Long Weekend

HE:

More interest in words/sounds/letters.

Whilst making a birthday card for her grandma, F came and asked me what four fours were, because she had 4 sections of card and wanted to put 4 star stickers in each section. This was very much reminiscent of my own early maths interest as related slightly too often by my mum (lego bases, rows, columns, multiplication, etc.) and made me smile.

She does do quite a lot of voluntary casual maths in her daily wanderings - she will pass by me with a flower or a cracker or whatever, and tell me she's got it for one of her toys and then she'll tell me she needs 4 more flowers for 4 other toys, etc. And then each time she gets another one, she keeps me informed on how many are left to get. J and I both have reasonably balanced maths/science/arts/english educational histories, so on a good day, that's all in our daily mix, and just come into the conversation and activity because we're interested in all those areas. And on a bad day, of course, it's all shouting, swearing and bad telly (*please insert winky smiley here, kind reader, to reassure yourself that I'm probably being ironic*).

Also recently had a good talk about flint and other stones that led on to talk about weather - when F noticed a lightning-like pattern in some stone, while we were walking back from the park, and compared it with similar pattern in a flint that we had picked up that was quite spearhead-shaped. Other things that came up in conversation: dinosaurs, moles, kites, seeds, plants.

Life: Was ill. Finally got better - feels like there have been a total of about 5 days this summer when I could breathe through my nose, I am so sick of it (first hayfever, then cold/virus thing). Sick of being ill and sick of telling everyone how sick I am of being ill and sick of how sick everyone is of me telling them I've been ill. End of. (little BB6 reference there for anyone who managed to sustain any interest in it)

Sometimes I can still work when I'm ill, but this time - No! I made 3 attempts to start the big job I had, but each time my head was so woolly from illness and medication combined that I could only stare forlornly each time at the array of blurry foreign words in front of me and think 'this might as well be some bloody technical French instruction manual', 'oh it is', 'oh that's right I'm a translator' and then close the document and go to bed, humbled by my own folly. But I stayed up till 5am Thursday night, and met my deadline, with a nice adrenaline buzz to go with.

F has been bitten a lot by something, probably a mozzy, in her room - I dithered about it being something else, but signs are all in favour of it being insect bites (exposed areas, appear overnight, she doesn't seem ill). So now we have put some stuff on her and bought a citronella candle. Hope that will sort it.

Katya Ria and Belle came over on Thursday and F and Belle 'made a seaside'. It was nice to see them, we hadn't managed to for various reasons for about a month I think. Katya and I had a great long chat, despite interruptions every 2 minutes.

Highlights: Finishing large piece of work on time; breathing through my nose.
Lowlights: Poor F's bites; big tantrum she had Friday morning when I'd had 3 hours sleep and was trying to proofread my work!
Quote: "OF COURSE I HAVEN'T FALLEN OVER - I'M BEING A SEED!" shouted at top volume on way home from somewhere after she kept walking a few steps then collapsing on the floor. 'Of course' she was being a seed, then growing into a big plant, every few steps. *sigh* Of course.