Monday 14 July 2008

A Day in My Life - July

Thanks to Little Jenny Wren for organising this again.

A peaceful start to the day, and our usual morning carer back at work again. Mog woke up just minutes before the carer arrived, so had no time for watching television. This put a less good start on her day, but since it gave me more time in bed, I wasn't too sympathetic with her!

Little Fish slept on. And on. Until I glanced at the clock and realised the school bus was due in ten minutes. There are advantages to the bus being late every single morning - I did in fact just about have time to throw her into some clothes and a hairband or two, insert breakfast into her mouth and water into her tube, clean some crusty bits and plonk her in her wheelchair before it actually beeped its way to the bottom of our road.

Two girls, two bags, one set of swimming things all safely on the bus, I put our recycling bin out came back inside and started to tackle this:and straightening out bits like this:my latest from the "don't ask" shop*. Beautiful, but going to be a pig to iron.

With stunning timing (school holidays beginning next week), our cleaner has resigned. So next step was to turn this sort of thinginto something more closely resembling this:and to turn nice sparkly clean and sudsy water into this:before enjoying a decent cup of coffeewhilst having a meeting with a researcher wanting to know my opinions on posturally supportive wheelchair seating and its impact on daily life. An interesting chat.

Little Fish came home just as we were finishing up, so gave a nice demonstration of how she can move about well in her posturally unsupportive wheelchair, and how postural support would reduce her ability to move about well.

Lunch next. I am confused why Little Fish decided to leave thesebits of crust on the settee, but felt it necessary to raid the bread bin and take only the centre of this sliceThe ways of this child are passing strange.

As I was clearing up, Little Fish decided to decorate my diary for next week.Since she managed to combine this with shredding several receipts, attempting to deface my passport and birth certificate, peeling dust jackets off books and keys off the computer, I decided possibly we ought to go out.

So we went to the post office and posted my grandmother's birthday card.We also stocked up on a few essentials; two for me and two for Little Fish - I hope you can tell the difference!
Time for our next meeting; this one was with our occupational therapist. Little Fish has outgrown her throneand needs something equally supportive to replace it. She also needs something posturally correct to sit in for mealtimes. Posture has been big today. We also looked at Mog's bedand agreed that when she has outgrown it (she's nearly there now), we will need to have something built in to replace it, as it is the only way we will fit an adult sized bed into her bedroom. Does anyone know of a built-in bed maker who can incorporate a height adjustable, profiling mattress?

As our OT left, the post arrived. Still waiting for some parcels (whenever I have something shipped by sea I remember how big this planet is; air travel has shrunk my perception of the world), also waiting for some cheques. Instead I received this:Great. Still, as I picked it up from the hall floor I noticed this hanging from Mog's doorand realised that 12 months ago, Mog was busy being a bridesmaid at her parents' wedding. Happy anniversary J and J! The bouquet is beautiful for what it symbolises, but I think I prefer these oneswhich are sitting on our hall table for day to day prettiness. They definitely smell better, anyway.

Time then to get outside and climb under the swingseat to remove the bindweed from the deckingand then to struggle yet again with our sweet peas.It doesn't matter what I do to them, they will not grow up the wall, the canes, or any other kind of support, preferring to sit around glumly staring at the soil. I have the world's only depressed sweet peas. I wonder if planting St John's Wort around them would cheer them up?

Little Fish helped me to gather the fallen applesand then helped me again by distributing them generously around the kitchen.I'm now wondering what, if anything, to do with them. They are about the size of cherries, and I suspect not terribly edible. We shall see.

A beep beep beep alerted Little Fish to the prospect of interesting traffic coming our way, and she was hugely excited to see the school bus return with Mog on board.
Mog herself was pleased to be home, but less impressed with the news from school that uniform will be compulsory for her from September. She has always had a school uniform, but worn it on average once a term. But for the next ten years she will now spend each and every school day clad in royal blue with a pretty picture over her left breast. She is not going to be excited by this prospect - I wonder if the governors who made this decision have realised how much Mog enjoys showing off her latest outfits? I suspect though that they didn't do it to spite her - we'll just have to hope that shoes are not a part of the uniform, and that she will be satisfied by rotating her way through her fancier pairs instead.

Our third appointment of the day was with our Guiding District Commissioner, who called in to verify documents for my CRB form.

Tea time, wash time, bed time for Little Fish, pyjama time for Mog and then our sitter arrived. Leaving Mog and the sitter watching television, I headed off to Youlbury for an end of term campfire with the Guides.I do like living in the town where I grew up. I moved from being a Guide to being a Young Leader and then to an Assistant Guider, all in the same Company. Mum is the Guide Leader. Tonight, Dad was helping with the Camp Fire, as was the parent of one of the newer Guides. This parent was my own leader when I was a Venture Scout. And in turn, Dad was his Scout leader. Connections.

One very smeechy fire, lots of girls making twisters, one new parent recruited to helping with Brownies. Home to two sleeping girls. One set of pictures uploaded for this post, and I am now going to take some of thismix it with some nice warm water, and attempt to remove the smoke from my skin and hair. I do love that campfire smell, but less so on my sheets and in the morning.

Night, everyone
Tia

*Oxfam, Cancer Research, Helen and Douglas House, could be any of them. If it's going to bother you that a piece of clothing comes second hand then don't ask. Family stuff.

5 comments:

Almost American said...

What a busy day - and I'm sure it's quite typical!

I have tried to explain to people in the US that Guiding in the UK is relaly not the same as Girl Scouts over here. Although my daughter has been loving her experience in Brownies, and has got a lot out of it, with some enthusiastic leaders, I am still somewhat disappointed in it. It finally occured to me that what's missing is the sense of tradition. Neither of her leaders was ever a Girl Scout themselves. They seemed quite taken aback when I said that the Guiders I knew in the UK (and I was an Adult Leader for a while) did it for the love of Guiding and not just because their own daughter was involved. Over here it seems (in my limited experience) that parents get sucked into volunteering in order for a 'troop' to be created, and they quit as soon as their own kid is done.

Alesha said...

such a busy day for you!!! I love the "don't ask" store bit!

I'll be curious to see what you all come up with for Mog's bed! She certainly is a lanky one and will be needing something soon, I'm sure.

It is nice to be back "home" for me, too. You do lose some things - like better restaurants and malls - because this town is smaller; but you can also drive across town in about 10 minutes - during rush hour, as compared to 25-30 in our other town.

I could still use a "house-stretcher" if there were such a thing for this little square thing we've moved in to; but the neighbors - Grammy and Papa - I wouldn't trade for the world!

Thanks for sharing your day,
Alesha

Tia said...

I do love the tradition we have of generations of Guiders and Scouters - my parents met at a Student Scout and Guide Organisation when they were at university, so in some ways I owe my existence to Scouting and Guiding!

We do have leaders who get involved just because their daughters want to come, and that's fine - some of them stay just while their girls are in our Company and others get sucked in and stay for years (Hello, M, I'm looking at you).

I think it can be quite difficult for someone new to Guiding to just step in though - so many people have been doing it for years and years, and without meaning to isolate the newbies, it is easy to fall into shared jokes about dire camping experiences, etc.

One thing we do struggle with is that both girls and parents do sometimes think that we are getting paid to do this. There can be an expectation at times that we should just put up with girls who don't want to be here, and deal with poor behaviour from girls who do want to be out of the house, but don't want to be doing anything constructive with their time. That's not an issue with our current lot of Guides, who are lovely, but it is a recurring issue. Do you deal with a similar misconception over there?

Tia

Almost American said...

With my daughter's troop, all the parents are very well aware that the adults are volunteers. I think behaviour issues are probably fairly insignificant - I know a couple of girls dropped out because they didn't really want to be there. Over the last 2 years the leaders have gotten better as they have learned how to manage the activities better. When they started they always used to end the meeting with a noisy, running around, activity and it was difficult to get the girls to calm down and get ready to come home. Now they finish with a calmer activity and everyone gets out of there much more promptly. I do miss Taps! They don't sing that - though I don't think we did in Brownies anyway.

I think that mix of experienced and new leaders is nice - you keep the tradition and the enthusiasm.

Jan said...

You certainly have busy days!

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