Categories: uncategorized
Date: 12 December 2004 16:20:12
The grand sweepstake is now open. On Saturday morning the optician finally gave in and prescribed Tiddles a pair of the weakest possible glasses. He can find nothing much wrong with his eyes, apart from a miniscule short-sightedness which shouldn't really account for any difficulty. This has been the case for the last year and a half, during which he's been monitoring him six-monthly because of Tiddles complaining of poor vision. Work avoidance? Dyslexia? Tiredness? Desire to wear glasses since watching Harry Potter? Could be any of the above or a combination or something else entirely, but we're hoping to experience the placebo effect with this rather snazzy looking pair of specs.
So, the question is, is it mean of our family to be running a book on how long it will be before he loses them? My brother-in-law reckoned we might have to break the choices down into seconds seeing as nobody so far believes he'll come home from school with them tomorrow.
Actually, he may not live that long. We've been "doing" Science and Maths homework this afternoon. He's determined not to listen to any parental advice (where have we heard that before?) but rattled off a load of rubbish for his Science and then sat deliberating and complaining over the hardness of the worksheet he had for maths (which was designed for children three years his junior and was well within his capabilities!). To my suggestion that he might need a bit of help structuring his Science write-up of an experiment so that it was meaningful to the reader, he declared, "Mr T told us to write about it. This is writing. So I've done what he said, haven't I, and I'm not doing it again." Hmmmmm. Was it mean of me to record this conversation in his home-school diary?
You could also have placed a bet on how long it would have taken for me to lose patience with my father, had my sister and brother in law stayed here longer than a weekend. He's a real pain sometimes - insanely jealous of the children and puts on a show of how unpleasant he can be to them whenever he has visitors. Our lovely weekend with my sister had quite a shadow cast over it really, except that we've learnt over the years not to take a great deal of notice. A shame to have to instill that in the children, though. Tiddles told me he felt sorry for me because I have to cope with him, and Smudgelet and Grandad being a pain, when he only has to cope with Smudgelet and Grandad. I pointed out that everyone has their bad moments and he has to put up with me during mine - but the little sweetie insisted I was nowhere near as much of a pain as most people. (Hmm... what is he after?) I wonder if he still feels the same this afternoon when I made him sit at the table and get on with his homework?