A very narrow escape

I've just been writing a round robin letter for the friends we've left behind in the States. (Real life friends, not virtual ones. You know...) I gave them news of the family, and how we're settling in to our new home, with a little reflection on the adjustment process. There's a paragraph that reads:

"Life in Scotland is both familiar and new. Small things take us by surprise. We both still go to the wrong side of the car, occasionally, and our kids really have no chance at all of producing work with correct spelling. Hurrah for spellcheckers. We have had to teach them to ask “Please may I have…?” instead of “Could I get…?” and wellies have become a part of life again. (You don’t know what wellies are? Google them.)"

But as it turned out, not so much of the Hurrah for spellcheckers. Because the spellchecker changed wellies to willies. 

Hurrah for me noticing before I sent the letter. What would the recipients have made of the statement that "willies have become a part of life again"? Followed by "You don't know what willies are? Google them."

It was a very narrow escape. I suppose you're all wishing that I'd sent the letter before I noticed. Shame on you. 

I couldn't make this cross-cultural stuff up if I tried. 

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How do you keep your jewellry?

I can't spell jewelry any more. The ability to spell jewellry is one of the casualties of living in America. What's more, I can't remember whether the spellchecker on this computer is British English or American English, so I don't know whether to over-ride its opinion or not. Sometimes it's hard being me.

Anyway, how do you keep your jewellry? That's not code for some gynaecological problem for which I want advice. I just don't know how to keep jewellry. These issues come into focus when you move house. Storage options suddenly rise to the top of your agenda, and you find yourself in IKEA too often for your health.

Lots of little boxes? One big box? Tree-like thing to hang items from? What works for you? I'm 48, and I have to say, I've never been happy with whatever I've done in the past. It's time to find a solution.

I once made myself a necklace and bracelet holder, which Blue Peter presenters would have been proud of. I made it out of a brown corrugated cardboard envelope, which a calendar had been packaged in. I glued some old felt inside, and then used map pins to fasten the necklaces and bracelets in, one pin at each end. When I opened the cardboard folder up, there they were, all lined up. They never got tangled. It was genius. It only worked for chains, though. Chunky jewellry still had to be in random boxes elsewhere. And ear-rings. It didn't work for ear-rings. I threw it away when we moved to America. I should probably have sent it to Blue Peter instead, and now my daughter would be making me another secretly for Christmas.

Seriously though. How do you keep your jewellry?

PS There's an 'e' in there somewhere, isn't there?

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Last night, I dreamt I photocopied my puppy

It's true. Most of the dream was trying to hold him still while closing the lid, which was not easy. The dream ended with the picture emerging: four paw prints, and the underside of his chin.

Why would I dream that?

A friend suggested that I'd really wanted to buy two puppies. Actually I didn't. Good suggestion though. Any other ideas?

PS Don't you so much prefer the old fashioned spelling "dreamt" over the more modern "dreamed"?

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A Christmas Miracle

That last post was a little grumpy, wasn't it? Oh go on, you don't have to be nice. It was. But I'm feeling better, enjoying Christmas CDs, eating mince pies (bought loads for an event Husband was organising, and then fewer people turned up than he'd guessed, so yay, spare mince pies for us!) and generally getting in the swing of it. If all else fails, I turn on my IKEA stars and think how lovely they look. Yes, I really am that easy to please.

In fact, I'm so full of the Christmas spirit, that I thought I'd share my own little Christmas miracle story with you. It has all the right ingredients: a family visit, a child, a special day, a mistake that turns out ok but teaches the main character a useful life lesson along the way, a three-legged opossum, and laundry.

Followers of my blog (sad, sad people) will know how much I hate my washer-dryer. I am taking steps to remedy the situation, but for reasons that I can't go into on a public blog (living in a house that belongs to an institution which employs Husband and is therefore not entirely my own to manage), for the time-being, I am stuck with it. I have a personal rule, which is that I never use the dryer function of the washer-dryer combo. Never. Never ever. The dial now has a red nail polish mark on it, to make it easy to see whether it is on or off (applied after I ruined a load of washing). As I say, I never use it. Never. I vowed I wouldn't ever again. Except just sometimes I do have to, for example when my brother and sister-in-law came to stay this week-end and I needed to dry some towels for them (see 1, family visit).

They left on Sunday night, and I turned my thoughts to Monday morning and getting ready for school. 12-yo (see 2, child) said he had to go to school in formal wear, which I thought couldn't be right, but I read the weekly bulletin and spotted a bit I'd missed. Yes, indeed, he did need to be in formal wear because it's the last day of school, with an assembly and a carol service (3, special day). Think kilt, sporran, knee-length socks, sock flashes... (love it, love it, love it, love having my children at a school in Scotland which makes them wear kilts from time to time). Only slight problem, the knee-length socks, of which he has only one pair because he only wears formal dress on rare occasions, were at the bottom of the laundry basket. So into the washing machine they went.

I had forgotten to turn the knob back to the "dryer off" position (4, mistake). When I went into the kitchen at 10.30pm, expecting to find a small pile of clean, wet laundry in the drum (pa-ra-pa-pum-pum) and the machine off, instead I found the machine humming away happily in dryer mode. Although it was on "wool" setting, it was very hot (no, there's nothing wrong with it, I've phoned customer services and asked, it's just that washer-dryers dry very hot). I decided then and there that the red nail polish mark wasn't enough. No. I would have to do more. I would have to selotape the knob, to remind myself never, ever, ever, never, ever to use the dryer (4, mistake that teaches the main character a useful life lesson).

But here's the amazing denouement. The socks were fine. They were almost dry, and they hadn't shrunk at all. They are wool, should be hand-washed, definitely shouldn't be tumble-dried, but when subjected to the foundry-like temperatures of the Hotpoint washer-dryer, had survived unscathed (4, mistake that turns out ok). It was a miracle. I'm naming those socks "Daniel", for they lived through the fiery furnace. (Know that story?) And verily there was much rejoicing, for if the socks had been ruined, indeed the stress therein would have been mighty. For it remaineth to be seen whether a mother can buy a pair of long dress socks for a 12 year old before eight o'clock on a Monday morning.

I lied about the three-legged opossum.

So if "It's a Wonderful Life", or "Miracle on 34th Street" fail to touch your spirit this Christmas, please hold the story of "Iota's Laundry Miracle" in your heart.

If that fails, eat mince pies.

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Iota's Six Top Festive Tips

Long-term followers of my blog (you poor sad people, don't you have anything better to do?) will know that I really love Christmas. So as the season starts to roll, I thought I would drip my distilled drops of wisdom, accumulated from experiences old and new, as to how to make this Christmas the most wonderful of all.

1. Don't get a spaniel puppy. They poo and wee a lot on the floor. They humiliate you at puppy training classes. They bark when they are excited, which is a lot of the time. When you discuss this, outside, with the puppy trainer, she will talk about rewarding good behaviour, as if you need to become an expert in canine CBT. You will be nodding and smiling, while all the while you will be thinking "or we could just buy a kennel and he could live outside". Shouting at your puppy does not help.
2. Don't have sons. They are incapable of distinguishing dirty clothes from clean. If you have to have sons, wait a few decades until Lasik have invented a corrective procedure, that will be offered to parents of boys at their birth. Shouting at your sons does not help.
3. Don't have daughters. They are like whirlwinds of chaos. They have 'art projects' everywhere. They insist on growing their hair long, and then they don't want to wash it because they are too busy when it comes to bedtime. Shouting at your daughters does not help.
4. Don't get married. Husbands are always right about everything, and it's very annoying. They put on a sad face with sad eyes (see "spaniel puppy" above) when you shout at them. 
5. Don't buy Christmas stocking fillers. You will hide them and then not remember where you have put them. Don't even bother with the shouting on this one. Those pesky stocking fillers will not hear you, and even if they do, they will not answer.
6. Don't buy Christmas decorations. Don't buy fancy cardboard stars from IKEA, and wait till Sunday night to put them up. You will have mislaid the light bulbs, and it will be too late to go and buy some more (even if you could be bothered), because this is Britain where shops shut at a stupidly early hour. You won't be able to make the stars hang straight, because electric flex is so deliberately wayward, and because, quite frankly, the world is against you. Surprisingly, shouting at the IKEA stars DOES help.

If you follow these six tips, I guarantee you'll be full of festive cheer, and the season will envelop you in a flurry of goodwill and jollity, as if you were in a blizzard and every snowflake was a warm wish of happiness.

This post is part of the BritMums Christmas Blog Hop.

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A parent's moral dilemma: the reveal

Great answers, everyone. I really enjoyed hearing from you all.

In reality, what happened was this. I asked Husband, who, after all, does teach RME (Religious and Moral Education) and has whole shelves of books on ethics, so you would think he would have an opinion. Failing that, he could quote Socrates or Bonhoeffer and I could get cross and accuse him of being irrelevant. Either would be possible. In the event, he asked

"What did you actually tell 11-yo you'd do?"

I thought about it, and I replied

"I told him that I would ask the neighbours and the postman next time I saw them, because they were the obvious people who could have dropped it.* So yes, I had said I would ask the postman. "

This made it much simpler. [At this point in the story, you may feel unfairly treated, like when a murder mystery author introduces a new fact about a character or situation which you couldn't possibly have worked out for yourself, and which is key to the denouement. In my defence, may I point out that when I was pondering the rights and wrongs of the case, I was in your situation too. I didn't see this piece of information as relevant. It took Husband "just call me Hercule" to dig it up, shine a light on it, and reveal it as important.]

So I told 11-yo, that I'd asked the postman, that the money belonged to him, that I'd repaid him, and that 11-yo needed to give me the cash. I was fully prepared to be met with disbelief, annoyance, accusations of being unfair, and 11 year old wrath, and I was ready to argue my case. But 11-yo said

"Oh, ok then. Well that's his good luck, isn't it?"

and coughed up the dosh, without a murmur of hesitation.

Being a parent is full of surprises, isn't it?

But one moral dilemma leads to another. As I was telling Husband the end of the story, I said I was glad for the postman, who's such a very nice and helpful guy. And then I paused to reflect, would the issue have been the same if the postman had been a miserable, grumpy geezer? Would I have done the same thing? Should I have done? At this point, Husband muttered something about being late for work, and hastened off, shaping his moustache between thumb and forefinger, tapping his cane on the ground, and practising rrolling his Frrench rr's.


*in the front garden, where it was found, to those of you still wondering why the postman would be snooping round our back garden.
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