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.

Hundreds of Hamlets

Shakespeare is one of my favourite subjects. We read his plays out loud, taking parts. Occasionally four people is not enough and we must double up. I can remember times when I've talked to myself because everyone else already had two or more parts. We love almost all his plays (Titus Andronicus just made me feel sick) but the one that takes the prize is Hamlet. Last time we read Hamlet I wasn't very good at reading out loud. I butchered Ophelia and Queen Gertrude and made a complete mess of minor characters. But last term we started it again. This time Sophie was just starting reading Shakespeare. I'm jealous. She got Hamlet as her very first play. I got Twelfth Night. 

Sitting on our family room table was a stack of DVDs. There were far more versions of Hamlet than I ever thought we'd watch. So we began reading. Imogen starred as Hamlet, I was horrifically Evil as Claudius, Sophie claimed Ophelia as her special property and Mum got Horatio. We each took various other parts and we muddled through. As we read we started watching the BBC production of Hamlet. That took most of the term and we still had more versions waiting for us on the table. Having finished watching the BBC Hamlet we started on the David Tennant version. By the time we were finished term was over and we still had at least two versions of Hamlet sitting on the table. 

This term we have returned to the world of Hamlet and are watching yet another version. But we never get tired of Hamlet. Today, armed with sandwiches and cups of tea, we put on the next Hamlet from the pile. Munching on sandwiches and sipping tea, we watched as Hamlet soliloquised and Horatio nearly had a fit when he saw the ghost. We stared when we recognized the actress of Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility and laughed when we realized that this Claudius acted Hamlet in another version. 

Hopefully, with any amount of luck, we'll get through the last of our Hamlets this term. They have after all lasted us over a term of enjoyment. But as I said, we never get tired of Hamlet. I'm hoping desperately that when we come to the end and nearly everyone dies I won't sniffle. It's very distracting and rather embarrassing to have to pause the movie to run and grab a tissue. Still, it'll be worth it even if I do cry. 

My Marvellous Mermaids

Drawing is one of my favourite hobbies. When I don't have any other necessary things to do like eat chocolate and sew socks into toys I like to pick up my drawing pencil (or any other pencil that happens to be at hand) and scribble away in my sketchbook. In fact sometimes it's more like the pencil hops into my hand. I don't always decide to draw. I just sort of end up doing it.

My newest theme (I like themes) is mermaids. I wanted something new, something fresh and I hadn't tried mermaids for sometime due to a lack of variety in clothing. But Then... something pretty with fins and a tail and quite a nice cardigan appeared on my page.




Me being Charlotte I did something no one else in my family would do. I coloured every single scale seperately... and enjoyed it. But one mermaid wasn't enough so I draw another one.

Still being crazy me I did the same to this one. But instead of rainbow scales I made her scales blue. I don't like mermaids that just stick to one colour so I went totally wild on this one. No blue mermaid for me. This one has enough colour to blind you.

But just mermaids floating around the page wasn't enough for me. I want my mermaid to be doing something. So I drew one leaping into the sunset. After stealing pencils from everyone I set about the sunset sky. Admitedly I'm not sure whether it looks like a proper sunset but I like it. Ideas for clothing just kept pouring into my head. A floaty shirt? Why not?

My last mermaid is quite different from the rest. I did a full background for her and got my hands rather covered in pencil while attempting the night time scene. I have a love of sparkles so in a picture covered with stars and glowing mermaids I just had to add a couple or twenty. For some reason this one ended up being mysterious. I suppose the glow and the flowing white dress has something to do with it.

So these are my latest pictures.

Dad's Right-hand Girl

I'm reading my new Christmas book, totally oblivious to the surrounding world. I'm not paying the slightest attention to anything that isn't inside my book and doing awesome things. But a really annoying noise has burst my little imaginary world and I'm back in the real world. Some one's knocking on the bedroom door. Sighing I shove the closest thing at hand into my book to hold the page and open the door. Gemma-Rose is standing outside dressed for intensive playing.

"Dad wants you," she says and prepares to run off.

"Where is he?"

This is an important question. Dad could be anywhere. I might spend ages looking for him in the house to find him fiddling with something in the garage or getting ready to do something in the garden.

"He's outside." Gemma-Rose is gone in a flash.

I shove my feet into a pair of garden shoes and head for the laundry door. Outside I pause for a moment. Where should I look first? But the bright cleaning cloths give Dad away before I've had a chance to go the wrong direction. I run around the side of the house and find him by our van.

"Would you like to help me vacuum the van out?" he asks.

I nod. Helping Dad is one of my favourite things to do. Already I've forgotten about reading and charge back inside to change to some cleaning clothes.

Armed with a super powerful vacuum cleaner that wants to eat the carpet inside the van I kicked off my shoes and climb in. The vacuum cleaner roars into life and I start sucking up the dirt. Almost hidden in the carpet I find some rather odd things. Wood chips from a run away maple tree, dried fruit and sand (also from the maple tree). Dad meanwhile has found something even stranger.

"There's proper soil in the windows," he exclaims, digging it out with a screwdriver.

I lean over to take a look. Sure enough there's lovely damp soil sitting in the edge of our windows. It's wonderful soil but not exactly what you want in your van's window.

I've only done the back of the van and moved to the middle when I bump my hand against the leg of one of the seats. Strangely my finger's really sore. After a nasty accident with some table mats and a curved side a few weeks ago I wasn't taking any chances. I slide out of the van and turn the vacuum cleaner off. On closer inspection I find there's blood dripping out of a cut by my nail. I sigh and head for the house. First Injury has been gained.

Patched up by Imogen I again fired up the vacuum cleaner and sucked up the dirt, fluff from the carpet and even the colour. This time I'm more careful. No more cuts for me. With the middle cleaned I head for the front.

"Can you do the driver's side first?" Dad asks. "I need to top up the coolant in the engine."

I heave the heavy vacuum cleaner around and suck away. The driver's side is easy. If there wasn't a huge steering wheel stuck in the way it'd have been done in a flash. I'm done before Dad's even started so I abandon the vacuum cleaner and go and watched.

"We'll need a container to mix the coolant in," Dad says.

He pulls a small pop top bottle out of the recycling.

"Should be big enough," he decides.

Dad tips some de-mineralised water into the bottle and tops it up with a glug of evil looking coolant. The passenger side seat is tipped right back into the middle of the van and underneath I can see the engine. I think it's a ridiculous place to keep the engine but never mind. The coolant mixture glugs down the pipe and disappears. We peer in but we can't see anything. Dad mixes some more and tips it down. We still can't a drop.

"There ought to be a bubble of coolant," Dad says.

We tip a third bottle down and finally there is a bubble of evil green mixture burping at us. We sigh with relief.

"There can't have been much coolant in there," I remark. "It's a good thing we checked."

Quickly I vacuum out the passenger's side and we're done. Dad and I pack up the cleaning tools and heave the vacuum cleaner away. I'm taking a spare windscreen shader into the garage when I scrape against a bike rack that's in the way. A long scratch runs down my arm. I shrug. It's not as bad as the finger cut. Today I'm accident prone. In the morning I cut myself on my braces. All up three injuries. Thankfully I manage to get through the rest of the cleaning without killing myself. Feeling satisfied with ourselves we head for the house and a drink.

I grin to myself as I flop in a chair beside Imogen to check on the cricket scores. I like helping Dad. I'm Dad's right-hand girl.

Wonderful NaNoWriMo Pictures

It was only when Mum downloaded a copy of 'No Plot No Problem' that Imogen and I started to think seriously about joining in NaNoWriMo. Before that I'd never really thought about it before. Write a novel in a month? I've only ever finished one story before and that was hopeless. But it sounded so fun. We thought a little bit and when were we finished our little bit of thinking we said,

"Why not?"

So we booted up the computor, opened a word document and... were interrupted after a few minutes when something else for the wedding needed to be done. Over the week I continually tried to plot out my story and every time something happened. We had people to dinner, the wedding happened, we all got sick and so on. But the day before NaNoWriMo started I sat down and remained glued to my computor screen until I had banged out a sort of plan. Then, feeling very pleased with myself, I switched off the computor and went to do something else.

NaNoWriMo started, I hit the power button, opened up my plan and... it wasn't there. I'd deleted the whole of my plan by accident. Only a few notes on the characters and the story remained to show that I'd spent ages planning. NaNoWriMo was upon me and I had no plan. I flipped to my empty word document that was waiting to become my novel. I clicked back on the missing plan.

"Oh well," I thought. "I'll just have to make it up as I go along. I didn't like that plan much anyway."

I had a vague idea what was supposed to happen in my story so I just shrugged and began to type. Words started to trickle out of my fingers and onto the page and I giggled quietly to myself as some ridiculous characters jumped into the story with both big feet.

When we were finished for the day Imogen and I decided to do some drawing for a break. Imogen whipped out her sketchbook and was happily drawing away but I had no ideas. If I didn't want to draw a fairy or anything like that, what did I want to draw? I just sat there doodling away. As something vaguely head-shaped appeared on the page I started to take a little more interest. A roundish body joined the head and I added some stick thin arms. When a couple of huge feet and a mug of hot chocolate on a tray appeared I knew who it was. It was one of my NaNoWriMo characters, big nose and all.

Over the next few afternoons and evenings I added similar pictures to the first. My main character turned up, a few sidekicks joined her. I whipped out the inking pen and drew over my sketchy lines. I tipped out my colouring pencils and picked out suitable colours but I wasn't satisfied. I wanted more colours. I needed at least three shades of red on one picture. Finally I had a cast of crazy, wonderful, magical characters sitting in my book.

Since I'm so pleased with them I decided that I'd scan them and share them on my blog.

Party Hats and Fairies

It all started with my birthday. For my birthday dinner, everyone wore party hats. Pink party hats with funny fairies on them. Even while I was laughing at the sight of Dad in a tiny pink hat, my mind was working.

"That fairy would make a great picture," I thought. "Or maybe I could make my own picture based on it."

As soon as possible, I sat down and began to draw. With a party hat in front of me I started to copy the fairy into my sketchbook. With some minor changes, a couple of additions of my own and plenty of silver and gold pen my fairy appeared. But she didn't occupy me for long enough. I grabbed my pencil and started to sketch again, working out how to draw the body, arms and legs and try to avoid making a dirty grey mess of my page.

Later I discovered that my new small drawing-on-the-go notebook was the perfect size for my fairies and I started filling the first page. In a few minutes I had a fairy in pleated skirt with tall boots standing on the page. I drew my colouring pencils towards me and rifled through them. I pulled out a yellow and looked at the dress. I decided that this fairy really did need a yellow dress and started colouring. Orange boots? Of course. Why not make the wings orangey-red at the tips and make them fade into yellow? When the last bit of skin was coloured and the last strand of hair was brown I ran to show Mum my notebook.

Since then I've drawn even more fairies. Ballerina fairies, party fairies and butterfly fairies and just about anything else I can think of. While supposedly watching a movie with Gemma-Rose I asked,

"What should my next fairy be?"

"A party fairy," she replied.

I thought I might draw her in something puffy, maybe with frills and quite a lot of pink but Gemma-Rose had other ideas. Our fairy ended up in a long light blue dress with purple frills, gold and silver dots and pink hearts. On my own I don't think I'd have ever thought up a fairy like that.

There are more fairy pictures on my artworks page.

A Beach Holiday Diary

Last week my family and I went on holiday to the beach. I thought I would share some extracts from the diary I wrote on holiday.

Sunday 2^nd of October

Piles and piles of boxes, bags and backpacks lay in a sea on the dining room floor…It was horribly cold and seemed unlucky weather for a beach holiday.

Dad and Callum loaded the van…We all piled into the van and set off for Swanhaven. I read ‘No Name’ by Wilkie Collins on my e-reader. We went down the Jamberoo Pass. I enjoyed going down but Imogen hates going down the passes. After making a short stop for supplies we finally arrived at Swan Lake Cottage…

Our cottage is wonderful. Dad and Mum have a really tall queen-sized bed. Gebbles and Sophie also have a queen-sized bed. Imogen and I have the bunk beds.

In the afternoon Mum suggested we went for a walk down to the lake. It rained a bit but we walked down the cycle track. It petered out after a while but when it did, we could actually hear the sea…

I'd also like to thank my three new followers. It was a lovely surprise to come back and find you'd followed.