Wheeeeeee!

I went ski skating today. Like skating, but with skis and more down-hills. Bridgjo said I didn't look too fliddy, meaning, I assume, that my bum wasn't sticking out too much. At this stage in my life it's with relief I can get off a horse/take off my skates/return the hired skis/get up in the morning and think "Phew! Still alive, then...".

One of the girls from book-club was giving a group of us a lesson, and it was really nice to be out on the track in the blazing sun (ONE DEGREE CENTIGRADE!!!). I think I'll have another go next week, whilst the tracks are still open, but might try the cross-country instead.

T did the cross-country, with her skis firmly wedged between the ski-width tracks which are cut into the path for this specific purpose, and I did skate-skiing (or ski-skating, I've forgotten). This involved attempting to skate in, well, skis on a quite frozen polished surface this late in the season, with no edges. Slightly less graceful than "Dancing on Ice".

T wants to "louper l'ecole" next week and go again, though at the rate the snow is melting, we'll have to see, although I am always up for a bit of constructive skiving.

Ah yes - "home schooling" - how to have fun yet still satisfy the school inspectors....

I went to the doc's last week as I thought I had a fungus under my nail. He said it was actually psoriasis, and looked very smug when I said said that I had had psoriasis (thanks Spell Checker) before. Obviously a bit of a House moment for him.

While I was in the waiting room, there was an elderly lady who'd been dropped off by presumably her daughter, who then dropped a pen on the floor. "Oh crap" she said, in the loudest voice. She wasn't even wearing purple.

Where have all the flowers gone?

I was talking to an Australian friend the other day and she was moaning about the relentless heat they were experiencing back in Perth. She also commented, genuinely perplexed, on the fact that we didn't usually go to the beach in the evening any more. "At least the snow will be gone soon, hey?" she asked. Umm, no actually. Although we probably only get three good snow-falls or so, it all just hangs around in the sub-zero temperatures and melts in one big cascade at the end of April. Whilst everyone in the UK is smugly busy writing poetry about yellow flowers, we are struggling to remember where we last put the lawn.

T jumped into a snow-drift in the front garden on Monday, and I temporarily lost her.

We did a bit of a mini tour around Downtown and St Paul today, for the stagiaire, taking in Punch Pizza and the Truffle shop (the latter owned by a man from Leicester. We also popped into the State Capitol buildings. There was, surprisingly, no security, so we ambled around at our own pace. I was especially impressed as much with the Senate's titles, as I was with the decor. I imagine the Sergeant-at-Arms at one point actually did have a gun (or probably, even still does), but I could only assume that the Engrossing Secretary maybe was furnished with a plentiful supply of lipstick and the odd flirtatious remark.

Pay attention at the back

As if I didn't learn my lesson (hah!) last week, I was called out of retirement on Tuesday for another bout of Helping Out ie "We need a temp but can't be bothered with spending money". This time I was to lead the class (although there is a perfectly capable assistant teacher in operation who could have taken over), and to also take them in English and maths ("because Mlle X isn't very 'mathy'"....whatdya mean the assistant isn't very 'mathy'....she's a teacher. How tricky is first grade math(s)?).

Unfortunately, in the English part the original teacher was working on "rhyming with 'AN'". Yep, quite easy until you ask an American child "Spell 'fan'". "What?". "Fan". "Uh?". "Fan". "Nope, still don't get it...". " Fen?". "Oh...F-A-N?". So yep - had to put on an extremely unconvincing American accent for 3 days.

I was struck by the huge difference between their abilities - a couple could read 'daughter', 'caught' and 'draught', others struggled on 'Please put the pecan in the pan'. But more I was struck by the difference in behaviour. Some kids would just sit there and do the work and ask for more (how can I not have favourites?), whereas others, in an obvious parody of their principle caregivers, would throw their arms in the air and yell "Why the hell should I want to do that?". Hmmmm - not quite what I remember from Miss Keyes' class in Infant 1 (but then again I remember that it also involved a jam spoon).

I realised towards the end the one big lesson of being in front of 6 year-olds.

Don't show fear.

A bit under the weather

We've had a sudden warm snap. Suddenly it reached the heady heights of 28 degrees at the weekend (F). In Minnesota this generally means getting the t-shirts and shorts out of storage. It caused some of the native wild-life to come to at least for the one day and check out the cafeteria situation on the back patio.

The little possum who seems to live under the wooden slats came out looking most bewildered, and in need of a shampoo, and hoe'd into the cat-food. It missed quite a bit though being completely blind and normally nocturnal.

Since then the weather has plummeted again to something bone-jarring, resulting in the wearing of blankets in the car on the way to school and extra hot water bottles.

I've been back to the dentist's to have another crown fitted and two more fillings. I've always a been a little freaked at the dentist's ever since I was forced to have fillings without anaesthetic as a child (being held down screaming by a nurse is no fun). Dental visits nowadays are much more ideal, involving, as they do, bounteous amounts of lovely drugs as they drill merrily away. However, I do feel one should never really be in a position to smell one's own teeth.

I went to see (hear) Debussy's La Mer last night. I'm such a philistine - IMHO I thought it was a bit too Disney-esque, and didn't really think it was that much cop. However, a couple of thousand Minnesotans unable to find anything else to do on a cold Thursday evening would probably beg to differ. I went with the new stagiaire and One of The Mums. They both thought the music was OK, marred only slightly by the two people on OTM's side who were on a blind date ("Hello, I'm Jude", "Ooooh, I'm Cathy"); I wanted to keep leaning over and tapping him on the shoulder and asking how he was getting on. Then there was the two people in front of us who were making out (at a classical concert), and the bloke behind us who started snoring everso slightly off-beat. In spite of the music, I think I'll go again....

The teaching assignment has finally come to an end. I decided that I really needed to take early retirement. It was good fun, although I deeply admire their teacher. We got some good results though, and it was really quite interesting just how well they each did once they were talked through certain bits.

The two wonderful "my child is a genius" examples are, naturally by my own "I-cannot-believe-she's-only-6,-it's-about-time-she-took-Chinese" daughter.



When is it considered the correct time for them to earn their keep?

Unfortunately they are not to keep, as the school will be selling them for fund-raising. One parent has already told me that they will be "putting in a maximum bid of $2,000" for the class portfolio. Not all the parents there are charity cases (like us), you understand.

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Today was the first day of teaching. Now this is an anathema to me. If there had been an exam to be a mum, I'd have scraped a C (in old money - otherwise possibly an A*). An example - I had always prided myself on telling the truth to my daughter....right upto the time a few weeks ago she fell and split her scalp open, and had to have staples. I explained the process to her, and what would happen, and that yes it would hurt, but only a little bit then it would stop hurting. Afterwards,on the way home, a small voice came from the back-seat "Mummy,you know how you always tell the truth? Well, do you mind if sometimes you could just fib?".

So, yep, me and kids (especially other people's); it's *really* hard work. I felt very much like Joyce Grenfell but less pearls. I was teaching the class how to draw birds, so first off was "what's the difference between a bird and an animal?". They got the hang of that, but it's so hard to keep on track when a voice says "but Miss, your sheep looks like a hamster". The next stage was teaching them the different shapes of beaks and claws, eg certain birds have beaks because they eat certain foods. "Diego, what sort of food does a chicken eat? No, not alligators. Anyone else?".

And that was the hour. Tomorrow is getting them all to draw a duck out of two circles and a rectangle, and then to talk about how to use a pencil, and then how to use water-colours. At some stage we shall actually do the drawings themselves.

I had a mouse man in yesterday to sort out the vermin. Apparently, they like to get in at ground-level (in our case the basement), and it's actually a bad idea to put bait in the kitchen as although this will kill one mouse in unspeakable ways, it in the mean-time lays a trail of pheromones encouraging all the other neighbourhood mice back in. He showed me all the mouse tracks in the snow at the front of the house. Lovely.

And what will poor robin....?

Christmas was great, but made far too short by the travelling involved.

With an award-winning naivety we both said, on the way, isn't security easy now, the papers have been saying they're going to ease up on the checks etc.

We landed in a snow-storm in Manchester on the way there, circling for two hours as it had shut. The pilot mumbled something about going to Liverpool instead, but unbeknownst to us by this time we'd run out of fuel (as we were later told by a relative who works there at Manchester). I expect that this is the equivalent in aviation terms of "Well, the fuel light's come on, but I reckon we can do about another ten miles".

We landed OK, being first in the stack, but the Airbus which came after us skidded on landing, so they reclosed the airport. The AA flight after ours ended up being redirected to Dublin. We then had to spend a further 45 minutes on the run-way waiting for the path and bridge to be de-iced.

The return trip back was made exponentially worse by potentially explosive underwear, of course. Everyone (travellers, staff, small animals in travel cages) was practicing deep-breathing techniques, and smiling through gritted teeth, but it wasn't really as bad as I thought it could be. We got there 3.5 hours before take-off. And so did everyone else. There were two extra security checks, one before check-in and one at the gate. The former one involved all those rubbish questions which obviously Don't Work, eg "Did you pack this bag?", "Are you carrying anything for anyone else?", "Is there anything in your suit-case which may be mistaken for a bomb?". Now, call me Little Miss Old-Fashioned, but surely even the most basic of terrorist training might prepare people to say "Um, no".

It was the pat-downs at the gate. By this time I had been queuing for about 4 hours (bridgjo entertaining T by looking at the sealed perfume and the inflatable cushions). I was told I had to wait, as out of the 5 security guards, only one was a woman. "But, really, I don't mind being patted down by a bloke," I started to wheedle, hoping to brighten my day somewhat. "No," said the woman on the desk, "it has to be a woman". "And what if she a lesbian?", I asked (somewhat hopefully, by this time).

And then when she did frisk me "around there", in a completely asexual sort of way, she asked "And do you have anything soft in your pockets?". To which I replied, "No, that's my stomach".

Coming home to minus 23c and two foot of snow was quite a welcome relief.