I'm an aunt again!
Cutesocks' Mama had a second son last night. They're both fit and well, although they did end up in hospital when a home-birth was planned. Cutesocks' Papa didn't make it home until 5am this morning. My Mama is flying down on Monday to look after Cutesocks for a while (and hopefully to take lots of photos).
Now I get to go shopping...
We took Mouse rock climbing with us tonight; now that I've got my natty grey membership card I can take him in any time I like, as long as I sign a form every single time that states that I do not intend to kill him, and that I will make him obey all the rules. His only rule is that we stop half-way through for hot chocolate, something I was happy to agree to, as the temperature was below freezing in the quarry tonight.
I think I'm getting better at this, I'm more confident about the long stretches, and I can relax and lean back to look for footholds and things now (rather than hanging on for grim death with anything I can possibly hold on with). And I'm much more confident about belaying now, I think I was worried at first that Handsome was actually going to lift me off my feet, or that I'd drop him, or that I'd burn my hands on the rope. None of these things actually happened, so I reckon I can cope now.
We didn't let Mouse belay tonight, I'll save that for another day, but we let him climb. He has such long arms and legs that he seems to be able to reach huge gaps, and he twists his body all over the place to go in different directions - he was amazing in the bouldering room, where he could twist himself up and over edges and round corners. I can't do that at all yet, because you have to hang by your arms, and my arms don't do that (or perhaps I'm just a bit too heavy...).Handsome can sort of half do it, but Mouse just hangs there, looking like a mutant rock-climbing spider-mouse.
I love doing this.
Talking through Mouse's homework today turned into a spirited discussion about how Lady MacBeth might have been misunderstood, and could have been a good person who had allowed herself to be corrupted through love for her husband... I love it that he has an English teacher who encourages him to think.
Mouse's Best Friend found a special club for playing with nasty little orcs Warhammer models on t'interweb - not actually playing on the internet, playing in a community centre in Livingston.We used to go there a lot when the boys were little, when we lived nearby. The library was there, it was the blood donor centre and the toddler's group was in the upstairs room (where the Gaming Club was held, in fact).
One of my worst memories originates in this community centre, the occasion when Hairy was about eighteen-months old and ran everywhere. He fell and gave himself a beautiful black eye on the kinderbox in the library. The actual black eye wasn't a big deal, the problem was at the doctors (asthma) a week later, when a (strange) doctor asked how he got the black eye, and Handsome very very nearly replied 'Oh, his mum hit him'. He has that sort of sense of humour. Unfortunately, not many GPs have that kind of sense of humour...
Anyway, we knew this community centre well about ten years ago, so I was absolutely horrified to realise that I couldn't remember how to get there by car. I could perfectly visualise how to walk there from the childminder we had at the time, but I had to look up on Google how to drive there...
The club looked busy and well organised, and the boys had fun. And I managed to negotiate the anonymous housing estate and find the carpark.
Firstborn, Hairy Maclairy, went back to university three weeks ago and I've hardly heard from him since - a good sign, I usually think, because it means he's having fun. But last night we had a long 'conversation' via msn (he wasn't in his room where there's a 'phone, and he never has any money/charge on his mobile, so there's no point in calling that) the gist of which was that he'd only managed to get back to his Hall in time for dinner once so far this week, and as he's trying to economise, he just skipped eating. He was starving last night, and counting down the hours until breakfast.
I was quite close to getting in the car and going and getting him, but I'm not allowed to treat him like a child anymore. It's very, very hard.
He has no cooking facilities as such, the kitchen he has on his corridor really only has a kettle and a toaster and a fridge, and they're not allowed to have electrical stuff in their rooms. On top of that, it transpires that his food constantly gets nicked from the kitchen fridge anyway (I have a solution for that involving freezer blocks). I remember that well - in fact I had a discussion with some vengeful colleagues today where one of them admitted to putting milk of magnesium in her milk, and the other confessed to a complicated plot where she made a small hole in the base of a pot of yoghurt and squidged shampoo in and then resealed the base. The lid of course looked perfect. I don't remember ever doing anything quite along those lines, but I remember well the annoyance of going to get something from the fridge and finding it wasn't there.
Despite the fact that we pay for these meals that he can't get back in time for (an actual impossibility as his lectures finish at six, his bus ride home takes half an hour, and the kitchen closes at six thirty) I cannot allow him to starve. I'm going to sort out a food parcel for him with things that he should be able to manage with very few cooking facilities or indeed skills. Although, it's entirely possible that he won't be able to manage, Hairy has no domestic ability at all, and could be described as home economic illiterate. The food may also be healthier than he envisaged, but it should help when he's gnurled with hunger.
His food parcel will contain cous cous, pasta, boil-in-the-bag rice, one or two microwave meals for real emergencies, cheese and butter, whole-meal rolls, fruit, vegetables and milk - oh, and two freezer blocks (one in the fridge, one in the box) and a very big tupperware (I think I'm supposed to put that trademark TM symbol in there) box to keep it all in. And vitamin tablets. I'll deliver it over the weekend, if I actually have five minutes (two and a half hours) to do so.
Hopefully he won't be hungry next week.
But I'll probably still be worried about him.
I'm a little distracted this week - we went rock climbing on Monday night (I'm now allowed to go on my own - well obviously I need a partner to belay me - and to be responsible for one other person) and since then I've been busy doing all the normal stuff that needs to be done. There seems to be more than the normal amount of normal stuff this week.
But tonight I'm going to sit down and watch Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, which I bought for myself with a token I had from Christmas. I've been saving it for a night when I'm on my own, so I can enjoy it without Handsome making sarky comments in the background.
Mouse came home from school on Friday extremely upset, because there had been some mucking around on the bus, and it was aimed at him - this time. Hairy used to have problems on the bus from time to time, and I'm aware that it is very uncontrolled (in a kind of Lord of the Flies way), but Mouse has always previously been in the position of being friends with the main protagonists and safe, something that is no longer the case.
I let him calm down a bit (for two days), and then talked it through with him. Unfortunately he is fully aware that when I complained to the school about Hairy, the school got onto the bus company, and the driver then questioned every kid who got on the bus until he found out whose parent had whinged.
Absolutely dreadful, but true.
So, Mouse doesn't currently want to make a fuss, and I'm not going to go behind his back and contact the school, especially as it is all too easy to identify individuals on a small rural bus with only a few kids per stop... But, I have made him promise me that he will let me know if it happens again, or if it happens to anyone else and then I will definitely contact the school, even if I have to drop him off and collect him from school every day.
I unlocked something called 'Zazen' on my wii fit thingy tonight - it involved sitting still for three minutes. Whilst I appreciate that this might be a chore for your average fourteen-year-old (although I don't see why, they all get enough practice of staying absolutely still apart from thumbs), really I just found it quite relaxing. If I hadn't been sitting cross-legged on a wobble balance board, I might have fallen asleep.
I scored four stars...
We've had Mouse's Best Friend staying for the weekend, so that his parents could have some grown-up time at a work's do. Now there's a terribly seventies phrase... Mouse's behaviour improves about ten-fold when Best Friend is here, he's anxious, I suspect, not to show himself in a bad light, which means that we have had a lovely peaceful weekend! The boys have played on various electronic devices (they start with X and W), arranged lots of miniature metal painted objects on the floor and done something very complicated with rule-books , dice and tape measures, condescended to play word games with the grown-ups and left the house when requested to do so, even although we were taking them out into the teeth of a gale.
Oh, and Mouse's Best friend lent me a book I have wanted to read since I gave it to him for Christmas... so I was happy too.
