Cabin Fever

Yak trail still unpassable. Been in the same clothes for 5 days now. Eating mice. Hearing the voices of previous tenants, 18th Century farmhands whispering 'Join Us'. Waiting for a drool-splattered St Bruno to come and save us. Fear it's already too late - been writing Xmas cards for god's sake. Become institutionalised.

Amazon's doing awfully well.

Drip drip drip....

It's still fucking snowing.

Hooray for being not wanted

Queues for the toilets are the best places for learning things. All sorts of things over the years. Things to make Ed Balls blush. Today however I realised the total bliss of not being wanted.

A whole gang of us had taken over half the local theatre for a fabulous prod of A Christmas Carol. Amongst the rest of the audience were children all wearing red jumpers. I'm so out of the loop now it took me ages to work out why they were all wearing the same thing. Duh. And then in the interval there was an insight to the outside world. There were updates on the threatened snow - definitely starting its campaign to screw up my plans (Bah Humbug) and one lady (must have been A Teacher) was saying how they'd already been ordered that they had to make an effort to get to work tomorrow no matter what. Most of the queue were urging mutiny: 'Stay at home and play in the snow' 'Give the kids a break' 'Baahh Humbug'. But according to the edict if they can't make it to the school they work in they must get to the nearest school. Are they serious? What a laugh! Carry On Up the Swannee...

My first thought as a life-long authority-dodger was exactly how much effort would be considered enough? Merely thinking about it the night before would satisfy me. But I recognise that there are people out there who feel obliged to do as asked. How many bruised arses and dented cars will it take tomorrow morning for these good people to finally turn-tail and go and build rude snowmen instead?

Isn't it bring a game-to-lose to school and wear baubles on your head day tomorrow anyway? The stiffening of the upper lip must be on Nat Curric now - can't possibly let these children have a day off just because there's a little bit of snow for heaven's sake! This would simply teach them to be lazy don'tcha know! Alaska doesn't shut down after every flurry! Baaahhh!

How fantastic is it to be no longer required? We did have the last gymnastics tomorrow - but they can jump on the settees - they do anyway. I was going to pick up my Leopard Boy but he can stay put in his chum's house and throw snowballs at him instead. We were going to do a bit of shopping after - but that's always a good idea to skip. What's the worry?

We're not lazy - we're thoroughly sensible. We'll not be adding any burden to the emergency services. We'll be keeping out of the way of the people who are actually needed - very thoughtful.

But we'll be HAVING FUN!!! Outrageous.

And I have a crucial follow up project for today's educational theatre trip. I have secured a pristine DVD copy of the highly regarded film version of Dickens' classic. Oh yes - The Muppets' Christmas Carol!

'Light the lamp not the rat! Light the lamp NOT THE RAT!'

I love it.

By the way in case you were joyfully imagining me all bonny in chunky knitwear tomorrow rolling out snow boulders with Mariah Carey - my idea of fun is handing the small shivering things carrots on the back doorstep and shutting the door. If Himself has charged up a camera I may take photos through the window. Depends where they put the carrot.

I shall now go to bed in all my clothes.... and stay that way all day tomorrow. Bliss.

One snowman to another: 'Ere...can you smell carrots?

My daughter keeps calling me Scrooge. It may be something to do with her Xmas list getting longer and my fuse getting shorter. It may be my not taking The X-Factor Final seriously. It could be the inability to recognise the reciprocal expectations of the Xmas card lark - or the Biblical swearing - or the GBH on the BFG outside the BHS.

And then today - it snowed.

What happy little rosy faces. Tongues peeking out to taste a transient flake. Pure innocent delight in pure heavenly white.

Fuck off.

My Internet's Still Connected So...

So I'm going to keep up the twaddle til it crashes again.

Today I stuck up almost everything we've ever made at Xmases Past - including fabulous hand-print angels on a string which just seem to get better every year - hand-print wings and dresses and totally wonderful faces of every colour - green, blue, pink, purple...some with huge black teeth, some with beards, big hair, no hair.... I would never be able to make something that wild and wonderful - something 'logical' would kick in and spoil it. And the artist herself, now age 10 probably couldn't recapture that creative explosion now either.

My logic obviously sparked the paper dolly chains of penguins with cotton wool pad tummies. Excess black card left over from Halloween was, I recall, one factor. These get dragged out every year too but this is the first time I've wondered what the bloody hell have penguins got to do with Xmas?

I think we had an excess of cotton wool pads then too. Must have switched to wet wipes that year.

How the magic is lost when the haze of baby-tending turns to stone cold refereeing.

And when the little bastards keep finding my secret stashes of chocolate coins.

'Are these for our stockings?'

'Oh I always buy some just in case Father Xmas gets held up or something"

(What?)

Anyway...I sort of get polar bears. North Pole. Which reminds me - educational quiz:

Why can't polar bears eat penguins?

'Cos they can't get the wrappers off.

I wish I understood my life

I'm so confused. Everytime I try to find myself - I don't mean in Nepal in a headscarf but simply on my own blogthing in a cardigan and slippers - I end up changing my password and chasing my technological tail around an inscrutable screen for hours. So crap at modern life. Would have been happy sitting outside a nice old hut making little fat ladies or spitting pigment round my hand in a cave. I've been so desperate all week while my internet connection has been non-existent and then (up comes the roller-coaster car) very over-excited when Himself said all the lights on the box were on - then discovered the monkeys had deleted Safari (down goes the car) Alpha Male saves the world with no swearing (loop-the-loop). He's such a man. I wuv him. But then I am left with buttons and wires and my own sorry intellect. I have no idea what the difference is between my username, my password, my e-mail address, my real name, my mother's criminal psuedonym etc And I can't even spell that. Now I've been blinking at a humming soul-sucker for hours of my life I will never see again. And what have I got to say for myself when I finally 'find' me? Blah blah incapable of blah blah useless at blah blah god you're boring...... is this the best I can offer after a week of bubbling frustration at not being able to do my blog?

SO what have I done this week to justify my existence? (Here's the bit where I dazzle you with my grand self-sacrificing efforts in the name of envy-inducing home educating for my over-achieving darlings...ahh bollocks..) You're way ahead of me. We have been busy though. We made it up to the Tower of London on Monday - part of a group of 87 I think - and that was the 2nd group of 'us' to go. There are alot of us about. Himself couldn't cope with the thought of his own offspring loose on a train so we were loaded into the car - which meant extra mascara and a chance to flick through a Tony Robinson book (I only read kids' books) about Kings and Queens. Leopard Boy starts asking questions about the pictures and the next thing he wants me to just read page after page. If I'd taken it upon to 'Listen to this children...' I'd have got the usual raspberries but seen as an illicit activity - the nose twitches. We 'did' the jewels, the armour, the shop (cool chess sets), Raleigh's last place of blog, 'vote for whodidit' in the case of The Princes in... and naturally we 'did' the ice-rink. Well - I 'did' coffee and waving, two small boys 'did' souvenir shop catapulting and battering ramming. Daddy did grimacing and pleading for mercy. Minx did all the swirling and swooshing - in the rain. Happy as a pig in..... We'd lost Leopard Boy by then somewhere near Traitor's Gate. Gone off with his preferred adopted family - as usual. Do we follow all this culture up with related projects? Do we bollocks. But I did buy some postcards to stick in a pile marked 'scrapbook' and (another kids book) Tales from the Tower - which I've left on the coffee table. Got tomato sauce on it already. It's now one of us.

But how these things filter down. The next thing I know I've got a naked Thuglet and Rock Godling playing chess with our posh Lewis set (get us) - and no charged up cameras to catch the surreal scene. Chess. Isn't that what speccy Ask The Family kids do? My kids play chess.

Also this week I've been bullied into scraping the bird poo off the Xmas box and tree and dragging it into the (now re-arranged) grotto. No dead creatures - that's a bonus. No live ones either. Astounding. Just our bulging bags of weird stuff. Every year we make more weird stuff to squeeze into the box. I still don't actually 'get' why we all put a tree INSIDE our houses for a few weeks every year. And ours is sad. It's tinsel - that's fine. But it's brown. That's sad. But it is an extra incentive to completely smother it in weird stuff. And we have.

Also discovered another odd thing. Always knew that the Leopard Boy was allergic to pens but in a moment of educational responsibility I knocked up some pages for the small creatures on the 8 Times Table. We're working our way through at our own pace. Started with the 1 Times Table a few months ago. On a high we tackled the 2 T T. A few weeks later we reached Base Camp 4 T T. While we're on a roll, today was 8 T T. In case you're worrying I crack the whip too hard, we took about 3 years to get our heads round the Alphabet. We were beaming in glory at our eye tests the other day. But back to the pen thing.... the other day I caught the Leopard with a pen in his hand scribbling on the bathroom wall. Mouth open to yell I froze - overcome by the sight of him WITH A PEN IN HIS HAND. So proud. This morning he's voluntarily writing his 8 T T answers on the page, very well too but taking ages to work out each answer - which is kind of odd 'cos he's pretty good at the numbers lark - in his head. Then he gives me the pen. 'You write it down.' And then I couldn't write each answer down as quick as he was shooting them out. In putting down the pen it freed up his mind. Put a bat in his hand and throw a ball at him and it's as natural as picking his nose - but a pen.....

Cavemen didn't catch a mammoth with a pen.

What the bloody hell would I do with a mammoth?

It's time I left.

Is there anyone else out there as crap as me at reading important information? I see buzz words like 'Badman', 'unauthorised overdraft', 'court summons' etc and I do try but after about 3 words in.......zzzzzzzzz I have to have everything explained to me in words of one syllable - with glove puppets. I have screens of e-mails I daren't delete because they have intelligent-looking data that I might just read all the way through tomorrow. Is there a ism-y word for people like me (assuming there are other such) - something I can wear like a Christmas jumper - a license to excuse backwards behaviour?

I do kind of want to be grown-up but can't concentrate on it long enough to actually manage it.

Worse than simply being simple I have now leapt on the fast train to Turning-into-my-Mother well before it was time to leave Truculent Youth, entirely skipping Confident Adulthood. Thank god I have a couple of nearly-as-tall-as-me sproglets to remind me now and then that I'm supposed to be somewhere in an hour and can we have lunch - and shouldn't we get diesel now even though it's not completely past the dial 'cos remember what happened last time - and did I remember the baby etc...

I like to think that it's all part of their education. I certainly don't spoon-feed them anything that may be construed as being intellectual. Life skills - that's what it is.

Hoping to erase a familiar expression off my daughter's face I tried to explain that this is the worst bit for me - when I know that I am hopeless, irrational, forgetful blah blah and how she should treasure this time because the bit when I wee in my shoes and hi-jack prams and deny all knowledge of my family is going to be even more tiresome for her - bliss for me however.

I think I just weed in my shoes.