Wedding anniversary

July 15th is our seventh wedding anniversary. I think this is quite a good number for starters, though not a reason for resting on our laurels. You have to work at a relationship to keep it going well. Nevertheless, between us we notch up over 50 years of good marriages because husband was married for 27 years and I was married for 17 years before. So

27+17+7 > 50

Perhaps one year we'll have a big party to celebrate lots of years in total even if he and I won't make ruby together.

Cat gone

That bouncy young tom cat that adopted husband has gone. Just disappeared. He was around at our family barbecue last week, trying to snaffle the sausages, but on the Monday, husband said that he wasn't interested in food, was shivering, and was sleeping a lot. I saw him on Friday, sitting under the bushes, with no energy. By the time husband got home to take him to the vet, he'd disappeared and we haven't seen him since. He must have eaten something poisonous. I think that in winter his body will turn up under the bushes when the leaves drop off.

Grading

Passed the grading after all those dire prognostications. Ha! Got my blue tag.

And, like my GCE maths teacher insulted me with, "you've done better than I expected" the subum said, "I was pleasantly surprised!"

Na-na-na-na-na.

Taekwon Do grading

Taekwon Do grading is tomorrow. Subum says that he hasn't used the word 'fail', just the word 'retake', and has talked about September.

End of term wet weather

Youngest daughter is away on a school trip to Buxton, but I texted her about the PhD offer. It's nice having encouraging children - here's her reply.

"Wow, go you!" Been raining cats and dogs here, but still fun. Was 1st to get hurt and got pulled in water. Got too much to eat, even with budget. Go celebrate!"

It's succinct but full, isn't it? What does she mean that she got hurt? How? Why? And does "pulled in water" mean that she was shoulder high, drenched and half drowned, or what? If she was the first, then that implies others go hurt too. Oh dear!

The reference to the budget is because the school is giving them a limited amount of money from which they have to plan and purchase and prepare their meals together, so I think there are lots of lessons about resources, and social negotiation going on here.

Today she texted:

"Need to wash/dry sleeping bag. Our tent collapsed this morning while we were still inside. We've made a few new records for the centre challenges."

Oh dear again! Does she mean that the centre doesn't usually have collapsed tents or is there some unnamed challenge that she and others have beaten?

Doctoral progress

People who read this might want to know and be as pleased as I am to hear that the OUBS has offered me a place to continue with the doctoral programme for the next years.

:)

So I am a late developer who got her degree in her thirties, her masters in her forties and now .. working for my doctorate.

Home comings

Both Youngest Step Daughter and Son are due home soon from university. YSD was hoping to be able to stay in her present house but it transpires that the landlord isn't letting them stay and she has the hassle of finding somewhere else. But she's doing well and looks like she'll come out with a respectable degree.

S is still taking exams - I think they're called collections.

And the lodger is still with us, with a bit of an overlap, so we have to have negotiations over bedrooms.

For a few days it will be nicely busy as Son is bring home a couple of friends too - Oliver and Qu, so we'll have people in all the rooms.

Tae Kwondo

I've got a grading soon, and about time too, since it is months since I took a grading. But I muddle the moves.

Each grade or kup has an associated pattern of moves. At my kup, I should know a pattern called Won Yo, which I do, but the earlier kup has a pattern called Do San, and the one before is Dan Gun, and for nearly two years, I've confused them. Now I'm finding that when I do Do San, I'm even trying to mix in moves from Won Yo. :(

But despite my lack of kinesthetic or haptic memory, tae kwondo makes me smile so I shall keep doing it. I play tag, like I did in the playground. The small boys, when I get partnered with them, wonder why I don't keep up the same! And they cheat. Even when I do tag them, they don't perform their penalty, 3 press-ups or a sit up or something, but the warm-up game still makes me smile.

And there was the time I was partnered with big cockney accent - lovely chap, twice my weight. We had to face each other in press-up position, and attempt to knock each other's arms away so we'd collapse. He won of course, but I just kept laughing.

Baby all right, and mother too

My mother skyped me to ask how baby was; I didn't know.

But then today, Sdaughter#2 rang to tell me, since she was there at the time and helped with the ferrying to the hospital 15 minutes away, and minding big sister. Her mother did stay in hospital with her, and fed her and looked after her in the children's ward, while her daddy and aunty minded BS. Hospital did various checks and scans, and found a cracked skull and a bruised brain, but nevertheless baby is perky again, and happily enjoying the attention.

I think her mummy and daddy are working out how to make the floor less slippery and hard.

Falling grandchildren

We've just had a phone call from son#1. He and family are coming over for lunch in a couple of weeks, but his younger daughter has just had a fall and been in hospital for two days! Apparently hospital was just keeping an eye on her, and I don't know the details because husband took the call. But son#1 is about to take family out - mother requires something stronger than a coffee. And I'm not surprised. I'd be worried about my baby daughter being away from me for two days, be demanding to sleep on the floor in the hospital next to her, and then worrying that the authorities would be saying I'm a bad mother. She's a lovely mother.

Watching the model trains

Grandparenting

Husband wanted to see the model trains at Seaton, Pecorama and thought he could take grandchildren #1 & #2, but it's more than a four-hour car journey, so needs a sleep-over somewhere. I rang mother-in-law #1 to ask if there were any places to rent but they were all booked up - of course. MiL#1 offered to have us stay, which is specially good of her when these aren't her great-grandchildren. May MiL#2 bless her from heaven.

So husband, daughter, GC#1 and GC#2 all traipsed down to Devon this week. On the way we visited Glastonbury, and climbed all the way up to the Tor.


GC#2 enjoyed throwing pebbles in the waves at Seaton, while we munched his sandwiches.


We had a lovely time. The children were cheerful, playful, fun to be with. The teenager was helpful and fun. MiL#1 was well and enjoyed our company, and husband didn't act stressed at all.

Here's MiL#1 in front of her house last month when the clematis and wisteria were in full bloom.

Freshers' Parents Lunch

We had an unanticipated invitation to Hertford College this month. It read:

The Principal and Fellows of Hertford College, Oxford
request the pleasure of your company at
THE FRESHERS' PARENTS LUNCH
On Saturday 12th May 2007
Drinks in the The Principal's Lodgings - 11.30 - 1.00pm
Lunch in Hall - 1.00pm

Son was pleased to meet us, and we had the chance to meet his fellow student who comes from the town where my parents now live. Husband and I had interesting chat with him and his parents. The meal was lovely, the wine appropriate, the company good. After the meal, son gave us a tour of the college, before we wandered off to the covered market to pick up something interesting for supper. What luck! How nice.

It seems that the university is making new efforts to open itself to the world, so others can better understand it.

'Twas on a Wednesday morning, the gas man...

Never ever give up, remember.

The man from British Gas came to do a service. Previous years we've had a local chap, but he's retired. The BG man first looked at the ventilation. It used to be 'not to standard', but Corgi have changed their ideas, and now the ventilation is 'at risk'. Why? Because the holes are too small.
The ventilation requires 33 square ins or 212 square cms, and these little holes mean we get only about 64 square centimeters so we will have to change this vent to a louvered one or make a bigger hole in the brickwork. Fail #1.

We also have a non-standard terminal on the chimney.
We need something suitable for a gas flue and over 150mil diameter, and what we have might have once been 'non-standard', but is now 'at risk. Fail #2.

Then the BG man got on with checking that the boiler actually worked. Yes. Hurray. and he changed the thermocouple. Good. Unfortunately, then he checked burner pressure which although clean, should have been 12 millibars, and the maximum pressure that we are getting is only 7.5 millibars, because the old gas pipes are too small, and this big boiler should never have been fitted with such small pipes and all the pipe work should be changed to something bigger. Fail #3.

Three strikes and the boiler's out! His instructions, and to ensure he is being responsible, are to switch off the boiler and put a safety notice on it, which he has done. It's not locked off and it's not immediately dangerous, but we are going to have to do something about the b* thing.

I can see some expense coming on. It'll be a hundred to get someone to come and sort out the ventilation, hundreds to get the scaffolding up to change the terminal, which BG man says is the priority, and I suppose thousands to sort out the pipes. And there was me thinking I might spend some money going to India for the first time in 30 years!

Never ever give up.

Mindless destruction

On Sunday morning we took an early stroll around the public open space near our house. This is what the young people had left after their Saturday evening.

A neighbour heard them at one o'clock in the morning. Ten of them, boys and girls were kicking the wall attempting to knock it over, and ignored his remonstrations. He called the police but they didn't come. It took the teenagers an hour to knock down the wall, but in that hour the police didn't come.

Now the local newspaper knows and so does one of the local radios who interviewed our neighbour about what he heard. It was broadcast on Tuesday morning, the day I took off to paint our garden wall with anti-climb paint.

Daughter is 17

Her birthday today meant a quiet celebration because she went bowling last weekend with a couple of friends and seems quite content with what she has. Aunty L sent her some nail varnish. "Ooh! I don't think I've ever had red nail varnish" she glowed.

Her SDad took us out for an evening meal. He nearly fainted when he saw her bright red nails. Here they are.

Model trains

Husband's hobby is building model trains.

Sick smelly cat

We have a cat called Dinka. But she is old, very, very old. We reckon being at least 17 years old makes her the equivalent of 88 human years old, and she moves and walks old. She used to scratch the mites in her ear, but she doesn't do that very much any more, thank goodness because the bits flew out over the sofa, cushions and carpets. Unfortunately she is totally deaf, so jumps when someone comes up behind her.

For the last year she has being having epileptic fits. Sometimes she doesn't have one for weeks, at least not when we are in the house to know. She had one last week at ten to nine in the morning. My mobile beeped as I got a text message:

"Dinka has had a fit on the new carpet. Where's something to clean it?"

And now, this last week, she has started to stink. She still cleans herself a bit, but her wind is horrible. Poor old Dinka.

In the above photo, she had been watching her territory out of the window. There's a young and bouncy tom that lives in our garden. He appeared at the bottom of the garden, near the rented houses, about a year ago. Husband and he got on very well together. Husband is a soppy thing for cats and started to feed him, delighted with his response to the interest and his purrrrr-rr-rr. Originally he fed him only once a day, but over the winter it got to be twice a day, and at the top of the garden and the cat (Whisper or Jack Flash - we can't agree his name) moved into the laundry house. So now that spring has come, Dinka notices Whisper out on the patio in the sun. Her patio. Here's a photo of him peeping in at the conservatory door, like he does the moment you go in there.

Family bliss (not)

This morning A got up to find the cat stuck in the dining room with the doors closed. We dashed out to work, leaving teenagers in bed. We weren't too happy when we came home to find the b* cat had deposited something nasty on the dining room floor. Husband grumpily cleared it up, and I snapped at him to eat something, and stalked off.

I informed teenagers that if things didn't get sorted out, the right doors locked or left open, then they were going to have to be in their bedrooms before we go to bed. Consequently son sulked all the way through his supper.

Bah! Families! Who'd have 'em?

Older teens

When they get to be teenagers we have different night-time problems.

This week, our-nearly-19 son went babysitting, and since I mustn't now worry about him, we went to bed before he came in. He unlocked the door, noted that the lodger's light was still on, and so he went to bed. He left the door unlocked. All night. It was still unlocked at 6 o'clock in the morning when we got up. Fortunately we were not murdered in our beds, and unfortunately son did not learn his lesson as no one burgled the house, crept in and stole his laptop. Bah! Pity. but probably just as well.

On the other hand, last night, step-daughter #3 hadn't been seen. We hadn't seen her come in, nor heard her. Mind you, she doesn't say anything when she comes in, no "hello!", she just tramps upstairs to her room. So we wondered if she were home or gone to Bristol a day earlier than she had planned. Father stuck his head round her door late at night, and found her tucked in and fast asleep in bed. Not so fast asleep unfortunately that he didn't wake her. He reminded her in the morning, gently chiding her for not acknowledging his existence in the same house and not letting him know that she was around and okay. "I was confused!", she complained.