Screen time

I've spent a lot of time on the computer today, going goggle-eyed, but getting a few things done.  Outside the rain poured down, as promised.  Something to do with Hurricane Nicole they say.

After school the Boy had a playdate with his Japanese classmate.  He lives in a furnished, rented house.  One of the fixtures is an ENORMOUS flatscreen television, the biggest I've ever seen.  That plus access to a Wii and a DS equalled much joy for the Boy! 

I had a haircut yesterday.  For once I didn't go to CheapoCuts but chose a place where the hairdressers had trained in their craft somewhere other than an army base.  Now that was a radical idea - and a good move. I'm pleased with the result. 

Chipper

Yesterday was dull, drizzly and strangely humid, but today has been perfect.  Tomorrow they're predicting floods.  It's all go here.

I have several fair trade irons in the fire right now - not interesting to describe just yet, but potentially exciting.  So I'm busy.  But given the loveliness of the weather and the awfulness of the forecast I made sure to spend a little time at Five Rivers this afternoon.

It's all looking very glorious there right now, as you can see.  Compare the tree with one I photographed only a week ago - Fall is progressing apace.

There was a lot of squeaking and scuttering going on in the undergrowth, and I caught sight of several chipmunks.  They are fast movers and difficult to catch on camera, but this one obligingly played statues with me and I managed this snap, from a distance.

Found in translation

I kept the Girl home today with a cold too stinky to be shared with her classmates.  She flopped around half the day, but rallied mid-afternoon and insisted on scootering to the local diner for hotdog and fries - all in all I think she'll be fit for school again tomorrow.

Late morning I left her watching a DVD and went to visit a new friend, the mother of a kid in the Boy's class.  We have things in common: her husband and mine are in the same line of work, and our families have both transferred here from overseas.  But their move has been much more courageous and challenging than ours - they came from Japan 18 months ago, she with little English and her sons none at all.  They're doing fine now, but she said it was very hard to begin with.  We had a good chat.  It seemed to work for us each to speak our own language and throw in translations when required.  I was amazed by what I managed to drag out from the attic of my mind - Japanese words and phrases that have been gathering dust in there for more than twenty years.

Tonight we've been watching a video of the kids from five years ago.  Our first thought was "Wow, haven't they grown!"  Yet characterwise they've hardly changed at all.

Acrimonious acronym

Minus a long bus ride, the kids now have a much shorter school day than before, with more than an hour extra to spend at home at either end of the day. To balance this, they also have homework much more regularly than they used to. Not an unmanageable amount, but enough to complain about now that the novelty is wearing off.

I try to explain to them that if they put a bit less effort into moaning how much they hate Math, Spelling or whatever it happens to be, and a bit more into doing the work they might actually get it done more quickly. But this inarguable advice apparently just makes it all worse. So tonight, in exasperation, I introduced my daughter to one of her dad's favourite acronyms:

JBDI.

Just Bloody Do It!

Fellow parents of school-age kids, how do you get yours to do their homework?

Leaf it out

We got the panda-eyed Girl back around lunchtime today. She's a bit short on details of what went on at her camp-out, but activities included boating, cooking hotdogs over an open fire and reading by flashlight, so that all sounds pretty much like fun.

We've had an odds and ends kind of day, a fair bit of it spent outdoors. We have various jobs to get done in the yard before winter and we've been getting started on some of them. Still-summer-ish weather nothwithstanding, the leaves are beginning to fall (largely collecting in the sadly neglected pool) - soon we'll be having to bring the rakes out.

Treasure seeker

So, the festive day dawned.  But before I could get stuck into it I had to deliver the Girl to a meeting point from which she set off for an overnight Girl Scout camp.   No doubt we'll hear all about her adventures tomorrow (unless she's grumpy beyond speaking due to lack of sleep).

It didn't take long to set out all the craft equipment in my regular corner at Five Rivers.  Then from noon until four I helped a steady stream of children make butterfly finger-puppets out of scraps of newspaper and pages from an L.L.Bean catalogue.  For another table I'd prepared a "Paws off my lunch!" potato-printing activity - stamping brown paper lunchbags with racoon and coyote paw-marks.  And at yet a third table kids were using stickers to decorate plastic milk-jugs which another volunteer had spent all year turning into birdfeeders.  I think all the children were pretty satisfied with their creations, and it felt like a job well done.

Meanwhile the Man and the Boy (plus various friends who also turned up) got to explore the rest of the festival. By all accounts the top activity this year was a GPS treasure hunt - using satellite tracking devices to search for tins, then trying to identify the contents (skulls, skins and other interesting animal remains). 

It was the best weather yet for this excellent festival - warm and sunny and without the seasonal breezes that can cause havoc when you're doing outdoor crafts involving paper.  Attendance was high, and visitors and volunteers alike seemed very happy with the whole event.

Spirited away

This can't be right - it's late September, but we've got the air-conditioning on.

Temperatures were nudging 90F by this evening, and it's been pretty muggy all day.  The Girl, who set off this morning in "school spirit" colours came home almost melted.  The only clothes she happens to have in the school's official colours are a long-sleeved shirt and warm skating trousers - so she sat and sweltered loyally all day.  The Boy, who is getting on better at school now but is still rather lacking in "spirit", fared better in his randomly chosen shorts and t-shirt.

I've stayed in today, finishing up my preparations for the Five Rivers Fall Festival craft area.  Just like last year I'm trying to be creative with rubbish.  I know these little projects will still make it into the landfill eventually, but the point is to give kids and their carers the idea that crafts don't have to involve expensive materials.  I hope we'll have some fun with these and some other ideas tomorrow.