Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

Dash came home from school yesterday with an insect bite on his right cheek. He had no idea what might have bitten him. He woke this morning with his cheek a bright angry red and so swollen that the right side of his face looked like it belonged to a different (and much much fatter!) person. Poor darling.

Dropped Katie at Stagecoach then home to collect Dash for guitar. I thought I would head Mr Baulch off at the pass (so to speak) so, as soon as he started to say that Dash looked somehow different, I said ‘It’s an insect bite’. But no, Mr Baulch was referring to the fact that Dash had had a haircut, and couldn’t resist suggesting that, like Samson, Dash would have lost all his strength. Given that Dash, having finally accepted that he can’t be a lion when he grows up, has decided that his back-up plan is to be a superhero, this did not go down well! Dash was clearly unhappy but confined himself to rather solemnly pointing out that Mr Baulch was incorrect, in fact Samson didn’t lose all his strength, his strength was merely reduced to that of an ordinary strong man.

Level 2 Chi Kung.

With the dreaded project management course looming next week, there could be no further delay in doing the pre-reading. After starting conscientiously on Monday and discovering that it defines a whole new level of boring, there seems to have been no end of excuses for not getting back onto it during the week. It’s fortunate however that I did go back to it today, as I discovered that the incompetent prats at Civil Service Learning had (again!) failed to send joining instructions. CSL have some cheap deal where they take whatever training room is available at the last minute, with the result that, until a few days before the course, the location is just specified as London – ignoring the fact that which part of London it is held in matters a great deal in terms of travelling times. I made a formal complaint about this last year on the grounds that it makes it next to impossible for people with children to plan childcare, or those from out of town to book a convenient hotel, but got an unhelpful, broken-record-technique response. Whoever invented the broken-record-technique should probably be shot – politely, over and over again! And of course it also means that, if they send the joining instructions to the wrong address, all you know is that you should be at a course somewhere in London!

Level 2 Chi Kung.

On Tuesday, Sherlock didn’t get to go on the school run on account of the yoghurt incident. When I got home, he was all upset and needy, so, after giving him a bit of a cuddle, I let him play around my feet while I cleaned the kitchen. As I cleaned, I couldn’t help noticing that Sherlock himself was less than pristine – particularly about the nether parts. So, once the kitchen was sparkling, I changed into gardening clothes and gave him a bath. I gave him lots of stroking and a few little treats and he was very well behaved, standing calmly in the warm water with tail wagging throughout. Well today is Thursday and, once again, Sherlock couldn’t come on the morning school run on account of me needing to drop Katie’s phone off for film club. And once again I arrived home from the school run to a needy and rather manic wee dog. But this time, when I opened the kitchen door, instead of whipping into the children’s living room in the hope of hoovering some crumbs up off the floor, he trotted straight upstairs. I followed him up and, sure enough, there he was waiting patiently beside the bath! I seem to have ended up with the only dog in history to positively enjoy baths!

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

Several weeks ago, frustrated that the recovery of my injured knee seemed to have stalled, I decided I’d better make an appointment to see the GP. The appointment was yesterday afternoon. I was hoping to be referred for some physiotherapy, but the GP wants an x-ray first to find out whether the bone is chipped. She asked what I was doing for pain relief, and I told her that I had been taking nurofen – just a couple of tablets a day but that I had stopped because I was concerned that it had been two months. She agreed that it isn’t a good idea to take ibuprofen long term and gave me a prescription for an alternative. I didn’t take much notice until I collected the prescription today and discovered that she has prescribed 1 to 2 tablets, 4 times a day, of something containing 15mg of codeine. So, if I followed this advice, I could potentially be taking 120mg of codeine a day. Now, even leaving aside the fact that, if I took anywhere near this much codeine I may never go to the loo again, this puzzles me. I have always found GPs to be very reluctant to prescribe painkillers – before I had kids I suffered from appalling period pain but was repeatedly sent away empty-handed, and a few years ago St Mary’s Hospital sent me home to have a miscarriage, with a prescription for paracetamol! And yet here I was saying that I was basically getting by without any pain relief at all, and the GP prescribes this heavy duty stuff. Of course there might be a logical reason – she noticed me limping and thinks things would heal up faster if I walked normally maybe (but, if so, she really needed to explain her thinking) – or is it just that obs and gynae stuff is ‘meant to hurt’ but knees aren’t?

Level 2 Chi Kung.

A hassly start to the day. Last week, a letter came home from Katie’s school saying that a photographer would be in school today to take class photos. To avoid last minute hassles of the ‘my favourite outfit is in the wash’ variety, I immediately initiated a discussion with Katie as to what she might want to wear. She repeatedly answered that she would like me to choose. This morning, she again said that I should choose, but that it shouldn’t be a dress, trousers or track suit pants. I genuinely wasn’t sure what that left!

Level 2 Chi Kung.

This morning, Jack looked like the victim in an old-fashioned vampire film: deathly pale with big dark smudges under his eyes and, just as he was meant to leave for school, he announced that he felt too ill to go.

Sherlock and I dropped Katie at school then headed for home to look after Jack. Not that he is any trouble – so long as supplies of toast and marmite are maintained! The plumber arrived at 11 to quote for moving radiators, installing outside taps etc. I wasn’t hugely impressed with him – so I am hoping he won’t be the lowest quote!

Elijah Wood in The Guardian Q & A:

“What would your super power be?
At a restaurant once, I noticed that the waitress – a beautiful waitress – had a nose that, when she was growing up, maybe people picked on her for. But it was a defining feature and made her unique. It would be an amazing super power to be able to make every person you meet feel better about the thing that makes them insecure.”

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

Nick wanted to swap Sundays with me so that he can do an organised bike ride next weekend, so I had a nice sleep in, then did Chi Kung.

A year or so ago, it became clear that I needed a new desk, as the old IKEA one was falling apart. Instead of another IKEA desk, I was really hankering for something a bit more solid and we ended up choosing an oak dining table that happened to be about the right size. Bizarrely, it was cheaper to buy the table with 6 oak dining chairs than to buy it on its own, so we ended up with a set of oak chairs which, fortunately, Nick and the children really like. I however, think that they are the most uncomfortable chairs ever made, so we have kept one of the old dining chairs (£10 from IKEA in 2005!) for me. The big snag with the table – and I only realised this after several months – was that it was about 3cm too high to be comfortable as a desk. As a result, even with a footrest, my posture wasn’t ideal and I often ended up with a sore back. I have therefore been keen for some time to have Nick slice 3cm off the bottom of each leg but he, very sensibly, warned me to be sure I could ‘see the whites of his eyes’. In other words, I needed to be sure he really had time to do it before starting to dismantle the computer and remove everything from the desk. Well, this afternoon we finally struck the right moment and I am typing this at a much more comfortable height! Hopefully back problems will now be a thing of the past.

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Saturday, with the usual round of Stagecoach and guitar. Lately, Katie has been less than cooperative about getting ready in the mornings. Implementing Katie’s suggestion of getting her her own alarm clock appears to have helped on weekdays, so I was unprepared for a re-emergence of problems on the weekend. On weekdays she has to get up quite early and the problem is that she doesn’t want to wake up and get out of bed. On Saturdays, we don’t have to leave the house until 0930 and today the problem seemed to be more that she was lying around the living room playing with her iPhone and didn’t want to stop! My normal approach with the children (within reason!) is to allow them to experience the consequences of their actions. I don’t take it as far as my mother. When we were young she had a small wood burner in the kitchen which flickered most alluringly when lit. Crawling children were inevitably fascinated by it and, as each of us crawled across the floor towards the fascinating flickering, Mum said: ‘No’, ‘Don’t touch’, ‘Hot’, ‘Burns’. Inevitably the child would ignore these warnings and, reaching out to touch the stove, would burst into outraged sobs, having learned exactly what ‘Hot’ and ‘Burns’ meant. Mum would then pick up and console the infant, probably by putting butter on the burned fingers, knowing that they would never touch the lit stove again.

I don’t have a lot of flexibility on school days – I am legally obliged to deliver Katie to school on time. On the weekend however, while I would always prefer to be everywhere on time, that is more a value rather than a need. It doesn’t really matter if Katie is late for Stagecoach – it doesn’t matter if she goes at all. She has been complaining recently about not getting enough sleeps-in, so I reminded her that she can give up Stagecoach anytime or, if she still wants to go, she can transfer to the afternoon class. She didn’t want to do either of these things as she has friends in the morning class. Anyway, there she is, lying on the sofa, declining to get dressed, and I realised that I could just relax about it – there are no consequences for being late to Stagecoach that are worth stressing over. So I pointed out that we needed to leave very soon if she wanted to be on time, and then went into the kitchen and did some cleaning up (sadly hadn’t internalised the ‘relax about it’ approach to the extent of being able to sit down and have a cup of tea, but hey – baby steps!). Katie eventually got dressed and I brushed her hair. She then announced that she hadn’t had anything to eat so Nick made her some toast. We finally left about 20 minutes late but, thanks to Sherlock setting a blistering pace, we made up 5 minutes on the journey and delivered her at 10:15 for a 10am start.

Home from dropping Katie and just enough time for something to eat before it was time to take Dash to guitar. A good lesson – he has been practicing conscientiously lately – though at one point when he was trying to explain what he was finding difficult and Mr Baulch kept on joking around, he put his hand out in a ‘stop’ gesture and said “Please, just let me speak.’!

In the afternoon, Nick took the boys for a haircut and then for a post-haircut treat at Costa coffee.

Almost forgot in the chaos of Saturday that I had a ticket for the Met Live screening of Mozart’s Le Nozze de Figaro. I was kind of regretting it – all cosy at home and then suddenly remembering that I needed to go out – but it was so worth it. Wonderful music and voices, gorgeous costumes. and moments of laugh-out-loud physical comedy. On the bus home, I found myself wondering if Wodehouse wrote the first Jeeves and Wooster story after a night at the opera. It’s all in there: the clever and endlessly scheming valet, boys dressing up as girls, men hiding in wardrobes and jumping out of windows, mistaken identity, the need to avoid the terrifying prospect of an undesirable marriage…

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Friday and Sherlock was very relieved to be included in the school run again! Although Jack isn’t ill in any discernable way, having him home from school seemed like a good opportunity for some pampering so, after I had dropped Katie at school, I encouraged him into a nice hot bath and then cosy lying-around-home clothes and let him spend the day on the sofa watching DVDs. Normally the computers are set up so that the children each get an hour of log in on week days, and two hours a day on weekends – but I see no harm in letting them ‘binge-watch’ on a sick day.