So another week has passed by and we are now firmly into the second half of May. This seems very scary. Where does time go??? It's now been 8 weeks since I first met my boyfriend, and it still only feels like yesterday.

So what has happened in this last week since I blogged about my sign language course. Not  a lot really! I waited in on wednesday for British Gas to come and do the yearly gas inspection required for my landladys homecare agreement that she has with them. This I find a pointless concept as the only gas related appliance in my house is the boiler and if there was a problem with it they would know about it. So I don't really know why they have to come and look at it and run a test on it to check its working ok, when I can tell if its working or not (My thermostat rarely goes below 20degrees and i have yet to actually turn my heating off completely this year).

So after that pointless excercise I then had beavers with the 7ths colony. It was actually a very fun evening filled with lots of exercise type challenges. It was here we discovered I can't draw a large figure of 8 with chalk on the floor without getting very dizzy and nearly falling over and without making the lines very wibbly. I also discovered I cannot walk round this figure of 8 with a book balanced on my head, I can still hula hoop whilst doing the macarena and I'm not a fan of star jumps. Most importantly the kids enjoyed it.

Thursday I met up with one of my friends who I hadn't seen in over 6 weeks. She is now moving back to her home town so I'm not really sure when I will meet up with her again either :( However we had a good few hours together and we went out for lunch to a local pub where I thoroughly enjoyed my duck enchilda :o). In the evening it was my beaver colony meeting, where I was also then running the cub pack meeting straight after. So my thursday evening was filled with planting sunflower seeds in eggboxs, fat ball making for birds and bug collecting. Well I didn't so much do any bug collecting nor let any of the cubs bring their containers filled with bugs come anywhere near me (I'm not a huge fan of bugs especially when they have 8 legs). I did the best thing a leader can do and that is delegate to my young leaders to check their bug collecting boxes for the kind of bugs they had collected.

Friday was the ever delightful food shop day again with my grandma. Now whilst I love my grandma to pieces, food shopping with her can be very draining. Normally me and my mum go (because quite frankly it needs the both of us to keep each other sane!) but my mum was away this week so it was just me. I normally leave my house to go food shopping at 8.15am, if I get by home by 11am it is a good morning, it is usually nearer 11.30am! So we shopped and I then had the standard cup of tea when back at my grandmas house (anything to keep us there longer!). Just as I was about to leave she asked me if I could photocopy some knitting patterns for her. So home I went, put my shopping away and then spent half an hour photocopying knitting patterns for her. I then went to the pharmacy to collect my prescriptions (a sign you are well known when you can walk in and they already go looking for your prescription without having to ask your name and know they need to look in the 'big' area as opposed to in the tiny plastic baskets) and then take the photocopied patterns back round to my grandmas. She tried to get me to stay for another cup of tea but I pleaded I was busy with jobs and escaped within 10mins of walking into her house (practically a miracle).

My weekend was spent with my boyfriend and for a few hours on the sunday with his little boy also. The weekend consisted of a lot of lego!!! I really don't think I've ever seen so much lego in my life in one room that wasn't a nursery/classroom or similar type setting!! After this weekend I think I'm almost savvy with all the required lego talk (well there was definitely less puzzled looks from my bf towards the end of the weekend and 'i need to see the diagram' to work out what lego piece I was after). The point of all this lego making?? To work out which lego kits he didn't want anymore and whether they were complete. I was also then informed on the saturday morning that there was football that evening that he reallly really wanted to watch. I was then given the remotes for the whole day up until the football started. I feel I chose well when I saw that the sound of music was on. Also who knew football could go on for so long!!! However to give him his due, he cooked for me all weekend and apart from the incinerated chips for one meal it was all very yummy and he made lots of cups of tea. So I think I can cope with football :o)

As for the upcoming week- well who knows what will happen???? things in the diary (something I can't live without and if I don't have it with me then I have no idea what I am meant to be doing or when) include sign language, babysitting my god-daughter, beavers, my mothers birthday and my nephews birthday! I'm hoping my friend will be free for a cup of tea and catch-up and get me out of taking my grandma food shopping this week.

A self-professed nerd!

I have always loved school. Whether it was primary, secondary, college or university I have always loved to learn. I was never afraid to admit that maths was one of my most favourite subjects and I went to school quite happily every morning and always found the school holidays long because I missed school for the learning!

I was always the child who had their homework done, I would get home from school and start doing my homework, eat my tea and then finish my homework off. I remember many a time where I was one of a handful who had actually done their homework on time for those teachers who were a little bit lax in whether they could be bothered to take the work in or not.

I am now in the middle of an introduction to sign language course. As has always been my pattern my nerd colours are truly showing in this class also! I am loving learning the language and frequently get complemented on how well I am doing by the tutor (who incidentally is completely deaf her self and sign language is her first language, which makes the learning even more true to life). The tutor knows I am a beaver scout leader and constantly refers to this fact and that i would of earnt my badge by now for this if there was one (I think she can see how much I am enjoying it). Last night towards the end I was picked to have a conversation with her in front of the class. In sign language you repeat what the person has told you with somethings to ensure you understand (and the grammar/syntax is different to the english language) but the conversation was along the lines of this:

T: Hello

H: Hello

T: How are you?

H: I'm good thank you. How are you?

T: I'm good thank you. What is your name?

H: My name is.........

T: Your name is........

H: Yes. What is your name?

T: My name is........

H: Your name is........

T: Yes. Would you like tea or coffee?

H: Tea please.

T: Would you like milk?

H: Yes please.

T: Would you like sugar?

H: Yes please.

T: How many?

H: 2 please.

T: (pretend to pass over a cup of tea). H: Thank you

T: Would you like cake or biscuit.

H: Biscuit please.

T: How many?

H: 1 please.

T: (pretend to pass over biscuit). H: Thank you.

THEN

H: Would you like tea or coffee?

T: Tea please.

H: Would you like milk?

T: Yes please.

H: Would you like sugar?

T: No thank you

 H: (pretend to pass over a cup of tea). T: Thank you

H: Would you like cake or biscuit.

T: Biscuit please.

H: How many?

T: 1 please.

H: (pretend to pass over biscuit). T: Thank you.

T: It was nice to meet you, see you next week.

H: It was nice to meet you. See you next week.

Both: Goodbye

That was a long conversation to have, only 3 weeks into learning sign language.

Luckily my friend who is doing the course with me is also abit of a nerd and we are both doing as fab as each other!! (I think to be honest we are starting to get some jealous and evil looks from some other people on the course!). I would love to be able to take this further and actually do the Level 1 in British Sign Language course which would also give me a qualification in it, but mainly because I want to learn more and would love to be able to be alot more fluent in this language. Also it means as a scout group we would be able to advertise that we could have hard of hearing/deaf children in our group without their parents needing to stay with them all the time. How great would that be for those children to have some independence and have fun and not feel frustrated because they are not understood due to a language barrier.

So to end this post I will leave you with this picture for the difference between a geek, nerd and dork!!

Catch up

RIP Harry. You were a wonderful hamster and friend. You made the house seem less empty and you are sorely missed.


Unfortunately Harry passed away on Tuesday. It was abit of a shock as although he had been poorly a few weeks ago, he seemed to have recovered and gained all of his previous strength and I had stopped being so worried about him.


I haven't really been upto much else since my last post.

CF Awareness week day 3

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is a genetically inerited, life-shortening condition. If two adults carry the CF gene then their child would have a 1 in 4 chance of having CF. Most people do not even realise they are carriers of the gene until their child is born with the condition. Below is a diagram to show the inheritance of CF.

I fell into the unlucky category of being the 1 in 4 who gets the condition, as did my oldest sibling (who was diagnosed after me despite being 5 years older). My twin brother fell into the category of not carrying any of the CF genes (he was tested after his partner became pregnant). My other sister does not know if she is a carrier or not as she has had no reason to be tested, she has no plans to have children and getting tested won't make any difference to her current plans. My brother struggles with the fact he is not even a carrier, especially when he sees myself or my eldest sibling ill. Whilst you can't help the genes you receive he still feels guilty, which I think is the reason my sister won't get tested as she too doesn't like to see us ill.

CF Awareness Week Day 2

A diagram showing the many different effects that CF has on the body! Mainly people think CF is that disease that just affects the lungs, how wrong they are!