Friday, November 21, 2008

7 Quick Takes Friday

Joining in with Jennifer's seven quick takes again ...

-- 1 --

This week I had a moment of awareness when I stopped to truly appreciate my good fortune. How many 48 year olds get to start their day singing nursery rhymes with an enthusiastic, giggling two year old? There may be times when I feel old and tired and stiff, but I wouldn't swap for the world.

-- 2 --

Friday is my day for socialising over food. My neighbour (and good friend) doesn't work on Fridays so we usually share breakfast, and Little Cherub and I regularly go out for lunch with my mother. I've also promised to take my middle daughter to Borders this evening for a browse and a Starbuck's hot chocolate. Lots to look forward to today!

-- 3 --

I can't say I was surprised by the announcement I heard on the radio news that October's retail trading figures had failed to live up to the doom and gloom predictions of the media. Sales had fallen only a microscopic 0.1% since last month. I went to a large retail park on Saturday to pick up a couple of duvets. Busy, busy.

-- 4 --

Listening to coverage of the economic summit I noticed another difference between elections in the US and the UK. In the UK the leader of the winning party becomes prime minister with immediate effect; in the US there is a time lag before the new president takes office, leaving the outgoing president in a rather awkward position where he has to look presidential but can't actually commit to anything.

-- 5 --

Tevye and I have a tradition of sending out an annual Christmas newsletter with a twist. Each year we try to come up with an original theme or approach. I'm feeling smug that I managed to hit on something entirely new for this Christmas. Unfortunately I can't tell you what as some recipients read this blog. All I can say is that it is quirky and cryptic and different from anything we have done before.

-- 6 --

Angel came home from school yesterday with an interim report giving scores for behaviour, effort made in class, and organisation and quality of homework. Excellent scores across the board except, bizarrely, for English were they were very poor. Having looked at her English work I can confidently predict that someone messed up and input the wrong numbers (the report is all electronically generated). How nice to be able to be so sure that a bad report is wrong ... and how unlike her parents she is. I found some of my old school reports a while ago. Comments included the classic "K does the minimum of work or less". Tevye tells me his weren't much better.

-- 7 --

Winter is forecast to arrive today, with temperatures plunging down to freezing and maybe a few snow flurries over the weekend. According to weather lore, a cold November is supposed to herald a mild, wet winter ... "if November ice will bear a duck, all the rest is mud and muck".

2 comments:

Romany said...

Re the Christmas letter: PLEASE can you share some of your previous successes, not this year's idea obviously!

We've done multiple choice quizzes, A Day In The Life Of Our Family, which were both funny. We've tried the month-by-month approach and a person by person approach. And we tried a photo-collage based one.

I am BORED with the whole thing. One year I didn't write one and just pointed people to the blog, but there were complaints about that and one year we were told it was too depressing by several people. Oh dear! I can't win.

I'm desperate for some different ideas or themes, can you help us out?

Can you make a blog post about it?LOL!

Melanie Bettinelli said...

Thanks for #1. I've had a poor morning, being very irritated at my two-year old and snapping several times. Mostly because I just don't do well when woken up for nursing in the middle of the night several nights in a row. But two orange juice spills didn't help. It's good to be reminded that is is a privilege to spend my days with my beautiful girls.

Also, last year we had a very cold November and lots and lots of snow.
Maybe the saying doesn't work so well in New England.