Spookin' it up

HE:
A bit more Splashy Quacky or Quacky Splashy (some doubt remains concerning his exact title) and some Study Dog, some conversations about food products and origins, some considerations of basic logic, some casual maths, various other conversations covering vaguely sciencey areas, morsels of history, etc.

Life:
Well, today we went to The MonsterTeeny Hallowe'eny! And a great time was had - I was watching the kids a lot of the time and I think they will all remember today's party as a really great day for them. It was a good mix of organized games/activities and then plenty of other times of running around in and out, dancing etc. And they all got the chance to throw popcorn all over the place, which I think was a very enjoyable experience that most of them don't often have. I particularly enjoyed watching the Musical Statues and Apple Bobbing. F particularly enjoyed Pass the Parcel, Popcorn throwing, running around, and the general party business. Thank you very much to everyone who contributed to making it happen, but especially thanks to Nic - you should feel very proud of yourself, I know you worked really hard and put so much time, effort and energy into the party, creating something for other people to enjoy, and it was great.
It was great to meet many other bloggers there too, although I'm not sure I managed very much actual conversation. Nice to put faces (and silly costumes) to names though. Still don't know exactly whose kids were whose, apart from a few. One of Ros's children (but shamingly I don't know which one) was such a star in keeping me going when I was reading the Spooky Story, which was a bit too long and rather confusing for the children, due to being put together from separately written bits and therefore not making sense. Ros's daughter maintained eye contact, showed interest and even laughed in the right places all the way through to the end, when my throat was drying out completely and half my 'audience' had given up completely, poor sods! Every time I felt my confidence slipping I took a breath and aimed the story right at her! Although the story made no sense, it was still fun to read it to them and get them all doing the sound effects, they were a lovely bunch of kids to do that with.
We did get a chance to chat with Dani, Allie, Pearl and Leo from the Green House by the Sea, which was great - we had a quick lunch together on our arrival, not sure how many witches, dragons and scary princesses the sandwich bar near the station serves in an average day, but they seemed quite used to it. J, F and I had rushed to get the right train from Brighton, and just made it by seconds, and found the Green House Gang on the train, met them properly when we got off, which wasn't quite what we had arranged, but was still a major feat of rushingness on our part, so glad that we managed that. Later on, F got a bit overly clingy to Pearl, who bore it with good grace, but I think found it rather hard going. Sorry Pearl! It is a compliment, honest! Forgot to tell Leo how much I like what I've seen of his comics. Hi Leo, I like your comics.
F particularly enjoyed Pass the Parcel, Popcorn throwing, running around, and the general party business.
Did manage very brief chats with Barbara (Hi there!) and Ros (thank you for the wig, we will arrange something soon to give it back to you). Ah well, there will be other times for more conversation I'm sure.

Monday - my best gay male friend came round for a cuppa and a lovely chat, which was really nice. Haven't seen him for a while and it was good to catch up, especially as he's making some changes in his life that led to interesting conversation. Our conversation was lent a surreal angle by F insisting on drawing the curtains and making the room as dark as possible for some reason. She also built a great big stack of books and objects (she was playing on CBeebies website, and needed Cinderella Barbie and her 'partner' Scoop (from Bob the Builder) to be able to see what she was doing, so erected this huge pillar of stuff for them, bit by bit) and generally made her various contributions to the ambience.
In the evening I had my writing group, bliss! I love it, and the group leader is talking of extending beyond Xmas now, so that's great. We're focusing on plot at the moment, I find it challenging.

Tuesday - Auntie HH came and really helped when we went shopping for bits to make Hallowe'en costumes. It's always better having 2 adults for shopping with 1 child, makes quite a difference. And nice for me to have someone willing to discuss my prospective purchases of plastic tat as if they really really mattered, to humour me! Thanks HH! We also bought winter boots and I realized F's feet had grown by a whole size. I knew that her feet had hurt in the last 10 days or so, but I think she could have done with new shoes a bit earlier, although at least the Doodles canvas ones must have been soft enough to give, I guess.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were fairly home-based days of just us two, which was mostly very nice. I had some work, and also some thinking about work, to do, came to a decision to make myself a bit better off in the long run, but will require a bit of determination and effort for a while first. Definitely think it's the way to go, though and so am quite excited about it. It's not a huge change in the scheme of things, more an addition than an amendment.
We watched Cinderella - F loves it at the moment.
And now I am tired and I am going to watch telly and eat chocolate, so there.

Highlights: Seeing so many children enjoying themselves today; cuddles with my girl; nice chats with her; J telling me that when I go out to my class and come back late, he really likes to cook me some nice hot food when I get in!
Lowlights: A couple of difficult tantrums when F tired; working till gone 4 one morning.
Quote: 'But spiders aren't scary, mummy' (good point, when I was sewing little rubber spiders to her top, to which I decided to cop out with 'I know they aren't, but some people think they are')