Round Up

It's been a manic couple of weeks here, coupled with a couple of big blog-related news items which I'll get to later.

Firstly though, Anna lost another tooth, her third in the space of ten days. The K household is hurtling towards a tooth-fairy related fiscal cliff and the girls are happily oblivious. Anna lost her first upper tooth, so we are waiting for her first 'tombstone' to appear, as LK calls those massive top teeth that dominate the mouths of most 7 and 8 year old kids. In the meantime she has a superb lisp going on that just makes me want to ask her to say 'super sausages' (thooper thauthages) all day long.

Please mind the gap. Apparently her teeth genes are British.

Lucy has been surprisingly, bizarrely, complacent about gift after gift appearing under Anna's pillow. It takes a lot for a three year old to comprehend that her time will come. Maybe she's just so groggy in the mornings these days that the injustice doesn't resonate.

Then there was Halloween of course. Here are my two in their super-thrifty costumes:

Anna was Hermione Granger in her preschool graduation gown and a Griffindor scarf handknitted by yours truly. Possibly the only female in the history of Santa Barbara to dye her white-blonde hair brown. The bathtub looked like a murder scene the next morning, and she's still only back to a strawberry blonde nearly two weeks later. Lucy was Cinderella again. I don't think she realizes she can be anything else quite frankly, and as it's both cheap, if a little large and off-the-shoulder vampish, I'm more than happy for her to wear it next year too.

Then I had an old Grammar school friend fly in for a couple of days, which was absolutely wonderful and I could sense my vowels flattening within hours (ow-wus) of his arrival. He is now an equity partner of a very large law firm, and I'm sure he was equally impressed with the fact that we have new patio furniture. Teak. Second hand. Craigslist. He may be able to retire in only a few years, but he is regularly up at 3am working towards a deadline, and I'm not talking about knitting Griffindor scarves with Halloween being only two days away....

Then - I know - I bet you can scarcely keep up. I went to a GATE meeting the School District put on for all parents who think their child may actually be Hermione Granger, one of the smartest young witches of her age. It was just an informational meeting, but you should have seen the furrowed brows when they tried to explain how a problem of splitting a square in to 81 spaces using as few lines as possible is an indicator of a gifted rather than a bright child. If you said 18 lines you're a muppet, if you said 16 (me), you're less of a muppet but sadly just bright, not gifted, and if you said 13 lines then you've spent too much time with a spirograph, or are a 'gifted' child. I'm not sure Anna would understand the question quite frankly, she would most likely suggest the correct answer was a Unisys, draw one in the box and then effortlessly argue her case until you're convinced she may have a point. Actually come to think of it, I may be rearing less a GATE kid than a future lawyer. Oh boy.

Actually what was funny is that I'd expected the meeting to be overrun with the quintessential Santa Barbara parents I bump in to daily, career over-acheivers who are pushing their kids as hard as possible. In actuality, there were only about thirty parents there, most of whom I knew - therefore a) I am clearly one of those parents that I am terrified of and b) I am competing with people like me. Muppet.

We may get Anna tested, but as with most things with this travesty of a school district, it probably will not make any difference and will not effect her ability to transfer to a better school. Having said that, we are really happy with the new school she's moved to, and once a kid is GATE 'identified' they are 'GATE' for life, so it wouldn't hurt to know. I'll keep you posted.

For me, by far the highlight of the evening was when I was chatting to some cohorts at the end of the meeting (all most likely thinking, well, I know my kid is bright, but really, what are you doing here) when a bloke with an English accent asked if I was Anna and Lucy's Mum. He introduced himself as someone who's been reading my blog for a while, having found it by looking up an ex-pat issue, and he said some really nice things about it which was equally shocking. So thank you Ian, it was really lovely to meet you. You made my day.

And then - what news could be bigger than actually being spotted by a reader (actually having a reader who is not my Mum???).

Having a reader who is an international film star. That's what.

No really.

I wrote this post several years ago about the fact that Daniel Craig had moved to Knaresborough a small village near my home town. It remains one of my most googled posts, which sadly says a lot about my blog. Well, last week I got a comment on that post from Anonymous which says:

Its not knaresborough but nearby 
Dan x

What do you think? Was Daniel Craig googling himself (oo err missus), does he go by Dan? Am I clutching at straws?

You bet I am!