Attack of the Bath Monster

Usually Imogen wrestles the cats through the bath. They are caught, bundled off to the laundry and all we hear are wails and meowing until a sorry soggy cat scoots out and takes refuge under the nearest table. But this week Imogen wasn't there. She is away at a mission school. So that left me as Bath-Master-In-Chief.

I eyed my first victim, a pitifully meowing fuzzy lump. I began to wonder if this might be easier than I had imagined. I plopped the cat in the bath, ran some nice warm water and bath day began. Soon Jenny began wailing, insisting that I'm a mean horrible monster who tortures poor little cats for fun. Bathing moaning cats is not my idea of fun.

One soggy cat scurried away, sliding on the tiles and hid under the table. I grinned. Only two more to go. The next cat was a breeze. Sammy hates the bathtub but he's so silly he won't try get out. Either that or he knew I'm the master of the bath. When I say "you will sit there" I mean it. He just sat there, meowing pitifully like a little kitten. But I was still cautious. There was still one cat left to go.

Poppy is known as a horror in the bath. The first time we bathed her, she jumped out of the bath onto Imogen's head. So I eyed her cautiously. We both put our best stubborn faces on and the battle began. At first things seemed to go well. Poppy stayed mostly in the bath, along with the water. Sophie help me pour cupfuls of warm water over her back. I relaxed slightly. Then the whirlwind began.

For some reason, Poppy decided she hated the bath more than usual. Or maybe she thought I was weaker and more likely to let her out of the bath than Imogen. She started clawing her away out of the tub. I yanked her back in. Sophie helped me pin her down. We settled back down to wetting her. Then Poppy climbed the air in front of her. I've never actually seen a cat climb thin air before but this one certainly did. She leaped into the air and wriggled like an eel.

"Turn off the water," I yelled at Sophie.

She wrestled with the taps and a little of the airborne water disappeared. I put my best stubborn face on and tried to wrestle Poppy back into the bath. The horrible animal decided at the moment that she wanted to be gone and scratched me, jumped out of the bath and ran away, dribbling water all over the floor. I clutched my arm and stalked after my foe.


"Fetch Dad," I told Sophie.

It was war.

Dad appeared a couple of seconds later and grabbed Poppy by the scruff of her neck. He dunked her back into the tub and the battle began again. This time it went our way. Dad held her down gently but firmly. There wasn't any climbing walls with him there. In record time we had a third soggy animal hiding.

I've decided that Imogen may keep her delightful job. This Bath-Master-In-Chief wants to retire. I've got several huge scratches on my arm and a horror of bathing animals. But we won.

Almost Evacuating

Someone was knocking at my bedroom door. I flipped the lid of my laptop down and went to open it. A very excited Sophie stood outside my door.

"The fire danger is catastrophic," she said. "We saw it on the way home from the shops."

That was the first time I've ever heard of the fire danger being that high. But I didn't worry. It wouldn't really matter. I settled back down to enjoy the rest of my evening in peace.

At bedtime I headed off to say goodnight. I'd just go kiss Mum and Dad goodnight, tuck myself up in bed and snooze. That was the plan. Instead I went out to say goodnight to Dad and was greeted with an unlikely message.

"Turn off your laptop and unplug it. Get your USB sticks and Imogen's laptop ready to evacuate."

That was rather random. I hadn't quite expected that.

I promised I would do it and went to say goodnight to Mum. She kissed me and said,

"Get yourself a pair of trousers and a long sleeved shirt ready. Also pack some other clothes."

This was getting rather serious.

"Are we in danger then? Sophie said the fire danger is catastrophic."

"There are any fires near us but fires move really quickly. We have to be ready in case we have to evacuate. We would feel pretty stupid if a fire came and we hadn't bothered to get ready. Also pack up any electronics," Mum said.

"What about the cats?" I asked. "Shall I get out the carriers in case?"

"That's a good idea. Put them by the front door where we can get to them easily."

"And what about the guinea pig?"

"We'd better move her up to the house so we can get her quickly."

I headed off and found cat carriers, hunted and failed to find a box for our ancient guinea pig and helped carry her cage up to the house. Then I was sent to find Sophie and Gemma-Rose's computers and cameras. They were awake and wanted to know what was going on. Before I knew it, we were preparing the whole house to evacuate. Bags of emergency clothing, laptops and cat carriers appeared by the door.

Finally, after everything we could possibly need to evacuate was packed, I headed for bed, much later then I had expected. But there was still clothing and laptops in my bedroom to pack. I slipped everything of importance that I could find into a bag and flopped into bed.

The next day dawned cloudy and rather cool. That didn't last. By lunchtime the air was scorching and any anxious thoughts about evacuating were banished from my mind by the heat. We spent the day hiding from the heat in the coolest places we could find. Mum checked where the bush fires were every few minutes. But the hottest day this summer ended without us evacuating.

It really was rather odd. Preparing for an evacuation felt rather scary. We rushed around, half expecting to hear the hooter go and to have to run. Then we got up in the morning and nothing happened. The day ended without any problems. The worst problem we faced was staying cool. So we almost evacuated. But I'm glad that we didn't have to.

A Shiny New Computer

One day I got up to find that my computer refused to turn on. It wouldn't charge. It adamantly insisted that I was being mean and it couldn't possibly be expected to work. At first I thought, "It's just the charger cord or something. I'll show it Dad and he'll fix it in five minutes."

So I picked up my little laptop and toddled off to find Dad. He took it and plugged the charger in. As I expected, nothing at all happened. He unplugged it and tried again. We tried another charger and got the same result. 

"I'll take it to be repaired," Dad said. "You can use my laptop while it's being fixed."

Dad took charge of my laptop, I started borrowing whatever computer was on offer and things went on as normal. A few days ago when Dad had some spare time he start ringing up about getting my computer fixed. He rang everywhere, even India, to work out what had happened to it. Then he came to my bedroom.

"I've rung them about the computer and they think the motherboard has crashed."

"That's like a computer heart attack isn't it?"

So that was final. My computer wasn't coming back...so would I continue to beg and borrow computers? Nope.

"We'll get you a new computer soon," Dad promised. 

I thought that it might be a few weeks before we'd do anything. But just a couple days ago things happened. 

The doorbell rang. I dropped the cheese slicer on the board, abandoned the sandwiches and ran to let Mum and Dad in. For a few minutes everything was forgotten as we unpacked the shopping. But once things had calmed down and I was eating my lunch, Mum called. I hurried to her bedroom. 

"Would you like this laptop?"

A large shiny brand-new laptop sat on her bed. It was black and silver and very shiny. My eyes widened.

"Yes please!"

I couldn't believe it. A new laptop! One that went at the speed of light, didn't die in the heat and wouldn't toast my feet as I wrote. 

In the afternoon Dad began setting it up. I stood behind him, eyes glued to the screen as he installed basic programs and got rid of random things it had come with. I couldn't believe the speed. It didn't go in fits and starts and moan the whole time. No, my new laptop took everything in its stride. Then came the most important part, the background. We hunted through the stock backgrounds it came with.

"There's these tulips or these other flowers," Dad said as we scrolled through.

"Can we try the koala?"

Dad clicked on the image and my screen filled with a massive fuzzy koala. 

"I love it."

"Are you sure that's what you want? We could look for something else."

But I was sure. 

By evening I had a brilliant laptop, ready to do anything. I could write novels and blog posts and play computer games, even on hot days. And it was mine. Thanks to my wonderful parents I now have one of the best computers in the whole house. 

Zany Zoo Photos

For us going to the zoo is a great treat. We only go once every few years and when we do, we make the most of the trip. During the holidays we set off on an adventure. We collected cameras, lunch and coats and set off for the zoo.

Usually, I forget to bring a camera, or if I do neglect to take any photos. I'm hopeless that way. But this time I did remember to bring the camera. With my pink camera in hand and a bag of tiny teddies in the other, I set off to see if I'm any good at photography. Maybe I'm not, but here are some of my better photos.

When I think of koalas, I think of dozy animals who can't be bothered to move and will sit still for photos. But these koalas were climbing around like they'd never heard the word doze. Thankfully I managed to get some of the koalas when they were almost still. But this photos is one of my rare action shots.

This Meer Cat was cold and found the perfect place to stand: under the heat lamp. But when the bucket of food arrived he had to choose between the heat lamp and the meal.

This little deer agreed to stand still while I took the photo while juggling my tiny teddies. It was a good deer and didn't move a little bit.

These lions are sensible. It was drizzling when we got to the lions and they weren't coming out even for their fans to take photos. But cameras have this wonderful thing called zoom so I got a picture despite their reluctance to come out.

By the time we got to the bongo, we were getting a little tired and I'd already gotten myself lost while we were watching elephant playtime. So I was grateful when the bongo stood still and kept eating. I don't think the greedy thing even realized we were there.

I never meant to take this photo. I meant to take a nice stationary shot of a turtle. Turns out the turtle had other ideas and wanted to look like a monster. Still, it made a nice shot even if most of the zoo is reflected in the glass.

Now I have my photos to remind me of our wonderful trip to the zoo. I admit that some of them are rather strange like the one where a Meer cat actually wandered out of the shot by the time I took the photo or the fuzzy alligator. But some of them are good and I'm glad to have them to look at.

Millions of Molecules

 As some people might have gathered from my Nutty Professor post, I like chemistry. So Mum bought me a  molecule construction kit. This morning, armed with the kit and my trusty chemistry textbook, I set out to explore the strange world of molecular bonds. I started with diamonds...and quickly found that I like the molecular structure of diamonds.

Diamond

Then I found another molecule to build: Methane. It sounds a bit weird to be making methane for fun but oh well.

Methane

Ammonia was fun to make. It looks a bit like a little robot.

Ammonia

This one just looks wrong. It wouldn't sit still for the camera so the picture is a little blurry. My Hydrogen Fluoride is...orange.

Hydrogen Fluoride

So I had a good morning. Making these molecules was a little like playing Lego, except it was educational and Lego isn't.

Camp NaNoWriMo

Last November I participated in NaNoWriMo and enjoyed it. Well, I enjoyed it when I wasn't pulling my hair out over my stubborn novel which refused to get written. So when Imogen discovered Camp NaNoWriMo I was delighted. Here was a chance to get two novels written in super speed. We signed up as soon as possible. Now all I needed was a story.

So I sat down at my computer and began my planning. I quickly found that I have the attention span of a fly and could easily become distracted by the slightest thing. After half an hour's work I decided what I had wasn't any good and began all over again. And it happened again. Imogen was filling a notebook with ideas and that seemed a good idea. So I grabbed a fresh clean notebook, dumped it on the table and look at it blankly. I hadn't a clue what to write in it. 

After a nice long session talking to Imogen I found found an idea to write down. Then the ideas started flooding in. My notebook pages were covered in scribbles. Of course I hadn't a clue whether these ideas were any good but they were a start. Random ramblings on characters I couldn't possibly leave out, evil ideas for my villain and hundreds of possible names for my heroine who was maddeningly vague poured out into my notebook. Who was she anyway? I could name everyone else in my story but the heroine and that was really getting me annoyed.

When I sat back down at my desk with my plans in front of me, my fingers began to fly. I pounded out my ideas and tried to put them into some sort of order. Probably I failed and I still changed the name of my heroine every couple of minutes but I was getting somewhere.

Now my planning is sort of going on track. True I get distracted easily and hate leaving any of my amazing secondary characters out of the story but I getting there. I have even decided on a final name for my heroine. This time I'm determined to keep it. Unless I find an even better one. Hopefully by the time I reach Camp NaNoWriMo next month I should have some sort of a plan. If I don't accidentally delete it like I did last time...

The Nutty Professor

Chemistry to me means explosions. I know there are other ways to use chemistry. Neon lights don't explode, neither do mobile phones. I think everyone would be very surprised if things like that started happening. But I like the exploding sort of chemistry best. What's better than seeing an innocent bowl of water explode when a tiny itty bitty piece of sodium is chucked in?

I've been watching videos on the periodic table and love it. I didn't know before that I liked chemistry but now I do. Funny the things you find out. That was interesting but it was all watching and no doing. So Mum got me a chemistry kit. It came with Litmus paper, tiny plastic cups and everything that an evil scientist would need to destroy the world.

"Why don't you give Sophie and Gemma-Rose a chemistry lesson?" Mum asked.

"Um," I replied, sounding incredibly intelligent. "Er, yes."

"When do you want to do it?"

I scrambled for a day.

"Wednesday?"

That left me enough time to actually work out what I was doing. Wednesday dawned, I planned to devote a good part of the morning to planning my amazing chemistry lesson. I would dazzle Sophie and Gemma-Rose with my chemistry knowledge. What actually happened? The morning disappeared. We went running, Imogen and I went for haircuts, lunch interrupted my planning. So the morning passed without me doing a tiny bit of planning.

I was determined to get some planning done before the girls came for their lesson. I wasn't going to turn up, grin foolishly and tell them that I hadn't got a clue what I was talking about. So I grabbed my trusty chemistry text book and got thoroughly confused. Out of my kit I had picked the Litmus test. So I had to look up acidity and pH. But the chemistry book was so confusing. I just wanted to know about the litmus test and what acidity actually is. But they wanted to tell me who defined acidity when and how an acid is named. Some time later I dumped the chemistry book. This wasn't getting me anywhere.

"What will I do?" I wailed to Imogen.

"Search the Internet," she replied calmly.

Filled with new hope I searched the Internet. Almost immediately I got results in a form I could understand. Grabbing my trusty notebook and pen I started scribbling. Interesting facts popped up. Hydrogen ion causes the acidity, blue litmus paper goes red in acid, fish will die if the pH in the water goes below five. Finally I felt prepared.

Armed with my notebook, a pile of plastic cups, some strips of litmus paper and a whiteboard I headed for the kitchen where my two students waited. I started with explaining acidity but we soon dealt with that and got onto the exciting part of the experiment.

"Get some lemon juice, Sophie," I said. "We need some tea Gemma-Rose."

The girls scurried around the kitchen fetching ingredients. It looked as though we were going to cook something truly horrible. I marked cups and the girls poured in water, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice and bi-carb soda.

"Er, tea is next, I think."

Gemma-Rose brought the tea bag and we began to make tea. Then we made an important life changing discovery. You can't make tea with cold water. We soon fixed that though. Our little plastic cups sat lined up, each with it's name written on the side. But still there were two little cups left empty. At that moment Mum walked past.

"What else could we use?" I asked her. "What about milk?"

"Milk is a good idea."

I looked around the kitchen. A bottle of Fanta caught my eye.

"Could we use a tiny bit of that for our experiment?"

The last cup was filled. The whiteboard was ready for noting down the results and so we started. The girls took turns dipping the litmus paper in and working out the pH against our chart. All was going well, my lesson was turning out beautiful, when we hit a slight problem. We were working on balsamic vinegar. Sophie lifted the strip out. It was a lovely shade of brown.

"I'm not sure what that pH is," I said, putting the stained litmus strip away.

We dissolved into giggles.

"Why don't we use some other vinegar."

The rest of the experiment went perfectly except for the time I accidentally used a permanent marker on the whiteboard and we found that permanent markers can be removed using some Gumption. With seven or eight soggy strips of paper lying on the side and our results written down the experiment was over.

"Now you may drink the fizzy drink and milk. Although," here I grinned evilly. "I'll let anyone who wants to drink the vinegar."

Sophie and Gemma-Rose hastily grabbed the little pots and started sipping. For some strange reason they didn't want to drink the vinegar. I can't imagine why. So my lesson did go well after all and Sophie and Gemma-Rose requested another one. But what was really fun? Getting to do real chemistry.

I'm the nutty professor.