If you've got time, stay and listen to my story...

I think I've known all of you long enough now that you may all remember this incident in September 2008, where my flat got flooded out after heavy rainfall.

( Yeah. Guess what.... )

The summer hols are almost over once more - thank god. It's been trying, as always, and I'll be glad when I no longer need to arrange childcare for Rowan while I'm at work.

He spent the first week camping at Chepstow Racecourse with the St John Ambulance, and he seems to have hated every minute of it. I missed him while he was away, and didn't get anything done that I had planned - I mostly came home from work and crashed out for the evening. I did take the opportunity to go see 'Captain America', though I would have preferred not to go alone. Such is my life, however.

Since he got back, he's spent the first three days of each week at his usual holiday club in a nearby leisure centre, then Thursdays with his grandmother. On Fridays I've been taking him with me to the rehearsals I've been running for the alto section of my choir - though only one or two ever turn up, and they're usually the ones that make the effort to attend the regular rehearsals every week and only need a little bit extra practise. The whole point was for the people who've missed several weeks, or are new, to get the chance to catch up! *sigh* I realise it's not easy for everyone to make it - I get excuses about meetings and team lunches and all sorts - so I try not to let it get to me. It can be hard to reign in my inner Rachel Berry though, when I hear people in my section bemoaning how they 'don't know this one' - they're not even practising at home! *grrr*

Anyway. After the rehearsal is done, Rowan and I go get a bite to eat and spend the afternoon doing something fun. Usually it's the cinema; we've seen 'Harry Potter', 'The Smurfs' (though in 2D - I recommend the 3D as I think we missed out in certain places. Didn't expect to, as most of the 3D in the films I've seen have been shoehorned in) and yesterday we went to see 'Glee In Concert'.

Best. Use. Of. 3D. Ever!

I don't care if anyone's sneering at the screen now, 'cause we went to see that. I loved it, and so did Rowan.

Last Friday I took Rowan swimming - something I haven't done since he was a baby, though he's spent time in the pool over the last couple of years through school. We were in the water for about two and a half hours, and loved every minute of it. He can't actually swim yet, but his confidence in the water is wonderful; we messed around with the floats a lot, pulling each other through the water, and he would cling to my back while I jumped around, both of us laughing like idiots. The last hour or so, we were deep in the middle of the pool - one of the advantages of me being short and him being tall is that we can currently mess around at more or less the same depth - and he was launching himself off my thighs into the water, trying to do somersaults. The only sad thing about it was that they never put the wave machine on the whole time we were there *pout*

The next day, we were joined by Rowan's classmate Lewis, and Lewis's little sister Eryn. Their parents were having to move house - all the way to the other side of the city too, so they've had to change schools.... *sulks* - so we kept Lewis and Eryn entertained for the day. They have four kids in total, the eldest being old enough to help out with the move, but I wouldn't have been able to cope with the toddler as well. Rowan's excitable enough when he has friends around, but when Eryn's around it's like they're a pair of Tazmanian Devils! *laughs* Neither of them were truly naughty, though I had to tell Eryn off more times than I'm used to 'cause she kept running off, and Lewis is always well behaved. We took them bowling down the Bay, which went well, then they cleaned me out on the amusement arcade *sigh* But I think they all had fun, and their Dad came to collect them just as I was dishing up some pasta for their tea. Going to miss having them all around, but hopefully the 'net will help with keeping in touch.

Work's been as dull as ever, and there's less work to go around at the moment too. We get our work allocated to us through an Excel spreadsheet - and hasn't that been a nightmare, having up to thirty people trying to work off the same file simultaneously! - and they've recently started training up previously 'phones-only teams to do some of our work. Which, of course, means there's less for the rest of us... *eyeroll* I really hate coming in of a morning to find maybe an hour and a half's work for me, then have to spend the rest of my - admittedly short - shift trying to locate more. My productivity always seems to suffer when I have to go looking.

There has been a new development, however. They're looking into testing how feasible it would be to have staff working from home. I think the main focus is on 'phones staff, as IT will have to install a system and phone into the work area of whoever tests it, but I emailed the Ops Manager asking whether this would also apply to someone like me since it would be very, very easy to arrange. All I would need would be access to the database software that hold's the policy files, the excel files we work off, and my work email account. I didn't hear back from Wayne, but a couple of days later I'm included in an email to those who have been selected to do the trial! I honestly don't know how well it would work out for me - I don't have a room I can use as an 'office', just a small desk over to the side of the living room where the home PC is. But depending on how they would expect me to organise my work hours, it could make things a lot easier for me regarding childcare - or I could find being at home extremely distracting. I honestly don't know, but it might be fun to find out. Plus attending choir might be a bit of a challenge, since it's a thirty minute bus ride each way. The trial's supposed to be for between four and six months - we'll just have to wait and see.

My new course for the Open University begins in about six weeks! *bites nails* It's a music course, and I've been going through their preparatory programme to revise the music theory I was supposed to have been taught during my GCSEs. As I'm sure you can imagine, the music department in my school wasn't that well funded and it was considered a 'bird course' by five out of the nine pupils in my class. I've been learning how the Sibelius software we've been provided works, mostly by painstakingly typing in scores out of my collection of song books - that is the best fun ever! And it helps cement some of the mechanics of music into my head as I go so it's not a waste of time. I'm really looking forward to the course itself, and once Rowan's back in school I'll have the majority of my Fridays back to get stuck in before it actually starts in October.

We have lots happening in the choir too; Mardis Gras next Saturday, which should be a blast, then we have a gig in London a couple of weeks later!! Just a small one in a hotel in Picadilly, but it has some sort of link to the BAFTAs? *hands* Then at the end of September we're throwing a party at the Tiger Tiger nightclub as a fund-raiser for our album, before we get stuck in to actually making it at the end of October! \O/ I honestly can't wait! We should have the actual discs in our grubby little paws by Christmas!

We actually had ours yesterday, 'cause Mam and Dad are both working till late this evening. Good thing too, as I am absolutely crap at making pancakes!

Yes I know it's one of the easiest-things-ever-OMG - but I tend to fail at any kind of cooking where the ingredients blend into a final, solid product. Ask me to make a stir-fry, or pasta, or something and I will serve you something reasonably edible, but cakes, omelettes, pancakes... they always come out wrong.

Anyway. There was a tradition growing up - I may well have mentioned this before - where my Mam would mix up the pancake batter, then she'd leave Dad to do the actual cooking and I would scurry back and forth between the kitchen and the front room bringing out the finished products. A few years back something changed and Mam is now the one who does all the cooking, while I still play waitress. We were talking about this last night, as Mam wasn't entirely gracious at being stuck doing it again (read: she went into the kitchen and got on with it). I went and joined her, taking responsibility for the sugar and lemon juice on the finished product. No-one told me I over-lemoned them, so all's good! :-)

I did joke that it was traditionally Rowan's job to be doing the serving, as the youngest, but that we had somehow stuck with history rather than tradition. Rowan, tucking into his pancakes - the first batch Mam made, and covered in marshmallows and strawberry ice cream sauce by me - responded with a "Nuh!" *laughs*

Once Rowan was full, and once Dad was full, Mam started on mine. While I ate mine, I stayed in the kitchen to add the sugar and lemon to Mam's. I prefer them with banana slices and maple syrup, but on Shrove Tuesday I tend to stick to the traditional currants, sugar and lemon juice. I think I ate about five in the end.... headed home feeling very bloated indeed!

Starting officially tomorrow (unofficially today - I was good till teatime!) I'm forgoing sweet stuff as much as possible until Easter Sunday. Hopefully that'll put me back on track for fixing my appalling diet! We put together a menu for our evening meals which we've been trying to follow for a couple of weeks now; we chose which main 'ingredient' we would have on which day (Pasta on monday, rice on tuesday, etc.) and then made a list of which things we both like to have with them - the idea is that I can prepare something for tea without him arguing as much. When we lived with my parents Rowan got just that little too used to having his say on everything, so it can be a battle to get him to accept when I need things to be a certain way. I did notice that the first week I followed this menu plan I was finding myself thinking of things to actually cook, rather than throw together in the oven - Thursdays, for example, is soup, because he has to go to Badgers at 6pm. I've been toying with occasionally slow-cooking some soup, instead of always opening a tin! How weird is that! *laughs*

I was fully expecting to get woken up early this morning by a frantic nine year old demanding to know where his video games had gone.

Over the last couple of weeks, he's snuck one of our DS's into bed with him - including finding them from their hiding places in my room. I always catch him out, even if he does manage to get away with it till the next morning, and he always gets banned from playing on them for a week. Unfortunately, he is so impatient he kept sneaking them back into his room before his ban was due to be lifted, thereby extending it.

On Friday evening, I warned him that if he did it one more time I was going to box up all his DS, Wii and PS2 games, and lock him out of the computer (Love Windows 7!). So when I caught him out again last night, that's exactly what I did. The only games on the shelves at the moment are the ones I play.

However, instead of kicking up a fuss, he merely made the best of it and entertained himself with my Wii Fit and Band Hero. The only wobbly he threw was around half past two this afternoon, when he tried to log into the PC and found himself locked out.

Might not sound like he's being punished, based on his behaviour today, but trust me. The remaining games will lose their appeal very, very quickly - I expect he'll start to kick off tomorrow after he gets home from holiday camp. But in the meantime it's been quite surprising how accepting he's been of the situation.

Right now I'm just hoping he'll go to sleep - camp opens at 8.15 am for breakfast...

I'm still recovering from the weekend in England; three days of travelling and late nights, plus difficulty sleeping really got to me. Plus for most of the last week my upper back and shoulders have been sore; I think it's time I made Rowan carry his own luggage, rather than struggle with it all in one big holdall *winces* My back's alright now, thankfully.

Last night, however, I was settled down in bed having a quick read before turning the light off. Then, all of a sudden I heard a noise that sounded exactly like Rowan exhaling in his sleep... But he was in his own room, right?

Apparently not!

I shifted the duvet around, even though I knew he wasn't in the bed, then looked around the room; I found him snuggled under his own duvet, on the floor, in the gap between the bed and the external wall! I couldn't help laughing, though I had to do it quietly so as not to waken him. I have no idea when he snuck into my room last night, but he'd better not make a habit of it.

I had a final check of him when I was ready to turn the lamp out, and he'd disturbed enough at that point to speak to me. I was a bit stern with him, 'cause this was a naughty thing he'd done, and told him he had to stay there. I'm entirely out of the habit of sharing my bed - or even the room - with anyone, and I sleep badly when I do. Of course, after about fifteen minutes he figured I must be asleep, and tried to softly creep into bed - which of course was even worse than if he'd simply gotten in. So I had to tell him to just get in already and go to sleep!

Typically he was up again before six thirty - and had to crawl over me to get out of bed! :-p

Kids!

Today was my annual appraisal - been with the company seven years now! o.O I always dread these things, as I'm not comfortable talking about myself and never know what they actually want of me - management-ese sucks! Last year I actually burst into tears, even though my manager at the time wasn't being nasty with me. I just get that defensive and wound up.

This year was a completely different story. I was given a ten page document to go through before the meeting; ten lists, printed landscape rather than portrait so not as much as it sounds, where I had to rank myself on a scale of one to five. Things like how well I relate to my colleagues, whether I am confident of my procedural knowledge, things like that. My manager and I were to then go through the lists, discuss my responses, and he would give his own responses.

I have something of a mental block on giving myself top marks in anything, so I mostly gave myself fours, along with a few threes - mostly my attitude to my workload, procedural changes etc. I explained to my manager and senior that, while I do what is expected of me, I'm not above having a brief gripe about it. They were pleased with my honesty, and my manager either went along with me or gave me a four instead. When he wasn't going along with my choices, he usually marked me a five or a four, which was astonishingly awesome. Not once did he give me a lower score than I myself had.

As a result, I left the two hour meeting in an extremely good mood. The relaxed chat and free breakfast didn't hurt either! ;-)

I then had a choir rehearsal straight afterwards; we practised a Glee-type rendition of 'Lean On Me', and began learning our parts for 'Signed, Sealed, Delivered' (six-part harmony, guys!! o.O) Very cool.

Rowan's not been very well this week, bless him. He had a bit of a cold on the weekend, and Sunday was a special activity day in West Wales with the St John Ambulance. It was wet and absolutely freezing that day, unfortunately, so when he came home that night the cold had fully taken hold. He was poorly all through Bank Holiday Monday, sleeping most of the afternoon, and hadn't gotten over it by Tuesday so we had to stay home. He was well enough to go back to school on Wednesday, which was ironically the first day this week my mother would have been able to look after him for me. She got made redundant from the office, and finished there last Friday, but she volunteered to work a little overtime at the supermarket on Tuesday to help with the inevitable post-Bank Holiday chaos.

My last assignment for my current OU course is due on Wednesday. Guess what I'm going to be doing during my day off tomorrow? Also, when is the weather gonna make its mind up? I turned the central heating off last week 'cause the flat was boiling, and we've had rubbish weather last couple of days - I am freezing!

Feeling rather sorry for myself tonight...

A friend of mine in work is going to see Hairspray in the Wales Millennium Centre this evening, and two of his group had to pull out at the last minute so he asked if Rowan and I would like to go along in their place.

Cool, thinks I! Yeah, it's a school night, but with tomorrow being Friday, I figure we can get away with it just this once. Only trouble is that Thursdays is when Rowan goes to Badgers, and they're just wrapping up the work towards one of their badges. Still, I provisionally accept the offer, telling Stephen I'd speak to Rowan and let him know.

Talked to Rowan when he got out of school but, while he wanted to go, he was very worried he wouldn't earn his badge if he didn't go to the Sett meeting tonight. Called my uncle on the bus home, as he runs a Badgers/Cadets group out in the Vale and he agreed that it was likely he'd miss out... *sigh*

So I had to send Stephen a text at tea time to let him know we wouldn't be joining them :-( And I so wanted to see Michael Ball - Michael Ball, people! - as Edna....

Sometimes having parental responsibilities suck....

It's been a busy day today. I promised Rowan I'd buy him some roller-skates for Easter, and today was the day we were going to go into town to get them.

Went to the skating shop in town to pick up a pair - not the ones Rowan was eyeing up, but he was happy with the ones the guy brought out for him to try on. Plus they were cheaper than the slightly fancier ones he'd originally wanted, so I was pleased. We then went to a sports supply shop to pick up some protective gear - good thing too, as they were on a special sale, and I got them for loads cheaper than I would normally. I was a little frustrated to see starter packs for almost half the price I paid for his skates - but they were for inline skates, rather than the regular roller boots I bought him, and I know he wouldn't be able to deal with them just now.

We jumped on the bus down to Cardiff Bay, so that he could try them out in the wide open space of Roald Dahl Plass. There were plenty of people about, but not so many that people got in our way much. Rowan did initially freak out, and after about twenty minutes I had to take him into a café in the Millennium Centre for a drink and a calm down. As I said to him, the reason I can't skate or ride a bike is that few people bothered to try and teach me, and those that did allowed me to quit when I freaked out - no way was I going to let that happen to him.

Anyway, after we'd both calmed down a bit, we headed back outside and worked our way around the Plass. We alternated between him gripping onto my hand or arm, or moving himself along the barriers of the main Basin. After an hour or so, he was sometimes shuffling along on his own power, with very very small movements. After we'd been at it for about three hours, I had him rolling along holding my hand, away from the barrier, and starting to make proper sweeping movements with his feet. Problem was that the path we were rolling along was a mix of large paving stones and rows of small cobblestones, and he didn't much like rolling over the cobblestones *rolls eyes* Guess I gotta work on that.

He doesn't think he did very well, but I'm pretty proud of the progress he made. He only fell over once (he counted three times, as I had trouble picking him up afterwards! *grins*) and he was moving with increasing confidence once he got over himself. We were laughing and joking most of the afternoon, and he's happy to try again sometime soon. \O/

We had chinese afterwards at the buffet in the Red Dragon Centre. Yummy, but I felt kinda sick afterwards :-p I seem to eat less each time I go, and yet I end up feeling like I've massively overindulged. Ah well!

As is our tradition during the school holidays, Rowan and I went into town to see a film. We got tickets for a late afternoon showing, seeing as there were so many other families with the same idea as us, and had some lunch in Burger King. We then spent a couple of hours mooching around the shops and just generally hanging out. He's been on holiday from school for the last week, but has been spending the day at the sports camp while I was at work, so this is the first day of the holidays we've had to spend together.

The film we went to see was the new Jackie Chan film, 'The Spy Next Door'. I'd read some bad reviews, saying it was quite a boring film, but I didn't care - I'll watch just about anything Jackie makes :-) It certainly wasn't a cinema masterpiece, but I still thoroughly enjoyed myself and Rowan thought it was pretty cool too. I would very happily watch it again.

The thing that amused me the most, was that the villain of the piece was played by Magnus Scheving, otherwise known as Sportacus from 'Lazy Town'! Apparently his Icelandic accent can pass for Russian... ;-p But he was very, very good, and his athletic skills meant he was very capable of keeping up with the kind of action you get in Jackie's movies. Very, very cool. :-)

Been absolutely loving choir over the last couple of weeks, as we've started learning a variation on the Glee adaptation of 'Lean On Me' by Bill Withers. It is soooo much fun, you guys! Our SGM is on the 14th, and we're having to do the Michael Jackson and Born Free medleys again, so this is like a breath of fresh air. Plus I just love it! :-) We're learning it for something we're going to be doing in the summer with the Tenovus 'Sing For Life' choir - another of George and Andrea's projects, where the members are made up of Tenovus employees and cancer survivors. They're learning our version of 'Somebody To Love' as well, and we're all going to perform together.

Right, gotta persuade Rowan to go to bed now. The cinema made him sleepy, and he's getting a headache now apparently. But then, the silly goose has been up since about half six this morning - why is it that you can't get kids out of bed for love nor money when they have to be somewhere, but when it's the holidays or a weekend they're up at the crack of dawn?

I have had quite a day. Some good, some bad.

Packed Rowan off to my parents last night, as I had to be down at the Millennium Centre by ten to eight this morning; we were doing a performance for the Arts And Business Cymru conference. Took my laptop to bed stupid-early, to make sure I went to sleep at a somewhat reasonable hour, and set the alarm on my phone to 5 o'clock so I would have enough time to get sorted in the morning.

First thing I am aware of this morning is the opening bars of the 'Thursday Cheesy Song', which opens up the Chris Moyles Breakfast Show on Radio One.

At six thirty.

( Alarums and Excursions )

( The day takes a downturn... )

( But on a positive, Rowan-related note... )