My Goth Girlie

Looking scarily considerably older than eleven in some of these. *Wail*

Time is slipping by so fast this year. This evening, for the first time, it was still light when I "put Lulu to bed" at 6.15 (that's when she goes back into her cage for the night and settles down to sleep for 12 hours or so). The crocuses are out and the daffodils are nearly out. In a few week's time a quarter of 2010 will be gone!

Education - yes, well, I'm *still* wrangling with how much structure Emily does or doesn't need in her home education adventure. Just when I think I've cracked it, we get a not-so-great day that causes me to rethink it all again.

Since my last post, Emily's made a start on sewing her halter neck top. She worked on civil war history (reluctantly) and done psychology homework for Hazel (much more enthusiastically). She has breezed through the first chapter of a chemistry textbook and read various library books. We've been ice skating with Romy, to our regular library slot with Romy, Hazel and Tansy and been to friends and had friends over. She has cooked, drawn, photographed and faffed endlessly with hair, makeup and clothes. Later this week we're going to Woodside Falconry centre and we're also going to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D.

Mainly, though, Emily has continued with her IT and programming obsession. She's been working with some DOS batch programming links like this, this and this given to her by our friend Sean, who said lots of lovely, encouraging things to her about her work and her growing confidence. She's also excited by these detailed, free tutorials in Visual Basic, C# and PHP and has started to work her way through them, party on her own and partly with Gramps, who seems to be enjoying himself nearly as much as she is! It's all way over my head, but I have a feeling I'm going to have to start learning so that I can keep her company and *attempt* to be of some help occasionally. With this being such an all-consuming passion of Emily's just now, I'm keen to let her have as much time for it as possible.

Time, mind, is something we're a little bit short of. Emily does like interaction and doesn't like being left to her own devices all day, every day. She spends Monday afternoons with Gramps, then Weds afternoons we're out and all day Fridays we're either out at friends or have friends over here. That really only leaves us with Tuesdays and Wednesday/Thursday mornings (Monday mornings just don't seem to happen!) but given how late someone gets to bed and therefore how late someone also gets up in the mornings....basically that leaves me with Tuesday. Factor in the regular Grandad doctor/hospital appointments, occasional illness and the occasional desire to leave the house and see the world and you can see why we have a problem fitting formal education in. Organisation is the key. The missing key, that is. As ever.

Meanwhile, with all the BBC cuts being announced - one of the things going is their teen website...and our largest contract along with it. That's over half of our income for the chop. Sigh. At least they've given us a long notice period, but replacing that contract with something else is going to be very, very tough. Panic? Me? As if.