At least it gives me something to write about.

One of the many things consuming my time last week were the kids’ parent-teacher meetings.  The highlight of both of them was the presentation to me by the Boy of his “data analysis” (I swear.  Yes, he’s seven.) project.  His teacher had gathered Haze readings for the previous 8 weeks and handed it out to the kids, telling them to compile a box-chart (is that what it’s called?) based on the information.  She didn’t care what they did, just that the chart / graph (whatever it is) had to tell a story accurately reflecting the data.

Everybody else in the class – bar none – painstakingly took the information and compiled charts showing the daily measurements.  Some did it for just one month, some for two, but all around the classroom were huge sheets of paper onto which wee boxes had been painstakingly drawn, piled on top of each other, depicting good haze days and (much more often) bad, hundreds (well, at least 50) of them.

And then there was the Boy’s.  Faced with drawing 50 boxes and writing out all the days of the week for the past two months, and remembering that the teacher “didn’t care” what he did, he chose the path less travelled by (which I think is known as Lazy Bones Lane).  He noted that for some reason there was only 7 Mondays’ worth of data, and further noted that “Monday” is quite a short word to write, and even more so that 7 is far less than 56.  And so he plotted the information for each Monday, and called it “The Monday Haze Chart” and, at a glance, anyone with any interest in these things can now see how the Haze was on Mondays over the past 7-8 weeks. 7 boxes. 7 words (Monday, Haze, Chart, PSI, Moderate,  Healthy, Unhealthy) and 5 numbers (1-5). It probably took him about 11 minutes to do.  Leaving him with the rest of the morning to, I suspect, play on his school iPad, and sneer at his more industrious classmates.

So impressed was I by his wile and his cunning that I’ve decided to take a leaf out of his (very short) book.  December looms, and I was planning to blog every day (or near as), just as I did last year.  But then I remembered that December is THIRTY-ONE DAYS LONG, while November – a mere 30 days!  And we’re away after Christmas, and OHGODCHRISTMAS, what with the Elf on the Shelf and Santa and the cats...

Oh yes, the cats.  PLURAL.

Because faced with the children banging ON AND ON about getting a cat "or even more than one, Mummy", I chose the easiest short-term path, and just got the fucking things.

Here, look:

(My sister suggested I call them “Fuck” and “Sake”.  It’s been 29 hours and I’m inclined to agree with her.)   Anyway. Take a good look at them.  Something tells me you’ll be hearing a LOT about them over the next 30 days.