.... sorry about the focus, excitement got the better of technique ...

Algy, thank you for the reminder to celebrate the small things.

Life with Tim the Cabin Boy is challenging and it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the galaxy of life-sapping misdemeanours and accidents that require more or less constant fix-ups and time-stealing restitution.

Tim is 12 and in year 7.  Last Friday after 8 weeks straight with us, he agreed to go and spend the weekend with his Dad.  We were going to be late home from different jobs and so he was to let himself out and walk there – again by himself (about 500 metres).

FM discovered the most amazing thing when we got home.  On her desk were a couple of geraniums.  Tim had obviously borrowed them from a neighbour on the way home – AND – worked out that they needed to be in water – AND – decided that one of the bike bottles was the go.  After seeing FM and I bring home flowers every week for the last four years, he pieced it together that giving flowers was an act of love.  Major breakthrough.

Before anyone gets all soppy about this wondrous event, the same day he lost his house key (because – against the agreed approach of locking the door and putting the key in a special place, he changed his mind and took it with him – hundreds of dollars now must be spent spent on new locks) and as an aside, he did not bring home his school diary – meaning that he couldn’t do any homework on the weekend.  It’s lost.  Gone for good.  Including, one suspects the demerit he got for not doing his homework and for being constantly late for classes (after we’ve dropped him off at school on time, of course).  But at least we got back the sports gear that he left at the bus stop the week before (but not the previous three times this year).

99 fairy steps forward and 98 fairy steps backwards.  But to be fair, he means well.

And the flowers look good, don’t you think ?