Fifteen

No, it’s not a Taylor Swift song, well it is, but that’s not what this is about. This is about the fact that the eldest lad has hit that milestone. Quite scary really to think that so much time has passed since the fateful day when he arrived in the world.

There’s certainly been some changes in the last 12 months. Michael at 15 seems to have his head screwed on the right way and there hasn’t been quite as many of those moments where irrational hormone driven obstinacy becomes the response. He’s generally accepting of his siblings and remains thick as thieves with Sam in particular.

The voice dropped since he was 14. Fortunately for him he didn’t suffer wild swings of tone during the process, it was more like he had a cold and sounded a little gravelly, but never quite recovered from it. It’s weird to now try and remember what he sounded like pre-voice change. I really don’t think I can recall.

Year 10 seems to be going well for him at school and recently he undertook one of those future career based assessments where they try and look at your personality and what you might be suited to in the future (whilst taking into account what the kid might actually be interested in). of course with all the communications skills of a teenager, the first I knew about it was when I received an email from the school asking that we make an appointment to see the people that had run the session. This lead to some questioning of the lad, but he wasn’t able to shed any light on the matter, not even really being able to remember what questions he’d been asked.

So we rolled up suspecting what it was about and fortunately were pretty much on the money. There weren’t really any surprises in the assessment other than to suggest that he has a whole lot of potential to live up to and that he seems to be headed toward an engineering career. There was way too much of me in that assessment even before getting to the engineering part of it.

Michael’s best friend seems to be his computer because that’s where you’ll find him most of the time. That’s probably not that unusual for a modern kid, but there are times when you feel like dragging him outside and staking him in the sun just so that he remembers what it looks like. At least he’s playing soccer again this winter and hopefully his team can manage to be competitive to keep the interest level up (I’ve not seen them yet as they’ve only had the one game).

All in all, I can only be proud of Michael and hope that he continues on the path that he’s set for himself so far.

Oh and it appears he might just have started to notice girls ;)

Camel Redistribution Theory

So as documented previously, Caroline has gone back to university. Overall, despite the additional stress, I think that she’s enjoying it. There was one assignment so far that I personally am well over.

It’s all about a camel. It could have been about any business, but for some reason, the lecturer decided to make it about a camel. The assignment caused great consternation as Caroline puzzled her way through it. It was made worse by the fact that in discussions with class mates, they thought that she wasn’t doing it right and she thought that they were doing it wrong.

The lecturer was also not very helpful according to the reports that I received. What it meant was that I heard an awful lot about the bloody camel.

The assignment was completed, handed in and results received. They weren’t what Caroline was expecting, so she quizzed the lecturer about the assignment and the process used as she worked out that she hadn’t actually got it all wrong, though she’d made a silly mistake early in the process. She got a re-mark and it improved significantly and also proved that the lecturer wasn’t possibly quite on the ball.

The long and challenging process meant that for several weeks, I heard more about the camel than I thought was reasonable.

So when we were at Floss’ the other night and the camel story started, I suggested that the best approach to the whole business would have been to shoot the camel at the outset to avoid all the complications that came later. Floss suggested that would have been a good way of redistributing the camel.

Camel redistribution theory was born.