I really enjoyed the four-day weekend that we had over Easter. We didn’t go anywhere, and although Phil made a lovely roast turkey, we didn’t do anything special, just vegged and relaxed…very much needed. I talked to my family, which was nice. Played a lot of warcraft, rode Queen Psycho Lizzie and enjoyed the sun…which went away yesterday. Poo.
Lizzie is losing her black winter coat and coming into her gorgeous chocolate-with-bright-gold-dapple summer coat. She’s dreadfully out of shape, so I work her for only short periods. She needs road work, but I would be taking my life in my hands to take her out right now on the lethal roads around our barn. She’s so lovely in spite of everything.
I heard on the radio this morning that some children’s charity was calling on all markets to enforce a zero-tolerance policy on smacking children. Excuse me? From what I can see, we need a bit more discipline. Our shopping trip yesterday was made a misery by a couple drifting aimlessly around the aisles, totally ignoring the furious howls at ear-shattering decibels coming from the two tykes strapped into the double stroller (push chair, whatever you call it in the UK) that totally blocked whatever aisle they were currently on. I would never have been allowed to act like that as a child in a market, or any public place.
I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. I heartily recommend it. Although he’s a decade older than I am, I can still relate to the things that he writes about. As a child in the fifties (sixties) you lived in a very different world, where you were allowed to survive so many things that would give any parent today a panic attack. And you did so perfectly well, without harm, and became a much stronger person for it. You left in the morning, and came home at dark, and no strangers ever stole you away. You ate food laced with sugar and lethal dyes, and never got cancer or got fat. The neighborhood policeman could march a bad kid home, holding onto one ear, and that kid’s father would make him apologise for causing trouble, and then give him a thrashing after the cop left…his first instinct wasn’t to sue. You fell out of trees and off monkey bars, you broke bones and skinned knees and elbows, and were allowed to go on doing it after the cast came off…it was wonderful.
Phil is going for surgery this Friday to have his gallbladder removed. He’s never had surgery before, and I’ve been winding him up a bit. Just a bit. :)
Ah, well, back to work…
Yeah, this stupid wingnut apparently thinks that not a single parent out there is capable of making the distinction between beating a child and disciplining a child.
I especially love that it applies to children under the age of three. Um, hello – isn’t that when they most need a swat on the bootie, because they CAN’T REALLY UNDERSTAND A LECTURE? The point of a spanking at that age is merely to get their attention and to discourage repeat behavior. It’s not to leave marks or welts or scare them.
I miss the days of climbing nearly to the tops of trees, swimming in the cow pond/irrigation ditch (hehe – yeah, that was sanitary) and jumping off rope/tire swings into the river. I can’t wait to let Angel do all of those things and more.