How to make a chocolate cake.

Cass is feeling unloved. I swear I don't know how children talk themselves into these things. I figured she needed some time doing something she really likes with me as I've completely ruined her holiday by limiting her t.v time, her computer time & then insisting she both read & do her music practise! What was I thinking?!

Anyway, she has been agitating to cook chocolate cake for weeks. This apparently simple request was complicated by the fact Theo took my no~fail cookbook to school one day (yes, I know that was years ago!) & it never came home & the fact Cass' book has mysteriously ended up with all it's pages glued shut. I'm not even asking!

So we go on line & come up with a 'to die for' chocolate cake. The only thing we don't have in the cupboards is the dark chocolate. No problemo. I prepare Liddy her lunch & we plan to buy the chocolate when we take her lunch up. I'm a little uptight as it's not a recipe I know & I've not had heaps of success with these sorts of recipes but both Cass & I can read, right? I figure we can follow simple directions without too much trouble.

We walk into the store & the boss' son swarms all over Cass & announces he's coming to our house to paint. Really? Not without mummy's say so, bucko. He tells us mummy says yes. I love these ones. I can just see me walking out of the store with a child I don't own on child's say so. Thankfully mum then appears to be floored by her son's request & also highly embarrassed. I understand that. On the other hand I figure it's not much fun for the kiddo to spend his holidays at the shop. So we come home with chocolate & an extra child.

Cass gets down her minature project to show him. (yes, all right! I'll post some piccies given an eon or two to get my act together in.) This is a built to 1/12th scale model of a toyshop & the ladies have all spoilt Cass outrageously by contributing to it, to the point it has a workable light & a perspex front. Cass has made the shop & nearly all the toys. Our visitor was fascinated & treated everything very gently. I'm not a minatures person but Paul Bishop ( a t.v. celebrity Cass worked with during choir) had a longish chat with her about how the skills she was learning in minatures were the same ones used in set designing but the amount of mess it generates is phenomenal! Another post all on it's own.

Anyway we leave the boy running the tiny train around the roof of the toy shop & proceed to make cake. Cass is not good with directions; impatience is a major drawback & I'm already trying to melt chocolate in the double boiler we don't have. (yes, you read that right.) Does she have to put in the whole of all 4 eggs? Does it say to separate them? Well, then, put in the whole egg. Honestly. At which point we acquire the extra child. Cass is great. She props him on the stool & proceeds to read the directions to him & he puts everything in the mixer. Cass has it on high so the poor kid is half suffocated, chocking on cocoa dust. He promptly turns from very fair to a darkish shade of brown. The cat arrives because, hey, everyone's in the kitchen. I eye the 10 or so steps between the stove & the mixer with some trepidation. I have a panful of melted chocolate that needs folding into the mixture. Cass grabs the cat & tells our visitor to sit very still. He wants to do the folding. (about here I need an eye roll emoticon) We negotiate ~ very carefully. Giving my own child 3rd degree burns I can cope with; someone else's is another matter entirely! I've never been so pleased to see a cake go in the oven!

I turn round thinking about cleaning up to find paintbrushes & jars of water have now joined the pots & bowls & opened jars on my bench & painting is in progress. Both children have scraped the bowls & beaters so have effectively had chocolate for lunch.

The cake was beautiiiful. We returned the child to its owner covered in chocolate, paint & red dirt from the garden & much happier. I meditated on the unusual ways God invites us to minister to others.

Our house is not the tidiest around & if you've been reading this blog for a while my lack of organization probably boggles your mind but I remind myself these days of a friend whose children I minded while he dealt with a court case. It was a custody issue & dragged on & on so he sent his 2 kids elsewhere one day to give me a break. He only did it once & offended the other woman terribly because she'd been in my house & was not impressed! 'But,' this man protested, 'when I leave my kids with you & arrive to collect them all the kids are in the yard after dark screaming their heads off, unwashed, unfed & beside themselves. I leave them with Jeannie & when I arrive they're washed, fed, have stuff to show me that they've made & lots to tell that they've done. I don't care if Jeannie hasn't swept her floor & I bet the kids don't either.' Now I like a neat & tidy house as much as the next person but I am much more likely to put people before appearances, which may be why I get a ministry of chocolate cake & poster paints!

Hold the cat!

Aaargh! I knew spring was here! Last night...midnight... & Theo hisses up the stairs, trying to be quiet, 'Mum! Mum! Hold the cat!'

Good quetion.

I stumble out of bed & down the stairs. The cat does not want to be held. He is a most unhappy puss & squirming to be let loose. Theo arms himself with a broom & I hear all the furniture downstairs being moved around. It is only a matter of time before Cass surfaces. More bellowing for mum. I plonk the cat in our bedroom feeling much better being where I can see what's going on than listening anxiously as Theo lunges round the lounge room after a snake that very definitely does not want to be caught. Cass, who does not like snakes, needs her light on for reassurance.

Definitely no paddling through the house at night without the lights on ~ & no, Theo didn't catch the snake. It sensibly found some hole to slither through & will be well gone by now.

Aaargh!

And what was Theo doing up at midnight? Well, he slammed his hand in the car door on Sunday requiring a trip to the doctor's to have two nails punctured to release the pressure behind them & his hand has been unusable for several days. He will lose the nails. I can only imagine he was on a Panadol hunt when he nearly stepped on the snake. He doesn't like snakes either. So why was he trying to catch it? Good question.

The heart of a home?

I'm used to being invisible. You know, Mrs Nobody who magically makes sure every one has clean socks & undies, keeps track of who needs to be where when, puts food on the table, feeds the cat, has spare cash for the boat, knows where that all important document got abandoned, & will roll out of bed at 1 am so you & your mates don't have to stumble home in the dark. It comes with the territory once you have kids.

So I'm out of the house for a week & I expect to find the washing up piling up till we run out of plates, the laundry steadily growing from a molehill to a mountain, the cat in meltdown & psychotic puddles, while I wade Cass to & fro through oceans of mud & torrential downpours so she can shine, however briefly & brightly. The day Liddy realised that absolutely no~one was going to be home to drive her to work, let alone bring her lunch on the dot of one thirty, & that she would have to be very grown up & responsible & sort herself out I expected her wails of outrage, poor abandoned orphan. What was completely unexpected where the solicitious enquiries she got. Is everyone well? How is your family?

Liddy is not without her own ironic sense of humour & comic timing. 'Well, Dino's at sea, I haven't seen Theo since Sunday, Cass in a week & mum in 3 days but dad & I are doing just fine.' The things people notice while we're busy living our lives! And didn't work pay her out about her lunches not arriving! Yet these same adults ring me when there is a work party to assure me that they are being responsible & keeping an eye on Liddy when Liddy knows perfectly well we're only a phone call away ; she has only to ring if she's at all uncomfortable or just had enough.

No~one has said anything but an almost audible sigh of relief has gone through my house this week. All's well: there are dishes in the rack, mugs on their hooks, clothes folded & the cat's stopped attacking everyone; mum's back at the helm. So nice to know I'm missed.

Earth to Cass...earth to Cass...

I do not function well on 4 hours sleep ~ which is all I got between performances & it will be some time before Cass comes back to earth ~ but she has been so good with all the travelling & the endless sitting still & quiet for the sound & lighting technos. She has loved everything about theatre ~ no surprises there! And what little girl wouldn't prefer the glitz & glamour to dull old school work? I am already being squeezed for her to continue with the choir ensemble. She has got her father on side but he doesn't leave the island. It will be me doing all the running around. OK, so I like it too. I am just a little wary of the whole 'drama, drama, drama' thing & Cass has stars in her eyes.

Cass has learnt so much from doing a professional performance ~ & I am still giggling having sat through endless rehearsals until even my dull brain picked up that the sopranos were having trouble with their counting; so I heard the sopranos falter in Honour the Earth & that their counting was wrong. 'It was sooo scarey,' Cass confessed. 'A~ (the choir master) just glared at us & lots of people stopped singing! Not me. I counted right. We are so dead!' Eye roll.

She is going to really miss the weekly rehearsals & there is all the catching up to do with her school work but I have promised we'll now do the community band, more professional than the school one, & that she can do this again next year regardless of whether or not she is allowed to join the ensemble full time. I think I will lose that battle, though if I am lucky not till next year. Over the next few days, as we settle back into our regular rountine & things return to as calm as they ever are around here, I am sure things will spring to mind that I will want to remember & blog about. Just now all I can think about is how exhausted I am & that anyone who does this for a living is completely & utterly insane!

What we've missed out on.

I rang the school this week. The organisers of Cass's choir were coming over & she wanted to join the grade 7 class for that period. No problem. We occassionally participate in things & they have generally been worth upsetting our schedule for. The staff are great about including her & the kids are used to her although they mostly seem to think she does no work. So I get given a time & we duitifully trot up to find they've screwed the times & the whole thing is just wrapping up but we sit down for the last 20 minutes or so prepared to enjoy what we can.

Forget it. The kids are behaving like a bag of monkeys on speed. Cass eyes got bigger & bigger (& they are pretty big to start with!) Apparently the rather nice chappie we've been working with for several months is a minor t.v celebrity ~ the kids all knew him off some show we've never watched & were swarming him like fleas. One very ADD boy was hitting him! Very few of the children would sit still & quiet to hear what he wanted to say. I could practically hear the cogs churning over in Cass' brain. My very silent child clutched her flute & eyed the pandemonioum with disbelief.

I thought of this wonderful lady directing her choir of 50 odd kiddies, one of whom is just 5, who behave so very proffessionally Cass doesn't look like an oddity & wondered how we got to the point where children have lost their innate respect for adult authority.

When I offered to drive them back to the boat Cass came too although she had a flute class about to start. Our famous friend shut the door with relief, turned to me & said from the bottom of his heart, 'Good call on the homeschooling.' Yeah, well I knew that. He then turned to Cass & gave her a pep talk about the 'bigger world' she will eventually move into where she will find like minded people to share her enthusiasims with. I appreciated the kindness of his intent but Cass is a hardy soul & she is savvy enough to know that there are some things that bigger world cannot give her: enough of nature's beauty to drown in, the sense of community, the love & closeness of family, a love of God. I know Cass sometimes feels deprived because she hasn't had the whole school experience but there are some things it's just as well to pass on ~ & for us school is now one of them. Honestly, if the kids behave that way at school, what are they like at home? And how on earth do their parents cope?

Running the Race.

We had a guest speaker on Sunday. This particular lady is excellent; her focus is mission to our schools, our kids. She likes to get her audience fired up. I don't fire well. Firstly I expect the world to behave like the world & tend to just roll my eyes. Secondly when I get asked what gets me fired up it's not the world. It's Christians acting like the world! I can feel a rant coming on so I will stop there.

However! ... amongst the exhortations to outreach she made a point that has stayed with me & it's stayed with me because I've got runners. Dino, Theo & Liddy are/were all long distance runners & regularly made up the bulk of the tag~team for the relay. Long time past, I was a sprinter. I usually ran last. I can't believe I was ever that fast! My kids have been running circles round me for years...but I digress.

The Point? Yes, there is one & I'm getting there! Christianity is like a relay. The faith has been handed on from generation to generation but for us, if you believe as I do, that we have entered into the end times, the stakes are considerably higher. We are the anchor leg, the last runners. We have to be the strongest & fastest to cover lost ground. We can't afford to 'drop the baton', to be distracted or jog along comfortably. We must run our hearts out. God is counting on us to finish the race strongly. I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me. Thank goodness I don't have to do it in my own strength or we'd be going nowhere fast!

Standardized Testing.

I hate standardized tests. What's more my ditzy Cass plays silly sods with them. I watched her do it (I was helping supervise) & there was nothing I could do because it's a test, you know. sighs!

Math paper. I looked through this one & freaked. I couldn't have done most of it to save my life. We haven't done most of the work in over 2 years ~ since the last test! Then there was the pre Algerba question! We have done NO pre~algerba. Hands were going up all over the room. Kids couldn't make head or tail of that question. NOT Cass' hand so I sneaked a look later. I think she aced that question! Mind you if she performs to usual she will ace the difficult questions & flunk all the easy stuff.

So yesterday was the English paper. I'd been pre~warned the written part was at high school level but I was hardly going to try & teach that 2 days prior to testing. Compare & contrast frogs & toads. So I'm watching Cass out of the cornor of my eye. I know this is her Waterloo. Unfazed. Totally. She starts writing. She keeps her writing neat & clear & writes steadily for 15 minutes. I'm madly impressed. Then she stops. She's done maybe 3/4 of a page. Everyone else is still writing like mad & is on their 2nd page. Cass is drawing a picture of a frog catching a fly. It was a great picture. Frogs aren't easy to draw. So I have a look at what she's written while the kids are on break. One short paragraph telling how frogs & toads are similiar, using & spelling correctly the word amphibian. A short paragraph on frogs. An even shorter paragraph on toads. I'm still laughing. Cass did the bare minimum, far too intelligent to waste her time on this nonsense & so obviously not interested. If I thought she was as dumb as her test results I would be seriously worried but knowing Cass I can pick every moment she just lost interest. Spelling; first half all correct, even the difficult words; second half all wrong but spelt phonetically & unusually ~ try possetions. Ouch! I think she's seriously playing with my head space. I distinctly remember teaching 'tion' says 'shon'.

Worse, the teacher confessed he'd 'taught to the test' for the past fortnight, revising what would be on the papers. Not in our house we didn't & I wouldn't have bothered even if I'd had any idea what was in the papers. Apart from comprehension where Cass usually scores well above the average, we are not one of those homeschooling families who blitz the test scores. You have to have an academic child for that & I don't. Do I care? Obviously not. I failed every math test I ever sat but I have effeciently managed my household finances for 40 odd years, & much better than my maths wizz of a husband!

On the other hand I am passionate about learning & seeing my child, who spends her days actively engaging even when she doesn't much like what we're doing, sitting in a classroom with her eyes glazing over & her effervesence flattened did not make me a happy mummy. Some things are too important to risk in a classroom. Train up a child is about more than just teaching a child to know & love God. It is about finding out how God made that child, the purpose He has in mind for that child & then helping them achieve their God given purpose. Thank God that should be the last of these silly tests we have to take.

The curriculum has arrived! (Yay!) Cass promptly retired into a cornor with the origami paper & instructions; her mother started reading the books! There is something wrong with this picture. Hm. Eventually I surfaced long enough to investigate the instruction manual. (As my mother would always say while rolling her eyes at those of us for whom the instructions were a last resort; when all else fails, read the instructions!) Manual MUCH easier than I had been lead to believe. Cass will struggle with the grammar but its about time she got a handle on this so mother is smirking & the books are lovely. I am sooo happy & pleased I made the change. I am going to go ahead & order our history this way too. It will work much, much better for us. Unfortunately that will have to wait until I have sorted out science & math. I can't believe Cass cleaned up the math in just 3 weeks but I guess it means we can afford to concentrate on something else for a while. This is being a really scrappy term for everthing except music. I do so wish people would recognise music is an intelligence too & it requires even more discipline & perseverance than straightforward academics does. We are upping practise times ready for next year & I am doing the pre~preparation for music exams. I know nothing about any of this & am shaking in my boots but Cass isn't batting an eyelash. Why would she? She has unbounded confidence in herself.

Meanwhile we have the state testing to deal with. This means two wasted days up at the primary school & I have no idea how much of the state curriculum we have actually covered ~ & care less. I just hope Cass isn't having one of her 'off with the fairies' days on test days. Can't think where she gets that from.

And I have been preparing Daniel in the Lion's Den for adults. How this ever got to be a children's story I do not know. Well, I do, but you have to dilute it so much it's a tad scarey. I am feeling a tad fraught. Can you tell? I work hard on my preparation if I am preaching but I am not a retired pensioner with oodles of time at my disposal There I was trying to explain Israleli history at the time of the Babylonian exile with a child alternately bleating on about plankton, nekton & blenthos or singing the nonsence words from Sarah Hopkins' music. I wrote some interesting sentences & a heavy edit was required.

My life is a soap opera...

Before we begin; yes, the flute has arrived. The express post curriculum has not. I hit the panic button & manned the e~mail. I mean, it should have been here overnight & we have been operating for 3 weeks with no curriculum. They say it is on it's way now. Hmmm....

Meanwhile who invented unnavigatiable web pages & where are the directions for idiots like me who can't make head or tail of what should be glaringly obvious? I am looking for the music boards examination critea but I don't speak goobly~dook. Nor do I recognise any of the music listed apart from Greensleeves & if Cass has to practise that again on yet another instrument I think she will have a massive meltdown.

And while we're at it, who brought the sniffles into my house that have laid 2/3 of it low meaning I am spending half my days on the phone explaining why we aren't going to be somewhere we should be?

To say nothing of the child who bought herself a copy of Harry Potter & woke the next morning to find her brother had 'borrowed' it & it had gone to work with him!!! Our lovely librarian reserved us 3 copies so now everyone can read it in peace.

I am running a temperature & have a splitting headache but is it the wog or is it my life?

Ongoing saga of... THE FLUTE!

God works in mysterious ways. For those of you who read the beginning of this tale it has been 22 days & still no flute. Dearest, who has all the patience of a hungry shark, was starting to make, 'ring those people' noises. I deal with homeschool suppliers who run home business while homeschooling & have waited longer than 22 days for supplies. I hadn't even begun to panic though it did seem a little odd. After all they are a big, reputable company. No homeschoolers here.

So we trotted off to band today still with our hired instrument & Cass lamenting she would not be home to get the post; she has taken to haunting the letterbox waiting on 'her' parcel. I should also point out Dearest NEVER, & I do mean NEVER, answers the phone. His sons complain bitterly about that fact. So I was shocked to find that he did answer the phone today. He got the paranoid salesman who had been away for 2 weeks with his band & returned to work today to find our cheque taped to his computer screen & that they had SOLD OUR FLUTE!!!! First day back at work & he had to ring us with that news, poor man. He was expecting to be abused all over the shop I am quite sure but Dearest is much cagier than that & much better in these situations than I am. I would have been too stunned to do more than murmmer,' that's ok, no problem; We'll wait till you get another one in.' Not so Dearest. Having done the, 'these things happen' number he asked what sort of a deal the man could do him on a new flute. Nothing delights Dearest's heart so much as a good haggle & an even better bargain. An extra 100 bucks & Cass gets a brand, spanking new flute of our brand of choice. And it's being sent express post at their cost! Don't try & tell me that's not God!

Proud mummy moment.

Cass, bless her little cotton socks, has just cleaned up at the art show! There was only one overall winner & she is it. I believe there is a monetary reward~ which we didn't know when we entered. I promise I will try & post pictures when we get her art work back; I assume we are getting it back. The funny thing is I liked her abstracts & I adored her picture of wood ducks but the painting that clinched it is the one I actively dislike though I admit the idea is good. Cass did an outline of our island but painted it using the Aboriginal technique of dots (migraine making I think) then painted one hand red & one white & handprinted the island. The theme was our heritage so the idea was particularly good; it's just I really don't like the actual painting ~ but then I don't have to do I. I thought she'd be rather chuffed but we missed the award announcements due to choir rehearsals & truth be told, Cass never looks back, only ahead & is no longer all that interested.

But hey! I am chuffed for her. I am chuffed for me too. I looked at all the kids' paintings & most of them were same/same; not an original idea or design amongst them ~ Cass being the notable exception. Had no~one to copy off did she? She had to think it out for herself. And this folks is why homeschooling can still rock my boat. When the going gets tough & my sanity takes a vacation these are 'minties moments' & I know why I do what I do.

SOME DAYS.

Some days I miss Mark. I want to tell him I have just successfully taught Cass how to do long division though I still can't do it myself! I don't think I get why anyone would 'solve for the unknown.' That's why it's unknown. Isn't it? It wasn't easy. It's mad, me teaching math. I kept sending Cass back to the dvd, which made no sense to her either, poor bunny. Hours later, & no wiser, I caved in, sat on the arm of her chair & said, ''Look, I can't do this...'(duh! Like she didn't already know that!) but you need to try & guess the first bit.' It was like watching all the lights go on. 'Oh, you mean I have to solve for the unknown,' said Cass, & proceeded to do so! We stared at her sum with some trepidation. What to do with the leftover bits? Now when they taught me at school (& so obviously did a wonderful & thorough job) we had a whole screed of numbers underneath the origonal sum that confused me terribly. I am a visual learner. I put the leftover number where it made most sense to me. Cass 'solved for the unknown' again & we consulted the guide for how to put down our remainder. One sum down, a whole page still to go. Cass was all done in 20 minutes! Mark would so have appreciated this little story. He always expressed such grave doubts about my ability to teach math. Plus he had his own problems with his son, who was in public school & failing math. Now Cass has 'got it' I can stop worrying because once she's grasped something she remembers. Two pages later she took her first test & knowing her that is probably all she will do from here on in, the tests. So long as she tests above 90% that's fine with me.

My mother was wont to say she wished she'd been given quiet, musical children. Truely musical children, as I have learnt, are not quiet! Sound & noise fascinate them. After a week of workshopping I think I am glad I only have one musical child & yet last night was wonderful.

It began badly with the child who wasn't coming home that night ringing at 1am to say he had made the last boat home; could someone please come & pick him up, that someone being me. So I slept in. Liddy, who answered the phone, slept in & was consequentially running late for work. Her mother, blearly eyed & dysfunctional, misread the boat times & blew all her connections. There are days when living on an island stinks! :) However we did make in to rehearsals on time. For the first time the vocalists & instrumentalists came together & the morning was spent blocking moves, staging, sound checks. Hugely boring & utterely necessary. As we broke for lunch & every one else was sent home we were told to arrive back in our black & whites! Our black & whites were back on the island, were'nt they! Logistically there was no way we could get them. Someone kindly lent us an outgrown pair but we still had 3 hours to kill at the shops ~ which meant we ate & got Theo's birthday present & I finally found some clothing that fitted Cass & met our modesty requirements, plus were half price!

Cass, who has only ever performed in church on the island for people she knows, really was thrown in at the deep end. Luckily she loves performing as the in house performance was very well attended. I've sat in on all the choir rehearsals yet it always astounds me how an audience really lifts some performers. I've heard the music ad infitum for two weeks yet there were still moments that brought tears to my eyes. The best moment? After it was all over & the girls let their hair down on the dance floor, lip~synching, dancing, doing flips. They were fantastic.

Next week it is a band performance for Cass & then we must settle into a Friday night rehearsal schedule. I know practise is essential for any performance but mre than most we need to keep things in balance so hopefully soccer will not have to be missed too often & Cass can burn off some of her excess energy.

ODDS & ENDS.

All our birthdays start this month. The boys will not be home for theirs. Theo is working, Dino is at sea. I won't be home for it either. Cass is rehearsing all day & we have an in house performance that night. Cass' present will arrive shortly, & somewhat early. We have got her her own student flute. In her own funny way she is absolutely delighted but she worries about how much it has cost. Any time we visit the music shop Cass wanders round listing all the instruments she would like to own & play so she knows to the last cent what they cost ~ even a 2nd hand student flute which is all we could afford. Everyone else gets to tighten their belts this week! Just joking.

I am pressing all my panic buttons. Cass has been shortlisted for the intermediate community band which rehearses on the mainland ~ one reason for now thinking the child should have her own instrument. Plus she has been invited to join a choir ensemble ~ which also rehearses on the mainland. No, I do not want to live on the mainland but I am spending far more time than I like there just at present. I am thinking Cass needs a job to help pay for all this but jobs are scarce on the island & she's a month short of being 12. Her sister is offering to help pay (how sweet is that?) but that isn't really fair & she has her own things to save for. However as this is God's deal He will have to provide.

To add to my present woes & when I am particularly time deprived, the washing machine died. Then Dearest, who is on a disability pension & in chronic pain, had to be rushed to the dr.s with muscle spasms. Came out of the surgery to a flat tire, which Dearest was in no condition to change (having just been shot with a relaxant) & his 45k weaking of a wife couldn't. God bless the good samaritans who did it for me! Then noticed we need new tires on the car. I just drive the thing; maintance I do not have time for ~ but it seems I will have to make time. Wonder where I will aqueeze that from? Not to mention I have yet to order the curriculum I need next week. Oh, then there is the art exhibition that is just going up now. Cass has several entries in & from what I have seen so far she has a good chance of picking up a prize so I must make time to take her down for a look as she hasn't seen any of the other entries & was really keen to know what everyone else had done for their entries. She has no expectations of winning anything & does not have a competitive nature. So nice after my sports mad competitive ones. I think I will be pleased when we start schooling again. I will HAVE to be home a little more.

I'm running as fast as I can.

We are suppossed to be on holidays. In my mind this means minimal housework & plenty of down time. Well, I got the minimal housework. Cass signed up for the massed choir which will perform at the Strawberry festival in September. This has meant a 7.3oam boat & all day rehearsals all holidays. At rehearsals they taught the kids tonal harmonics then sent them home to practise. If you don't know what this is just count your blessings. If you do, please sympathise!

Friday after rehearsal we raced for a train so we could spend the weekend with my mother for her birthday. Train got cancelled. Next train NOT an express ~ 2 changes & the last one was a bus that went all round the sticks & took FOREVER. Cass exhausted. Mother besides herself & did I mention I suffer from motion sickness? There was a lot of motion & I did not feel at all well. My sanity levels are rapidly dropping.

At home Dearest was left in charge of running the workers to work. Theo has just begun a 2nd job, Dino arrived home from sea & the cat had a melt down. We are NOT discussing the state of the house.

Cass & I had a lovely time with my mother but she is pleased the 'tonal harmonics' have moved to my address.

Cubbies & other strange games.

My oldest son has a terrific imagination. He was much in demand as the istigator of ideas as between the 3 houses in our neck of the woods there were 10 children & they invariably ended up at our place, our place being the most relaxed & having the largest number of children to start with. However my oldest is something of a recluse. He would much rather slink off with a book than play so he invented these complicated games with complicated rules & then abandoned them to his siblings & their friends. One morning I poked my head out to find a wig~wam made of she~oak saplings decorating the next door paddock. It came with a picket fence & a half dozen minature sized hay bales & it was shower proof, as the kids discovered in the first rain. Over the months a complete city emerged in our bushland, complete with roads & paths, up in the trees & through the undergrowth. My son was happily upstairs reading in peace while the rest of the neighbourhood waged a complicated war.

However Jossie was a rather strange child. Having not seen him for several hours one day I went looking for him, He had made himself a ''nest'' under the outside stairs. It was thick with died grass. Several large round stones huddled amongst the grass & my son squatted begninly over them on his haunches staring vacantly into space. What was he doing? Hatching eggs! I have yet to see a chick hatch from a stone but whatever.

Genetic musings.

Families are odd. The genes that get passed along are even odder.

My paternal grandfather died when my father was about 10, which means I never knew him, only the stories my father & his sister told about him. He was a quiet, dreamy, gentle man but any story my aunt told was likely to be highly coloured & to be taken with a large grain of salt. However this one has the sad ring of truth about it. She argued her brothers were a little wild. They were prone to perching my father, as the youngest of 5, in the avacado tree where his job was to swing a jam tin full of pebbles for his brothers to shoot at with their .22's. Eventually their antics drew the attention of at least one parent; my grandmother. My grandmother was of strong Scottish stock, a no nonsense sort of woman who was staunchly Church of Christ but redeemed by her cooking. Her predjudges ran deep.

"John!" My grandmother insisted. "Do something about your boys."

"Yes, Dorothy...And what would you like me to do?"

This tendency to oblivion in the midst of turmoil runs deep. My aunt painted through 8 decades of family drama. Her children say she would surface occassionly, smack everyone soundly as the fairest means of settling an arguement impartially, & sumberge back into her art. My husband insists I can read through any amount of chaos & never notice & I wrote my first book through 4 children under 5. I have a cousin with 5 boys who sits placidly doing cross stitch while her sons play Tarzan through her house. It is a genetic predisposition. It has an equal & opposite reaction in the next generation. They tend to be very practical & live in the moment children. It makes for an interesting mix. There's never a dull moment.

Curriculum Woes.

I am not the most organized person I know. It takes me time to get my head round mundane but necessary things like ordering curriculum. Firstly I've usually finished a curriculum before it occurs to me I need to order some more. Well, Duh! Hello, jeannie! Secondly we never seem to finish at the specified times. Science & LLATL were both suppossed to last 2 years & we are finished both more than 6 months early. Science is a nightmare. My 11 year old has expressed an interest in marine biology. The only textbooks are for grade 12 with a biology prequisite. At present we are doing our own but while this is fascinating it is less science than an extended art class. We are drawing everything. I have the left hand side of a tidal pool at present. At some point the exotic concoctions that decorate the page will be labeled but whether or not this is actually science is arguable. I have a visual/spatial learner so no prizes for guessing why we are drawing everything.

However as I have been unhappy with the LLATL (both Cass & I are bored silly by it) I have actually done my homework & ordering early. I have opted for Sonlight for all those lovely books. Expensive but I hope worth it. The catalogue is a nightmare. I couldn't make head or tail of it. In desperation I rang the suppliers. That took days just to get through so I could leave a message on their answering machine. When they rang back it was after I was in bed for the night & I was half asleep when I was called to the phone. Lovely, lovely man!!! Sooo patient. Explained everything. I doubt I have everything sorted out ~ when did I ever? ~ but I am actually ok with that. Loverly, loverly man understood my consternation when I realised the catalogue prices were in US dollars, not Oz ones! (ouch!!!) & said I didn't have to order everything at once, just 5 or so books at a time. Big sigh of relief. My budget will cope much better this way, though my organizational skills are a hazard. Cass not impressed.

Mother not impressed either, though for different reasons. Band yesterday. We have extended waiting periods so during lunch Cass asked permission to try out the drums. She's had her eye on the drums for some time & while she hasn't seemed to have paid any attention while we've sat through the beginner's drum classes while waiting for the flutes to arrive she must have. The child sat down & began rapping out a beat. Her sense of timming & co~co-odination were really good. How good was highlighted when the next lot of students tried. I am NOT buying a drum kit! Where would I put it? To say nothing of the noise. However there is a spare alto sax around at present & Cass is planning on hitting on the teacher for that. Massive sigh. I am already climbing over instrument cases, music stands & spending wasted time looking for music that is never where it should be. Oh man. Another instrument I do not think we need & I am already worrying about how I am going to afford to buy the child a flute for next year when we will no longer be able to hire an instrument from the school. $6oo~Oz, maybe a bit less if we can find a decent 2nd hand one. Sax's cost even more. As music is an important & major part of Cass' curriculum I am starting to get a little wild around the eyes.

Dear Lord, you know our need; Help!

Tantrums.

I am the first to conceed that my children are just a tad unusual. This has never bothered me. Personally I like oddities. Their oddness began early & has developed nicely over the years. What I remember of the 'terrible two's' is the unusualness of the tantrums. Most of mine threw one absolute doozy which cured them for all time of ever throwing another.

Dino liked to throw his wobblies in public. The sweetest natured of all my children he was a chronic social butterfly & inevitably performed whenever he was told it was time to pack up & go home. This particular day I had taken all our kiddies to our small swimming enclosure. The tides were kind & we had had water for swimming in most of the day & the small strip of sand for the rest of the time. We had spent the entire day in the open air & everyone, but especially mum, was getting tired as the shadows lengthened. It was time to go home, wash off the sand, have tea & head for bed. I was looking forward to it but Dino wasn't quite ready to head home. He stood knee deep in the water & told me, 'No!' Then he hurled himself down to throw the biggest wobbly of all time. Half way down he realized he was about to go head first into the water & frantically tried to back pedal. His wail was heart rending ~ but he never threw another tantrum.

Liddy is a cat of another colour. A thoughtful & docile child we had a delightful few years with her but eventually the day arrived when she decided to test our mettle & threw her one & only wobbly. I do not recall what she decided to dig her little heels in over. I remember her standing there glowering thoughtfully before getting down on her hands & knees. Dearest & I stared at each other mesmerized as we tried to work out what our beloved daughter thought she was doing. Gently Liddy felt the hard wooden floor all over. Very, very gently she laid her head down & began to bellow. Dearest & I gaped. Eventially we realised this was Liddy's version of a full on tantrum. We couldn't help it. We let out a roar of delighted laughter. Mortally offended Liddy shut up, stared at us in disgust & took herself away to think some more. It was the only wobbly she ever threw. Liddy learnt early you catch more flies with honey than vinegar & has been plying the honey trade ever since.

A Mouse Tale.

We moved into our house when I was 9 months pregnant with Liddy. She was due any tick of the clock & we had just one floor down. The toilet & shower were working but could only be reached by a precarious journey along the beams & joists. No wonder our middle children were so good at sport. They used to run. Me, I'd be lucky not to topple into the hole!

Anyway, we were all camped down on the living room floor, all our worldly possessions stacked in boxes around us experiencing family togetherness. We also found we had an extended 'family' of very unwanted visitors ~ a mouse plague of enormus proportions. Yuk! Dearest bought huge numbers of traps & every night went about setting them & every night we would hear the regular snap, snap as the traps went off. In the morning Dearest went round tossing the limp bodies down our hill for the monitor lizards to consume.

We were always telling the boys not to touch the traps. Jossie, at going on 6, was quite sensible but the twins weren't quite 3 & chronic fiddlers. They couldn't leave anything alone & Theo was forever egging Dino on 'cause if Dino didn't get hurt it was safe for him to have a go. The inevitable eventually happened. We were woken by a sharp snap & a piercing shriek followed by loud wails; 'Ry' dead! Ry' dead!' Poor kid. The look on his face said it all. He thought he was about to follow the mice down the hill, hors d'ouvers for the monitor lizard!

I would like to say this experience vastly improved the listening capacity of my sons & their obedience levels but sadly this was not so. Some children only learn by experience. I own a large number of them.

The Ughs.

We have had an 'ughy' few weeks plagued by a low grade fever, tummy upsets & an ongoing migraine. Very ugh! In amongst this bedlam I came downstairs one morning to find Dino cutting his cast off with the kitchen scissors, Cass acting as his surgical nurse & Liddy offering a running commentary on how stupid he was being. His new skip had rung & he was heading back to sea. Ugh! Twenty minutes before he was due to head for a boat he was meandering around the house hunting up his sea boots, apron & wet weather gear, none of which he'd seen since he dropped them on my floor as he arrived home 6 months ago. Boys! Ugh!

Ten days later he rang to say he'd be home on the next boat: he wasn't. He was rather late & had brought all his washing home for mum but it never got done. Eight hours later he was heading back out with all his dirty washing intact & disturbed the entire house. Theo hadn't realised Dino was home, wandered into the bedroom for something & got the fright of his life when the bedclothes heaved! That meant Cass was awake very early. Ugh!

Friday Cass & I headed into town to sell off her old maths curriculum so we can afford to buy the new science curriculum! This would have been lovely ~ new homeschooling family, talking shop, wandering round the shops. Unfortunately we had a sudden cold snap & the wog kicked in. With the wog came a whopper of a migraine. Double ugh! Cait hates it when I get sick like that hours from home & on public transport. I think she has visions of us being stuck on the bus forever.

There is light at the end of this ughy tunnel. Liddy went back to work this morning! Yay, for Liddy. So was so excited. Just 3 hours to start with but I think she will find she is much tireder than she expects to be & 3 hours will be quite enough, thank you. Ugh!

The Fishiest Tale of all.

I do not like seafood. I don't fish by choice. I do not eat seafood. I won't cook it. I can't even bear the smell of it. I will, very occassionally & only under great duress, go fishing if someone else baits my hook for me. I object to running sharp objects through live animals.

Dearest, having prevailed upon me to buy the lads fishing rods & provide the bait decided we would have a family afternoon down on the point & he would teach his sons the manly art of casting. So off we went. Dearest is an avid fisherman & some of his best memories are of family fishing holidays. Liddy, too small to hold a rod, was seeing how wet she could get while technically remaining out of the water. I took myself a little apart with a small sigh. I was reckoning on about an hour tops before snags had dispossed of all our tackle but the boys were so wild with excitement I held my peace & quietly dropped my line as close to the hole as possible & began to think of other things, totally oblivious to the excitment around me.

In a little while my line began tugging in the gentle way that tells you something is interested in what you have plastered on the end of your line. I'm not much of a fisherman so I jerked without much hope & reeled in a good sized bream. There was an immediate surge of men & equipment my way & lines plonked into the water all about me while Dearest removed my fish with a delighted grin. I removed myself from the crush & dropped my line in the water on the other side of the point. Catching something has never been my goal so I was shocked to find my line getting tugged yet again. In came a small flathead. By this time my sons were eyeing me with a stunned mixture of respect & as if I was the lucky fish charm & waited to see where I dropped my line before moving enmass to join me. I love my sons but the inevitable happened. The next fish to bite made a run for the rock ledge. My line snagged & I lost the only decent hook I had. The boys were tangled around each other in the sort of knot that was going to take time & patience to sort out. I left Dearest to it & walked back up to the house for more bait. I took my time so was absolutely stunned to be met halfway by 3/4 of my household delirious with excitement. 'You've caught a fish', Jossie shouted. I had? Last time I looked I didn't even have a hook let alone a line in the water. 'A cod,' Dino informed me. Well, he would know. 'This big.' He held his hands apart to show me. Wow!

I walked down the track with my overexcited offspring to see if Dearest could make sense of this wild tale. 'You wouldn't believe it,' he said shaking his head. He had replaced my hook, baited the line up & cast it out before dealing with the boys tangled lines but was as surprised as the boys when my line started running out. He reeled in the fish, indeed Dino's cod, to find my best hook embedded in the cod's mouth & the fish snagged through the old line. You wouldn't read about it. I'm still the cleverest fisherman I know. I don't know of another one who has caught a fish when they weren't even there!

Fishy Tales.

I am not a hunter; I do not like to see things die. My tendencies are all towards vegetarianism. My sons do not share my squeamishness. They learnt to fish early & crab as soon as they could carry a pot. They know our bay in ways I never will.

The first thing Dino did with his first pay of the trawlers was buy himself a flash tinny & a motor with a lot of grunt. He then went back to sea leaving boat & motor moored amongst our mangroves (& as both are much too heavy for the girls & I to deal with) the whole lot promptly sank at the first king tide. It was an expensive lesson. Outboards do not like salt water in their works.

I've always been quite pleased (apart from missing the child dreadfully, of course) that Dino trawled on the other side of the country. I have vivid memories of his early days of fishing. Once they actually learnt to swim, a post all on its own, they were allowed to walk down to the point & fish off the rocks on the promitory. There was a hole just off there & good anglers nearly always caught something. My boys realized early they were too short to have much hope of reaching it so took to wading out up to their chests, an activity that had the big boat drivers cross. They had to slow as they came around the markers &through the channel so as not to swamp my boys. As this was an activity that invariably took place well before the sun was up (why do fish get up so early?) I would hear the boys leave as they called out to say they were going fishing & happily submerged only to be shaken awake by a small dripping figure waving something, wet slimy & gasping its last under my nose. 'Look what, I've caught, mummy!' I have always been sooo pleased Dino was not able to arrive at my bedside with his first trawler catch!

Random notes.

Friday it rained. The rain thundered down & the wind whined. The bay churned unhappily so Saturday's outing got cancelled. Saturday dawned calm & fair. Outing back on. Now this outing was with friends, Cass' piano teacher & her wheelchair bound sister. With the wheelchair there were still two spare seats so who would like to go? The Duvyken was back in town & moored at the maritime museum.

The Duvyken is an 18th C replica spice ship, very pretty. Cass & I went over her last time she was in port. It took Cass all of 20 minutes to see everything there was to be seen & then she asked if she could climb the rigging. Liddy is now out of her sling so we sent her instead. She was unlikely to want to climb the rigging. She was a little unlucky. The owners have decided the hold is off limits so Liddy couldn't go into the bowels of the ship as we did & it isn't really her thing but it was a day out & something to do when she has not been able to do very much at all for some time. You can google the Duvyken if you want a virtual tour. I know. Cass used their site to do a visual report of our visit. Cass & I went to soccer as usual.

My older daughter & I do share some characteristics when it comes to sport & especially when it comes to soccer. One is being able to find space. My skill level is low so enough space to think in & organize my feet is necessary. The other is being able to read the game. Now Liddy reads the game & is in position early. I read the game, analyze it & move too late, which is how come I took a ball to the face. I am sporting a split & swollen lip. The opposition's back suggested I might like to take up boxing instead. Ha, very ha! Luckily I preached last Sunday!

Talking of which; I wrote everything up for my blog, typed in my title & posted, at which point Liddy arrived & gazing over my shoulder let out a wild whoop of laughter. My title read: Mothering Sinday!!!! We are still cackling about it. The mind boggles.

Homeschooling woes.

The things you can't forsee! When we planned our house I didn't forsee trying to school an attention deficiet child with much older siblings. We planned for coolness in a sub~tropical summer & have an open plan house. The house is cool but some days I just want to pull my hair out. Like Tuesday. Dictation is hard enough. Cass talks so much she rarely remembers what she is suppossed to be writing until it's been repeated 3 times & some days when I check her work I wonder if we were using the same text 'cause what she's written bears little resemblence to what I've said. So having Liddy join us with her new John MacArthur book was not what I needed. I am easily distracted from the boredom of dictation according to Cass & Liddy kept saying, 'Did you know...' & off we'd go on a 15 minute theological diversion. Grrrr! Cass was so happy. Rarely is dictation so entertaining. Still I can justify that as part of Cass' curriculum, right? It was her brother that caused the real problem.

Mid~morning there is the phone call. We spent months training friends & family not to ring during school hours, a dictum my own household happily ignores. Dino was on his way home, could I pick him up? And the good news? He'd broken his wrist & was in plaster! Argh! I already have one hyperactive child bored out of her brain. Two I did not need. Dino is not one of my readers so what he did was stock up on videos & he & Liddy settled in for a movie marathon. Cass NOT happy! I moved her work into the kitchen. Her bedroom is too close to the t.v & goodness knows what nonsense she would have written. Besides she would have spent the rest of the morning wandering round on the pretext she was clearing her desk, which is piled high with art work. The t.v can be seen & heard from the kitchen but with the sound turned down is not too distracting but it meant I spent the rest of the morning standing behind the breakfast bar so Cass couldn't see the t.v. screen. Open plan houses & homeschooling are not a good fit. However it seems Liddy's collar bone is actually mending nicely & she could be back at work in as little as three weeks. Roll on the day! Mind you, all she is interested in is when she can get back on the soccer pitch!

Mothering Sunday ~ as they say in England

Liddy insists on telling me she never listens when I do the message at church. My children find it highly embarrassing to have their mother get up & speak after all the practising I've done on them. Now I thought today's service was lovely ~ spirit led, gentle, applicable ~ but I am so focused on getting the message right that I really pay very little attention to anything else until I'm all done & trying to hold so much of the spirit tends to have me weeping at the drop of a hat & bursting out of my spiritual skin. People must be mad who choose to do this for a living.

So I ask Liddy in the car, the car generally being good for getting her with her guard down, how she thought the message was ~ & got the usual answer. 'I wish you'd listen,' I whinged, 'so I have someone to obsess with afterwards like you do with the soccer.' Liddy insists she does NOT obsess but I can assure you otherwise! 'Well, MOTHER,' mother being the term sorely tried children address me by, ' Seeing as you had three quarters of the church in tears, I think you hit a nerve don't you?!'

And my ultimate point was...?

Even our DNA has been programmed to sing & glorify God. It speaks of an enormous love for His creation. It speaks of something incomprehensible. Much as I should like too I have as much chance of comprehending that as I have of grasping quantum physics. And that really is the point, isn’t it? All around us we can see the results of God’s glory & majesty & nearly all of it is beyond our minds to grasp. But, and it is a very wonderful thing, we have been given God’s promises. Those have been revealed to us & when we are faced with troubles & grief those are promises we can cling to. We have tasted of God & know that He is good. In our suffering that is our witness to a world that does not know the goodness of God. It is our testimony that no matter what we can say with Job, ‘ Though He slay me, yet will I trust in him.’ Amen

Liddy is a child of the island. Jossie was four, nearing five, & the twins were just one when we moved onto the island. As the truck that had towed our 25 foot caravan over headed down the red dirt road in a cloud of dust the drought broke. All our worldly possessions were stacked to the roof of that van. We climbed over them to wiggle into bed that night with the rain thundering down. Thank goodness we never had a fire because we'd never have got out!

Our electricity pole wasn't up, despite all the promises. We had no running water, no electricity & the boys all promptly got diahorrea. The rain cascaded down in true monsoon fashion.

Dearest is a brickie by trade & began building our house while I taught our boys the subtleties of NOT living in suburbia: Shrieking curlews do not require you to climb your father like a monkey up a pole; Monitor lizards are bigger than you are, leave them alone; Snakes are not for playing with. To add to the chaos we acquired a damaltion puppy & then God decided it was time the girl I'd requested should make her appearance. No~one else believed I was carrying a girl. Dearest's family runs heavily to boys but I was convinced this one was the requested girl & we agreed to name her for her maternal grandmother.

Now I am a 5'5 , 7 stone lightweight ~ except when pregnant. Pregnant I blossom like a galleon carrying all her sails in a following wind. Carrying the twins I came close to doubling my usual weight so believe me when I say pregnancy makes me uncomfortable, irritable, clumsy & absolutely exhausted. Added to my list of usual complaints our water supply got contaminated & I found I had gardia. All treatments crossed the placenta & caused complications so I refused treatment. Instead I accepted something for the vomiting & treated everything else with over ripe tomatoes & white bread.

Given the slothful nature of this baby it is hard to believe what a hyperactive child she became. I was always poking her to make sure she was still alive but some things never change. Making decisions has never come easy for Liddy & she was chronically incapable of making up her mind whether she was on her way or not. I spent a week with contractions that began each evening on our afternoon walk at twenty minutes apart & dropped consistently until they were 10 minutes apart when they would just stop. My mother, who had come down to help, was getting frazzled. I was merely irate at all the fussing. Everyone was very conscious we would have to call out a boat once it was time. Liddy was in no hurry.

The last evening Liddy performed as she had every night for a week. At 10pm, with contractions at zilch yet again I went to bed, my mother hovering anxiously & Dearest still convinced I was in labour. He was right. I went to sleep but woke abruptly as my waters broke & all bedlam broke loose! I was insisting I needed a shower before going anywhere, Dearest insisted he wasn't waiting on me showering convinced once I was in warm water I'd never get out & my mother insisting Dearest get me off the island pronto! Even so the boat beat us to the jetty & the driver got us to the mainland in record time. They don't like delivering babies at sea either.

Once at the hospital I headed straight for the shower & I only got out to deliver my baby. Liddy was fast & effecient. I passed her to her father & headed back to the shower. He sat & rocked her, an event that has gone down in posterity as it is the only time in her fist 3 years that Liddy didn't scream blue murder any time her father came near her!

Dearest left in time to catch the first boat back to the island but he had had plenty of time to think how best to break the news to an expectant grandmother & three excited little boys.

'Well.' said dearest managing to look gloomy, 'James is a perfectly good name...' My mother hid dissappointment. 'But it doesn't really suit our Liddy Rose.' He has a wicked sense of humour. Luckily for him my mother has a forgiving nature!

I believe in angels.

We have had very few family holidays. We have never had the sort of income that has allowed us to holiday with 5 kiddies in tow. However when the twins were about 4 months old we did a camping holiday down Yamba way. Camping with babies is not a whole load of fun in my opinion despite the fact we had loaded a cot onto the trailer & they at least were sleeping in comfort. My big boy was perfectly happy so long as I took him swimming in the river & sat in the park so he could play but what I particularly remember about that holiday is coming home.

Now I am something of a nervous driver, mostly because Dearest likes to drive & doesn't believe anyone else is as good a driver so I have never had much practise. The only time I ever got the wheel on long trips was when the sun hit the windshield making visibility difficult. As I had sunnies I got the wheel & endured a running commentry on my driving, something I particularly dislike. If I am given a job I like to be let get on with it, not be told how to do it. This particular trip Dearest did me the honour of promptly going to sleep & leaving me to it. Loaded down with three kids & a box trailer stuffed with camping gear I was hardly travelling fast as I turned of the main highway onto the road that would join us up to the inland highway. As we hit the gravel the car suddenly slewed & we began fishtailing gently from one side of the deserted road to the other. I knew enough not to slam on the brakes. I wasn't even panicking. The road was rising gently & I figured with my foot of the accelerator we would eventually coast to a stop. Meanwhile I just had to keep the car on the road. There was nothing wrong with my plan although the fishtailing was becoming rather pronounced. What was wrong was the semi~trailer that suddenly crested the rise. He was travelling too & I was all over the road like a vulture's dinner!

I saw very clearly the next day's headlines: Family Of Five Perish In Horror Smash. Time, which science continually tells us is different to what we think it is, spagettied out as if I were about to enter a black hole & the cold, logical little voice that lives inside my head began weighing up our options. Take the car off this side & we would roll for sure down an incline. Take it the other way & we would just as surely roll, only into the side of the hill. Neither choice looked pretty.

I do not ask you to believe what happened next. I do know that none of us should logically be here. I was still trying to decide. I could see the white's of the truck driver's eyes. Poor man. There was nothing he could do to try & avoid us. I had absolutely no control over the car. It was all I could do to keep us just on the road & the trailer was headed in a completely different direction to the car. Then two angels appeared out of nowhere. They rode shot~gun on my bonnet. The car steadied for the time it took the truck to wizz past then the angels were just as surely gone & the car was once again all over the road.

Dearest woke & helped me battle the car to the side of the road & we ground to a halt. We had blown the front passenger tire & were lucky to be alive. My children love this story but they always ask the same question ...& I give them the same answer every time. If they thought I had any time to spare for close observation of what an angel looks like they are completely & utterly insane! I retain the barest impression of immense strength & height. I know one was dark skinned & one was fair. I suspect two more were at the back we were held so steady on the road but other than that I know nothing. I don't know why they were sent that day but without them I doubt any of us would have survived & neither Liddy or Cass would ever have been born. It makes you think doesn't it?

Youngest children.

There are 12 years between Cass & Jossie, 6 between Liddy & Cass, so Cass was very much a surprise addition & one her sister, as the only girl & very much the queen bee, was not sure was a welcome one.

Cass arrived after creating the greatest amount of difficulty for all concerned in the wee hours of the school sports day where I was suppossed to be supervising. It is the only sports day I have ever missed & even now I'm not sure I've been forgiven. My mother, who had agreed to mind the hordes, rushed down from up north, suitcase to hand, straight to the wrong island to take my place cheering & supervising while her youngest granddaughter, who had wedged herself across my pelvis, struggled to untangle the knot she'd made.

When she finally arrived she was so round & dimpled I was seriously alarmed. I hadn't thought you could have dimples in some of the places Cass had dimples! She had red hair & staring into her face for the first time I was struck by how peculiar she looked. Cass had arrived minus her eyelashes & her eyes were overly sensitive to light.

Now we are a house of strong minded individuals so when the children discovered I was pregnant there was great debate as to whether God would provide a boy or a girl, so much so I asked the untra~sound technician to tell me the sex so I could knock all arguements promptly on the head. I'm not sure I would do that again. From that moment on my kiddies would all pile into my lap of an evening to pat & stoke my tummy & 'talk' to the baby~ by name! Cass responded to her name from the moment she was born, her head swinging round like a seeking hound's. She also talked early & prolifically! You know the blurb: THEY COULDN'T WAIT FOR ME TO WALK & TALK; NOW ALL I HEAR IS SIT DOWN & SHUT UP. Well, I wouldn't put it so rudely but you get the drift.

Worse, the poor child inherited a family of wanna be parents. If she cried 6 people promptly rushed to her assistance. Unfortunately Cass usually only cried in temper. Disciplinging her was a nightmare. There would be a chorous of, 'Oh, mum. You've made her cry! You can't let her cry.' Well, I could, but apparently no~one else could. It was so impossible to give her individual time I simply popped her in the sling & kept her with me so that Cass was hardly ever put down. On the rare occasions I did someone else promptly picked her up. It's surprizing the child ever learnt to walk at all. She was weaned sometime around Easter ~ straight onto chocolate! Theo, being helpful & considerate & deciding he knew how to make Cass love him best, would get her up without waking me of a morning & keep her quiet & entertained by feeding her bits of Easter egg. It explains a lot about Cass!

Yet she has turned out remarkably well. She adores her siblings, is a supurbly confident young lady, & so kind & loving she blows me away. She will be 12 this year, almost a teenager. I look at all that self assurance & remember Cass slept in our bed till she was nearly 10 because she was afraid of the dark & cried the one & only time I tried putting her in reins because she could be trusted to behave herself & do exactly as I said, even at 2. Everyone in the house has sheltered & petted her so it is not surprising she is just starting to ask for a little more freedom now. Liddy is of an age to take her to the movies, just the two of them, & she has had the occassional outing with trusted friends that linger as highlights in her memory but I was old enough when Cass was born to know how fleeting childhood really is & how fast they grow up so I made time to enjoy Cass in ways I didn't with my older children. I am so blessed to have her.

More snake stories.

We live with snakes. They are a part of our lives & over the years we have acquired a few stories. When we moved into our house a snake moved in with us. He (?) is a good sized carpet snake , rather pretty, & he lives amongst the joists of the ceiling keeping rats & mice & other vermin at bay. We know he's there but very rarely see him. Unfortunately the ceiling is also where our t.v antenna lives, precariously balanced on a joist & delicately angled so as to pick up SBS, the only station that regularly supplies the sort of history/archaeology shows I like to watch. Every so often SBS becomes nothing more than black & white 'snow', which means our resident snake has bumped the antenna in his travels & the kids need to climb into the ceiling & realine everything. Normally this occurs without incident but having hoisted the twins through the man hole they reappeared a good deal faster than they'd gone up, white faced & shaking & refusing to deal with the antenna until I'd dealt with the snake. Out of curiosity I did poke my head up but that is as far as I got. Even seeing our snake was completely saited, bulging out of his skin & dozing happily in the warmest part of the ceiling was not inducement enough for me to actually try & move him!

At one point we had rather a run on snakes. I have no idea why this particular year so many snakes moved into the house but after the 2nd time a child on a night toilet run nearly stepped on a snake curled up in their dropped clothing there was a mass midnight exodus out of the downstairs bedrooms to the upstairs living area. ALL the kids bunked down together & the only thing that moved them back was discovering nowhere was safe. 'Mum', a wavering voice fluted down the stairs. I came up to find Dino lying rigidly in the top bunk, too afraid to move until someone else had checked to make sure the snake was really gone. It had crawled across him in the dark but brave boy that he was he had lain completely still until it was gone.

Given how prone our wildlife was on moving in with us it is perhaps not surprising that my male residents took to moving out. From the time they were about 8 there were tents pitched semi permanently in the next door paddock & the boys took to camping out. We used to joke we'd run out of space inside until rumour reached us that there were some people who actually believed the joke! I remember Jossie, my oldest boy, coming in one day looking a little agitated to say there was a snake & what should he do? I came out to look, decided it was one of our harmless varieties & told him to pick it up & carefully remove it to the bush proper, WHICH he proceeded to do! As the snake was lifted I glimpsed it's red underbelly & nearly died. It was either a large small eyed snake or a small red bellied black & either is highly poisonous! I shrieked & Joss threw that snake high & wide. I don't know which of us got the biggest shock.

Then there was the first day back camping after a long spell of bad weather. The boys had planned & planned this first night back under the stars. They had an enormous pile of firewood, bread all buttered, a mess of sausages & I'd been prevailed upon to provide marshmallows for toasting. I had heard nothing else for days so was mightly surprised to find Theo lugging all his bedding back inside before it had even got dark. 'I am not,' he stated with dignity,'sleeping with a snake.' I went to investigate this newest development to find our tabby cat, Bindi, pouncing all over the floor of the tent while my other two boys watched mesmerized as the floor wriggled & squirmed, jiggled & bumped & the cat became frantic. I rolled my eyes, told them to get a move on, pick up the tent & walk it away from the snake! No doubt it would be as relieved as they were. I took the cat. When you live cheek by jowl with wildlife you can't back off from every encounter but I didn't need her antics with a snake in the house.

Boys & boats.

The one thing I can be tcertain of is that nothing stays the same. I have got used to having Dino home again & safely land bound but my middle son has never wanted to do anything else but fish. I have a photo of a tiny Dino & Theo standing knee deep in an enormouse puddle, a stick each, pretending to fish as the rain belted down around them. Then it was a little dingy they took to rowing round our bay trailing fishing lines & crab pots in sight of mama's watchful eyes. The boats just got bigger & now my son drives my car as though he were still in the middle of the Indian Ocean throwing an 80 foot trawler around on cyclone strength waves. Landscaping with his brother is not for him. As he says, he wants to drive big boats not plant big trees. Depending on whose viewpoint you look at it from, he has unfortunately been offered a crewing job locally. He prefers the east coast & being able to catch up with friends & family on his time off. His mother has said nothing. I do not like the ocean. I will not watch the weather when Dino is at sea but when the wind picks up & our bay churns with mud & white caps I keep a prayer in my heart for all the little boats bobbing about on the oceans of the world & the men who sail them. God knows, I don't do much sleeping.

Water babies

One of the things I'm looking forward to in Heaven is the lamb lying down with the lion. There's something wonderful when all God's creation gets along with each other.

When mine were all quite little & before Dearest broke his back we had one of those perfect days on the water that come so rarely. Dearest had taken us over to Straddie. The kids had played on the sandy beaches (we only have mud) & swum in the tepid water before having a good fish & catching nothing. I hate catching something because I object to something dying slowly in a bucket.

We were pottering home gently through an evening soft with mauves & pinks & a bay reflecting piles of cloud like a mirror when dark fins broke the water. Dearest cut the engine & a moment later the sleek grey bodies of dolphins were all about the tinnie. The children were delighted. Children of the sea they knew better than to jump all over the boat but they were clinging to the sides to get just as close as they could get without actually getting in the water.

Then Mama dolphin arrived. Mama dolphin had a very tiny bub riding with her. He might have been tiny but he was a world class clown & he fell in love with Liddy & Liddy, who was barely walking let alone swimming, fell in love with him.

So there we were, mama dolphin hovering anxiously around a baby who was trying to figure out how to invegile my baby into the water with him, me anxiously & sureptiously clutching my baby to make sure that wasn't where she ended up. For 10 minutes or so the pod circled us, bub rolling a droll eye Liddy's way & performing outrageous tricks for her while we held our breath & marveled. Liddy doesn't remember at all; I will never forget.

There is something of sadness in the memory now too. I remember very clearly Dino's big blue eyes wide with delight but he grew into a man & went out on the trawlers & what he has to say about dolphins, who are quite clever enough to harrass one good~sized trawler, aren't printable here! There should be enough to go round & share but the ocean is in drought as well as the land & it seems there is not.

Late night loose cannons.

The computer sits in our bedroom, mostly because this is the safest room in the house. It normally gets shut down when Theo comes up to bed; he objects to the click~clack of an exhuberant typist. This being a long weekend none of the boys are home & Liddy took the opportunity for a late night chat with the homeschool buddies she has. The sound of typing doesn't normally bother me so I happily went to bed & left her click~clacking away in the dark bathed only in the blue halo of the computer screen.

Hours later I was woken by a frantic,'Mum!Mum!' Only half awake & hopeful whoever it was would go away & let me finish sleeping I mumbled, ' mmm...'

'Mum!' Liddy had resorted to shaking me. 'What's the rest of this scripture?' she asked heading back to the computer. Blearily I resonded on automatic pilot & prepared to submerge. 'Don't go back to sleep!' Liddy hissed frantically. Embroiled in a theological discussion with her Catholic friend she wanted me wide awake & functioning to provide the theological ammunition!!! Half an hour later, & me with a migraine kicking in, the poor guy on the other end opted for retreating with honour.

Liddy is perfectly capable of fighting her own theological debates but it is much easier to rely on mother's memory (because she uses a translation conducive to memorisation) than go to the bother of cross~checking herself with the concordance. She is also a slower thinker & mum is handy with the quick comebacks. I just wish she'd choose her times better.

Homeschool home visits.

I think it's just me but any time I particularly need a nice quiet stretch my life goes completely catawamps.

Cassie's supervisor (yes we have those for homeschooler's here) is coming for her home visit on Tuesday. She is a truely lovely Christian lady who thinks Cass' art work is wonderful & loves her school work but I'm sure she thinks we're all quite, quite mad. Last time she visited our house was drowing in tubs of stamps, literally, & Dearest had turned our living room into a workshop for making coasters & place mats out of stamps. Any time the place is likely to stink of turps & thinners & every surface is cluttered with things in various stages of construction that can't possibly be moved. Cass is making minatures & experimenting with clay which has to dry before it can be fired. OK, I can write that off as school work but I thought I would be organized & start cleaning early. I should have known what a mistake that was. The boys have been cutting up concrete & brought bucket loads of stuff inside clinging to their boots & socks & now it is on my living room floor.

Plus I had this bright idea (I so wish I wouldn't get bright ideas!) of making a cookbook as part of our study on Europe. After all both Cass & I ( to say nothing of the concrete cutters) all have a very sweet tooth! We have wasted a lot of time & tonns of paper scouring the net for absolutely mouthwatering recipes. Unfortunately most are far too time consuming to attempt in term time when our schedule is already overloaded but our supervisor has said how wonderful if Cass could prepare one for her visit. AAArgh! I know what that will mean. Cass does NOT get to choose. I have chosen Irish Clannrach (which I can't spell either!) as being the simpliest & something we can make the day before. Cass doesn't mind. It is quite similiar to the raspberry pots we make when we want a fast, rich & yummy desert.

I'm a little spooked. We seem to have done so little this term yet been busier than ever & certainly we have piles of work to show for it. I guess I just seem to spend a lot of time preparing stuff that is completed so quickly in the end it feels like we haven't really done much. Like I get wild that European history always seems to start with the Romans, who really were very dull & not at all innovative; just very good at bossing everyone else around, so I've been hunting up stuff on the barbarians, somewhere I shouldn't go just now because I got sidetracked by the Sythians who are completely fascinating when I started too. Cass will no doubt just roll her eyes some more but she was breastfed to body excavations & facial reconstructions & commentators explaining sex from forearm bones & general health from dental remains.

So long as we stay with the arts & humanities we do well but Cass is about to move into long division, which I actually have never been able to do myself so have put off ordering her book for ages as if the whole horrible thing would dissappear in a puff of smoke. Liddy CAN do it & as she is otherwise unoccupied for the present she has been roped in to deal with it. Ditto chemistry. Cass & I spent a week on the opening chapter. We read the words. We even understood what they meant but the concepts completely eluded us. We are no wiser but have moved on, hopeful things will become a little more self explanatory. What I have found with science, contary to how most scientist want to teach it, is we are great with the natural sciences. That is all about us. We love nature & understand lots simply from living with it but both Cass & I are theorists. Don't ask us to make stuff. Our experiments fail miserably. We don't care about the ins & outs of how certain things go pop! Only why. Artistically we will remember that stars both sing & dance, as the bible said eons ago before scientists reached the same conclusion, but the ins & outs of the nuclear fusion that creates it is likely to bore us silly. I'm considering looking at chesmistry from a totally kitchen perspective. Cooking is all about chemical reactions & while I may not like to cook Cass certainly does ~ & no~one at all will object to the eating.

Bushfire.

Straddie is burning. We are enveloped in clouds of smoke & the islands appear & disappear like ghost ships. The russett of the she~oaks stains the mist & the trees are full of little birds. Our world is reduced to a few square feet of luminous & doubtful sunshine & the smell of eculypt burning. It is the smell of campfires & crisp winter nights but for there to be so much smoke an awful lot of Straddie must now be a blackened ruin.

There's no wind so at least this time we aren't being showered in glowing sparks & hot embers fallen from a blood red sky because when Straddie burns, it burns! We have watched the fires burn all down one coast, turn around & head back the way they have come, burning a new & destructive path, over & over because Straddie is part sacred land, part National park & nearly all completely untouched bushland.

Most of my life I have lived with water & the threat of bushfires leaping the divide, one of the less attractive problems of rural living. I have stood awstruck & dumb as the native animals have taken to the water prefering to take their chances in the suburbs than risk the firey hell at their backs.

I like fires. I like the way the flames leap for the sky, the walls of flame, the explosions & bursts of smoke. I like fireballs & the rushing sound fire makes. I do not like what it does. I wish I could have these lovely big fires without the death & destruction they inevitably bring.

The Cat.

The cat is psychotic. It has a serious meltdown any time I go away. It is serious when Dearest, who is a dog man from way back, rings me up & says, 'Speak to your cat!' Maybe he just likes watching the cat turn itself inside out around the phone.

From the day the furr ball arrived it would follow me round the house & flop across my feet every time I stood still ~ a highly dangerous occupation my eyesight being what it is. It would sit forlornly & cry if it 'lost' me but my heart belonged to Gyver, our old siamese ~ THE most gorgeous cream with ginger points & vivid blue siamese eyes. My heart broke the day Gyver died. I wept myself silly while trying to be reasonable for the girls, who were beyond all reason. I had no thoughts to spare for a cat that technically belonged to Dino, a love gift from an ex~girl friend, the one no~one had liked.

There I was , exhausted, emotionally beaten, sitting in my chair staring blank~eyed at the t.v screen when a miserable little furr ball crawled into my lap. Issi kept coming until he could lay his head over my heart & there he collapsed, burrowing into me with a deep sigh & a heartbroken purr. If a cat could be said to be grieving Issi was.

Issi is a 'people' cat. He knows Liddy is for playing, Cass (as the weakest link) is to be dominated, Dearest is to be obeyed but for love & grooming he heads straight for me. I'm almost flattered. Did I mention the cat's psychotic?

Optional squeamishness.

When we changed curriculums last year I really liked how it gave Cass so much more control over her learning. How much I didn't quite realise until we hit the first brick wall. Cass is what's known as an immovable object. Amundsen was the Waterloo. See Amundsen was smarter than Scott, which is how come he got to the South Pole first & lived to brag about the fact. He ate his dog team.

At this point Cass gagged & refused to learn anything more about the race to the pole. I can't say I blamed her. Dearest didn't help by contributing unsavoury facts about vitamin A in dogs' liver & its effects on humans. I am NOT going there.

Everyone knows about Scott & Amundsen ~ except Cass. Cass can hold her own though. She can tell you what the only land Animal of Antarctica is; the anti~freeze mite for the curious. Or about the plant life ~ moss, fungi & lichens ~ & more about krill than I ever wanted to know.

What really got me though was, having refused point blank to dicuss the ethics or lack thereof of eating your dog team, she promptly moved into South America & did an in depth study of Aztec religious practises! For those of you who have walked this exceedingly gory path Amundsen pales into insignifigance by comparison. Definitly not for the squeamish but Cass didn't batt an eyelash.

One thing after another...

We are having a rough time. Cass, having decided she's not much good on the pitch, opted to play goalie. She borrowed a book from the library & thought she knew it all. The blokes coaching from the sideline got very short shift but eventually she took one bad ball too many & snapped her wrist back. Liddy is in a sling; why wouldn't Cass want her wrist strapped?

After just 2 games Liddy's soccer season is over. Worse the day she got the news trials that lead to state selection started. She had planned on being there this year. Her collar bone has one of the worst possible breaks. The outer end of the bone is 2 cm higher than the inner; no connection at all yet. Six weeks before healing will even begin, 12 before we know if it's likely to happen at all & 3 years before the remodeling of the bone is fully accomplished. She is soooo NOT a happy bunny. Dearest & I are not popular for refering to the break as 'the attitude adjuster'.

Having given up my Dr's appointment to Liddy twice in a row (Dr's appointments being rarer than gold here) I finally went & had my growth cut out. I loathe needles anyway & this was a particularly nasty one. God bless Cass, who held my hand tight because she doesn't like needles either. What was suppossed to be a local anesthetic practicaly put me to sleep & the girls refused to get in the car & let me drive for at least 20 minutes afterwards. They kept a sharp eye on me all the way home.

The good news is that lessons have begun well. Cass' handwriting, always a sore point, has shown a marked improvement. She has remembered how to do long multiplication & is not grizzling about the amount of writing she has to do on Malawi. She has been less enthusiastic about making notes on the sun but as it's a video & not reading she's not too stressed. Plus flute & band decided to work out remarkably well after a period that looked like making my life completely miserable & Cass has submitted most of her artwork for the exhibition. I'm sure Liddy knows how to post it in here so one of these days I shall get her to teach me, only not just at the moment while her 'attitude adjuster' is doing some adjusting.

The Three Minute Problem.

Our island is tiny. It is three minutes from here to just about anywhere: three minutes to the school, three minutes to the boat, three minutes to the shops, garage, post office, library... You can't get really lost. Sooner or later there's the water again.

We have discovered an interesting problem. No matter where she goes on the Mainland Liddy thinks in terms of three minutes. Australia is a big country & our capital city is hardly small. Twice in the last month I have found myself on the end of the phone, refedex to hand, issuing directions down the phone line to a child who has not reached where she was going in three minutes & panicked. It is not good when Liddy panics. Her CFS kicks in & she suffers increasing amounts of 'blonde moments'. Walking into a shop & asking a complete stranger for directions makes her quail. Yesterday, finding me glued to the end of the phone for the second time that day, her father just shook his head & said, 'She'll be ringing you from Brazil, you know.' That will be interesting; I don't have a refedex for Brazil. Perhaps I should buy one before she leaves.

Warning: Read with a Spirit led heart.

What I am is a BA in language & Literature ~ with a little pottering in Drama. What I like doing is research & writing. It makes me perfectly happy. In a perfect world I would do nothing else except a little painting & gardening on the side. I am academically inclined, useless for most practical tasks, which is one reason I'm sure, I was given 5 hyperactive, capable, practical children. They bemuse me as I'm sure I do them.

When we moved here, nearly 20 years ago, we doubled the numbers of the little protestant church every time we attended. I can't speak for the Catholic church but Christians of any denomination were rather thin on the ground. We all worshiped once a month at the little Anglican church because the Anglicans were the only denomination prepared to send a minister over, even so irregularly as once a month. I had trouble remembering which week he came so our church attendance was scatty. However this little group of elderly ladies had been praying for a retired minister who would be prepared to do a service every week for a nominal fee, that being all our tiny congregation could offer him & we have had a series of retired ministers since; but being elderly themselves they have a habit of dying unexpectedly on us.

As our church grew (though 50 is hardly a large church) we gradually began to see we could only continue to function if we didn't rely so much on an actual minister & used the people with their God given gifts much more than we were. I do not have the gift of helps; I am a nusiance in the kitchen; hospitality sends me into hysterics; believe it or not I'm terribly shy so greeting was not for me. Then one terrible day my dearest, who happened to be the chairman at the time & was responsible for filling the pulpit, got a phone call 48 hours before our Christmas service to say our speaker was terribly ill & there was no way he could take the service. Dearest & I stared at each other in horror.

'Well, jeannie,' said dearest, 'It's me or you.' Dearest, bless his heart, is so dyslexic he can't string a sentence together. I knew it would be me however much I might protest. I hit all the panic buttons. I had words to say to the Lord about it too, believe you me! Now it wasn't the research that had me worried. Research is the joy of my life. Obsure facts that no~one else knows are so much fun. Nor was it the writting out of a sermon. No not even the ogre of public speaking bothered me. What had me panicking like a headless chook was the scripture that says those who preach & teach will be judged more stringently. I am NOT a qualified preacher & I don't pretend to be. What I am is an over~educated female with a little knack for writing & an ability to research my facts that God can use.

God has been dragging me kicking & screaming but despite all my objections: I'm a SAHM, I have 5 kids & a disabled husband, I homeschool, I don't have time for this; I have been asked to speak more & more often. Speak, not lead. Someone else always leads the service. All my objections are valid plus one more. When I am given a speaking date I go to the Lord & say, 'OK, what do you want me to speak on this time?' Then I wait. Usually something pops up in the back of my mind, something I would never in a thousand years have thought of speaking on. My mind being a bit of a white elephant stall I usually whinge, ' Can you be a bit clearer, Lord,' but once I'm sure I've heard correctly I check the scriptures & get on the net. I make a pile of notes & let it sit simmering on the backburner of my mind. There's 2 reasons for this. One I write a lot in my head so that when I actually sit down at the computer it flows. The other is a practical consideration. Once I have my message written up the Holy Spirit really starts to drive me to get up & preach what I've been given to say. This is most uncomfortable when the set date is still weeks away.

Not only am I a panic merchant I discovered early on doing a message was absolutely guarrenteed to bring my whole household under spiritual attack & there is nothing worse when you are scrabbling to meet a deadline so I have taken to getting my messages finished early. Yep, I am sitting on one now. I am doing Job for Mother's Day. Odd choice but I'm not quibbling with the One giving the instructions. The next few weeks are going to be most uncomfortable. Dearest, who is always so supportive & encouraging & has never shown the least jealousy, (more like relief it's not him) has gone into prayer for me. Just at present my prayers are more like a rant & we start schooling again at the end of the week So if the thought of a female in the pulpit doesn't completely horrify you & the Spirit leads you that way, spare the odd prayer for me & my household. We are going to need all the prayer we can get.

How we got here.

I knew we were in trouble when the preschool teacher informed my twins they needed to exercise their minds as well as their bodies. By primary school they were beyond redemption, cooly informing their poor teacher they didn't come to school to learn; they came to socialize & play sport. I am not going to comment. I'm university educated; you can just imagine what I thought!

By the time Cass, who was a late baby, came along I was working the remedial literacy program at the school & had lost all faith in the education system. I was seeing far too many bright kiddies who not only couldn't read but did not have the basic tools to help themselves. I had three dyslexics myself so I knew how frustrating it was to understand & still be failing in the system.

Cass, who spoke her first full sentance at just 5 months & was walking by 8 was obviously a bright & demanding little spark. She was very like her oldest brother who got tagged g&t very early & then left to drop like a stone through the gaps in the system, ending up a bored, frustrated & very angry young man. I can't blame him. I remembered all too clearly how stressful trying to get anything done was & dealing with a school that just didn't want to be shaken out of its complacency for any reason, no matter how many children got damaged in the process. I felt too old, too vunerable, too exhausted to go through all that again.

My dearly beloved had refused to even consider home schooling; that old bogey 'socialisation' terrified him. I considered my options. The local school was going downhill fast. I spent enough time up there to know discipline was getting more difficult every year & I came close to pulling Liddy out when the jealous bevvy of grade 6/7 girls began bullying her simply because my sports minded daughter had worked & trained hard enough to start making state teams & spend weeks out of school at different meets. The thought of Cass, without any older sibling around to protect her, in that environment horrified me.

I decided a little deception was called for. I decided not to send Cass to preschool. Hubby raised no objections. It was my job to do the school thing & I just said we had enough pre~school stuff from the older kids (who all started at home) for us to be going on with. What I didn't tell him was that I was concentrating very much on Cass' pre~reading skills. Reading is the key to everything & given how distractable Cass is & was I just knew she would have trouble in a regular classromm where so many much more interesting things were happening.

Cass' weakness is chocolate. I purchased several LARGE packets of choc bits, made an alphabet of lower case letters that would fit easily into a child's hand & proceeded to bribe the child to read with chocolate. I must say she was highly motivated. I wasn't in the least sure that my ruse would work but I figured if a remedial program worked for the less able academically a bright child should do very well on it. Cass did. She began reading very quickly ~ & it didn't cost me very much in chocolate after all.

I then went to my dearest & told him we had a problem; what was our reading daughter suppossed to do in school for the first 6 months while the rest of her class caught up? Thankfully he saw we had a real problem & while nowhere near convinced agreed a year's homeschooling was in order. One year became two, then three. Cass was testing consistently high & I made sure she socialised.

I was madly insecure & Liddy was chaffing to come home to school too. Cass was reading The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe at the beginning of grade two. Without wanting a debate on Harry Potter she began wading through those books, well above her age level, & followed with all the rest of the Narnia books. The school thing was still very much my bunny but then the shock came. Dearest began discussing how we could bring Liddy home to school. He began talking about what a difference the homeschooling had made spiritually & how much easier discipline was when we weren't constantly battling a school's input. I was shocked out of my little cotton socks! Liddy came home to school for her last 4 years of high school.

Do I have days when I want to drop my daughter off at the nearest school that will have her? Yep & for sure! Do I ever wonder if I'm doing the right thing? Often. Would I put her in school? Not for any reason I can presently envision! You see we have kept tenuous links with the school for sport & music & it was Cass, not I, who decided choir was no longer for her. Why? Because a change of teacher resulted in an overlarge, disorganized, badly behaved class where very little learning took place any more. Apart from the headaches the noise gave her it made her very bad tempered. 'They're just noisy & bad,' Cass snarled, cross at giving up an activity she had previously enjyed very much. Out of the mouths of babes!

Homeschooling.

It took years before I was allowed to homeschool (& quite a bit of sleight of hand )~ a topic for another post ~ so I have always treasured being able to do it at all. I am passionate about learning. Mind you I got a fistful of kinesthetic learners & of all the learning syles they are the hardest to teach, especially when you yourself are a visual learner & academically inclined. Liddy would leave her work in little piles all over the house & follow it around, if only because she could never find the particular thing she wanted at any given moment. It was part of her learning style but I was going crazy trying to keep up with it.

Cass is easier. Firstly there is now just her, which helps. Secondly she is at least a partly visual learner which makes it easier in some ways, harder in others. We share the same flaws. I thank God every day we never sent Cass to school. She is what educators term 'Gifted & Talented'. The term makes my blood run cold. Oh, she has brains to burn & then some but academics don't interest Cass in the least. She is last in a long, long line of bright, not interested children I have spawned. I would be forever getting the sort of reports that read: Could do better if she tried. Ugh! All Cass' true gifts lie in other areas, ones not generally given a high value in our society. She is good with languages, talented musically, a very good artist & quite the performer. The last I could definitely do without. She feels she has to practise on me ~ a lot!

We muddle through the academics, Cass with her eye on finishing school just as soon as she legally can & bleating about being let go to the local high school. NOT a hope bucko! I tell her she would not have time for all the things she actually enjoys & is very good at if she had to spend most of every day in a regular classroom. She is not convinced but she is not the one who grips about the 1/2 hour walk up a VERY steep hill for flute & band. She doesn't gripe about standing for hours sometimes doing the same thing over & over because violin is nowhere near as easy as she thought it was going to be. She adores the fact she is now good enough on the piano to play duets. I envy her dexterity with art. I'm biased I know but I think she is very good.

And because life isn't fair Cass, who is overly sensitive, eager to please, highly social, got the difficult & less obviously attractive personality while Liddy, who is steel through & through, seems outwardly sweet & docile. Liddy, who doesn't care if she's liked or not, is univerally loved while poor Cass, who so loves to be adored, is very definitely an acquired taste. Those who have acquired a taste for her liken her to a full bodied red wine; not for amateur palates! Red wine gives me migraines ~ which could explain a lot!