Mad Scientist!

The steroid tablets seem to have worked very well; we haven't had an "emergency" attack since we went to the doctors, although yesterday Emily did have a bit of an asthma session while playing out in the garden, but it wasn't too bad compared to recent ones!

Yesterday we worked downstairs again, and had another very productive day. Emily did lots of work on 2d and 3d shapes for maths and tons of dictionary work for English. She also got to grips with her thesaurus and thinks it's the best invention ever, lol. They're digging up the road again outside our house. Darned new houses. If they were even half way affordable I'd be all for more housing in the village, but these are going for half a million each for pete's sake, it's totally absurd. There are now six new developments as in still being built, not to mention at least another three that have been finished in the last year or two. Shall have to be careful not to impose my views on Emily when she investigates this local "issue" in days to come, lol. Anyway, so they're digging, and so we had no electricity for half of yesterday. 'Twas cold, and quite dark, but hey, it was fun.

Slightly less fun was coming back to the PC once modern life was restored only to find that the power cut had someone completely buggered up our broadband wireless connection. Much huffing, several very expensive phone calls and an hour and a half later, peace was restored. That didn't leave us with much of the afternoon, but we pressed on with our local area thingy - can't get much more local than Emily's bedroom, so she spent yesterday afternoon making a to-scale plan of it on graph paper having carefully measured out its dimensions and her furniture with pigeon steps. We're also going to make one of the whole house and how the rooms fit it. Then we *would* make one of the street but we don't have a metre rule on wheels thingy and my lazy old brain can't think of any other way of making it to scale.

Today has been utter chaos. Jon and Emily were due out to tai chi this morning, but that was cancelled with minutes to go becuase the instructor is ill. On the plus side, he's apparently seriously considering home educating his two adopted little ones, and wants to talk to Jon about it :-)) Considering that Emily's yoga teacher is also heading that way, I reckon we could start a mini revolution here if we try hard enough. Jon had to rush out for a dentist appointment, making it back in the nick of time for me and Emily to head to drama; we got back with seconds to spare to wave Jon off to his first homeopathy lesson.

Drama was apparently great fun; Emily got to play a mad scientist (a role I suspect she was born for) and she's come home with a mini script she has to practice for next week with her new partner. Jon's course sounds fascinating, so that's all good too.

In other news, walked past our bedroom this morning and spotted Juliet acting suspiciously in the door way. Closer inspection revealed lots (and I mean lots) of black feathers. Even closer inspection revealed Romeo with a fully grown blackbird on our bedside rug. Sigh. Guess we should be grateful that having caught it, laboured it all the way in through the flap, round the corner and up the back stairs (it was nearly as big as him!) and into our bedroom, he decided to present it to us on the mat rather than **in** the bed - he has been known to frequently take toys and leave them in the bed, so we had a lucky escape there!

Meanwhile, I've finally been brave and written in on the calendar that we're GOING AWAY on the 8th May for a full week. Have been umming and aaahing about it for ages, every time a suitable window appeared in the calendar it was quickly filled before I had a chance to think "holiday". But there, it's written down now, and it's going to happen COME WHAT MAY. So there. Found out from a book of walks around St Bees that we were within sight of the footpath down to the "secret beach" with the gemstones when we gave up on our cliff walk last time. Hrrrrppphm. This time, we'll know where we're going. Can't wait for a week of sea, sand, rocks, bird sanctuaries, secret coves, sketching, board games and PEACE!