Simply a moment - January

It is 7pm. We have just eaten dinner and Mr M has "done" the dishwasher while I made the tea and coffee. I stopped to glance at the old Christmas cards brought by my daughter from her colleagues in work while Mr M went into the front room to set up the last disk from season 2 of The West Wing. No TV, no noise from the neighbours and no traffic noise from outside.
My hands are still as I listen to the silence.
I look about me at the blind on the kitchen window, the draught excluder in the shape of a cat that is promised to one of my grandsons, who has loved it since he could stand up even though it was taller than him. I see the birthday presents wrapped and ready for the very important third and eighth birthdays coming up next month. I look down the hall to the front door, covered now by the thick curtain that keeps out the draughts. Mr M comes out of the front room and looks expectantly at me.
"Ready?" he asks. "Yes I'm ready," I say, leaving the cards and walking quickly towards him. A moment of silence is sometimes all a person needs to take stock of how fortunate they are.

This moment is part of something given to us by Alexa at Trimming the Sails Why not pop over there and take a look at some of the other moments.

Just made my heart swell...

Miss Em is feeling much better today. She had the dreaded lurgey before Christmas and was off school for the last week of term, always a downer when so much exciting stuff is happening. She felt a little better on Christmas Day but by that time Mummy and Daddy were sharing her germs and Grandma and Grandpa were recovering. The week after Christmas she slipped back as the secondary bacterial infection took hold and the first lot of antibiotics failed to make an impression. She reached the end of the week with a visit to the out of hours doctor - I just love that the acronym is OOH DOC - and some antibiotics that really meant business. By Sunday she had bounced back, had a couple of good night's sleep and she went back to school today. Daddy is on afternoon shift this week so I get to collect her from school and feed her until her mother gets home from work.
I LOVE this special time with her. She talks about her day. I tell her little bits about my day and we do crafty things or read a little or just watch TV a bit - as long as it's not cartoons I can only do cartoons once a week on a Friday.
Today at lunch time the phone rang and a nice female voice told me she was the school and asked if I was Miss Em's Mummy, "I am Grandma," I said, "What's wrong?"
"There's nothing wrong," said Nice Voice, "Miss Em has come to the office because she thinks her Mummy might not realise that there is no Gardening Club this afternoon and she wanted us to ring home to make sure that everyone knows that they should come to school to fetch her at the proper time."
I said thank you and I would be there at half past three and I put the phone down.
She will be eight years old next month and yet she had the common sense to go to the office at lunch time and ask if they could ring to make sure that she wasn't left waiting at three-thirty. I would never have thought of that at her age and if I did I would have just worried about how I would get home and begun making ever more fanciful plans about what to do when no-one turned up. I certainly wouldn't have thought it through like that.
When we got home after school I told her how proud I was that she had thought about it and said "Thank you so much for doing that"
"you're welcome" she replied "Can I watch TV for a while?" So for her it was no big deal. My heart just swelled fit to burst. I was so proud of her.  To me, her mother, her father and her grandpa it is a huge deal. Just needed to share

The Day Jake Bought a present...

This story is brought to you through Story Telling Sunday Three: Pick your Precious This was thought of and is held together by Sian at FromHighintheSky After you have read my story why not go over there and click on the links to read everyone else's story. I can assure you it will be worth it.

Wicked Uncle Cliff shuffles

Wicked Uncle Cliff came to stay for New Year. He is a Courtesy Uncle and not a blood relative, not that he could be any closer to our family. We have known him nearly 30 years now and he was the boyfriend that my daughter left home for 20 years ago. They split up but he continued to be our friend as he had been before they became a couple. Writing this explanation is so much more complicated that actual life!

Anyway, when they were together and living in Manchester, Cliff was offered a German Shepherd dog in exchange for a motorcycle. Cliff was working in a pub and the man used to come in with his dog and Cliff always thought it was awful that this man should have such a lovely animal and be so cruel to it. The man said he had a job offer in London but he couldn't afford to get there and had no way of taking the dog. Cliff offered him a motorcycle in exchange for the dog and the deal was accepted.

This dog was Jake. We went up to visit soon after and I fell in love with this huge but incredibly gentle animal who listened intently to everything I said and then looked at Cliff to make sure he understood.

Jake was now being fed good food. He had his own bowl and water dish. He had a ball to play with and was taken for a walk twice or three times a day. He no longer had to rattle pebbles against his teeth or pick up chips in the street although that habit took a little while longer to break. He would walk alongside Cliff and ignore every other dog even if they yapped in his face. Put him on a lead and he immediately started to pull and choke himself.
We walked to the petshop one day to get him some food and biscuit and while we were there he examined every box of toys but didn't touch them. Then he spotted the ones that are made of animal hide and he carefully lifted out the biggest one and brought it to Cliff.
"Do you really want that?" asked Cliff. Jake carefully stood on his hind legs and put the bone-shaped thing on the counter, then he looked Cliff in the eye. "OK, if you're sure you want it" said Cliff and it was added to the list. He gave it to Jake to carry home.
When we got back to the house Jake put the chew onto the chair that Cliff preferred. Cliff picked it up and put it into Jakes's bed and then sat down. Jake went to his bed, picked up the chew and took it to Cliff, dropping it into his lap.
"I don't want to play, Jake, take it and lie down" Cliff never shouted or raised his voice so this was said quietly, almost conversationally. Jake just looked at him. Cliff tossed the chew into Jake's bed and then Jake went and lay down. Over the next two days Jake persisted in putting the chew onto Cliff's chair at every opportunity until we suddenly realised that he was not wanting to play he was giving it to Cliff as a gift.

He had chosen the thing that he most wanted in that shop and brought it home for Cliff because Cliff had given Jake a safe home with food and fun and lots and lots of love. I think that this experience has to be one of the most precious things I have ever seen. Jake lived to a very good age for a German Shepherd - until his hips began to fail and he could no longer walk far. Even now when we think of him we have a smile on our faces as we remember special, precious times with a very intelligent dog. So intelligent he could speak Arabic, but that's a whole other story.

Wicked Uncle Cliff

playing cards with WUC

It is always good when someone you like comes to stay. When that someone has been a friend for more than twenty years, their visit is always looked forward to and enjoyed. When they bring a friend who fits into your family as though they were born there it makes everything just about perfect.

WUC shows us how to shuffle

Wicked Uncle Cliff came for the whole weekend and New year. This was an unexpected bonus for us and nearly a week of excitement for Miss Em. She adores him. He teases her and buys her presents - that she never takes for granted - and he takes great delight in her sense of humour and her amazingly adult outlook. In some things she is a normal seven year old but on occasions she can leave us all lost for words at her grasp of how things work in the adult world. He pushes her brain and finds ways to make her think and she loves the challenge.
This time he introduced some card games. Simple ones that a seven-year-old can understand and play. It has been interesting to watch how she has toned down her behaviour as it became obvious to her that she was getting just the same attention as everyone else and she was being treated exactly the same as everyone at the table. She stopped trying to be the centre of attention and concentrated on playing to win. We played Newmarket and Chase the Ace and a little game that we think is called tuppence-ha'penny.
At Midnight last night we upheld our tradition and stood by the front door to yell Happy New Year to our neighbours across the road. Then we all came back into the warm, gave everyone a hug and after a while drifted off to bed.  A very good start to the year

Not a single Picture

A warning about this lurgy that is sneaking in and catching everyone by the throat. There is an aftermath! I had the dread lurgy a week before Christmas and had thought myself lucky to be recovered while the rest of the family seemed to fall under it. On Christmas Eve it was like walking into a solid stone wall. Not a cold or a runny nose or a sore throat but a definite drop in the mood department. I could have cried, and with no reason. There we were, Mr M and I watching TV together. All the shopping and running around done. All the presents packed and messages sent to special people and all I wanted to do was crawl under a blanket and sob.
It continued all day on Christmas Day and then on Boxing day too. This morning I got up had breakfast and then sat on the sofa and slept until 2pm and now I feel a little better. So I am putting it down to the cold I had and this is the backlash, the secondary infection that usually means a bacterial infection has this time got me in the miseries.
I am now going back to my sofa for a few hours perhaps to snooze some more.

I thought the Onions were lovely.....

We went to the ballet today. none of us have ever been to the ballet before so it was a very exciting adventure for all of us, and especially for Miss Em.
We went to see The Nutcracker, performed by the the Russian State Ballet of Siberia. It was wonderful! the place was full of children and they were mostly well behaved. The little boy who sat behind Miss Em wasn't very nice but his mother moved to different seats before things started so he could kick the back of someone else's seat.
Miss Em was totally entranced by everything. She sat motionless all the way through Act 1 then helped Mummy buy the ice creams and then sat transfixed through Act 2. she stood and clapped with everyone at the end and was bubbling about the dancers and the mouse king and the Chinese dancers all the way back to the train.
When we were on the train she asked if she could look at the programme and Mummy asked "What did you think of the snowflakes?" and pointed to the picture in the programme. "Oh I thought the onions were lovely." she replied and then her brain caught up with what had been said. She looked up from the picture "Snowflakes? I thought those things were little onions. They are round and white and dangley." Anything else she might have said was drowned out by the train revving up and moving out. This was fortunate because then she couldn't hear us laughing into our coats.
I bet you didn't even know there were onions in the Nutcracker did you? Made the day complete.

It's all in the tone of voice

The Christmas 24 channel is a godsend with a sick seven year-old, when you are fed up to the back teeth with cartoons and that shmaltzy sugar-sweet Disney channel. I like that it is child-safe while some of the cartoons that are on are really violent and somewhat scarey.
It does get a little trying for Mr M though, but he watches it with Miss Em and suffers in relative quiet - most of the time. Sometimes he just can't help himself and will make a comment like "...and he'll open the cupboard and find the thing in there" or perhaps "When she opens the box she'll see it's exactly what she wanted".
When such things come to pass there are questions from Miss Em. "How did you know, Grandpa? How did you know it would be in the box?"
"I wrote the script." he said and she asked no more.

Fast forward to the following week when Miss Em is at her own home and is watching Christmas 24 with her Mummy. "This is my favourite Christmas film EVER!" She said."Oh really?" said Mummy "Why do you like it so much?"
"Grandpa wrote the script" she replied, rendering her mother speechless for a moment.