Tuesday 21st of March 2006
It’s still so cold!
This winter has been one of the longest I can remember. It’s late March and there hasn’t been a single day with a hint of Spring in it. It hasn’t rained much at all, it’s been very dry for the last 18 months so there’s a lot of water rationing on the way… Hose pipe bans are already in force I think, by the looks of it swimming pools will have to have some control too.
Tomorrow it’s assembly at your school, Mother’s day, and you’ve been memorising your lines. You’ve been so worried about it, even said you didn’t want me to go because you couldn’t remember your lines and the drawing you made of me had no glasses on and your teacher wouldn’t let you change it. This afternoon you felt better about it, you had practised and learned your lines and you said it’d be ok if I came and watched!
Tomorrow morning, I shall be watching your class assembly with gusto.
Your uncle Warren came to London a couple of weeks ago and we happened to be at home on Friday (more boiler fitting to be done, that turned into a saga that did!) so he came to visit us. It was nice to see him. He’s now well settled into his job at the hospital, who’d have thought! I think your dad thought Warren would never get himself sorted, but there he is! I always had a more romantic view for his future, I like his paintings so much I thought he end up making a living out of selling them… That’s not to be, not yet anyway. He said he doesn’t have much time to paint these days as he’s too tired when he gets home from work, which really is a shame…
You’re still asking some very funny questions, mainly of the ‘what would you do’ type:
What would you do if a hurricane was coming? you then answer your own question: I’d hide under the ground!
What would you do if a car hit you?
What would you do if an alien landed?
and today, on the way to the station, after school: What would you do if you were the devil for a day?
oh, my word, I was laughing so hard! You said you’d go to Disneyland!!!
On Sunday we dug the roller skates out, and the skateboard and the three of us went to Highbury (you, J and I). You were skating and laughing your little head off every time you fell… Then we all took turns sitting on the skateboard and being pushed around like silly heads! Brilliant stuff. Later on we went to the playground, the sun came out for an hour and it was almost warm, then it went all cold and miserable again. That was the closest to a glimpse of the end of the winter we had so far.
The money from the options got put into our account on Monday, got just over £6,000, paid £5,000 in tax… It’s really odd, because if they were normal shares the first £8k would have been tax free, so we’d have got about £10k instead, but for some reason with options we pay the higher tax rate. That’s the boiler paid for and a bit left over! Want to take us to Brazil next summer, so we have the money for that! Also thinking of getting a new kitchen, but not just yet, all this home improvement malarkey is so stressful, stuff keeps going wrong. The bathroom had all sorts of problems while being built, the boiler was a bit of a struggle too. In the end they both looked/worked fine – but I think I can only undertake one major DIY project a year. Currently I’m also having to peel the wallpaper off the living room ceiling (yes, the previous owners wallpapered the ceiling) – and I can’t use the wallpaper steam remover on ceilings, because of the boiling, dripping steam – so I’m having to do it manually, using my hands, a scraper and water. I started about a month ago and I’m only halfway through. It’s hard work on the neck so I do a bit at a time then I get bored and stop.
You had a tough time the week before last. On Thursday you fell down in school, and had a massive bruise on your left eyebrow. Then you went to your dad’s and he applied more ice to it (they had been doing it at school too). The next morning, you and your dad were running for the bus, and you tripped and landed on your face. As a result you scraped your nose and a bit of your upper lip. When I met you and your dad, to take you to school, you were in a right state, your dad was really pissed off (at himself more than at you, but he was taking it out on you, saying you should have paid more attention). R. left, you were crying so much we nearly went back home, but then we talked for a bit and you decided to go to school – I explained to you it wasn’t your fault, really, it was just an accident and that running for a bus wasn’t your decision, it was your dad’s. Your face looked a real mess on Friday. You ended up getting a certificate for being so brave and coping well under difficult circumstances! How lovely. You also got to seat on the special table at school dinner time, as you behaved well. Sitting on that table means you get extra ice-cream and fruit.
You made these this weekend on Photoshop, it’s the ghostbusters sequence, it all started very innocently with some cleaning around the flat, and it ended like this:
J’s wearing my shower cap in the last photo! The idea, in case you don’t remember, was that you are a ghostbuster, sucking J inside your ghostbusting machine.
Not quite as funny as the video we made a while ago, with your nana Cesca teaching you how to dance.