Pond Hopper

Over the weekend, an old friend contacted me and asked if she could come and stay with us. She had a baby 7 weeks ago and eluded to having problems with her husband. We haven't seen each other in years. We had a falling out over the man she is now married to because I thought he was bad news. At the time, she was only twenty and didn't want to hear what I was telling her so she put an end to our friendship and didn't speak to me again until a few months ago. When she asked to stay, I had a feeling it was down to abuse (due to cryptic text messages and the fact she couldn't actually speak to me over the phone). With that in mind, I asked her not to tell him where she would be staying until after we spoke, but it was too late. She was on her way and he was driving her. When they arrived, I could feel the tension. He stayed briefly and when he left she crumbled and cried. I hugged her and told her we'd talk when my son was in bed, but what ever it was it would b...

During our trip to the States, my three year old son became obsessed with a TV show called Dino Dan (which they don't play in the UK so I had to buy it on iTunes before we left so he'd be able to keep watching it). On the show, a ten year old boy sees computer animated dinosaurs everywhere he goes. Now, my son also sees dinosaurs everywhere he goes. He's constantly sayings things like, 'A T-Rex! Cool!' This morning, he tried to climb up to a window in my bedroom which is on on the top floor of our three story house to look at a dinosaur he was sure was outside. In the UK, most windows open out (like a door) and have no screens or child safety latches to keep children from falling out. In his room (also on the top floor) and in the rooms on the 2nd floor, we have window guards to keep the window from opening too wide. We didn't put them in the master suite because he's never in there without supervision. He's older now and I know it will have to be d...

It's been months. The first part of my absence was down to my laptop being in for repairs and held by my insurance company until they decided if they were going to cover the damage or not. They had the laptop for a month and a half. I wanted to kill someone! In the end I got it back repaired, but it runs far too slow now and I've been putting off the inevitable - reformatting and starting with a clean machine again. The process is long and tedious, but I know sooner rather than later, I will have to do it. The second part of my absence was down to 3 weeks spent in NJ visiting my family and friends (and a week of recovery time). The trip was both wonderful and terrible (as all trips home turn out to be). The day we arrived, I came down with a high fever followed by the worst sore throat of my life. I ended up at the doctor finding out I had a bad case of strep throat. This was followed by my son coming down with it as well. Our first 7 days, we were stuck in my parents ho...