Last night we switched the lights out for an hour to take part in Earth Hour - we may not have the light capacity of the Sydney Harbour Bridge (or even the Forth Road Bridge, which also took part), but it certainly took a while to go right 'round the house and make sure everything was switched off...
We had dinner by candlelight, which was very pleasant, and then we played cards with Mouse (weetabix - there are a limited number of games for three players). It was actually fun; I feel that we should switch the lights out more often.
And I'm not at all biased by the fact that I won.
It was a bit of a shock to read Hairy's blog and find out that someone had attempted to mug him a couple of days ago. He was lucky, a passer-by intervened (with a threat to call the police). Of course, my worry gene has become dominant again (it never goes very far beneath the surface anyway), but he seems to be very casual about the whole thing. Actually, that worries me even more...
Handsome attempted to drill his thumb off in front of a class of eleven-year-olds today. Apparently they were busy and didn't notice... By the time I saw him, he had an 'egg' of bandages wound around it, at least enough so that he couldn't see any blood seeping through. The first aider told him that he should go to A&E, but he decided to go back and teach three more classes instead.
Stubborn.
But, on the plus side, at least not over-egging it.
Vox is mucking around with my font sizes tonight, and I can't get it consistent. Aaaargh. Also, Handsome is mucking around with the 'phone lines (because the phone isn't working), and he keeps cutting me off in mid-flow.
It's
been a somewhat
frenzied week - Mouse has been rehearsing his socks off (no actually,
his father's socks because he doesn't have any white ones, and he
needed white socks for an Abba number... ) including a full evening
rehearsal (until past his usual bedtime) on Wednesday, prior to the
actual show on
Thursday and Friday. It seems a little strange to think that it's the
last time
we'll go to a school show in that hall. After the summer the school
will have moved to
the new building, where they will not have a permanent stage, although
apparently
there will be a temporary one. I hope it doesn't change the school
enthusiasm for music evenings, shows and musicals.
Mouse's Best Friend has been staying with us over the weekend, so that his parents could have a child-free wedding anniversary break. I had a plan that involved the boys sleeping in different rooms - BF in Mouse's room, and Mouse in Hairy's room - so that Mouse didn't wake up BF too early in the morning. I can't put visitors in Hairy's bed, because he chose a very high platform bed for his room. Even though we pointed out at the time that there was only going to be about two feet of clearance to the ceiling, he insisted. It's impossible to get in and out of Hairy's bed without performing contortions, or hitting your head off the ceiling, so I can only sleep family in it. The plan, however, didn't come to fruition, because Hairy announced on Thursday that he was coming home for the weekend, to pick up his bike.
I offered Mouse the choice of the fold-down settee bed in the playroom, or a sleeping bag on his bedroom floor. He chose the floor, and appeared to be happy about it. Teenagers are strange.
Poor BF may have suffered a little this weekend, although I did my best to let him and Mouse play the X-box as much as humanly possible. But he did have to come to Mouse's show (because I wasn't prepared to leave him at home alone, and Hairy wasn't back yet) and he did have to come to the dentist with us, although I didn't make him have his teeth checked! And he did have to come climbing with us on Sunday, because, well because I wanted to go, and I thought it would be good for all the boys to have some exercise that didn't involve thumbs.
This week is going to be spent not sympathising with Mouse, who has exams all this week and all next week, and who has done absolutely no work whatsover, despite large amounts of hinting, reminding and nagging vocal caring. If he does well, he'll think that it's ok not to work, and if he does badly, it'll be my fault.
Out walking in the Pentlands today, with the Bronze and Silver groups (not ours), only Handsome and I didn't really get to do very much walking, as we were check pointing roughly in the middle. He had to rush off and divert a lost group back in the direction of the path (unfortunately it was the one with Mouse in...embarrassing for both him and Mouse), and I had a few strolls to see if I could see overdue groups approaching, but an awful lot of the day was spent in the yellow minibus with the red nose.
The kids were all dressed up - they were sponsored to 'look funny for money' for Comic Relief, which was yesterday - the other walkers in the Pentlands were most amused. We had facepaints; pink pyjamas; deelyboppers; cowboy hats; two kids with the total red look, including wigs; mankinis (over the walking clothes, I promise); superman underpants (ditto) and Mouse in a lion costume. It was quite muddy by the time he got back!
I started off wearing deelyboppers too (in red), but the winds were quite high today, and they were behaving a bit like upside-down clackers - when I went in the shower tonight I discovered that my hair was full of red glitter - I hope it wasn't too noticeable when I was talking to some of the kids parents at collection time.
Obviously I can't post photos of other people's kids, but there's nothing stopping me from posting the minibus.
Ok, so programmes like 'Police Interceptors' are hardly mind-improving tv, but why do they need to tell you everything that's already happened after every single ad break? Are people's attention spans really that short, or do they need to make the programme longer by wasting two minutes in every fifteen?
Rant over, I'm going to watch something educational now.
Mouse is a bit of a performer - goodness alone knows where he gets it from. He's involved in the school show again this year, which appears to be a sort of medley of songs from big musicals. A lot of song and dance routines... The dates of the show have been brought forward by a couple of months (because the school is moving to a new building during the summer term) so everything is getting a bit rushed. The rehearsals have now gone from one night a week to two nights a week, from one hour to two hours, and tonight Mouse came home and said that next week they would have lunchtime rehearsals as well. He'll be exhausted!
On top of which, he handed me his costume list tonight, with a casual "Oh, we're to get these by the week after next", which gives me two weekends to get six costume changes, including white trousers and coloured shoes. He has size ten, high instepped wide feet, ordinary shoes can be hard to get, and I haven't even started to think about where I can get white trousers. He'll look like a tube of toothpaste in them anyway...
Luckily there are a lot of charity shops in Peebles, I should at least be able to get the more normal things (sleeveless pullover, preferably striped; black long sleeved shirt; white long sleeved shirt; red headband). Maybe there'll be an ex-swinger who has handed in a pair of 30" white trousers... perhaps they'll have fringes.
Yay - I got my laptop back, and it's all better. (Thanks BFP) Which is really, really good, because I found it very hard to concentrate on anything in the same room as Mouse and the X-box... and he's got a Macbeth essay to write tonight, so I wouldn't have been able to claim that surfing was more important. Obviously it is more important, but this probably isn't the image I want his teachers to have of his home life - "Sorry Sir, I couldn't finish my essay because my Mum was updating her blog."
Mouse is on final warning for homework. He's allowed three texts per term from school - we get text messages when he fails to hand in homework - and then he loses the electronic playroom study for a week. That includes the X-box, computer (apart from supervised school-work) and Wii. I think it's amazing and a bit scary how technology allows us to spy check up on our children constantly, but it certainly works for Mouse.
However, it's a little worrying that I have received so many texts from his school (about all sorts of things, I hasten to add) that it shows up as a 'buddy' on my 'phone. What stupid software.
