[newspaper article]
BREAKING NEWS!!!!
Hamster steals bombs!
Apparently, a hamster called Pip, in the grade 4T class, Kings College and Preparatory School, Gauteng, South Africa, is illegally hiding tiny bombs in his toilet roll. It appears he is sneaking out of his cage at night, and robbing the local explosives store. Nobody knows why he is doing it, but we have some suggestions, like he is an evil mastermind, his cage is too small, so he is trying to blow it up to give himself more space, and, he thinks dynamite will make class more fun. We are still trying to find out why he is doing it. The whole of grades 4 and 5, are not allowed to go to school, in case the bombs are set off. Pips very words were: 'squeak, squeak, squeak!' We think he pleads 'not guilty'. You will be informed if we find out any more about this case.
By Megan
This article was inspired by the grade 4T's new class hamster, Pip.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Worst mother of the year....
That title has to go to me after today. I would challenge other mothers to beat this, but that would mean a whole lot of kids out there fearing for their lives!!!
I was de-scaling my iron in the kitchen while the kids were hanging around. I squirted with the squirty button and Ali responded with a 'hey, that's cool, mom'. And so, you will NOT BELIEVE what I then did..... I pointed the squirty thing at him and squeezed, thereby squirting a large amount of descaler right into his eyes! I have been known to do stupid things, but this one pretty much takes the cake (other than the time I let Ali, age 2 or 3, eat a hard boiled sweet, on which he choked and I thought he was going to die there and then - remember that Girls???).
So, once he started writhing in pain, and I realised what I had done, it was straight to the sink for some serious flushing. It didn't work so well with the water running, so I ran a sink and made him submerge his head and do a lot of underwater blinking. Problem was, that involved coming up for breath, so I went and got his snorkel, and there was Ali, bent double over the kitchen sink with his head underwater and breathing through his snorkel!
Bent double, as I'm sure you are with laughter at the picture of what was happening in my kitchen today!
Anyway, he seems OK now. The doctor said to monitor him and bring him in tomorrow if he is in pain.
Fortunately, I have Carl for a husband who made a comment along the lines of:
'oh well, at least the scales have fallen from his eyes!'.
I always warned Carl that things are most likely to go wrong on my watch!
I was de-scaling my iron in the kitchen while the kids were hanging around. I squirted with the squirty button and Ali responded with a 'hey, that's cool, mom'. And so, you will NOT BELIEVE what I then did..... I pointed the squirty thing at him and squeezed, thereby squirting a large amount of descaler right into his eyes! I have been known to do stupid things, but this one pretty much takes the cake (other than the time I let Ali, age 2 or 3, eat a hard boiled sweet, on which he choked and I thought he was going to die there and then - remember that Girls???).
So, once he started writhing in pain, and I realised what I had done, it was straight to the sink for some serious flushing. It didn't work so well with the water running, so I ran a sink and made him submerge his head and do a lot of underwater blinking. Problem was, that involved coming up for breath, so I went and got his snorkel, and there was Ali, bent double over the kitchen sink with his head underwater and breathing through his snorkel!
Bent double, as I'm sure you are with laughter at the picture of what was happening in my kitchen today!
Anyway, he seems OK now. The doctor said to monitor him and bring him in tomorrow if he is in pain.
Fortunately, I have Carl for a husband who made a comment along the lines of:
'oh well, at least the scales have fallen from his eyes!'.
I always warned Carl that things are most likely to go wrong on my watch!
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Meg's Birthday
As mentioned in the post before this, Meg turned 10 last week. So, Saturday was the great party. I am delighted to report that as they get older, the parties get better and better. As in, fewer and fewer kids and the ability to do more interesting things with them. Hooray, no more enormous parties where catering for the moms is more stressful than having forty 3 year olds trashing your house!!!
Megan chose Sci Bono as her party venue of choice this year, which, over and above being a great venue, is FREE on weekends! For those who don't know, Sci bono is a hand's on science museum in Newtown (central JHB). The drive there is pretty dodgy, but once there, what a place! My folks joined us, and there were 8 kids in total ( so a 2:1 ratio of kids:adults - not bad!).
There are so many displays involving magnetism, electricity, sound, brain teasers etc etc. Carl felt that the kids didn't exactly get the ultimate learning experience out of each display (and said on more than one occasion that he can see why they make these displays tough!) but the kids had a blast. I'm going to let the pictures do the talking:
The squonky mirror is always a hit!
Ryan and Louise trying to get the stick from one end to the other without setting off the alarm.
The kids load testing the suspension bridge!
This picture looks weird, but Ali and Louise are playing 'virtual soccer'.
Marco making a picture out of magnets and the other trying to guess what it is.
The ultimate highlight! A Murray and Roberts house to build out of foam bricks and cement. Much co-operation was required and it was fun to watch the kids sort themselves out! Not much intervention required (except to stop blood being drawn, of course!).
I think fun was had by all!!
Ahhh, Rats!
My little girl has turned 10. You may suspect that at her age she may have asked for ..... a PlayStation? brat's doll? Ipod? Wii? No, no, no and no.
She asked for (and got!) A RAT!!!!
We now have a 6 week old white rat with pink eyes who goes by the lovely name of Penny. My apologies to all the Penny's out there that I know - I had nothing to do with choosing the name!
Megan is besotted, and even I am forced to admit that she is quite sweet, for now! I dread her getting big! My biggest concern is that 'Penny' may actually be 'Percy' and if anyone has ever seen a boy rat, you will know that it is not a pretty sight! Problem is that we can't exactly kill it off it when we see some 'you know what's' starting to appear!
Next problem is that Ali also wants a rat, and in a way, I agree as little Penny must be pretty lonely. However, if we end up with two of opposite sex, we all know where that will end up!
Oh dear, the things we let ourselves in for!
She asked for (and got!) A RAT!!!!
We now have a 6 week old white rat with pink eyes who goes by the lovely name of Penny. My apologies to all the Penny's out there that I know - I had nothing to do with choosing the name!
Megan is besotted, and even I am forced to admit that she is quite sweet, for now! I dread her getting big! My biggest concern is that 'Penny' may actually be 'Percy' and if anyone has ever seen a boy rat, you will know that it is not a pretty sight! Problem is that we can't exactly kill it off it when we see some 'you know what's' starting to appear!
Next problem is that Ali also wants a rat, and in a way, I agree as little Penny must be pretty lonely. However, if we end up with two of opposite sex, we all know where that will end up!
Oh dear, the things we let ourselves in for!
Friday, June 5, 2009
The Great Escape
I suppose it is less 'the Great Escape' and more 'Taking the Opportunity'....
Grumpy Jack, our pet cockatiel flew away today. How, you might ask? Well, actually he was sitting on my shoulder and I went outside with him. On seeing the painter, he took fright, and took off. Terribly irresponsible of me, I know. Especially when he escaped only last week, but I managed to rescue him, AND the fact that my father found him in his garden and gave him to us, so he had obviously escaped from his previous owner. All that considered, I am clearly a slow learner!!! And Carl even managed to not say 'I told you so' - I was impressed!!!.
So, all that aside, he was gone!!! Much distress on my part (how was I going to explain to the kids that I had lost him???), and if the truth be known, I'm actually quite fond of the old codger, even though he drives me quite mad (you do all know I'm talking about the bird, not Carl?). I called and called and called, but after a while he stopped responding. So, I did all the things a responsible pet owner would do - contact the community via email, buzz on neighbour's gates in garden's where I thought he may have flown to, write signs on the community notice board, and trawl the streets calling 'Grumpy, Grumpy'. I shamed myself!
I had quite given up hope when I went outside to greet an electrician who had arrived to do a job. Grumpy was obviously close enough to hear my voice and started cheeping to me. So, every time I called, he responded! We managed to pin point him to the house diagonally behind us. Unfortunately they were not there, so I couldn't get in the conventional method....
which led to some creativity. I had the painter's ladder leaning against the wall/barbed wire fence, precariously close to the other neighbour's electric fence, and from there I could actually see Grumpy and I called and called and called and called. Well, let me say, that the phrase 'bird brain' did not come about for nothing!!! Eventually, I was on the verge of climbing into the next door garden, braving said fencing, when another electrician, who had come to do another job, and fortunately for me, is a consummate gentleman, persuaded me down the ladder and he bravely took on the fencing! Perhaps, being an electrician, he has a certain immunity to electric fencing? I'm not sure, but luckily (for him!), we never got to test that little theory of mine. Anyway, once he got near Grumpy, Grumpy took off again, by which time I was back up the ladder, and he flew to me. Amazing!
I forgot to tell you that the whole event was witnessed by my domestic worker, the gardener, 2 painters, 2 electricians and their assistants! Did I mention that I shamed myself?
Do I even need to tell you that I was at the vet's this afternoon having his wings clipped?
Grumpy Jack, our pet cockatiel flew away today. How, you might ask? Well, actually he was sitting on my shoulder and I went outside with him. On seeing the painter, he took fright, and took off. Terribly irresponsible of me, I know. Especially when he escaped only last week, but I managed to rescue him, AND the fact that my father found him in his garden and gave him to us, so he had obviously escaped from his previous owner. All that considered, I am clearly a slow learner!!! And Carl even managed to not say 'I told you so' - I was impressed!!!.
So, all that aside, he was gone!!! Much distress on my part (how was I going to explain to the kids that I had lost him???), and if the truth be known, I'm actually quite fond of the old codger, even though he drives me quite mad (you do all know I'm talking about the bird, not Carl?). I called and called and called, but after a while he stopped responding. So, I did all the things a responsible pet owner would do - contact the community via email, buzz on neighbour's gates in garden's where I thought he may have flown to, write signs on the community notice board, and trawl the streets calling 'Grumpy, Grumpy'. I shamed myself!
I had quite given up hope when I went outside to greet an electrician who had arrived to do a job. Grumpy was obviously close enough to hear my voice and started cheeping to me. So, every time I called, he responded! We managed to pin point him to the house diagonally behind us. Unfortunately they were not there, so I couldn't get in the conventional method....
which led to some creativity. I had the painter's ladder leaning against the wall/barbed wire fence, precariously close to the other neighbour's electric fence, and from there I could actually see Grumpy and I called and called and called and called. Well, let me say, that the phrase 'bird brain' did not come about for nothing!!! Eventually, I was on the verge of climbing into the next door garden, braving said fencing, when another electrician, who had come to do another job, and fortunately for me, is a consummate gentleman, persuaded me down the ladder and he bravely took on the fencing! Perhaps, being an electrician, he has a certain immunity to electric fencing? I'm not sure, but luckily (for him!), we never got to test that little theory of mine. Anyway, once he got near Grumpy, Grumpy took off again, by which time I was back up the ladder, and he flew to me. Amazing!
I forgot to tell you that the whole event was witnessed by my domestic worker, the gardener, 2 painters, 2 electricians and their assistants! Did I mention that I shamed myself?
Do I even need to tell you that I was at the vet's this afternoon having his wings clipped?
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Something fishy!!!
Something strange is going on...
I have just made a fish dish for my family's dinner. And it was actually tasty! Now this is coming from someone who, in 14 years of marriage has almost never cooked fish (other than fish fingers for the kids, but that doesn't count!). From now on I am going to try and give us fish once a week and a vegetarian meal once a week. And buy organic food. And try and have more fruit in my diet.
Can I be that close to 40 already????
I have just made a fish dish for my family's dinner. And it was actually tasty! Now this is coming from someone who, in 14 years of marriage has almost never cooked fish (other than fish fingers for the kids, but that doesn't count!). From now on I am going to try and give us fish once a week and a vegetarian meal once a week. And buy organic food. And try and have more fruit in my diet.
Can I be that close to 40 already????
Monday, June 1, 2009
Simple Pleasures
I have decided to do small inserts of the simple pleasures of life - things that happen often, but don't often get a mention. You know, things that give your spirit a lift?
My first one is my bedroom in the winter. I walk in there on a cold winter's afternoon, and this is what greets me....
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