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Such a sweet talker
 Some teenagers who were leaning on the wall and shouted "fat arse!" at me as I walked past. I explained to a colleague that I had been tempted to turn round and shout that it wasn't that fat and that I then thought better of it because when it comes to it the aim was to be offensive not to make me aware of my bulk so it would have defeated the object. She thought about it a little and then said. "You should have, it's not small but it's definitely not shout out in the street large". I might have laughed, a little loud, ok, I admit, very loud at the remark. From now on, when I get dressed I shall no longer inquire "does my bum look big in this" noooo, in future I shall ask "does this make my bump look shout out in the street large?".
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Click you heels Dorothy, the return
Swiped from Violet . Now I have moved I guess I shouldtake the opportunity to update the meme. When you walk in your front door, which room do you enter? Oh yes. It's lovely and I am currently training The Boy aka my favourite kitchen slave to fill and empty it. To be fair it might take a while before he is fully trained. Is your living room carpeted or does it have hardwood floors? Depends, there's a fairly blunt set in a knife block, the sharpest ones I use the most and some paring knives are in the drawer. House, apartment, duplex or trailer? How many bedrooms is it? Gas stove or electric? Do you have a yard?  What size TV is in the living room? Are your plates in the same cupboard as your cups? Is there a coffee maker sitting on your kitchen counter? What room is your computer in? Are there pictures hanging in your living room? Are there any themes found in your home? What kind of laundry detergent do you use? Do you use dryer sheets? Curtains in your home? What color is your fridge? Is your house clean? What room is the most neglected? Are the dishes in your sink/dishwasher clean or dirty? How long have you lived in your home? Where did you live before? Do you have one of those fluffy toilet lid covers on your toilet? Let's imagine fore a few seconds that I was the sort of person who likes fluffy toilet lid covers (I know it requires a rather fertile imagination but it's only for a few seconds so have a go)... right now remember who else lives in this household... yep 10 year old little boy. Little boy + things that can't be wiped clean within target range in a toilet = insanity (or a higher tolerance to the smell of stale urine than I mine at the very least). Do you have a scale anywhere in your house? Same answer as last time: Nope, I bake by volume rather than weight. How many mirrors are in your house? 1 in each of the bedrooms in the shape of fitted cupboard sliding doors. Look up. What do you see? Do you have a garage? |
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I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
Well can't have it, but we can have snow in April instead. The best bit about the snow, The Boy declaring this morning that he was going to get dressed because he wanted to make a snowman. The Boy, getting dressed, on a Sunday, without being ordered to has been unheard of in months. If I'd known all it took for him to step out of premature teenager mode was a bit of snow I'd have talked to the weatherman long ago.  Other week-end activities included naming the sock-beast who flew all the way from Canada to live in London. After a long group discussion he was christened Fred Magnus Onkey. And a quick thank you to Him Indoors who helped unlock my gmail account.
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Dumb and dumber
How did I celebrate having a phone line and internet connection in the new flat? Easy, in an idle moment I thought "I haven't changed my main gmail password in a while, maybe now would be a good time to do it". Because i am a bit of a paranoid fool I thought maybe it was time to stray from the dozen or so standard passwords I use regularly and decided to create a brand new one. I thought long and hard so it wasn't something too obvious and off I went and did it. Then this morning as I went check my emails I just could not remember the stoopid brand new password. No problem I thought, I'll just get it reset. Except it appears I have somewhat forgotten to change the primary account for my gmail address and the reset instructions have been sent to an account I have not used in years because it was unreliable, the webmail interface was unwieldy and the spam filter was inefficient and I tired to cleaning it up. It goes without saying that I cannot remember the password for the primary account (although I did try all of the obvious ones). Reseting the primary account's password involves my ex calling some ISP call centre somewhere and since he is rather busy at the moment with writing his final paper it's not really something I feel I should ask him to waste time on. Gmail have thought of the "what if I can't get to my primary account" bit. Their thought is that before they'll let you reset using the security question they need to make sure that the account has been inactive and I am not somebody else trying to gain access. Fair enough. Except they think a reasonable length of time to wait for this is 5 days. I wonder how well I'll do without email for that long. Now, one small favour, please nobody mention the strong possibility that by the time the 5 days have passed I may be unable to answer the security question because it was set up years ago and since I never actually put the truth as the answer to the security question (because I am after all a big boobed paranoid fool and what would be the point of me giving my pet's name as a security answer when it is not a secret to anybody). So in 5 days if I am stumped by the name of my first teacher or my grandmother's phone number feel free to point and mock. In the meantime I guess you can mock too jut don't mind if I growl slightly in return due to the slight email withdrawal. |
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February - now with added crazy
Latest encounter of the not particularly sane kind... the young lady who crossed right in front of me so that our cars collided. No harm done, just bent metal and plastic on both sides. So far annoying but no biggie right? In my world of high functioning crazy you breathe a sigh of relief nobody was hurt and you move from the middle of the intersection so you don't cause a traffic jam and just pull up somewhere safe and swap details. That's what happens in my world anyway. In hers you leave the intersection (so far so good), drive past the places where it would have been safe and sensible to park and drive off, yep, just like that. And when other drivers flash you and try to flag you down, you still don't stop, you carry on your way. Good: Some very nice witnesses let me have her registration number and their details so that the police and insurance can do their stuff. Not so good: Since nobody was hurt all the police are likely to do is write a letter to the registered keeper saying that it was naughty and they could face charges. The self righteous part of me feels that if she gets away with driving off when all there was was minor damage and it was just a case f swapping details and there were loads of witnesses about, I dread to think what her reaction would be to running over a pedestrian if there was nobody around. And lets face it I'm a bitter sort of a person. Good: The insurance have already tracked down who the registered keeper of the vehicle is and have confirmed they *are* insured (which makes the not stopping even more infuriating). Because they are insured there is an outside chance I might recover the excess in a few months time when the insurance companies and the lawyers have done their thang. Also good: The insurance company have appointed a garage and provisionally authorised the repairs. Not so good: I'll have to settle the excess as soon as the car is fixed and what with the extensive dentist work I had done on Saturday, before the bint decided not to check for oncoming traffic when she turned it's not really money I have spare. Good: The damage isn't so bad and the car will soon look as good as new. Not so good: I kinda need the car this week for trips to the tip and moving related errands and paperwork, formalities and car repairs are not really something I had factored in diary wise. 
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Just a thought
Maybe those parents who were offering their kids on the "recycle" board of a forum a few weeks back were onto something. Do you think I could swap mine for the services of a cleaner? Failing that I guess I could always try and see how much he'd fetch if I sold him into slavery on e-bay. I doubt it's worth calling Social Services just yet but if things carry on as last night and this morning I might just get tempted. |
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Brains work in mysterious ways
"do you have any homework?" "a bit" A little while later "are you still doing your homework? Do you need some help with it?" Then starts homework crisis of the day number one. The one that goes along the line of The Boy not really understanding the homework which has been set, not asking the teacher for an explanation he can understand, not writing it down because then there might be a chance I could help and not remembering the wording of it either. After establishing that there is no point wasting any more time on that piece we swiftly move on to the next piece of homework. I speculate it should be quick and easy since all it is is learning squares from 1 to 20. Piece of cake, after all he already knows his time tables to 12, 20 square is a doddle so it's a series of 7 pairs of numbers to learn by rote, not fun but it should take 10 minutes tops. Not so. Under guidance he reads the pairs out loud, and in his head, in increasing and decreasing order, writes them down a number of times, tries writing them without the card with regular "just go for a walk for 5 minutes", in between. No joy and loads of tears as the only 2 that appear to have sunk in are 15 and 19. Help comes in the shape of an IM conversation with Neil who provides mnemonics and tips and a quick method to work out squares of 2 digit numbers. The Boy then works out 13 to 18 using the method and agrees that he may not have time to do all of them in a test situation but that if he gets stuck on 1 of them it will be helpful he also agrees that knowing the last digit should be enough of a reminder. After nearly 2 hours he is ready to go to bed. In the morning he climbs in my bed to revise the dreaded squares for the test with a view of my quizzing him on the way to work. As we walk he doesn't feel too confident he will remember the numbers, I ask him if he is glad he has a trick to work out all of them up to 99 in the future. That way I said "if you needed to know 48 squared and you didn't have a calculator with you you could still work it out without too much effort". "Oh, I wouldn't need it for that Mummy, 48 square is easy, it's 2304" I had a bit of a "huh" moment as I checked my "tables de trigonométrie" and found he was indeed right. "How did you know?" The child then rolls his eyes at the obvious stupidity of his mother. "It's close to 50 so you only have to multiply by 100, divide by 2 then take away 96". Somebody please explain how working out 48X48 in your head is easy yet it is almost beyond him to learn 7 pairs of numbers in 2 hours? I don't get it. |
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