Tears and Laughter

Today was a long and slightly weird day. It was a good day, it was a very emotional day, it was everything it should have been.

Today we said out final goodbyes to Grandma's mortal remains at the Crematoriam at 10am, and then lunch at church at 12, Service of Celebration at 2.30, then tea and cake afterwards.

The Crem bit was fine, we were there in plenty of time, and it was just family. Mum and Dad, Shelia and Francis, Andrew and Christopher (their two boys) Ru and Fran and the lovely niece and nephew, Hannah and Alan (who get married on Friday - whole nother set of blogs there) and us. And Mr Ralph and Nelson who are family. Not family friends, family.

We walked the coffin in, and the undertaker Emma, dressed in whole Victorian undertaker get up had her lads place Grandma on the plinth thing, and there was a hymn, and a reading, and it was lovely. I cried, Rich held my hand, and it was fine.

We chatted for a bit afterwards, then headed back to the house, got changed, packed up the bike pannier and zipped over to mum and dad's for lunch at the church and then the service.

The service was amazing.

My uncle read about what his mother in law, my grandmother was like, what her life had been like. We sang 4 hymns in big voices, as a true Methodist should, we prayed, we listened, we sang some more. Sometimes tears escaped me, sometimes they didn't.

And then the minister announced that we would sing Taps, as my grandmother was a Brownie, Guide, Trefoil member. It was shattering. We sung it properly, we sung it loudly, we sung it to give grace and praise and joy back to an old lady who had done so much for everyone else.

I'll ask mum for the words and put them on here. It rocked.

There's more to say, but I can't right now.

Blogging

I just had my emails back from BlogHer. One of my blogs the URL doesn't work, (well I probably mis-typed it!) and the other needs a password. Now I didn't realise, but that makes it not pulic access.

I can't remember why it's set to that, and tbh, it probably has something to do with the She-Ex, but it made me think about blogging, and why I do it, and why on here, I seem to have a different style of blogging to anywhere else I have ever blogged.

And I wanted to remind myself to think about that later, so I am. Right now, I have to get the AC and I dressed, ready for the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!

And in other secret news - MY MAN IS HOME! More on that story later boys and girls. (well, mainly girls!)

Who knows what tomorrow brings?

The OH returns tomorrow, at some point, from his trip away. And this is how it's going to be for the foreseeable future. I think we both started looking at this as though it was a one off, and it's not, this is 8 weeks of our lives apart, 3 times a year.

We'll get used to it, of course we will, and this one has really flown by. It was not part of the job when we got together, but now it is. Of course I worry, and I want him home, and I want us to be a family, to be sorted, to be together, but I am worried about what he will be like when he comes back. Maybe he'll just be the same.

Nothing prepared me for hearing the air-raid siren whilst on the phone to him though. Suddenly, it wasn't fun anymore. It wasn't a trip away that earned us extra cash, it was dangerous. But that's the way it is, you know. That's just it.

Since he's been away my grandmother has made the final journey (funeral on Friday) we have discovered we have mice, I've trodden on a slug in the dark in bare feet, the bank have lost and then found £1300 of our money, and so on! It's all been just fine.

And there have been times when the peace has been nice, when the quiet has been nice. And there have been times when the bed has been too big and there have been no arms to run to and no one to lean on and I think we've both found that.

But regardless of whether I think he should be there, he is there, even if he's now coming home. And the lads he leaves behind there, at all different degrees of deployment, need support, even if the reason for them being there is cock-eyed.

Who's responsibility is it?

As usual in the news there is some wombat spouting off about how society is falling apart, and it's the young, and the schools that are at fault because teachers are not doing their job properly.

I take exception to that.

As a teacher of 7-9yr olds, I would love to take responsibility for the children I have.

If I did, they would be at school on time, having had breakfast, a
wash, some clean clothes, and their hair brushed and de-loused. Their
homework would be done, they would have read to an adult who gave a
damn and could read themselves, and they would be keen to learn.

During school time they would listen, write what they thought about,
have the freedom to think without having had the tv mash their brains
for them, or having been up until 10pm on the DS or XBox360 playing
games rated 18. They would know how to respect other children, adults,
school property, and their own clothes. They would know how to dress
themselves and have the PE kit to change into.

After school they would be fed, played with, helped with homework and
eventually put to bed no later than 7.30 after a warm bath and hairwash
and nitcombing.

And then we'd start all over again in the morning.

I can do it with my son and teach full time, and work evenings on
school work, so why can't 63% of the parents in my class? (Yeah, I
worked out the stat myself!)

I would love to take responsibility - but heaven forbit I even point at
a child these days, in case I am invading their personal space.

But if I don't because I can't, and the parents don't because they won't, then who will? Well certainly not the social, because they are over stretched as it is, and their attitude is that at least the child is at school, has clothes on, and is fed (yes, at school!)

The parent's won't because they either can't through drink and drugs, have more children than money, or in some cases just don't know how to parent properly. Too many parents want to be the child's friend instead of their parent, negotiate and then capitulate rather than set firm boundaries, feed a child processed rubbish instead of cooking properly (usually because they don't know how to cook either!)

So who takes responsibility in the end? Well, no one. Not even the child themselves, because they've been brought up that nothing is their fault, there is always someone else to blame, and usually, they fall back on the schools.

Mice

I have mice in my house.

I cleaned out under the guinea pig cage today because the Fudge Creature, who has the bigest cage in existence which is apparently big enough for two rabbits, persists in chucking his hay out over through the bars, and periodically it needs doing. So I did it, moved all the stuff, moved HANDFULS of hay (no wonder he's always hungry!) and then discovered little tiny bits of hay. And a little store of food. And little tiny bits of poo. And a pervasive odour.

Mice.

Now there are several good point here. It took me a while to find them, and I had to stretch a bit, even with my Pollyanna like tendancies, but I did find them.

1) The mice or mouse can only have been there since the demise of Tim-The-Cat which was only 6 weeks ago, and therefore that is a good thing.

2) There is a hole in the brick of the fireplace nearby. Ambitiously, I have decided that that is the entry and exit point for a sweet little field mouse, and have blocked the bugger accordingly.

3) The boiler cupboard is now cleaned out, the pig stuff is in the boiler cupboard, and therefore one of my long term "I must do that" jobs is already done.

Like I said, some of them were a bit of a stretch.

I am going to insist that we get another cat, asap. Or two.

Trying to get the hang of this

I've blogged a fair piece since R has been away, and it's been ok. Mostly it's been dodgy poetry on the other blogs, and yeah, there's more than one. I'm like that, I like to catagorise my life into different sections. And I'm trying to sort out my BlogHer thing so that I can have them all in one place but separate, if you see what I mean.

It's made me think about why we blog. For instance, this blog was originally the house blog, and will be again. My MySpace page was for general stuff, but got hit by the Marham Mummy Mafia, so in the end I let it be. I have a Xanga page, which I write in a lot, and a wordpress page. In fact, there are 2 Wordpress Pages, because I blog every week to the Beautiful Girl.

But I've decided to start blogging for me.

I have the summer holidays coming up, I have time to get in the habit of doing it. I have an opportunity each year that lots of people don't have, in which I get 6 weeks to remake myself anew.

So now all I have to do is work out how this BlogHer thing works!

Any ideas anyone?