foot-rubbing, woman of 46. Ack… did I really write that in the first sentence? Well, best get it out of the way and then it can be put aside, perhaps to be pulled out and re-examined at a later time.

Mostly, I love my life. Sometimes I detest it. Sometimes I wish I could visit a few of those parallel universes where other me’s split off to go and do their own thing. I love the idea of more me’s exploring all the choices and options that I turned down. There are at least two married me’s who chose to stay with their husbands. There’s the me that kept her horse. And the me who carried on teaching ICT. There’s even the me who got the trainee hairdresser’s job at 17 (thanking Universe that this me did NOT take that option! No offence to hairdressers).

What I love most about this current life is that I get to do most of the stuff I want to, whilst having my delicious two younger children around me all the time. What I hate most about this current life is not being able to do all the stuff I want to, whilst having my horrible little brats around me all the time. Joy and contrast, joy and contrast… that’s how it goes.

So, what did we do today? Well, all the ‘normal’ kids are back in school after half-term, so we went to the beach, of course. Freezing cold, sunny day. Empty beach, tide all the way out. Calm and still. Lovely.

In enthusiastic home-educating mood, I pointed out the patterns in the rocks left by the eroding currents. Was ignored in favour of a bit of wet sand flinging. I tried showing them the fascinating layers of hardened mud laid down over countless millennia, which now show up in the raw, fallen cliff face. Was ignored again as the children spotted a really colourful dog turd. Gave up educating.

Tegan, 3, sat down on a wet bit of sand and threatened to fall flat on her face several more times, as she skipped through the wavelets in her wellies. Decided to beat a retreat before the inevitable happened. At the rear of the beach, beyond the car park, is a delightful, restored, Victorian walled garden. A haven of peacefulness. Each walled section leads to another. The children love to explore as though they have never been there before. Kids wanted pennies to make wishes in the wishing well. No pennies but found two glass beads that had fallen off Tegi’s hand-crocheted (by me) poncho. With no hesitation, Tegan chucked her bead in, yelling for ‘a bootyful bloo dress!’ Alex, 6, promptly burst into tears at the loss of the glass bead, even though he was still holding his. Needless to say, he did not want to take advantage of a free wish.

Later, at home, we decided to make a ‘dream castle’ from our new Art Attack book, which arrived this morning. After watching me wrestle with loo roll tubes, foil tubes and masking tape for a few minutes, the kids lost interest and wandered off, leaving me happily creating towers and turrets. Tomorrow, I will see if I can restore their enthusiasm with the toilet paper and glue stage. Can’t wait.

22/02/05
a.m.

Maybe we won’t get round to doing the castle today. We have a museum trip to take up much of the day tomorrow, I have a reflexology client tomorrow evening, and the house is a tip. Will have spend morning in a flurry of cleaning. Ho hum.

Our home is not huge but it’s bigger than most of its kind – a mid-terrace ex-miner’s cottage in a small village in South Wales. When we decided to look for a place for all of us, I gave the Universe a list, in the form of a collage of the type of house and where I wanted it to be. This was the first house I made an appointment to see, although I did see another one before this. It had everything I asked for. There is much to be done but all our basic requirements for space were answered. The price was £50 less than I’d specified and it is a quarter of a mile from the place we originally chose.

p.m.

We did have a go at the castle but it ended up being a bit of a mess so required binning. Alex did some pages in his workbook and Tegan tried writing her name – not a bad try for a 3 year old. We also played a building game with dice and megablocks – this one was part of a trial for a company producing educational games, though we have adapted it slightly.

I do have moments of anxiety as to whether we are doing the right thing by keeping our children out of school. Sometimes, when all is going well, I am convinced that our choice is the right one. At other times I feel like driving past the school and dropping Alex off – without bothering to stop first!

It has been trying to snow today but nothing has come of it. The kids had a great time trying to catch snowflakes in their mouths until they got too cold and had to come in. The sun is shining again now. The east side of the Uk has had more snow, ooh about an inch and , of course, it has brought everything to a total standstill. We used to be a country that could cope with anything but now a centimetre of the white stuff turns us all into panicking wimps.

Also in the news is the food-dye panic. Apparently a company that makes Worcestershire sauce had inadvertently included a carciogenic substance in the ingredients and now the whole country is in a state of emergency, as supermarket shelves are being cleared faster than at Christmas Eve. As we don’t buy much in the way of processed foods, I am not too worried. We found out this morning that this substance, Sudan 1 has been used in this country for 18 months.

I don’t actually watch the news very often. In fact, I usually avoid it at all costs – nothing is guaranteed to bring down my spirit quicker than watching half an hour of national and international news. One could be forgiven thinking that the world is a brutal and unfriendly place if you based your perception of reality on the media, whereas, in reality, the complete opposite is true.

Weds 23/02/05

Alex and I went to the National Museum of Wales today for a home-ed workshop on marine life. We both enjoyed it – it was rather a relief to leave Tegan at home with Dad. When we take her, I spend the whole time chasing her about and rescuing exhibits from certain destruction.

Afterwards we sat in the park nearby with another home-ed mum and her little boy to have our lunch. It was sunny but freezing and, after a little while, began to snow.

Drove home with U2 blaring… Alex would only let us listen to two tracks off the album. Must mention that I have tickets for U2 in June? YAAYY!!! My partner, my grown-up eldest son and I, all get to escape for a few hours of total and utter bliss. It’s taken me years to get round to this. Their last two tours, I was pregnant both times and unwilling to subject my unborns to all those decibels… keeping my fingers crossed that R’s vasectomy holds up!

R was talking about our Big Adventure again. This is very good news, as he was dead set against it a few months ago. Last summer we decided to put our dear little house up for sale and take to the highways and byways of Britain and Europe for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately our timing was crap, as the house market virtually seizes up in the summertime. A month earlier and it probably would have sold easily. In September we decided to stay where we are for a while longer and then eventually, muttering about security and safety, R decided he didn’t want to leave at all. Ever. Unless it was to another house, with another mortgage. My p.o.v. is that we haven’t got any security anyway… who has? He works 7 nights a week and 3 mornings doing a crappy job for crappy wages but, hey, if he wants to remained chained to that, who am I to drag him off to an easier life and sunnier climes? So it has remained a mild bone of contention between us, and I have kept my vision strong and intact. We will see how it all unfolds.

Anyway, a couple of good things came out of it all. We had a huge clear out, which was lovely and made us fell all light and sparkly. And we took the kids out of school and nursery in preparation for a life of home-edding on the move.

Have been asked to do a quick reading for a good friend this evening – am quite happy to do freebies when they are requested so nicely. Need to do some more work on my website – had to change domain names recently and took the opportunity to begin a revamp. It’s nothing complicated; just a few basic pages and some great links.
Friday 25th February

That reading was cool… the question was (and I’m sure the questioner won’t mind me writing about it), “Should I telephone the dental surgery?” As soon as I drew the cards, I realised the question was nothing to do with teeth. After I sent the reading, telling him what I thought the situation was and yes, to go ahead and ring the surgery, my friend emailed back to confirm he’d met a delightful lady who worked at a dental surgery and the reading was accurate… anyway, he rang her and now has a date for the weekend. Great stuff.

Had some home-edding friends to visit today, so made a chocolate cake. Me, who never bakes cakes! It was okay too, in fact, really nice. Thanks to another HE-er for passing on the recipe.

Tegan was really naughty today – probably the sugar overload. She tried to strangle Treacle, one of our cats and then later, tried to throttle the little two-year old girl who’d come to play with her. Nice work, Tegan. She was even quite proud of herself.

Have, this evening started up a new Yahoo group for recycling unwanted items in our immediate locality. It’s all part of the International Freecycle Network **2008 Note: we have now defected from the odious Freecycle and set up our own www.realcycle.uk
Saturday, 26th February

Visitors tomorrow so big clean-up required. I don’t actually mind the cleaning… what I do hate is the two hours of picking up that must be done first. I ‘encourage’ the kids to pick up after themselves but obviously not very successfully. What works for me is to spend 15 minutes in one room, 15 in another, 15 in a third then take a break. Then start again.

This afternoon Wales played France (rugby). Thrilling match and Wales won! Third win this season after 30 years of awfulness. The whole country is buzzing!

Monday, 28th February

Good day today. Got a few things sorted this morning like booking the car in for a service, reading the electricity and gas meters for our online billing service, booked a tarot reading and gave the kids some messy time – on their own and then some more with me. We had some unfinished papier-mache projects so started layering them with pva and tissue paper.

Slightly worrying incident when I discovered Tegan had shut herself in her bedroom with one of our cats. Poor cat looked terrified. I have no idea what T. was doing to her. Seems to be no worse for wear. Why doesn’t the cat run when she sees the Brynna Strangler approaching?

Relaxed this afternoon watching Steely Dan dvd on my laptop while R. made paper aeroplanes with Alex, using instructions from the Internet on the other pc. Keeps trying to snow but after a few flurries it gives up.

R. has said he would like to go and look at some RV’s. There is a show coming up in Malvern in March – yippee!

Big discussion going on about religion on the Education Otherwise list. There’s no nastiness or flaming at the moment but you can sense people starting to push against each other. I am a big fan of not pushing against others – pushing only gives them the power and impetus to push back harder. There’s room for all religions; all philosophies. We don’t have to agree but we do have to allow. It’s all good.

Monday 7th March

Interesting week, most of which I have already forgotten.

The big important bits are that R has just about decided that we are going to aim towards our Big Adventure after all. Of course, he might – let’s be realistic, he probably will – change his mind several times over the course of the next few months. Anyway, this will mean getting the house ready to sell again. Needs a dose of the House Doctor to sweeten it up a bit.

The second big important bit is that R’s sister has just sold one of her houses in Spain and wants to give us £5k as a present. Verrrry useful!

Let’s see if I can remember any other significant bits.. last Wednesday was busy with a reading and reflexology. Thursday was run around and do the shopping day. Friday, I was requested by our local Home-ed rep. to visit a hall to see if it was suitable for our group to migrate to. It was and I had a nice time meeting some very pleasant people and drinking coffee in the booking secretary’s home while Home-ed rep. looked after m’kids.

Saturday was okay, I think.

Sunday was Mothering Sunday and after my coffee, card and potted plant, we took a trip to Cwm Carn Forest Drive. The weather was stunning, the 7 mile drive panoramic and lunch in the visitors’ centre was welcome. Then we come home to watch the repeat of the first F1 race of the season from Melbourne (R had already got up at 2am to see it live) and then the phone call from his sister. Yippee!

Oh and have also begun new healthy eating regime. Baa-aa. Have been low(ish) carbing for a couple of years now but my eating habits are way out of synch. I don’t usually eat anything all day, then stuff a whole day’s load during the evening. Not good. So, am going to try (still low-carbing because if i overdo the carbs I get chronic back pain) calorie cycling. 1100 cals for four days then 1800 cals for three days. Need to get my metabolism off the ground and perhaps this will work for me. I might have to adjust the calories and/or the number of days in the cycle but let’s see how it goes. I shan’t be eating any less than I do currently, and perhaps actually a bit more than usual… just going to spread it out a bit.

Did a ton of stuff with the kids today, downloaded a maths curriculum for Alex, which is really varied and interesting – for both of us. He was reluctant, as usual but completed a few of the ‘puzzles’. We also ‘talked’ some spellings and mixed up sentences. We played a story-telling game with a die, board and cards – both kids loved the two stories we made up about Cap’n Redbeard and Princess Princess (Tegi’s suggestion of name). I bought the game on Ebay – the seller makes them herself and they are really good. Then we had a mad 15 minutes of ‘P.E.’ where we were seeds tucked into the soil for winter, sending out shoots and eventually growing into trees blown by the wind, plus a bit of general stomping, jumping and getting rid of some excess energy – theirs, not mine… I need all the energy I can get!