It's been a busy week.
There ... too clichéd; too lame? ... the most impoverished of all poor excuses - "I've been busy." So anyone left dangling on a thread of anxiety for Bertie Baggins and his unfortunate post-op complication, has had to wait.
And wait. While I marshalled children - feeding them, laundering their clothes, listening to their revision woes - and worked to earn the cash for their keep.
Makes it sound like I don't like the holidays. However, the opposite is true. I have never been able to relate to the type of parent who gets stressed at the thought of having their child/ren home for a full 24 hours, or worse, for several 24 hour stretches in a row. They are usually the ambitious must-fill-every-waking-second-of-little-George-or-Daisy's-day-with-something-deeply-meaningful. (Apologies, if I have temporarily forgotten that I know someone with a child called George or Daisy, I am not referring to you!) These are sometimes called 'helicopter parents' - zooming around frantically with their children and descending to interfere in all their little life experiences - and are easily identified. They are the I-work-all-day-and-provide-a-taxi-service-all-evening-and-on-top-of-that-have-to-do-my-child's-maths-so-that-we-don't-lose-that-top-of-the-class-record-and-yes-I'm-knackered-but-it's-all-worth-it-because-we-have-a-top-university-in-our-sights parents. This obsession starts when the child starts pre-school and finishes when the parent or child or both suffers a melt-down.
Helicopter parents, pre-meltdown, hate holidays, consider pyjama-days the invention of evil-barely-literate-children's-television-broadcasters who push slothful behaviour on the vast majority of normal semi-neglected children, whose parents don't care enough and are out there getting a life of their own, and function entirely through the dictatorship of the Family Holiday Timetable. Honestly. These exist. Well ... at least one did. I saw it, a few years ago - four neat columns; hour-long slots; headings and stickers - music practice, lunch, see to the rabbits, homework, reading, different musical instrument practice, tennis lesson, learning times tables, swimming etc.... and not one minute for the necessities of life - what if you linger in the loo, distracted by a magazine? (Actually, the eldest child was seven and the only reading material in the toilet was a back issue of the Financial Times ... guess where Dad went to escape the tyranny of his column on the timetable). Would tardiness result in a knocking on effect, with the next hour starting at say, five past? As they got older, I wonder if the children challenged each other to see which could go most off-timetable? How far they could stretch a walk to the tennis lesson? How many times "I got a puncture" would delay getting home in time for music practice? And what happened if they were invited to a (time rich, experience poor) party? Needless to say, they were exhausting to know and we didn't keep in touch. I don't think they approved of our more relaxed if-they-want-to-play-with-lego-it's-not-the-perfect-opportunity-for-an-engineering-lesson and painting-is-all-about-getting-paint-on-our-all-day-pyjamas-and-the-table-and-the-floor (more Jackson Pollock than Rembrandt when you think about it and a lot more fun) and listening-to-music-other-than-classical-won't-rot-their-brains attitude.
This holiday has been all about exam preparation, essay writing, composition and a sickly puppy but I love having my kids home. Always have and always will.
When they go, as Eldest did today (back to Uni and exam term), I hug them, walk around for a few days with the empty space left by their absence and then look forward to the next time. When they come back home.
Anyway, as a device for conveying how busy I was last week, my over-lengthy paragraph is either irritating, because you still don't know how Bertie Baggins is, or particularly apt in a slow procrastinating way that illustrates just how long my week felt.
So ... drum-roll (this will make no sense at all to someone visiting this blog for the first time! ... thus a rapid summary of the situation: Bertie Baggins - male (obviously!) puppy; lost his balls and subsequently his inclination to jump, 10 days ago, due to a massive post-op haematoma) ...
There ... too clichéd; too lame? ... the most impoverished of all poor excuses - "I've been busy." So anyone left dangling on a thread of anxiety for Bertie Baggins and his unfortunate post-op complication, has had to wait.
And wait. While I marshalled children - feeding them, laundering their clothes, listening to their revision woes - and worked to earn the cash for their keep.
Makes it sound like I don't like the holidays. However, the opposite is true. I have never been able to relate to the type of parent who gets stressed at the thought of having their child/ren home for a full 24 hours, or worse, for several 24 hour stretches in a row. They are usually the ambitious must-fill-every-waking-second-of-little-George-or-Daisy's-day-with-something-deeply-meaningful. (Apologies, if I have temporarily forgotten that I know someone with a child called George or Daisy, I am not referring to you!) These are sometimes called 'helicopter parents' - zooming around frantically with their children and descending to interfere in all their little life experiences - and are easily identified. They are the I-work-all-day-and-provide-a-taxi-service-all-evening-and-on-top-of-that-have-to-do-my-child's-maths-so-that-we-don't-lose-that-top-of-the-class-record-and-yes-I'm-knackered-but-it's-all-worth-it-because-we-have-a-top-university-in-our-sights parents. This obsession starts when the child starts pre-school and finishes when the parent or child or both suffers a melt-down.
Helicopter parents, pre-meltdown, hate holidays, consider pyjama-days the invention of evil-barely-literate-children's-television-broadcasters who push slothful behaviour on the vast majority of normal semi-neglected children, whose parents don't care enough and are out there getting a life of their own, and function entirely through the dictatorship of the Family Holiday Timetable. Honestly. These exist. Well ... at least one did. I saw it, a few years ago - four neat columns; hour-long slots; headings and stickers - music practice, lunch, see to the rabbits, homework, reading, different musical instrument practice, tennis lesson, learning times tables, swimming etc.... and not one minute for the necessities of life - what if you linger in the loo, distracted by a magazine? (Actually, the eldest child was seven and the only reading material in the toilet was a back issue of the Financial Times ... guess where Dad went to escape the tyranny of his column on the timetable). Would tardiness result in a knocking on effect, with the next hour starting at say, five past? As they got older, I wonder if the children challenged each other to see which could go most off-timetable? How far they could stretch a walk to the tennis lesson? How many times "I got a puncture" would delay getting home in time for music practice? And what happened if they were invited to a (time rich, experience poor) party? Needless to say, they were exhausting to know and we didn't keep in touch. I don't think they approved of our more relaxed if-they-want-to-play-with-lego-it's-not-the-perfect-opportunity-for-an-engineering-lesson and painting-is-all-about-getting-paint-on-our-all-day-pyjamas-and-the-table-and-the-floor (more Jackson Pollock than Rembrandt when you think about it and a lot more fun) and listening-to-music-other-than-classical-won't-rot-their-brains attitude.
This holiday has been all about exam preparation, essay writing, composition and a sickly puppy but I love having my kids home. Always have and always will.
When they go, as Eldest did today (back to Uni and exam term), I hug them, walk around for a few days with the empty space left by their absence and then look forward to the next time. When they come back home.
Anyway, as a device for conveying how busy I was last week, my over-lengthy paragraph is either irritating, because you still don't know how Bertie Baggins is, or particularly apt in a slow procrastinating way that illustrates just how long my week felt.
So ... drum-roll (this will make no sense at all to someone visiting this blog for the first time! ... thus a rapid summary of the situation: Bertie Baggins - male (obviously!) puppy; lost his balls and subsequently his inclination to jump, 10 days ago, due to a massive post-op haematoma) ...
Still swollen, still sore, but definitely got his bounce back.
Dogs don't need balls to fly ...
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