Busy Bees

It's been a hectic week, this one. Can't remember everything, but roughly:

Football
Emily's enjoyed lots of footie practice and today Jon took her and Romy to the Scunthorpe FC training session again. Emily went in goal again and this time made lots of saves, diving about all over the place :-)) She was very pleased with her efforts this time round and is really looking forward to next Tuesday's local derby match between Scunthorpe and Lincoln.

Films
In the end we did manage to cram in a cinema trip after all (compensation for missing out on swimming) - Emily and I went to see Lady in the Water which was exceedingly fantabulous indeed. Very "dark" and eerie, very, very jumpy, very haunting. Having seen it, I'm surprised it was given a PG rating....I know I'm out of touch but if films like Shrek and Ella Enchanted are PG, I can't possibly see how this one was; it was a heck of a sight more potentially frightening than any other PGs I've seen. Mind you, Emily loved loved loved it. Considering her age, she does "dark" exceedingly well, lol.

During the week Emily and Jon have been watching Titanic in bits here and there; again, a definite hit with Emily who's picked up an awful lot of information from it!

Health
On Monday we went to the little local cottage hospital for an Xray for Jon's foot. Loads of space to park, in and out in about fifteen minutes flat. What a refreshing change from Scunthorpe's hospital nightmarish visits that last for several hours at least one of which can be spent waiting for a flippin' parking space! Tuesday I took Grandad to the doctors; the news there wasn't great. He's finally been put on thyroid medication after having regular tests for oooh, the last decade or so (feels like!) and he has been referred to a renal specialist due to failing kidneys :-( Dialysis was mentioned as a distinct possibility for the future. Wednesday, Jon went off for another blood test, thus completing our trio of health issues for the week, lol.

During the week I did lose the one pound I needed to lose to meet my first "stone before birthday" target....but then I promptly put it and two extra back on again for no apparent reason. Hrrrmphh. Never mind. I narrowly avoided throwing things and resolved to just grin and get on with it.

Cats
Merlin went missing for a very, very, very long time. Merlin eventually turned up. Sigh. Wednesday was K-Day - the year's anniversary of when we got the kittens. We made lots of fuss of them although we didn't get round to making them cards or pressies due to lack of time. Romeo has further developed his endearing sleeping habits. I don't think he was around his Mummy long enough to learn how to sleep like a cat, lol. Every other cat I've ever known has slept with their head on their paws, or in a ball, or slightly on their back or whatever....but not sprawled out chin on floor like this!

Clearly he thinks he's a dog. Mind you, Emily reliably informs us that Romeo can now say Romeo, bed, Daddy, hole and....wait for it.....elbow. The first four kinda made sense with his weird miaows, but elbow???

JuJu is on a permanent diet of butterflies, so it would appear. And Cassie-Cat just gets on with life, raising a weary but indulgent whisker at the antics of the other three.

Organisation

Spent all day Wednesday on a MASSIVE tidy up and reorganisation of the downstairs dining room. Chucked out four black sack loads of junk. Cleaned, tidied, found homes for all the masses of stuff that had migrated down there from where it should have been in the upstairs junk room (sorry "craft room/stock room") or jumble area (sorry "Emily's bedroom"). Brought Emily's old PC desk and PC down into the dining room. Sorted out all the education resources onto shelves down there. It looks fab and it's really nice to work in. Result.

Discovered that I'm too cowardly to even attempt to hook that one up to our wireless broadband thingy - we have enough trouble trying to keep the two upstairs PCs stable on that, let alone adding another one. So, there's no internet down there but it's all running smoothly. The printer down there is a photocopier too so I can copy stuff for Emily on the spot without having to wade through piles of boxes to do it up here. She does have Word and Publisher on her upstairs PC (which is really our second office PC) but it was never really convenient/comfy to work on it up there. Now she's all set. :-))

Business

Work has been absolutely manic, as anticipated. The general pressure wasn't eased when on Tuesday our business bank decided to bounce a £10,000 cheque which was due to be paid to one of our major suppliers. No particular reason. The funds were there. It was a "blip in the system" thing which should never have happened and indeed wouldn't have happened if their "24 hour business banking" was actually 24 hour. They apologised and refunded the unpaid item fee they'd charged us...but not before it was too late to reverse the refusal, which meant our supplier has had to represent the cheque which in turn has meant our account being on stop for a goodly while. Fantastic. Thanks, Royal Bank of Scotland.

Other than that things are progressing well. I've had an unfortunate run in the main Elysian New Age Shop, though - plenty of orders this week, but a full 50% of them have turned out to be people trying to pay with credit cards which have ultimately been declined, not authorised. Very annoying. We do get brief periods where that seems to happen. It'll pass.

Education
Ah yes, education. There's been masses of that. Let's see: Emily's done loads of English and maths. She's sailed through the maths without a peep of complaint, which is gratifying if unusual, lol. Most of our English work has been looking at idioms, proverbs and cliches. She has read Usborne: What's Happening To Me? avidly and now has to write a review of it for the EO magazine. We've also had fun with loads of activities from this rather excellent book including lots and lots of logic puzzles and lateral thinking tasks. We've also done science experiments, art, some geography, tons of playing on zoombinis and Emily's also spent a long time on various PC encylopedias (if that's the right plural, which I doubt).

I've been planning work for September and I'm really rather looking forward to getting on with it, as is Emily. We're all set for a weather project, with the Romans too, a technological investigation into beams and support structures, and lots of Hogwarts-inspired chemistry-masquerading-as-potions science investigations too. And that's just for next week, lol.

Speaking of education, I've enroled on this Freelance Journalism course which is kind of birthday pressie, in a way. We're already doing quite a lot of writing but as I may have mentioned before, all of our clients have found us, rather than us finding them. This course came highly recommended and I'm hoping it will give me the confidence to expand that side of the business and go out there chasing some work.

So: it's looking good all round! :-))