Weekend Round Up

Now then, as both Jon's and my ex-employer used to say. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. I'll try and remember what's been happening.

Friday morning is a blur, but I'm sure it was frightfully constructive, whatever it was. Friday afternoon Emily and I spent hours painting. Emily's working on a great big canvas to produce a "four seasons" acrylics painting; I'm doing the same on a considerably smaller one. Emily's completed winter and summer so far. I was really impressed with her patience on it and the way she built up colours, shades and textures.

Saturday was another blur but I know that in the morning I took Emily off to ballet, where she played with Kayleigh and drew eyes on her knees. Something to do with checking whether her alignment is "turned out" correctly, apparently. They've all been given strict instructions to practise all kinds of stuff at home....the only thing is that there are 24 different "elements" to this exam and since parents are banned from the lessons and have no clue what's going on the kids have to rely on their own memories not only for what to do but as to whether they're doing it vaguely right or not. And we don't have the music to practise to. Oh well.

Saturday afternoon Jon and Emily went off to watch Scunthorpe v. Cheltenham. I can't remember what on earth I did when they were out, although I know I was hugely cross with myself for not getting more done. I do, however, remember one thing with crystal clarity: when I drove to pick them up, I found the road that the stadium is on blocked off by police cars in my direction, jammed solid in the other direction and full of flashing lights and a general air of something having happened. I had to skirt around the back of the town to find the other end of the road, but I had the most dreadful thoughts as I was crawling along there (everyone else trying to do the same). I don't normally panic like that but images of a collapsed stadium or a burnt out stadium or a bombed out stadium or any one of numerous other disasters just wouldn't go away. Drove the whole way round in tears :-(( Still don't know what the problem that closed the road was - but it was apparently nothing to do with the football, so I discovered in the end. Still, not a fifteen minutes I wish to repeat any time soon.

On Sunday morning Emily went to her karate lesson. George still hasn't remembered to bring her uniform, but this is a bit of a running joke with him anyway, bless him. Emily's still loving it and picking up lots of Japanese too. Apart from the actual physical aspects of karate, George is very big on the spiritual and moral aspects to it too. They were discussing character building and responsibility this week and Emily answered George's question about what responsiblity means: she said it meant doing what is expected of you and not letting someone down when they're relying on you, an answer which apparently went down very well indeed. Jon says Emily's always really keen to join in the discussions they have and keeps shooting her hand up for just about everything, lol. Bit of a change from the girl who not that long ago would have never dreamed of volunteering an answer "in class", let alone in front of a load of older boys.

Sunday afternoon, Emily made a fab collage using all kinds of different art techniques - she called it "Crafter's Dream".

Today we've been on a manic tidy up, as my Mum and Dad are due back from the caravan any minute now and we'd somewhat trashed their living space by using it as an extra stock room/laundry room :-/// Order is now restored and the place looks half decent.

In between helping us tidy, Emily's done a lot of Harry Potter related English today. She started off by creating her own version of a word cloud on Word on the PC, choosing the words and sizes to use instead of having it automated. It looks very effective, although it is conspicuous for its complete lack of the one word you'd have thought would be biggest of all: Harry!! I'm not quite sure what was going on in her brain there, although she did comment to me last night as we read the last but one chapter of Order of the Phoenix (where Harry has a major tantrum in Dumbledore's Office when he's told the truth about the prophecy etc) that Harry has acted like a spoilt brat through most of this book. Think she prefers Draco ;-) After that, Emily went on to write two pieces, one answering the question I'd set her about "If you were Professor Dumbledore, would you have chosen to reveal the truth to Harry any earlier than this? If so, When, and how do you think that would have affected his behaviour and the plot?" and one analysis of whether she thinks Professor Snape is good, evil or a bit of both (playing Dumbledore and Voldermort against each other for his own aims) and why. Mind you, Emily hasn't read Half Blood Prince yet; she therefore has no idea of the, um, rather dramatic actions of Snape at the end of that one, so it'll be interesting to see how her opinions change when she does read it.

This afternoon, Emily baked some cat cakes as a surprise treat for Nana and Gramps when they get back. Apart from making sure she could reach the ingredients and putting the cakes into the oven, she had no help from me whatsoever, I wasn't even on the same floor of the house. She did a magnificent job! Emily's done LOTS of baking before but this is the first time she's done some completely alone, so she was very chuffed with herself indeed.
Meanwhile, cat-wise, we've got more problems. The fleas are back. Flippin heck. I've lived with cats, plural, since I was about 7 and I've never experienced this before. Usually a quick flea spray at the first sign of a problem has dealt with it completely. Nope, not now. Meanwhile, Romeo has helpfully developed feline acne, bless his little heart :-(( And I gave Merlin another dose of frontline, once we knew the fleas were back, so his dermatitis wouldn't get any worse. He promptly chewed a great big piece of fur off the back of his neck to try to get rid of the treatment - and is now balder than ever. May as well camp in the vets driveway at this rate.

[edit: couldn't post this until Tuesday morning due to blogger problems....adding this bit now:]
Late last night we had a big power cut for about an hour. Emerged out of the darkness, eventually, to find Juliet mewing about her latest capture on the sitting room floor. Thought it was a big moth or a daddy long legs. Nope. HUGE spider, which she was trying to eat. More legs on the floor as I backed away rapidly. I'm torn between being freaked out, disgusted with the eating bit.....eeeeeuuuugghg....grateful she's hunting the damn things so successfully but desperate to know where they're coming out from so we can do something about it!!!! Then again.....do I really want to know?