Boing!

Yes, the sound of boing-ing has been coming thick and fast round here for the last 24 hours, of which more in a mo. Very zebedee like.

I am so looking forward to the time when I can get this blog back to being a home education blog. At the moment, all I seem to have to say are constant updates on the Grandad-Hospital fiasco. May has passed in a complete and utter blur of continuous hospital admissions and visits; I'm extremely alarmed that tomorrow is the first of June, it feels as though we have just fast forwarded a month :-((

Anyway; Jon's Dad is STILL in hospital. After his cancelled angiogram last Tuesday (post below) and the hospital records fandango, he was supposed to have an angiogram on Thursday last week. They prepped him for at 6 am, and all through the morning they kept telling him they'd be ready for him in half an hour, ten minutes, another ten minutes and so on. Lunchtime arrived and he was refused any lunch (which bearing in mind he has severe diabetes was not a good move). It wasn't until about 12.30 that they finally admitted they weren't going to do the angiogram because....drumroll please....they still didn't have the bloody records. Unbelievable. He was extremely upset. Jon and I were absolutely livid.

I rang the ward to find out what the hell was going on and was put through to a dopey staff nurse who told me that she couldn't answer my questions because she also didn't know what was going on. OK, I'll speak to a doctor then. No can do. They're not available (are they ever??). Saw red at this point and emailed the hospital complaints manager explaining what was going on and stating that we wanted to make a formal complaint about the whole fiasco. To be fair, she did respond within ten minutes, which was something. She said that *we* couldn't make a complaint, it had to come from the man himself, but that she had alterted the "modern matron" to the situation and it was being immediately investigated. The complaints manager then rang back about an hour later full of profuse apologies. She admitted that they had made a "huge mess up" with the records situation and that the way Grandad had been treated was "completely unacceptable". OK, but now what? She assured me that the records would be obtained urgently, and that his angiogram was still on course....but that there were no more angiogram slots until next Thursday, i.e. today.

Sooo.....on Friday, Jon's Dad was given a choice of whether to come home and go back into hospital today for his angiogram, or whether to stay in as an inpatient for another week. Inexplicably, he decided to stay there. Apparently because it saves him money as he doesn't have to get any shopping. OK. Never mind the cost and inconvenience to us then. Fair enough. Anyway, he's still there. It's now 4.30 on Angiogram Day. As far as we know, he hasn't had it done yet. Which means he probably isn't going to have it done. Which means I am going to have to throw the paddy to end all paddies with that bloody hospital. And I'm so tired of having paddies with them. Which also means that the whole of this month's inpatient and visiting saga has been for - nothing. Happy bunnies? Nope.

Right, so apart from all that, has there been any education going on? Well, er, not really. Bits and bobs, here and there. Emily has displayed the patience of a saint, to put it mildly, but she is now beginning to get bored and really wants to get back to some degree or normality. Which isn't much to ask.

We have at least been socialising, as it were. On Friday afternoon last week we went to visit Hazel, Romy and the increasingly, if that's possible, adorable Tansy, who were the proud owners of a new and huuuuggge trampoline, which Emily naturally fell head over heels in love with. We'd been debating getting one at Easter time, but had decided against it. Having seen how much fun (and, more to the point, exercise) Emily had on Romy's though, we had to change our minds. So with thanks to them, we do now own a trampoline.

It arrived yesterday morning. We had Emily's friend Maisie over for the day, so she and Emily enthusiastically "helped" my Dad and Jon put it up, lol, which largely consisted of playing Egyptian Mummies in the big box and helpfully asking every five minutes "is it nearly ready yet?" When not boing-ing, Emily and Maisie also had fun making home made pizza dough in the morning, which they baked with the toppings of their choice in the evening. Plus hairdressing, dressing up, nintendo-ing and all sorts of other malarky. All capped off with a late night phone call pondering over the intricacies of neopets. Some pics from yesterday:





Tomorrow we're off to visit George's wife Jackie and her two youngest kids (9 and 10, I think they are) for the day, for a mixture of work and play for the girls and a good chinwag for me and Jackie. George is Emily's karate and tai chi teacher, and together with Jackie runs the psychic circle Jon attends. They home educate too, but it's taken us a while to get the kids together. Jackie and I do have very much the same approach to home ed, so although at the moment the girls barely know each other, hopefully they'll all gel together and it should work nicely. Then on Saturday, Emily's playing with Kayleigh and on Sunday she has a birthday party for twins to attend. So at least she's having some good play times, even if the education is rather lacking!

Oh, and both Emily and I were rather narked with these two pieces of Harry Potter news: US Order of the Phoenix Film Release Date Moved to July 11th and Universal Studios to Open Harry Potter Theme Park. What's the deal with the US all of a sudden? I though JK Rowling was supposed to be keen to keep the books a basically British thing. So could someone explain to me why the hell the film release date is moved so that the US gets to see the film BEFORE the UK??? Why not on the same day? And as for the theme park, well. A) I hope they don't ruin it and b) yet again, if they must have one, why the US?? Yeah, money talks and Harry Potter is big business. We all know that. But we're narked.