Give me strength!

Funnily, I did have a feeling it was going to be one of those weeks at The Beehive after Mr Beehive chose to have a premature rehearsal for Halloween this week and try out his Vlad the Impaler costume (or perhaps that should read - Vlad the ImpaLED!).

Fast forward to Monday morning, the boys are doing enrichment programmes this week at the local middle school and, due to life being easy and simple (NOT!) Master Beehive the elder's programme starts half an hour before Master Beehive the younger's. So what to do in the spare 30 mins?? Well, the list of errands was endless and achieving some of it was all within my grasp - oh but for such a short time.

Start at go, recieve $200:

First off, killing two birds with one stone (such a fool am I!), Town Hall, Dog license renewal and a car pass for the recycling plant. If successful get 60 bonus points and return to Middle school without hitch within alloted time span.

Not to be: problem number one: last year's license showed the incorrect expiry for the dog's rabies shot so of course a call to the vet was in order......lose five minutes from the sand jar. Town hall recycling problem as pass requires car reg. which then requires my exiting the building to retrieve this with smalls in tow, thus losing another 5 minutes of my time. So take forms as alternative to return in post at own convenience (add one bonus point for initiative!) Time remains unaltered!

Back into car - record time, 10 minutes to get back to the Middle school - perfect as it is only 3 minutes drive. Sit patiently at red light behind another car to pull out of junction. Watch jerk with exceedingly long trailer and no patience pull into the intersection and block it during green on our side. Swear under breath and do nothing but wait for this to rectify. Man in front obviously in far more of a hurry tries to pull infront of said van and trailer, realises he can't so thus reverses at speed in irritation, without looking..........yes, you've guessed it........into me! Go directly to Police Station, Do not Pass Go, Do not receive $200 and lose all your remaining time in the jar!

Feckity feck!

Fortunately kids are fine, car is actually fine, attitude of twonk in the car in front is not but as it has all been observed by police man (we were in the police car park - bigger twonk!) it is all sorted with apologies (of blustering British force - yes, of all the Yanks in all of CT, I get a Brit put his tush in my face!!!!!!!)

Today can't be get worse, mwahhaahaahaa *evil laugh*!!!!

This morning Little Miss Beehive has woken up as Violet Elizabeth Bott!!

It is 93 degrees here - externally, but after a quick dash into the supermarket whilst boys were successfully at classes, it became 93 internally for me!

She wanted to hold the bread - OPEN! ON THE CART and the FLOOR! Sometimes there just has to be a "No"

She could have held the pasta, the cheese? The Tomatoes? No, it had to be her little fingers on the bread and then the bread loose on the cart!! and my god, she wanted to the world to know what a bitch I was for not letting her do this.

Become a fly if you will on this supermarket wall. Today, of all days, I chose the up market supermarket in town, you know the one, with the ladies with pink rinses, DINKY's, business men and the one mother in there aside from me had four, yes FOUR bloody angels with her and a smug grin ggrrrr!!

I am pushing around this massive fuck off car trolley for my six piddly items because I felt in a "happy mummy" mood when I started, no one had crashed into me yet today, the kids had played wonderfully together earlier, so I could cope with apologising for a few scraped ankles and tins off the shelf to allow my sweetie the opportunity to ride in a car trolley, which I normally say no to because we are:

a. in a massive hurry
b. I've got the boys with me too, so of course it only seats two and then a fight ensues as to who gets to sit in it.
c. I can't cope with the extra 80lbs of trolley to push around (these buggers are HEAVY!)

I knew that to the outsider I had already lost this. Be warned parents of tantruming children - you will NEVER look good in this situation however you handle it. Here is the Beehive guide to tantrums in public:

1. If I try to reason with her and try to comfort her (which is where I start - distraction, giving her another item to hold etc) the tantrum gets louder. This fits the inexperienced parent of one , doesn't know what to do and hasn't read enough parenting manuals yet category. This mother will be greeted with sympathetic noises from onlookers.

2. If I give in - she gets the message that she can throw wobblies and get what she wants - I fit the category of the pathetic parenting tribe - those who don't discipline and have unruly kids. This group of parents gets tutted by those who have seen, and ignored by those who have not (because the tantrum is over!)

3. If I ignore her - she continues to yell and scream. Now I am in the category of uncaring parent and social outcast. I know she will calm down e v e n t u a l l y.
I have explained to her why she can't have x and that she can have y as an alternative. This is the worst category to be in - people stare, tut, mutter under their breath and even offer opinions as to how I should discipline her!

4. The final category is rather limiting - it means that one can probably never return to the Pink Rinse Store which in a small town does mean that you may eventually be limited (or even fairly quickly!) to the local Kwiklidlkostsave that only sells blue and pink food and coke!
But it involves having no real need for the food that you are rushing in fo in your only free five minutes in the week, leaving your trolley with food in it in exactly the place the tantrum explodes and exiting the store with (preferably!) screaming child and irrate staff!

Take your pick - I am sure there are many more options. I tend to start with 1 and then move to 3 and back to 1 when she eventually calms down and I can give her a hug. I would LOVE to know other people's solutions to this one!!!

Emergency!! The doctor has to belch!

There is nothing like a day that is full of drama in the Beehive and today is like no other. We are having friends around this afternoon so.......putting off clearing out the shed yet again (after all, why do today, what you can put off until tomorrow!). That said, we decided last minute that the gravel we had stored in there from last year would be better placed surpressing the remaining weeds under the Hibiscus tree on the patio. So.....*feeling a little guilty here, but not TOO much as it is primarily Mr Beehive's domain and thus his chaos* I asked for them so I could spread them out.

A simple task one might think, but not so. Venturing into the valley of disarray, Mr Beehive willingly obliged.

One minute we were laughing about the volume from our neighbour on her latest rant at her latest tenant, the next he is joining her in wails and screams, managing to successfully impale himself on the barbecue fork that he has left facing outwards at calf level (hmm, of course you can't really hear the slight - whaddiditellya, in that last sentence can you??)

Fortunately, he managed to miss his arteries (I am sure there must be some big ones down there!) and the actual hole was a puncture rather than a large cut requiring stitches, but there was blood.

Master Beehive, the elder, the guy who hides behind the sofa in Nemo disappeared pronto, Master Beehive the younger, however, proved to be such a great help. He helped apply a firm compress to the wound so it stopped bleeding and helped me to put a bandage around his daddy's leg - my paternal grandfather would have been proud!!

On completion of the job in hand (no, not the gravel - I have still to send him back out to do that *insert wicked laugh*!! - kidding of course!) I told Master Beehive the younger, how great a help he was and what a great doctor he would make.

"Really?" he asked "can I be a doctor?"

"Yes, if you work hard, you can go to medical school."

Grinning from ear to ear he rushes off to find his brother to tell him this "wonderful news"!!

Five minutes later, he is back

"Are doctors allowed to burp?" he asked in all seriousness

"Well, not out loud in front of patients" says I

"Okay, I'll only burp inside my mouth then."

OMG - please if he ever fulfils this dream, just don't tell me if he is ever YOUR doctor!!!

Proboscis monkey

What a week of ups and downs - quite literally. W. fell yesterday, he wasn't wearing his glasses and managed to cut his top lip badly. He unfortunately looks something like this poor lamb!! We had only hours earlier returned from the Opthalmologist who had scolded me for not forcing him to wear his eye patch!!! How can you force a 4 year old to do something! She told me she would be giving me drops to blur his vision if I didn't make him wear the patch! The way I see it is this, there is no way doing this patching is necessarily going to make his poorer eye any stronger, whereas there is a strong chance that forcing him to wear it is going to make him not enjoy school, feel resentful towards me, and is probably going to make him less outgoing.....he had already said he didn't want to return to soccer today with his lip in case they called him "beaky"!!! Okay, laugh over! But seriously. I am so divided with this. I don't want to wrap them up in cotton wool and mickey taking is part of life, but equally I don't want them to feel that to get on in life you just have to take the crap. Those that take the crap end up giving the crap I think. Anyway fortunately the heaven's have opened this morning, so the soccer choice was made for me.....I know, passing the buck!! He is currently obliging by wearing the patch attached to the lens of his glasses.

I. had a home visit yesterday from the Montessori teacher. M. brought her son who played with the boys, which was a great idea, it meant that I. had M to herself. T. did me proud though by offering and serving up drinks and brownies (homemade earlier in the day I hasten to add!) without help.

Today we went to R's works do: A cowboy cookout - or rather a CT washout!! The weather is out to get us at the moment!! Still, at least we got some lobster this year, but I am still laughing at the things we do to entertain our kids. Seriously, there was a small train there and the guy driving it went round and round in circles over and over, with kids so excited that they couldn't sit still and parents crunched into this minute contraption with moronic grins on their faces as if they couldn't have thought of anything more fun and adventurous!! Fortunately for me, our kids thought it was a little trite and beneath them (good on you guys!) I. rode the ponies, which she thought was the best thing "horse!" and W and T decided to throw themselves down an upturned bouncy Titanic slide about 45' up!!

For those of you that are disappointed in my lack of jam this year, I am going to gladen your hearts........it is being made as we speak! This year's efforts to keep the world in toast for another year, are peach and a new recipe - well, I made it up really:

Plum and Basil Jam
Same proportion of stoned plums (that is remove the stones guys, not feed it anything!) to sugar ie; 1lb to 1lb
Quarter of a lemon in whole (you will remove this later)
and around a dozen small basil leaves per lb.

Allow it to gently boil stirring to ensure the sugar doesn't go gritty, then leave it to simmer.
There really is no science to this (well, there probably is, but not in MY kitchen) I just run quality control every so often with a cold saucer, take a little bit out, roll it around the plate, as it cools it will run less, once you have it to great consistency, then stop it simmering.........that's it! Not rocket science!!

Okay, better go, this jam is gonna be a late entry in the CT seriously scary old ladies guns out agricultural fair!!! Let ya know next week how I do ha ha!