internet friends

Just last week in the UK a man was jailed for the abduction and rape of a 12 year old girl he had met online. He had pretended to be a teenage girl, and over several months had groomed his victim on a social networking site until he was able to lure her into meeting him.

I hate horror stories like that. I hate that they actually happen. Not frequently, but enough to make all parents super conscious of what their little ones are up to when they are playing games or using social media. 

So when, 5 years ago, our then 9 year old started talking about her new on line friend, Fox, who she had met in the game “Perfect World” we were naturally concerned.

Who was this “Fox”?  

Where did she live? 

What did they talk about? 

Our daughter looked at us as if we were mad. 

We were savvy parents. We knew all the rules. Don’t give out your number. Don’t tell anyone where you live. On NO account arrange to meet anyone.

The online friendship continued.

This girl with the screen name “Fox” and our daughter,(screen name “Eli”) started to meet up daily. In little bubbles that appeared above their avatar’s heads whole dialogues were taking place. Little by little these two were getting to know each other.

We learned her real name. That in itself caused suspicion as it matched that of a famous singer and actress. And was also our daughters first name. 

Those scary news stories were flashing through my head. Was this really a little girl, or was it a sex monster? How did we know? 

Our daughter shook her head, rolled her eyes and carried on.

With our knowledge but also with trepidation, boundaries were crossed: emails were exchanged. Skype addresses were swapped. Then phone numbers. 

And inevitably, in this technologically advanced world, they wanted to chat face to face. So we set up the webcam and waited. And there she was. A cute little girl with pigtails and a cheeky grin. And behind her in the background, looking rather anxious (as probably were we), her mother.

And so, now we knew it was safe, the friendship grew. The girls would chat on all forms of social media, from facebook to gaming sites to AIM to Skype to texting to cellphone. Anything and everything. Every day. Sometimes at night. In times of sadness and times of joy, they would be there for each other. And I even got to be facebook friends with her mother. 

And last weekend, after many many months of asking, we finally got them together. I drove my now 14 year girl 4 hours to virginia Beach to meet up with her best friend.

And that first physical meeting in the parking lot of the Oceanfront Inn I will never forget. Like a scene from all the best movies, those girls ran across the lot and into each others arms. 

Sometimes good things do come from the internet. Very good things.

A Week In The Life Of ...

It's been a bit of a week.

2nd eldest daughter was relieved of her appendix on Monday afternoon, having woken up at 4.30 am, in pain and in a panic. Husband was persuaded to take her to ER after his failed attempt at diagnosing her ailment ~“Does it hurt when I prod you here? Well it’s not appendicitis then” ... (can I admit to a small twinge of self righteousness that he was wrong?)

Oldest daughter proved herself a stellar big sister ~with her all day during the interminable wait for the surgeon, and then all night, as the nurses checked in on them every hour.

Tuesday saw the patient sent home to continue her recovery. 

All well and good.

On checking the rabbits later that day ~maggots crawling around Lady’s cage. On closer inspection ~ maggots everywhere. Blow fly strike. Very bad. Very very bad. Emergency trip to wonderful exotic pets clinic. We had caught it in time. Phew. They shaved away her butt fur and flushed out the maggots that were busy devouring her flesh. She was left with a cool new hairdo and three deep open wounds near her tail. I was left with a long list of medications and a huge bill.

Tuesday night we went to sleep. 

Wednesday morning, 3am, we were disturbed by unfamiliar sounds from outside. 

Someone softly knocking. 

Two police officers and third daughter.

“does she make a habit of running away?”

“No, but she does have insomnia ...”

I asked where they found her “... she was dancing in the middle of the road”

An affronted Jessica declared succinctly “I wasn’t dancing I was twirling!”

“She has Aspergers” I explained. 

(Reminder to self ... must make that child psychologist appointment).

Wednesday, a fever took 2nd daughter back to ER. This time I stayed. Two nights of being woken by machines beeping and nurses checking and some annoying stranger asking for blood at 4.30am. Hers not mine.

Home on Friday (all better, thank you God). To discover bunny not eating or drinking, pooping or peeing.

G.I. stasis. Even worse than very very bad. 

And while the vet was giving me a run down of the treatments proposed, and the (even more) medicines we will have to administer, and the (even higher) astronomical amount this was going to cost, something in my head (I think it was my Mother) was screaming  “It’s a RABBIT for goodness sake! It's VERMIN!!”

...  what does it take these days for a vet to put a rabbit  to sleep? How sick does this poor little bundle of fluff have to be? ...

So I brought her back home, and we have spent the last few days force feeding her critical care hay mush, syringing 5 different medicines into her mouth and injecting saline under her skin to keep her hydrated.  Twice a day. (Don’t other people get paid to do this sort of thing?)

Last night she ate a slice of apple.

And I think I saw her munch on a stalk of hay.

And she definitely drank from her water bottle.

And 4th daughter read to her. And prayed for her.

Maybe she’s turning the corner?

It’s a long, s l o w process 

reading for fun

Smallest child has always been a slow reader. 

As I watched her struggle in public school at age 6, and as I heard her teacher telling me “she will need a lot of extra help, there’s definitely something wrong” ... that was the pivotal moment for me. The tiny niggle of “maybe I should think about homeschooling” suddenly intensified into a loud and impossible to ignore klaxon of “what am I doing, allowing my small defenseless child to be humiliated in this place?!” 

Her confidence was zero.

She still liked books, but she had no interest at all in reading.

The first year, we went back to the very basics and did phonics to death.

This year she is still slow but she is enjoying books and stories and likes to open books and read by herself.

There is no competition. 

It’s just her and a book.

And the other day we went to the eye doctor.

He suggested she wear reading glasses as her eyes seemed to be working a bit too hard.

Since then, she hasn’t stopped reading.

The last few nights she has actually asked for extra time to finish the chapter before she turns out the light.

I don’t believe it will solve all her problems (there is some mild dyslexia there), but we are well on the way.

FROG BLOG

The kids were bored the other day, so I sent them on an unaccompanied field trip to the creek armed with a rucksack full of snacks and an empty water bottle.

“Go get some tadpoles” were the instructions.

Off they went.

Back they came an hour and 30 minutes later with 7 tadpoles.

So I went to the shed (braving the spiders) and found our old 10 gallon tank (the one that has housed myriad fish, salamanders and the odd gecko over the years), dusted it out and set it on the table on the deck. 

Then, accompanied by Rebecca and an old blue bucket I drove to the creek and collected some good old creek water and a collection of mossy rocks. And some water snails which happened to be attached to the rocks. 

Rebecca and I spent a few minutes setting up the tank, and with a flourish (think major water park flume ride) she introduced the tadpoles to their new home.

Three weeks later we now have the odd tadpole and at least three frogs. The snails have grown huge. The water is still nice and clean and I guess all the things that make creeks alive are working. 

And yesterday Rebecca captured it all with the camera. 

The life cycle of a frog. Tadpole to frog to “hey, you wanna make more tadpoles?”

I will say one thing for frogs. They don’t waste time!

Summer School

Hooray! We are almost at the end of our second year of home schooling. 

Well, actually .. as I am learning (yes, I too am being educated) there is no such thing as “end” or “beginning” when it comes to teaching your kids at home.

Not that it stops them asking. 

Child: “When does school finish?”

Me: “When you’ve finished the curriculum”

Child: “But I’m only on lesson 14 of 76 in my history!”

Me: Well, you’d better get on then hadn’t you”

(Sounds of lashing whip in background and cries of torment from captive children)

It’s a hard lesson. 

The idea that you just keep going ‘til it’s done.

Still, the onset of pool season has helped speed up the process. The knowledge that swimming only occurs when work is done spurs little minds to grapple with hitherto impossible multiplication problems at twice the speed as before. Suddenly that paragraph on hieroglyphics, neglected all morning, is now sitting on the table awaiting my perusal. The lure of the pool trumps everything.

Small child has also been promised a hamster when her math is all done. She is on lesson 74 of 118. The suggestion that she could do two lessons a day, and even work over the weekends, although initially greeted with enthusiasm, was ultimately thrown out. Some ideas look good in principle, but the practical application is SO hard! 

Last summer I sort of gave up once evaluations were done. It had been an exhausting year, as I learnt what home schooling was all about and as we adjusted to our new way of life.

This summer I feel more in control. I sort of know what’s going on. Sort of.

We are not organized as such, but there is a method (somewhere, under all the clutter in my mind and on the table) and I am happy with how the children are progressing.

So. We shall carry on. I think until August. Then we will all deserve a break.

I wont be the hard task master. Some math and writing every day to keep the brain ticking over. And reading ... always the reading. Books are everything. 

And the pool. The pool is more than everything. 

WOLVES

A few weeks ago, I put two of my daughters in the car and we drove to Pennsylvania. This in itself is noteworthy, due to my directional ineptitude. I can barely find my way from one end of Fairfax to  the other. Give me a map, and the chances of me getting lost increase. But aided by the soothing ministrations of the lady in my GPS box, we made it almost all the way to our destination before someone decided to build a new road and the genie of the GPS disappeared back into her lamp, bleating “recalculating route” in a confused stutter.

A quick cellphone call to Hero Hubby and we were pointed back in the right direction. 20 minutes later we were booking into our hotel; a sad, limp establishment, with thin walls and a manically noisy extractor fan in the bathroom. But it had two Queen beds and a TV. What more could the girls want? Once they had exhausted themselves jumping from bed to bed they settled down to watch Spongebob.

 Later, Jessica did have a moment of homesickness (for her laptop) but we played an ad lib game of pictionary which had her laughing hysterically at my very bad character drawings of snow white and the seven dwarfs, and later still we went out to dinner at the semi posh Olive Garden, where she stuffed herself with breaded scampi until she felt sick and happy. (Rebecca had a far more sedate mac and cheese).

Back at the hotel I fell asleep to them singing and telling ghost stories. I was woken briefly at 2am to find Jessica shaking me to inform me that I was snoring. 

I don’t know what time they got to sleep, but they weren’t particularly enthusiastic to be roused at 7.30. Then they remembered why we were there. We had come to see the wolves at Speedwell Wolf Sanctuary.

Another 30 minutes of listening to Mrs GPS as we drove through beautiful old towns of rural Pennsylvania, past farms and the occasional horse drawn Amish buggy vying for road space with cars, motorbikes and massive trucks. No wonder the horses always look so angry.

The wolves at Speedwell are beautiful, and as keen as the visitors for the tour to start. This may have had something to do with the full bucket of raw chicken the tour guide was carrying. Wolf noses were pressed against wire meshed fences, long pink tongues protruding to lick enticing pimply fleshed morsels. Teeth were bared and alphas snapped at over-eager omegas, letting us all know who was boss.

All the wolves have a story, from Chipper, (half wolf, half lab and so much like a dog it seems cruel to lock him up behind an 8 foot fence. All he needs is a cuddle and a snooze by the fire) to Thor (full wolf but abandoned because he was blind).

Most had come to the sanctuary from homes ill equipped to care for full grown wild beasts which, we were informed again and again, is what wolves are. They may look endearingly cuddly and Fido-like as they wag their tails and prance around, but They Are Wild Beasts. 

Find out more about the wolf sanctuary and it's history. It is well worth a visit.

The Fat Orange Cat is Sitting on the Table

Today my 9 year old has been learning about adjectives and my 17 year old has been practicing her procrastination skills.

An adjective is a describing word. 

For example: 

“This is a long, yellow pencil”. 

“I have a fat, orange cat”. 

“My fat, orange cat is sitting on the table”. 

“My fat orange cat is sitting on the untidy, overcrowded kitchen table.”

“My dog Billy is big, black, naughty and extremely smelly ”

“My younger sisters are ravenously hungry and noisily demanding lunch”

“I have some cool, new mouth guards for when I play rugby”

"Facebook is a popular, fun and useful social media site"

Procrastination is a noun. Definition: - to postpone or delay needlessly. 

For example:

It has taken me so long to actually start doing my work because I had to sharpen the blunt point of my long yellow pencil. 

I haven’t, as yet, got round to actually doing anything which could be construed as ‘work’ because the fat orange cat, sitting on the untidy, overcrowded table, demanded that I feed him by meowing piteously.

The overpowering stench emanating from my big, black dog Billy made me violently ill and I was therefore unable to complete my work in a satisfactory manner. 

As a kind, thoughtful act, I have selflessly put off starting my difficult essay in order to make a healthy, hot, appetizing lunch for my wonderful, younger sisters.

Oh look! I had forgotten that my Mother had bought me some sparkling, new mouth guards only four short days ago. I know that I could easily have got them ready to wear over the  past weekend, but it is so much better to do it right now, just when I should be getting on with my work.

I had to update my facebook page with some crazy pics of me in Sunny Las Vegas!