The Cat that Thought She was a Shoe (by sarah)

Dad went to the shoe rack in the kitchen to change into his slippers to go upstairs and read to Jean when he noticed that I had a new pair of fluffy black boots that I had inconsideratly placed upon his slippers.

He grabbed hold of said boots to shift them only to find he had a hand full of a very miffed Mini. To make things worse - he had hold of the the bit with teeth in it!

It made him jump and go 'arg!' and Mini retreated further into the shoe rack where she still remains pretending to be a shoe! Albeit a very cross shoe.

I’m Hungry All the Way Up to the Sky (by sarah)

Jean is being most inventive with description at the moment - for being very hungry she said, 'I'm hungry all the way up to the sky Mummy, my tummy is pointing to the clouds, I'm that hungry.'

I gave her a bowl of cereal!

But she is coming out with lots of things like this and now she has started telling me stories too - long involved stories about toys and the like 🙂

She wants to write them but doens't know how to form the words yet - if she continues in this vein I have some fun projects to do with her to help develope her language skills and the like.

Obviously she will be starting school in Septmeber and there is going to be a bit of homework from that so it depends on how interested she remains with the story and writing stuff.

Due to the dyslexia I think there is going to have to be alot of 'lets look that word up in the dictionary' which means it will take longer but I can't see any other way around it and the system worked well when I was doing my work experience and was left in charge of the 'spelling wall' I am even tempted to make a spelling wall for her room to help with this.

We have been steadily working through the work booklets I picked up for her and she still seems to be enjoying them.

Photo Booth and the inbuilt iSight make a fairly good shaving mirror (by alaric)

Designing a general data model (by alaric)

All that talking about HYDROGEN was such fun, I was sad it was over.

So what could I explain about ARGON next? My design for CHROME is currently just a list of features and a plan for how to put them together, with no details whatsoever; TUNGSTEN is still in flux because I have research to do in the field of replicated storage, LITHIUM depends on TUNGSTEN, MERCURY depends on CARBON and LITHIUM, and so on.

So, I guess I'll have to talk about IRON, which is a data model.

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Swine Flu? (by sarah)

Ok I have loads of nice happy posts half written and waiting to go live but I've been sick again 🙁

After Rob's 40th and Ulrike's birthday I was clearing stuff up when like a switch flipping I sudddeny got a runny noise, sneezes and coughing but most of all a damn great headache that felt like the mother of all storms was happening in my head.

Rob hadn't come up to set stuff for the party on Thursday as he was trying to make sure he hadn't could swine flu from work colleagues who are currently off work with it down in London.

But it turns out that the initial comments on incubation periods where wrong and are still unsure and could be more like 5 days than the 2 he was told.

I have to confess I did have a nightmare the night before people started to turn up that instead of it being the Masquerade of the Red Death written by Edgar Allen Poe, I was holding the Concert of the Swine Flu.

Not that it mattered holding a party for London people, and a nursey type person in a flu epidemic or pan demic or what ever it is, as all of this was negated by the fact that a grumpy, fevery Jean came home from pre-school brandishing a letter saying that one of the children in her group was down with suspected swine flu and here where the guidelines - they had the previous week sent out what the education board and health people were suggesting.

I also received a leaflet informing me I was a high risk category due to my general health stuff. Looking at Jean and feeling like a complete hypochondriac I went on the NHS website and there was a link through to the panflu site.

Al, it turned out, had already done their questionnaire and thought I should - he'd come out as fine so it's still his post-viral asthma from the last lot of flu he had acting up - poor thing's still on an inhaler.

I'd spent a lot of the day asleep in fevered dreams on Monday so Al was a bit concerned as he'd woken me up several times and I'd just gone straight back to sleep etc...

It was like being hit with a sledge hammer - I was clearing up and then wham! Sick - Monday night also saw me being sick sick in the tummy way of things and then the key thing my teeth started to hurt - this only ever happens when I have a viral infection.

Anyway I digress I did the questionnaire and it was - the patient appears to have complications contact your GP - sigh.

Jean was not in a good way Tuesday morning either so after some faffy medical stuff Alaric was dispatched to get us antivirals I'm on the 75 mg Tamiflu and Jean's on the 45gm Tamiflu along with instructions on how to make sure it gets into her.

Poor Jean keeps bursting into tears if you tell her off for the slightest things and she keeps having nightmares and doesn't want to be on her own - she reckons she's scared of everything which is a bit puzzling but, bizarrely, it was one of the symptoms asked about on the form.

Jean has a great way of describing things; she said she has fire in her bones and that she had shapes that hurt in her throat.

I suddenly had a back flare up but it turned out that its inflammation from the flu - I couldn't sit up by myself 🙁

Having said all this though - this is not bad flu for me - I only checked because I was concerned as I always get chest infections and stuff from flu and really don't want pneumonia again to be quiet honest and it coming from two sources and Jeany being sick meant I had to do something.

About the only thing I did when I came down sick was email high risk people from the party to tell them. I slept most of yesterday, too, and have only just woken up today, and - are ribs supposed to hurt?

I have had lots of people telling me I shouldn't be taking or giving the Tamiflu to Jean but I'm trusting the Drs with this one and am hoping they know what they are doing.

I was still quite surprised they where giving the antiviral out as I thought it was being rationed.