Ah, but yes. But it's not all bad.

Eldest had a heavy fall at rep netball training last night. Right on her hip. It was quite a *thud* apparently - the coach even rang me when she got home because she was a bit concerned. At the very least she'll be sporting an impressive bruise before long... but I guess we have to wait to see whether she's done any worse damage. I figured she'd be pretty sore today, and indeed she woke up finding it hard to walk properly. So she's getting a day off school. The trade-off is that she has to do a lot of maths!

This has caused a slight problem, in that I had planned to go to the shops today to do birthday present shopping for her - she is turning 14 on Saturday. Yet while I have no problem with leaving her at home, I am not sure that I can trust her to keep to the maths. Marc has been supervising and tutoring her most evenings, occasionally glaring and muttering at me that I could be helping too, you know! (I tend to support the division of labour method according to ability and skill, and he is far better equipped to tutor maths.) I am pretty sure when I get home she'll be "having a break" in front of the TV.

All this maths business puts us in a bit of an ironic situation. Here we are telling her that she should pull her finger out with the maths, because it's important - 'too important' a subject to throw away (well, particularly if you really do have the brains but are just too lazy to use them.)

Then she has me as the role model of someone who did the maths (albeit without the angst) but can't remember most of it. If I'm to help her, I will have to re-teach myself Year 9 maths, which is not something I particularly feel like doing right now, not this week anyway. Been there done that, got the certificate - and didn't follow through with the maths. (Mind you I can still do some of the basic stuff that she has some rather scary brain fades over.) But if I have managed to get through my adult life so far not needing to know how to do 'all that shit', it's pretty hard to impress on her the usefulness of algebra, geometry, indices and surds ... (Surds? I don't even recall the term, although once explained I can nod and say 'oh, right... those!')

Then again, much of school, and even uni, when it comes down to it, is a means to an end.. and getting the bit of paper at the end of it. Which could be the topic of a whole new post where I bemoan the uselessness of my degree. (BA stands for 'Bugger All') I used the phrase 'means to an end' talking to her about it the other day, and she didn't really get what I meant.

So, meantime, and despite getting a Maths half-yearly test for her birthday, it's "celebration" time on the weekend, and today is really the only day I have left this week to shop for her. Which is a bit difficult...I'm not quite sure what to get her; I have a couple of ideas, but I'm not sure about type, and how much to spend, etc. I actually said to her the other day 'Why is it that this year, again, leading up to your birthday, your attitude and general behaviour hasn't contributed to making me feel all warm and fuzzy about putting myself out for your birthday?" (Last year she actually lost her birthday party through some misdemeanour or other!) Seriously.. she seems to have gone to town on the Attitude again just recently. Or maybe I am just noticing it more because I have to reconcile being a loving mummy at birthday time with stuff that she says and does that really shits me!

She had at least the grace to say 'I don't know', rather than give me more Attitude. And she did ask "You're not going to blog me are you?".

I rather think that that threat could be quite a powerful one to use, oh, for the next few years at least! Although I think she's smart enough to realise that, good or bad, I'll do it anyway! You'd think if you were her, she'd make sure I only had good and wonderful things to blog about her!

Back to the Maths. And birthday presents. And birthday.. celebrations....

Labels: birthdays, daily, parenting, teenagers