22 Foxhole East

greent

Ah - you sound in a similar mood to me! Not much to add, sorry - this 'being there for the rest of the house and just getting on and doing it' isn't much fun. And, yes, like you , we are all well, there's plenty of food in our warm house... etc... doesn't make it easy, though (just less hard!)

f0xh0les

I think 'it's carp, but could be so much worse' sums it up.  

Sorry to hear about Mr GT's colleagues - give him a hug from me.  It will be affecting him.  Poor thing. You too.  Hugs all over the GT household!  

Right, off to make a lasagne and a roast lunch.  No matter what, the animals all still need feeding at the zoo.

I think I might be in charge of the meerkats.  Or monkeys.  Either way they are cheeky.

f0xh0les

Numbers!!

First of the month, the mortgage debt  after  February's  scheduled monthly  mortgage repayment was £87,748.63  but I had a couple of amounts I needed to cross off on my spreadsheet  (to track where I would have been at this time  with no o/ps,  with £100 o/p with £200 o/p etc, ) so I can see if I had stuck with my original mortgage, I would have over £12k more in mortgage debt than I actually have.  It is all motivational. Utterly geeky. Wonderfully nerdy. Totally MSE.

Bizarrely the monthly interest was £134    more than last month (how?)

The daily interest was £4.32,  back over the £4.25 goal I hit last month  (again .. how??)

I made a sneaky overpayment of £298.63 to bring me down to £87,450.00  which is on target for hitting the £80k in December / 50% LTV goal.

So it is all good news then. Shunted  another £300 to savings - currently £16k.   All household bills paid.  CC bill paid.  Budgets are set at £100 a week for  absolutely everything, including petrol.  There are no plans for the govt to make any announcements about lifting restrictions until 22nd Feb. So there will be no charity shops open until after that date.

Ok, need to get going as tomorrow is DS3's birthday and I have to buy a few bits and bobs for his birthday meal and some chocolates for him. 

apple_muncher

Belated happy birthday to ds3. Hope he had a fab day!

f0xh0les

I am stressed to all hell and back.   DS4 is still on Monday's schoolwork on Friday.   All I get is a sulky face. 

Every night we take his devices off him, every morning I find at least one of them back in his room when I get up just before 7.  

I could scream.    Sneaky little swine.  I should not have to resort to locks and keys to make my children behave.

I have had more 'DS2 did not attend his X lesson yesterday' for lessons he says he was in.  He might not have contributed- that I can believe -  but he was watching along.    Why is he not showing up on the attendance list on T3ams?

That and other mysteries will not be solved in this post.  - All in all my stress levels are through the roof.  DS2 keeps coming and giving me a hug 'because you are short'.  Really he knows I am fighting his corner and do not want him to be punished for something unfairly.   He will not be punished, I will be punished.

I have now only to earn 83p before I can cash out another £10 on p/a and that will mean my savings accounts will all add up to £16k, and I am still bang on budget for the month.

After coming home from volunteering yesterday I sat on my bum very quietly til DH finished his lectures, and had a cup of tea and relaxed for an hour, then leapt up, cleaned the top floor bedrooms, hoovered them, stripped the beds (not DS1's he was told to do his own, and remade them  (again DS1 can do his own), I stole all my glasses and mugs back and got DS1 to return them to the kitchen countertop downstairs, along with all the  dirty laundry.  So he did  help out some, which is a vast improvement.  Then the middle floor received the same treatment so everyone had a nice clean bed last night, and a clean and tidy bedroom.

This morning I am being 'bad cop' with DS4 and I am hoping to have finished Monday and Tuesday at least today, and Wednesday and Thursday tomorrow and Friday and project work on Sunday.  Sorry teacher types, but honestly there is nothing you can say that would make me feel worse than I actually do.  Bad parenting on my part and bad childrening on the part of my kids.

He is also taking advantage of me not being here one and a half days a week.  Which may end up being two and a half days as they have asked me if I would do a side project, but to be honest I am not exactly thrilled with the idea, will find out more, possibly help out for a week or two and then cry off due to  not being able to fit it in with my ever so busy homelife/ Prison Warden responsibilities. 

This morning I sprang from my bed totally knackered and aching, not sleeping well I am afraid.  Probably due to the night-time wanderings up and down the stairs of kids.  The bucket in the loft has been emptied, the bathrooms and loos have all been cleaned and are sparkling, 3 loads of laundry have been done, 2 full drying racks of washing up have been defeated, laundry on the line, I have checked all the kids are in the lessons they are supposed to be in.  Wandering the stairwell like a ghost haunting the bedrooms.  Sick of it all already.  Now DS4 is in a z00m meeting with the rest of the kids in his class so it is all shouting and Hi!! and utter nonsense, but at least the teachers will  see him, so they  know I have not locked him under the stairs  or pushed him down a well.   Pastoral care via internet.   Sorry, I am a whinging muppet this morning. 

I have a plan to get him back on track, and even if I have to sit on him, he will do the work before Monday brings another bucket load.   On a positive note, DS 3 loved having me with him in his french lesson so I could correct his pronunciation. We have watched a documentary on archeology, and one on slavery which has brought about some interesting conversations.  So it is not all totally doom and gloom, they are still learning things, but getting them to write anything down is like pulling teeth. 5 school days left to go until half term!  Every cloud eh?  We will know more come the 22nd and Boz lets Gavin Williamson out of his cage to enlighten us all about the proposed, future, possible, hypothetical, safe return to school.

The rest of the day will involve sitting on DS4 and cleaning the rest of the house so that I can get out my hammer and bang some more nails into wood.  There can be no spending until Monday when the budget resets.  I need to bake some more soda bread, as yesterday, in the 5 hours I was out, they ate a whole loaf of sliced white bread, and 2 ciabatta loaves.  There is no bread left in the house.

The tv aerial was a piece of carp and was sent back for a refund.  The refund is back in my account already.  The tv part came, and I will ask DH to get out his soldering iron and see if he can fix it for me.  Otherwise it will have to go and live at the recycling centre.

VintageHistorian

Stick the devices in your car glovebox, or the boot, and sleep with the car keys under your pillow. If he manages to get them back then at least you know he as incredible lockpicking skills.

ChasingtheWelshdream

Oh F0xh0les,

I just want to give you (a) a hug and (b) complete solidarity. Your struggles with DS sound exactly the same as mine, and I suspect many, many folk around the country. Today I have not even attempted school-work (the school have decreed Screen-Free-Friday, which is actually MORE pressure on us I think, as they want photos of all the wholesome tasks we've been doing........but at least there's no deadline for the submit tasks today). We have yet to catch up on the week.

We too have not finished DS3 or DS2 work, and DS1 has turned from a star student to someone who does the bare minimum he can get away with, and sometimes not even that. We have had attendance calls from the school, where he has registered in Teams but still marked as absent. See? Told you you're not alone :-D

This week I emailed DS2/3 school and just said "look, we're both working from home and also renovating our house. We are doing our best, but we can also only do what we can do. When it's a choice between meltdowns (on both sides) and a sky-high stress, or us just stepping back, then we're not going to back to the battlegrounds of last year. Sometimes we just need to stick the tv on'.  Despite all the horrible generic 'you MUST engage or we will REPORT YOU' emails, the individual teachers were actually incredibly supportive.

It it NOT bad parenting, please don't think that (although I always blame myself). We have actually resorted to physical lock and key for devices as, like you, they kept sneaking and finding them. Yes, it feels like we shouldn't have to resort to it, but sometimes it just is what it is. 

I lurk on your diary and am in awe of the way you manage to keep your house in order. I spend so long refereeing the kids that sometimes I just can't get anything done at all. Today's only housework has been emptying the dishwasher - after a huge row with DS1 that it was his turn. I still ended up doing in, mostly in tears. I feel like I'm living in a pigsty, although the roofer has now finished and we have lost the bucket!

So anyway, you are doing AMAZING, you really are. :-)

XSpender

I have a DS in the same year as your DS4 and feel your pain.  You are not a bad parent, it's bl00dy hard and I have only 1 to wrangle along with his access to tech.

DS teacher rings for a catch up once a fortnight and during the first call I said we cannot possibly get through all the stuff set with me trying to work from home and DH out at work.  What should we prioritise?  He advised us to drop RE, art, PE and French and concentrate on Maths, English and Reading.  DS always does the science and geography too.  We don't bother with the rest and the teacher is happy with what he is producing.  Is this a compromise you could come to with your DS4 teacher? 

f0xh0les

They have maths and grammar every day, and some kind of project work (global warming) and art and PE.  PE was the first to go. Art is a one day a week speed session and we pretend it took all week. 

It is totally unfair to introduce algebra while parents are teaching  at home.  It is really simple stuff so he can't understand why the answer has to be 3a = 9 and not a=3 .  He is trying to solve the problem, rather than write the equation.  It has just resulted in him throwing his sheets of paper across the room and proclaiming THIS IS STUPID!!!  He is totally convinced we are making it up to mess with his tiny 11 year old head.      I have tried telling him it is like a code, or writing a mystery  for someone to solve, but he just thinks I am delusional - I am sure some of you can relate to your own algebra lessons at school.  I think it is something that either sets your world on fire, or you find it an exercise in futility when there is a simple answer to be had.   Anyway he is sitting here with his hoodie over his head.  So he can have a rest for a bit, but he is not getting out of this room without us being on Wednesday......  He has had all week to pretend to do the work, and he is incandescent that we no longer believe him that he will do the work if he is allowed to be up in his room.   

We are obviously utter monsters.  Hey Ho!   Waiting with bated breath for my membership badge of Monsters Anonymous UK.

VintageHistorian

God I loathed maths and would hate to have to repeat those years where it was an essential part of my education. I could never work out why the answer was what it was. I don't know if I have a touch of dyscalculia (or possibly just a case of maths anxiety) but if I do it's very mild as I can do some bits, but still need to count on my fingers for some sums, and have never ever mastered the 8 times tables (the others were memorised at school, but if I often have to repeat the string to get to the one I want if asked spontaneously).

There's lots of others in this boat f0xh0les, all you can do is keep sailing on. It'll be worse because none of them are able to get out the house much and neither are you. You're all indoors altogether all the time, and it's easy for small things to blow up spectacularly, especially when he can see that DS1 isn't being forced to do XYZ thing that he hates (primarily because DS1 is almost an adult, but when you're DS4's age it's sooooo unfaaaaair!) Plus you're not a trained maths teacher, if you were then there would be other strategies at hand to help DS4 wrap his head around it!

Would it be possible to push this back on the school and explain "We've hit this obstacle, DS4 is struggling with algebra and we can't work out why, what do you suggest?" and see if they come back with something?