Martin & Hazel Frost

We do get asked sometimes what a typical day looks like for us. This is quite a hard question to answer as a “typical” day can usually be defined as one that is completely different to those on either side of it.
Tuesday has been the busiest day so far this week…. collect a pile of photocopying at 8 am, come home, slurp a coffee, feed and dress child, strap him to the back bike, drop him off at nursery, go on to the special school, drop off same photocopies, stop for a conversation with one of the support staff who I needed to catch, on to the fruit and veg shop, home for another shot of caffeine, change mode of transport, drive to Quebracho Herrado, meet with social worker – for various reasons including collecting petrol money for the month hoorah – drive home again, take dogs for a quick walk via the butchers, cook lunch (midday is the main meal here and I try and have it nearly ready for when Joni comes in tired and hungry from nursery), feed the zoo, clear up, put washing out, kiddo has a siesta, we watch whatever we’ve currently got downloaded onto the computer, back on the bike go to mums and toddlers swimming, via the nursery to pay for the month (having got cash from social worker this morning), meet Martin in town, go to the English institute, meet with the directora who is hopefully going to be employing us for conversation classes after we get back from the UK, Martin’s also writing her a website so we take some photos for that while we’re there, home via the bus station to collect tickets to Buenos Aires for Sunday night, throw child in bath, stories, songs etc child bedtime routine, answer emails, feed ourselves, throw dogs out, gather them in again, adult bedtime routine.

Compared with today for example which has been much gentler on the soul…. morning routines for child, dogs and husband (well, he usually manages to put his own clothes on, but sometimes I make the coffee), drop child off at nursery, come back, make more coffee, start putting together a powerpoint for a couple of forthcoming presentations, decide we need some more photographs, go out and take a few, faff around with the powerpoint, give up and take dogs for a walk, come back and set the stew off to cook itself, continue to faff around with powerpoint, interspersed by throwing things into stew and stirring periodically, receive Joni home, have lunch, drive to Luis Sauces to collect disabled kid and mum, deliver them to special school, home, prise my own child away from Bob the Builder and slop him into his bed for a siesta, watch Rev (BB2, you can find it online, we love it!) boy wakes up, decides he doesn’t want to go swimming today, so we take the dogs for their second walk out to the canal (irrigation ditch) and have a look at the horses, cows and chickens, throw some stones into the canal, return for “cooking with mummy” – popcorn, pizza bases and bread, that’s all the major food groups covered isn’t it – throw child in bath, stories, songs, child bedtime routine, Martin’s disappeared off to see the directora of the institute again, so I clear up, put a pizza together for when he gets in, light the fire, and here I am.

See what I mean?

An interesting exercise would be to sort the above into a Venn diagram according to what’s building the kingdom of God, what’s the stuff that we have to do to stay alive, and what’s needless chasing of one’s tail. On second thoughts, I’d rather you didn’t, if that’s OK with everyone.

Saw this today – enjoy! BBC News Article

As I watched the kid making splodges by holding a paint-brush between her toes, I thought “fantastic… they’ve managed to identify a body-part which she has some voluntary control over”. And then I thought “I wonder why they don’t seem to have figured out that this might be a useful starting point for teaching her a communication system”. As I was lying in bed later I thought “I wonder what it would take to invent some sort of low tech switching activities to try out” and that thought led to “I wonder if we could get hold of an old computer and set it up with some software and different switches… I wonder if that mad guy still works at the place where I used to teach… I wonder if I could persuade him to help me…” and by the morning, I had most of a project designed in my head.
That was a couple of weeks ago. Today I was summoned into the Director’s office, I’m not sure why she was so formal about it, seemed like a bit of a chat to me, so I took my chance and dropped in a few switch-based ideas to see what she thought. My jaw nearly hit the floor with her response; “Oh, we’ve got a whole lot of things like that. They’re in a cupboard because no-one knows how to make them work”. Twelve hours later and I’m still not sure whether I’m more horrified that this whole amazing resource is languishing in a cupboard, or delighted that my middle of the night project proposal is halfway to being realised without even having to get out of bed yet.

Being married to techno-geek has its advantages… high on the priority list for post-UK-visit will be the techno-geek-goes-to-school-to-set-their-stuff-up event. Then we’ll need to think properly about matching kids with technology… might still need to get in touch with the mad guy… anyone know if he’s still there? And how to get hold of relevant software given that the big-name products seem mostly to be sold in pounds (Dollars/Euros) by companies who assume that their customers are northern-hemisphere based institutions and thus able to afford same. And finally how to involve and enthuse at least one or two of the staff at the school, which I suspect may be the most important part of the plan, otherwise presumably they might have tried a bit harder to find someone to set the hardware up in the first place.

The thermometer in our car hovered between minus one and minus three as we made our way back to San Francisco last night.  Luckily the car has central heating.  Unfortunately the house does not.  What our house does have is the most ridiculous system of roller blinds ever imagined; the mechanism is installed by taking a great chunk out of the wall, and then vaguely covering it with a wooden box, qua;

As is instantly observable, daylight, accompanied by corresponding fresh air enters through the gap between same box and the wall.  The above is the office, repeat same in Joni’s room;

plus dining room and spare room. The one in our bedroom is the worst;

The change of light in the middle third is outside as viewed from inside, as it were.  Minus three without, equals something pretty similar within.  We’re looking forward to a couple of weeks of gently damp European summer. 

As all the above demonstrates, we made it back from Carlos Paz.  Although we may not have fully answered the question posed on the previous blog entry, it was definitely good to catch up with folk.  Maybe we should just stop being so western and decide that we don’t need a programme in order to justify having fellowship.  The fellowship was good, and having birthdays to celebrate on two out of four days meant that cake was a high feature, always a good unifying factor;

For me the most exciting thing was the bird I spotted in the scrub on the way here.  That’s not entirely to denigrate the rest of the event, just that I find birds exciting and this one in particular.  Called a Chuña, it’s a greyish wader with long red legs, dishevelled ruff and a purple eye patch.  They’re not normally found in our province and I hadn’t seen one before.  So I drew it, in lieu of one of the other probably-more spiritual exercises that I couldn’t manage to get my head round;

And now it’s ten o’clock at night again, and the temperature’s dropping like a rock again, so I’m about to partake of a drop of red, as an alternative form of heating you understand. 

Three legged football

Story time

Tree Planting

Happy as a piglet in a sandpit

Just got back from cub weekend away in a field in Quebracho Herrado, and about to go off to our mission team meetings in a hotel in Carlos Paz. Sublime to the ridiculous… but which is which?

The moral of the story is… don’t plan a sophisticated outing if you’re travelling with a two year old. We went off to Rafaela today, in lieu of the bank holiday tomorrow (bank holidays are really rubbish here; the roads are completely blocked with people visiting their relatives, and if you don’t have any relatives to visit, you’ll find everywhere else shut anyway). Rafaela’s just a big town really, bit bigger than San Fran, similar sort of design, probably founded at around the same time… but last time we went on a bank holiday, so this time we thought we’d like to see it with some life on the streets. In the centre is a large green plaza with a kind of arboretum affair, lots of native trees, each with its corresponding information plaque. Joni tailed us around, until he finally whispered “mummy, where’s the slide?”
Luckily, about five blocks away, opposite the police building (nicely kept solid colonial affair) we found a small park, complete with one monstrous death-slide which we avoided, and several smaller ones which we put through their paces before heading to a handy cafe for spaghetti bolognaise (“Spasta” he calls it, which I do think sounds quite derogatory, but maybe I’m just over sensitized after too many years working in learning disabilities).

When I grow up I’m going to be a:-


Raddish

Cabbage

Beetroot

Chicory

Scientist? Train-driver? Bob the Builder?

I’m really excited about those baby plants (naturally I’m also excited about my son’s future, but that’s more of a long term project). The seeds were being given out for free by an organisation called INTA which stands for something that I can’t remember, in conjunction with a government project to encourage people to eat more vegetables. I planted them ages ago and nothing happened, and I read the book which said that they should be through by now, so I thought the frost had finished them off, and then suddenly, here they all are… I’m not a great gardener, but there is something magic about little shoots pushing upwards, bringing with them the promise of something edible later.

My list of things to do today said “write a blog” (as well as go to supermarket, go to Quebracho, talk to social worker, buy nappies for disabled kid, take my own kid swimming, etc). All the other stuff’s either been done, or can no longer be done because the day’s finished and everyone’s gone home. So that leaves “write a blog”. What to blog about?
Life? Well there’s the supermarket… Actually, there’s a change shortage on here of late. That means that when you go to the supermarket, if you don’t have the exact money (and whoever goes to the supermarket knowing in advance that their bill is going to come to $54.37?) then first you have to convince the till operator that you don’t have the exact money “no, really, look, I haven’t got any coins at all”, and then you have to queue up at the far end of the till until she’s made enough change from the people coming after you in order to reimburse your sixty three centavos.

Theology? Haven’t done much thinking about that of late despite the fact that we’re supposed to be Christian workers. In fact I deleted an email from a Bible college today that I had been thinking about doing an MA with, but one, we can’t afford it, and two, another overseas qualification isn’t worth anything here anyway. At the moment I’m intrigued by the suggestion that the only place that John Mark might feature in the gospels is in Mark’s own account where “a young man” is mentioned running away naked as Jesus is arrested. Why does that intrigue me? Well I’m not exactly sure yet.

Work? I bought those nappies, but didn’t see that social worker, nothing unusual there, except that it was my fault rather than hers this time; car was double booked so I didn’t get to the village. Apart from that, I was looking at the guys at the special school yesterday and wondering if we could get hold of an old-but-functional computer and think about inventing some sort of single-switch access for it without having to spend zillions of dollars on “proper” hardware (or software come to that).

Other stuff? Martin just got back from the prison and went off to the mens’ group. He reckons the prisoners are more switched on in general than the men from church; he’s been using a lot of the same material for both groups. Our kid found a bit of fluff on his bed and became convinced it was a bogey (he says that very clearly), and then bizarrly became equally convinced that the bogey wanted to eat his trousers. Too much Dr Who I say. I wrote a bunch of emails and tried to get my head around various forthcoming events… Scout training on Sunday (the kitchen and bathroom both need cleaning, motivation for same not as high as last time I did it), Scout camp next weekend (not done very much towards that yet, nobody else thinks this is a major issue except Mrs European me), Latin Link Argentina team conference/retreat starting two days after Scout camp, and then Frost family retreat to England a few days after that… As last year, we’re happy to share a beer with anyone who’s willing to travel to Baldock to collect it.

Is this long enough to be a blog yet?

Life’s quite busy, I’ve got quite a few half-starting projects and ongoing things to think about, but my brain-cell’s gone into weekend mode, so today’s blog isn’t going to be about any of it.
Today I bought my kid a ball. It’s a plastic green thing, to make up for the several others that have been punctured by the dog’s over-enthuseastic football-playing. It cost five pesos fifty, which is a bit less than a pound, so it won’t matter too much if we soon have to buy another one. Joni loves it, we had to take it out in the car with us this afternoon, and he kept touching it and saying “that’s for your birthday” (you and your are his favourite all purpose pronouns).

My first thought was “what evil parents we are that our kid thinks it must be his birthday because he’s got new stuff”.

My second thought was “fantastic, how many years can we keep this up?”

My third thought was “if we can raise a kid who doesn’t need to measure his worth or our love by how much stuff he gets, then we’ll be doing something right”.

At the moment he’s only two, and we don’t have a TV, so the hard bit’s going to come later. Just to show that we’re not perfect parents (in case you don’t know us very well) this evening, he put a plastic bucket over my head and announced “Mummy, you’re a Dalek”! He watches Dr Who back-episodes on Daddy’s lap, and he loves it. Like father like son.

Four years ago Martin was nursing his broken neck and I was well into the world cup on the loaned TV. This year I haven’t managed to get the hang of it at all, maybe because we don’t have a TV so we’ve got used to doing other things with the time. Not necessarily more worthy things, just in case you’re worried that we’ve gone saintly or anything, just different ways of occupying ourselves. In fact, I completely forgot there was an Argentina game on Thursday to the extent that when I went out and found San Francisco resembling a ghost town, I wondered if there was a bank holiday on that we didn’t know about (which does happen quite often). In fact it turned out to be even better than a bank holiday because not only was the supermarket open, but it was also completely deserted and I did all the shopping in five minutes flat and still had time to go home and walk the dogs, so they were pleased too.
I’m not the only one who hasn’t managed to get into the world cup this year, judging by the lacklustre England performance yesterday. I did manage to see half of that game, and it was so boring that I abandoned the patriotic attempt and went out visiting instead. A fellow mish in South Africa who saw the match writes on his blog… “I love it when England play because it allows the rest of the English footballing fraternity know what it’s like being a Palace fan” which pretty well sums up the half I saw at least.

Apart from lack of media, I’ve frankly been far too busy for watching grown men playing ball games. Four trips to the hamlet of Luis Sauces, two trips to the village of Quebracho Herrado, one hospital visiting session, seven trips to the Cottolengo (site of the special school), not to mention the usual stuff of kid to nursery, swimming, walking dogs, playing in the park, supermarket, Scouts etc, and it becomes clear why we’ve never missed that TV, and why I’m looking forward to Monday, which is a bank holiday that we actually managed to find out about in advance.