Blech. I feel awful. What started out as a minor head-cold-type thingy about two weeks ago has surreptitiously developed to the point where tonight I feel dreadful - my throat feels tight and sandpapery, and I am fed up with the coughing and painful chest. Taking the morning off tomorrow is a tempting prospect, except for the fact that they have this annoying rule, in theory at any rate, about doctor notes on a Friday or Monday. Sigh. I feel weak at the thought.

On the whole it hasn't been the best of weeks.

The visit to the opthalmologist on Monday showed at least that the vision in each of Daniel's eyes is good. This is by far the most important thing. It doesn't look like he has fusion, but that's not a surprise at this stage. He's a bit young for the testing to be conclusive though. Unfortunately the wandering eye thing didn't happen at all during the consultation. I think it happens mainly in outdoor conditions. The doctor said that it is quite common for young children to close up one eye in bright light (which Daniel also does), and that it seems to be preceded by the eye wandering out to the right. So perhaps this is happening to Daniel and in very bright conditions the eye wanders and so he closes it and in somewhat bright conditions it wanders a bit but not enough for him to close it.

On Tuesday Lauren had some friends around to play, boy and girl twins from her class. Now I was a bit surprised at her asking to have them, as they're not like the kids she usually enjoys, but there you go. Being a methodical child, it's possible she wants to work her way around the whole class of 12. Since the twins' mom had a car problem, I went to pick them up from their home. Now here's the first strange thing. The twins were playing in the front driveway. I arrived, expecting the mother to appear. It turned out she was out, and not one but two smartly dressed domestic workers seemed to be in charge. So naturally I assumed one of them would be clued up about the fact that I was coming to pick up the kids. Nope. Neither knew a thing about it. Neither seemed particularly interested that I, a total stranger, was proposing to drive off with their employer's children. Did they want to phone her to check? I asked hopefully, not wanting to be inadvertently responsible for their getting into trouble. No, no, they said. If I had told her I was coming, it was fine.

Moving on.

Oh, the other strange thing was their house. While I was popping my head around the door to try and stir up some interest in the removal of the children, I was struck by the utter lack of character in the house. It was beautifully finished (parents are in some sort of interior design business), but was about as homely as a display in a furniture store. There were no signs of real live people living there at all. No bits of paper on the fridge. No kids pictures anywhere. No toys in sight. No leaves swirling about in the breeze on the driveway. Even the domestics were picture perfect in smart black and white uniforms.

Once I got them all back to our house, we went in through the kitchen door, and the girl stopped straight in her tracks and just stared and stared at our kitchen. Long silence, then 'Your house is FULL of paper! Completely FULL! LOOK at all your stuff from SCHOOL on the CUPBOARDS!' And a few minutes later, on entering the playroom-which-is-now-sort-of-but-not-completely -Daniel's-room, 'WHY is there a BARBIE picture in a BOY'S ROOM? LOOK at the BARBIE PICTURE! WHO ever heard or a BOY with a BARBIE PICTURE?' I was not entirely sorry that their mom came to fetch them early.

Bridget (who has a boy a bit older than Daniel and is expecting twins) also came for tea that afternoon. She took some baby clothes from my huge collection. (The baby clothes have all been washed, folded and sorted, a very few picked out to keep which the kids can play dolls with, and should be disappearing off to my dad-in-law's favourite charity tomorrow. Big accomplishment.) Daniel enjoyed being all boyish with William, waving plastic golf clubs around like swords, trying to destroy parts of the garden, and saying things like 'Lets get away from the girls and the mommies.'

Tuesday evening was also mostly enjoyable as I went with Maria to see a show at a tiny theatre in Westville that we'd never heard of before. It was fun hearing some old favourites from the stage, and although the production had an undeniable sort of home-made flavour to it, the cast were so confident and having so much fun it really didn't matter. The down side of the evening was that I pulled out of Maria's driveway rather too fast (we were a bit late) and scraped the car again. I'm really bad about this and have a knack of inflicting minor injuries on my beloved car. Sigh.

On Wednesday all three kids were home sick from school. Flu for Robyn, sinus-type things for the other two. Peter stayed home with them in the morning, and then in the afternoon I took all three of them to the doctor and paid a sickeningly large amount of money for the consults and medicine. I literally felt ill - nauseous and panicky - about how much it was.

The highlight of Wednesday was Judith from work popping in unexpectedly for a cup of tea. We usually natter a lot at work but since I've been off-site we've been missing each other. It was good to catch up and exchange work and parenting trials and tribulations. After Judith left I felt a bit better and managed to shake off more of the stress with woodwork. It was wonderful doing something physical and tactile after a day of work, driving, waiting, seeing doctors, and handing over vast sums of money.

Today - Thursday - was more woodwork, with my dad this time, and an evening at Robyn's school. We've been aware that things are not going as smoothly for Robyn as they did last year. Last year she just flew through school. This year is much more of a battle. Last year's teacher, though occasionally a bit religiously nutty, was wonderfully positive and full of praise. Robyn literally went to the principal two or three times a week for the hallowed Good Work Stamp. This year - not one. The teacher is on the mean and manic side of strict. Runs the classroom on a points basis in which the tables compete every week for points and there is a winning table every week. So they lose and gain points for every imaginable thing, and it's stressful for a lot of the kids - I know from having chatted to other moms. We were very keen to see her work tonight and get more of an idea of how things are going. While she has a lot of good work, with a fair sprinkling of Gold Stars (10 points for your table!), it was a bit alarming to see how often there was a comment like 'Finish your work!', 'You must try to finish', 'Do more work!'. In a quiet moment I asked the teacher about this. She blithely described Robyn as 'A Social Butterfly' who is interested too much in what is going on around her rather than her work, and 'Very Immature'. Her nice tidy 'one size fits all' synopsis of the situation, in line with her 'one size fits all' approach to teaching. I don't exactly know why Robyn has difficulty getting down to work. I don't know if she's bored, or has a real concentration problem. But we've known her her whole life and I know the depth of understanding she has on really complex concepts. To glibly describe her as 'Very Immature' seems worryingly simplistic.