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.

Eeek!

Poor T. She does get an awful lot of unjustified flack, just because she is the shortest person in the house. Yesterday evening, I went into the drawer (you know, the one which contains crap, just above the drawer which holds all the plastic bags), and found that every single one of the Oxo stock cubes had been opened - even the ones in the tin (which had also been prised open). Naturally, the only person to blame in the house was the small one....and after getting rather a bit too cross, I had a closer look.....and the drawer was, indeed, full of crap. From a mouse's bottom.

So I had to empty all the drawers, and the cup-boards (emptying the rubbish drawer directly into the bin. Yes, even the elastic bands and the partly used party candles), spraying everything and everywhere with bleach, immersing in scalding water, then sticking it all in the dish-washer.

There are gaps in the cup-boards where they have got in, leading to the back of the dish-washer and then outside.

So off went bridgjo to the hardware store at about 8pm (which we can do here, because we're in the US, and the shops don't shut at 5, like they seemed to do in Switzerland), and got "humane" mouse-traps.

We had had them on our list in any case, as, although the squirrels had been sorted out by the trappers quite well, there was still a lot of night-time activity above T's bed, which they said was mice (as they kept nipping in the squirrel traps, eating the peanut butter, and scurrying out without setting them off).

So we placed them strategically about the kitchen last night and managed to bag one this morning.

So, animal-loving fools that we are, we bundled into the car in minus 10 centigrade, so we could release it back into the wild (obviously several blocks from where we live). We gave it some cheese and let it out, so at least it was still alive at that point.

Today, in-between mouse-detail, we went off to the Ridgedale shopping centre to exchange my new espresso machine for the second time. On Thursday it was the plastic casing which was broken, and yesterday it was the carafe. This time I decided on a de-Longhi, instead of the much cheaper Krups. It's made a really quite decent cup of coffee too, though it did seem a bit of a faff the first time (fill with water, warm the machine, warm cups and place on heating plate, fill with coffee and tamper down (but not too much, yes, that's about right), make coffee, froth milk, ladle and decorate accordingly, leave to cool and repeat for a second cup. Don't understand why tea has never really caught on here.

I was telling my friend about going to Ridgedale on Thursday, and got as far as "and the funniest thing....", and she interrupted me "You mean the 'Mall Walkers?'".

Yes, they even have a phrase for them. These are the people (generally of a certain age, but I also saw young mums with prams), who go to the mall an hour before the shops open, just to walk around to get their exercise, as it is too jolly cold to do it anywhere else (I kept seeing these old biddies speed-walking passed me in sneakers and sweat-pants, with nicely-set hair).

Friday was T's school play. The theme this year was a King and Queen who were turned to ice, and needed to be cheered up in order to be thawed out. The French joke section was a bit hard-going (Who is the president of vegetable? Mr S'haricot-zy), but the singing and dancing was great. As usual the plus petite section (who are about 3) stole the show with their interpretation of 60's dancing.

After this, I nipped across town (tentatively, as there was still ice about) to go to an Ugly Christmas Sweater party. It was a hoot. It is quite amazing what people can actually purchase/receive for Christmas.

We then exchanged "rubbish presents" (each had to have a story, and had to have been received as a gift). I think the best one was from a guy called Steve Smith, who regifted a present given to him by his father-in-law. It was a wallet with a gold "B" on it.

I have had another winter advisory message on my phone - everyone stay inside from 9pm tonight till tomorrow morning.

Time to Rug Up

First real snow driving of the season. Naturally, everyone else drives as if they have never seen snow before, and I was glad coming home from T's eye practice that we came the back-roads way (25 m/hr with no-one else about, and I could take the corners like a steam-roller). Already the free-way was crawling along.

We are going to have a good old snow-storm ("andja only get one like this one a decade," they said on the radio) which will last about 24 hours. We should be getting about 8". In '91 they got 29" in three days. There were food shortages at the supermarkets.....but only of the junk-food variety. Less of the "pop out for a bottle of milk," and more "For God's sake, don't forget the pepperoni!".

T was given some tiny Puppies in My Pocket (the sort of size toy manufacturer's currently delight in, which are just perfect for getting sucked up the hoover), which you put into iced water so that their nappies change colour and you can tell if they are girls or boys. T said that today when the kids were flung into the play-ground, she was standing there...."and they all went blue".

Madame yesterday met me at the class-room door and said "Good, I've caught you. Now, I need 20 cat masks for Friday. I've bought the foam", and presented me with sheets of craft material and elastic. I felt a little like Rumpelstiltskin. So I did that; tie-dying last week; and today helping at lunch and then laminating all the letters of the alphabet. T is going to be an Alpha-bete (a hilarious French pun); the letter J, I believe. I would so like a laminating machine. Not sure what I'd laminate, but it's great fun. Recipes, articles, socks...

Next week, I'm dinner-ladying again, and helping out in one of the class-rooms. A bit of a hoo-hah a couple of weeks ago when one of the teachers went a bit bonkers and had to be escorted off the premises, so they are short on anyone to help-out, but long on gossip if you do want to actually do your bit.

I got my battery sorted. He comes around, drops me a car off, takes mine away, and, this time, met me at school and we swapped over again.

And the tree was in the back of bridgjo's wardrobe. So, how did it get there then?

Art Attack

I went into T's class last week, with the purpose of asking her teacher whether it would be a nice idea for the class to do a series of Birds of Minnesota pictures for the class-room. The idea was that I could find all the local birds in Latin and French, get the children to draw them, and we would label them aka the Voyages of the Beagle Botanical sketches.

Today - I had to give a presentation (with print-outs!). And I am proud to say that my feasibility study has been accepted by the Gala committee, and not only will each child produce their own volucrine masterpiece as a limited print for the grannies to swoon over, but we will present the originals in a leather portfolio for one of the auction items at the end-of-year auction. And then, we will be rolling out coasters and place-mats (really).

A sign went up in the school corridor this afternoon: Remember, that unless then temperature falls below 0 degrees Fahrenheit, the children will be going outside to play and will require their snow-suits, mittens and hats.

They make them tough around here.

And I cannot find my Christmas tree. It was suggested that maybe the stagiaire took it with her when she left on her road-trip, but even I had a job imagining just how she would sneak it out. But, quite amazingly, I have all the boxes of decorations AND the empty tree box, but no tree or lights.

I had to sort out two grown-up things today - getting the local lad to dig our drive of snow (I know he was a lad, because when I asked for a written quote he said "Yeah, OK, I'll just ask my M...Secretary to get one out to you"). The second one was that my car battery has suddenly started coughing on me each time I try and turn on the ignition. The chap asked me when I called up, if I had checked the contacts. He had to ask me twice as the first time I must have phased out and thought "Oh, bridgjo can answer this one", even though I was the one actually on the phone.

The temperature has plummeted, and the poor little critters in the back garden are getting fluffier. We have grey foxes (the only ones which can climb trees), a family of raccoons (which can also climb trees and attempt to swing off the bird-table), two opossum (which are completely blind it seems, and are also the only marsupial outside of Australia. I have not seen pockets) and a myriad of local birds, including the blue jays, cardinals and, possibly, turkeys.

I buy the cheapest dried cat-food on special and put some outside each evening. Not in a bowl though, as the only time I did that the raccoons ran off with it and hid it somewhere.