The X-Files and Financial Recklessness

Oooh, look, another month. Rolls eyes. Can't believe I used to find time to post here regularly. Oh well!
X Files Mania
Since I last posted, Emily has developed a passionate interest in, of all things, The X-Files. Jon and I have been watching the entire nine seasons worth of episodes, one on most nights, for months now and have just about got to season 5. It was something we used to watch while I was pregnant with Emily, although I don't think we ever got that far along with it, and we're re-visiting it now. Random fact alert: Emily was actually named after the series in some respects, in as much as Emily is Dana Scully's daughter, and Dana is Emily's middle name.

Anyway. So Jon and I have been working our way through the series after Emily's gone to bed each night. She's always *hated* anything to do with aliens or outer space and even the music to the X Files terrified her, to the extent that she accidentally overheard it one night and was hysterically upset, bless her. Needless to say we'd always been turning the sound right down after that. BUT. She saw an interview about a week ago with the actors, promoting the new film, and suddenly announced that she was interested in it after all. Now, nobody could say that my daughter ever does anything by halves. Within an hour of deciding she wanted to know about the series, she'd read everything she could find on the internet about it, had made posters of it and was playing the theme tune non stop, rofl!

And it's become something of an obsession since then. We've been carefully picking and choosing episodes to watch with her that aren't way too adult in nature or too gory or too frightening. Or rather, she's been carefully picking them herself after diligently reading through countless episode guides. She has a very good handle on her own tolerance levels.

I guess it counts as citizenship, at least. With Jon and I on series five, even I'm starting to get a little lost in the conspiracies to cover up conspiracies to cover up lies to cover up conspiracies - if nothing else, watching it with Emily, as she gets past the first series, will prompt interesting discussions about how far a government might go to protect its own interests and about how much one can or should trust what we're told or not told. She was doing a quiz about the series this afternoon and she got more right than I would have done!

Financial Recklessness
I turned down the opportunity to take on a very large writing contract from the press association last week. It's quite simply not what I want to do any more and it would have taken up way too much time, leaving me unable to develop the things I DO want to do. So, financially unstable though we are, it was a big No Thanks. Which I suppose was reckless, but hey, a little bit of recklessness never hurt anyone. It's time to trust that things will work out OK, financially. And they will. I've had it with doing stuff I hate doing. I'll honour existing contracts, but I'm not taking on any more. If I wanted to spend all week doing things I don't like doing, I'd go out and work for someone else doing it, and get a guaranteed income. I can't see the point any longer in working for yourself and not enjoying it.

Reiki Master
Jon completed two full day's training recently to gain his qualifications as a Third Degree Master Practitioner in Tera Mai Reiki and Seichem, which he's exceedingly chuffed about. He can now teach, and is considering where he wants to go with it. I'm very proud of him!

Father in Law Issues
We've spent a goodly part of the last few weeks running around after Jon's father, as usual. And he has been even more obnoxious than ever. In one particular bout of vitriol he raged at Jonathan that he (Jon) should be going out to get a "proper job" but then swiftly followed that up with a spiteful "But nobody would ever want to employ *you* anyway." What a delightful thing for a father to say to his youngest son. Seems he's conveniently forgotten that Jon *chose* to give up a lucrative career position as a company director in order to move up here. Seems he's also conveniently forgotten that Jon's practically singlehandedly supported us for the last ten years via self-employment. I'd be spitting with fury if I hadn't already used it all up, years ago. We're subjected to nothing but constant praise and adulation of his eldest son followed by constant put downs of Jon. It would be sickening even if we weren't running around after his every whim, but to be treated this way when we're doing our best to take care of him is just beyond words. I have no idea where such spite comes from or why he's doing it. All I can say right now, at the very end of my exhausted tether, is that Jon's father had better be careful not to ever turn that kind of deliberate, spiteful, mental cruelty onto our daughter, because if he does, father in law or no father in law there will be consequences.

Emily's Social Life
Well, Emily's certainly seen plenty of her friends recently. We're still seeing Jacki, Mei Lin and Jasmine every Friday; last week she saw them for four days running as we were at theirs on the Friday, then Emily spent all day Saturday with them too, then on the Sunday it was Mei Lin's 11th birthday and Emily was there all afternoon at her party, and then again on Monday night. Miraculously, they didn't manage to fall out even given the constant company, lol. We've also had friends over to play at our house and Emily's been busy writing lots of letters to friends too.

Emily's Education
There's been lots of education, honestly. I just can't remember much of it. I know Emily's done plenty of fractions work, and she's also done lots of geography and geology. We made salt dough sheaves of corn for Lammas, learnt about why the Normans won the Battle of Hastings and Emily's been keeping close tabs on the flowers and caterpillars in the garden. Speaking of caterpillars, both kittens (must stop calling them that, they're over a year old now) have been on constant butterfly patrol. Poor flutterbies. Keep finding dead ones on the floor or spotting a kibbie dashing up the stairs with a mouthful of wings :-(( Not very nice.

This Friday just gone I did some poetry work with Emily, Mei Lin and Jasmine, using the famous "I Saw a Peacock with a Fiery Tail" poem, examining how you can twist the lines around to make sense, and then the girls all wrote their own versions using half a sentence on one line and the other half on the line above. Here's Emily's:

I saw a rat floating on the breeze
I saw a leaf cover up his sneeze
I saw a man shining with light
I saw a crystal squawking with might
I saw a bird swallow a whale
I saw a salmon jump through a gale
I saw a raindrop, fluffy and proud
I saw a rabbit climb through a cloud
I saw a pegasus skating on a pond
I saw a dragonfly with its chicks so fond
I saw a swan crack on the floor
I saw a plate squeeze under a door
I saw a mouse as a house so tall
I saw a cat who saw this all.

Future Plans
Jonathan's going to Grasmere for a meditation and spiritual retreat for a week in October, so Emily and I will be going up to stay in the caravan during that time. I'm hoping to stay for several weeks longer too, so we'll be away for most of October. It sounds like a long way off, but it can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned.

Meanwhile, Jon is writing a runes package, and I'm going to be starting on some children's spirituality books. Having turned down the writing contract I didn't want has actually made me feel very empowered. Yep, definitely time to start pleasing *ourselves* for once instead of chasing every penny or running round after others all the time. The BBC failed to pay us on time at the end of July. Again. That's five months in a row now. The payment won't reach us for another week, apparently. All of our first of the month payments out went bouncy-bouncy. But you know what? It's only money :-))