Category Archives: Family Life

Tickets on paper

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I don’t think the girls read this – but if they do I’ll now find out.

Some years ago the house we had was your typical starter home. Not a lot of space and at Christmas even less. We ran out of room hiding the presents and at that age kids want big boxes – the bigger the pile the better Santa was. But we couldn’t hide them any longer and we couldn’t add their names because they’d get opened. And we couldn’t try and remember either. So I came up with the idea of putting raffles tickets on the presents. One ticket for the present, another for a small santa stocking they would get on Christmas Day. Worked perfectly. They got to see a growing pile of presents and on the day itself they busied themselves matching them up. After a couple of years we stopped doing that, not sure why. P mentioned earlier that she wants us to do the raffle ticket thing again. Hm. It would be really boring to do that in the same way. The pile of presents is so much less (though more expensive). So I have a plan.
Tomorrow I buy a book of raffle tickets. That’s 500 of them. We get some random ones for their presents and on the matching ticket put a small D or a small P. I then remove every ticket from the book. All these tickets + the marked ones (which match the presents) get put in a big jar. And on Christmas Day I let the girls take one at a time to see if it matches. If it matches their sister it goes back in the jar. I have doubts the plan will proceed to the proper end but it’ll be fun hearing the protests :)

Update: I had a better idea. I get all the unmarked tickets and put them in the jar. I get all the marked tickets and put them somewhere else. Then I tell the girls all the tickets are in the jar. Jacq doesn’t think that’s my best idea… the comedy value is high though.

Playing hard

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Fairly nasty incident last Friday involving Winston’s teeth, my hand, blood and a still sore hand. I posted at a forum before seeking further help and spent well over an hour earlier talking to a very nice lady who was a dog behaviourist. The super-brief version: Winston wants the top job. The super-polite reply: No. Lots of talk about the why, the how, the why, where etc. The main upshot is that the others in the house blank him for a week. He simply does not exist. Jacq will find that very very difficult. But I am the giver of food, the taker-away of food, I praise, I command, I will be obeyed and I am Number #1 and he will be left in not the slightest doubt of this. It’s all good behavioural stuff and it starts tomorrow morning.
It’s a PITA for me because I need to be downstairs more than normal so instead of the monitors I’ll be on the laptop. No biggie, but I’ll have to work a little slower. That alone will annoy me. But then if we want W to learn then it has to be done. He’s a big dog and if he bites again it’ll be the last time. And my hand is still sore.

Lobbing at angles

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I really like this attitude. You can’t feel hurt for kids, you can’t trust that they will believe you, you can’t make them learn from your experience. You can’t do a whole lot of stuff – so you may as well let them do it. Just more safely.

One point though – it mentions spears. Now I can’t be the only guy who has not yet met a woman that can throw. My girls have both meant to throw something straight down the garden and the item has flown straight over the hedge. They’ve thrown balls in entirely unexpected directions when playing with the dog. They can’t even throw jelly babies and hit me across the room. So give a girl a spear? Yeah right. Evolution took care of that one :) (cue the sexist stuff..)

Allowing kids the freedom to explore … will make them stronger and smarter and actually safer.

Go watch Ted. (10 min video)

Moving suppliers

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We used to pay little attention to the utility bills. If they said they wanted 35 quid a month (or any amount) then they got it. We took it for granted that what we saved in the summer would even out with what extra we used in the winter. Oh how wrong we were….
After going bankrupt we naturally examined where each penny was being spent. And once we got the ability to pay bills again by getting the utility back (water are okay, electric/gas aren’t too bad, phone? they make you sweat blood. No, I am not joking) we looked really hard at these budgeting schemes. Initially we left it to them and it slowly but surely slid in their favour. I don’t mean that they had our money – I mean that our debt increased. Their grip got tighter. This matters because we wanted to change suppliers.

You ring your gas supplier and say “I want to switch to someone else”. They reply “No problem, but fully settle your bill first”. And all of a sudden you can see that part of their ploy is to put that financial obstacle in your way. After all, if you are moving suppliers to save money chances are you don’t have the money around to pay that bill off. So you are more likely to stay with that costly company – who then say you can save money by having your electric / phone / broadband / satellite with them. And you can pay monthly there too…. bargain….

With the costs of energy going up (and we can only hope the Govt immediately start telling the elderly that they will help more than they do) then I’m sure many people will head over to USwitch, find the deal and only then discover just how bad their debt is. So when the Govt and journos say that so many people have yet to switch it must include not just the inertia effect but also this financial hostage taking that the energy companies deal in.

Are we switching? Hell yes. But only when Martin Lewis says so. (The only thing I will not change is my ISP. At £35 a month it’s costly but when I ring Zen I get someone who really does know all the technical stuff. I don’t ring often but when I do the last thing I want is someone reading from a screen. I also – obviously – need an excellent service which I get).

A little closer

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D got an offer from Derby University today – Behavioural Sciences Hons degree course. She’s walking on air and smiling so wide the top of her head could drop off :)

Grouch

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For the last 364 days and 20 hours the people next door have not been in residence for more than an hour in total. They decided to have a party and bring all their LOUD FRIENDS with them. So I accompanied their wailing at midnight by blasting out the Cunninglynguists (it’s the only music I have in the PS3). I hope I annoyed them, I really do.

(Bee Gees – they are playing the Bee Gees and loudly too. Baaaaaaaad)

Another Dad thing

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I passed an important parental milestone last night.

D (who is now 17!) watches Skins. I have no idea about it but she says it’s cool. There are Skins parties at what I assume are nightclubs in town and she has been to 2 so far. Last night was the 3rd. I knew she was going out and wouldn’t be back until the early hours (it was 2am in the end) but I didn’t know when. So I’m working upstairs and decide I need 5 minutes away from the screen. I head downstairs and as I wander toward the kitchen I hear the hairdryer. Turning the corner I see D drying her hair. Wearing a “little black dress”. My response – “You can’t go out in that!“. This brought a glare from D and much laughter from Jacq and P. D demanded to know why she couldn’t. I told her that she could, she looked great and that I hadn’t meant it. This was something I feel all dads have to say to their daughters’ at some point. It’s a necessary part of “how things should be”. It’s a sign that I am growing old, it was never like this in my day, that I do not understand the younger generation, that I don’t want people to have any fun, that I should buy her sackcloth if I didn’t want her to look good – all those stereotypes. The look on D’s face was excellent though – she really thought I meant it :)

It’s a loo.

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We finally have a downstairs toilet. The sparky needs to fit a light and wire that and the fan, but it’s otherwise there and working. J no longer has to fight her way up and down the stairs many times every day. This isn’t just a good thing, it’s a fantastically wonderful thing. It’s one thing to be worn by doing something you like and quite something else to have the strength to cope with the calls of nature – the second leaves no energy for the first. Add into this that the last interferon jab went well and although MS is never good, it’s on the better side of bad right now. When I get the names of the people who did it I’ll blog them because each one I would recommend without hesitation.

Green needles have arrived.

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The (real) tree is up, the sparkly lights lit (one set don’t work so they go back to Tesco tomorrow), Home Alone has had it’s first of many viewings, Santa Clause 1 2 and 3 have been seen, xmas music has been played, Noddy Holder’s Top whatever was on The Hits. P sat watching a video on there saying “Who is he? never heard of him. I know him he’s SO young. Look at her hair. Look at HIS hair! This is terrible music. What ARE they wearing..” It was the Band Aid vid from 198x. Makes me feel older when my youngest daughter says things like that. But she makes excellent mince pies and cookies so she is forgiven.
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Dogs should be big.

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A friend of D’s asked if she could look after his dogs while he is away for a night. She said Yes. They arrived yesterday (and thankfully are going today). They epitomise everything I dislike about dogs.
They are constantly pleased to see me, their tails never stop wagging, they seem to want to be under my feet, they scamper around, they sit and look all forlorn at me. I had to come downstairs in the early hours and as I opened the door to the lounge they were both sat there wagging their tails so hard they were actually wobbling. It’s that ‘Dogs worship you while cats expect you to worship them’ thing. Annoys me intensely.
The reason why Winston is cool is that first he’s huge. If you are going to have a dog, have a dog. He does none of this fawning rubbish. Get back after being out and he’ll say hello and that’s about it. Play Hide and Seek while out and he’ll be momentarily pleased then he’ll charge off. He doesn’t scamper – though at at least 13/14st that would be tricky – and he doesn’t fawn and look forlorn. Sure he’s got that droopy look but that’s because his skin is too heavy for his face (“No J, he is not sad, he is not asking, he doesn’t look hard done to – it’s just how he always looks so no he can’t have it – he’s a dog” “Yes, I am harsh :) “). But Winston isn’t a wuss. He’s a great big dog and 99% of the time he acts like one. The two little wretches from the friend’s house (who our cat isn’t fazed by at all and who is bigger than one of them) are just so…pointless.