Holidays

This is Sister 3's (late) contribution  for this week's Gallery over at Sticky Fingers. The theme is 'Holidays'.

Before, meaning six years ago, I used to think that a holiday snap had to be beautiful: a great landscape, a magnificent site. It had to be beautiful and ... impersonal.

Since then there is Nina, and my holiday albums are Nina albums.

Occasionally, you see a bit of landscape...

So this week's theme was problematic, because you see, I'm still not allowed to post pictures of Nina on the web.  Fortunately, leafing through my albums, I came across this photo I took on the Ile de Re last summer!

Oh, one last thing. If you liked this post, would you mind terribly clicking on the RSS feed, here, or the Google connect buttons (top left), or by email at the bottom of this page? And if you didn't like it, you might still want to look around. There's three of us, you know, so you're (almost) bound to find something you like. And then, if you've still got time, you could share this post or stumble it, or both and get in touch with your local tv station to sing our praises. We'll love you forever.

It's a girl thing!

This is my entry for this week's Weekend Assignment:

Weekend Assignment #323: Tech Savvy

When you bring home some new piece of technology, do you usually get it up and running with pleasant anticipation and calm confidence, or is there more likely to be much swearing, wailing and gnashing of teeth? What's the most trouble you've had with a new computer, tv, phone or related tech gadget?

Extra Credit: Who do you call in to help, if you get stuck?

In our house, there are no divided responsibilties. 'Im indoors and I share everything equally - childcare, housework (not much of that as we have a cleaner!), shopping, cooking, taking Max to his special ed (lots of that!). It means a lot of time spent talking about things, organising, comparing notes. But it's definitely worth it. There are a couple of exceptions: 'Im indoors tends to do all the repair work that involves gluing things. I tend to be in charge of the technology. So if we have a new computer, a new telly, or dvd player, I'm the one that sets it up. If, at a later stage, there's something wrong with any of the above, I'm the one that fixes it.

Who took the fun out of the fair? Or why I am a wimp and my daughter isn't.

Two days ago I took my daughter to the funfair. Her first. She loved it. She had this huge smile plastered on her face the whole time we were there. Even when her eyes were screwed close and she was holding on to her neighbours' arm for dear life.

We went to Luna Park, in Ankara. It's a big traditional affair, with some new rides and some seriously old ones too. A lot of the rides are for over 12s and Charlotte, a small 11, got turned back quite a few times. She did, however, manage to sneak in to the two storey ghost train, the caterpillar ride, and the ship that goes up and down. She did not succeed in blagging her way in the roller coaster, for which I was grateful indeed.

Portraits of Autism #1

I'm in the waiting room at my son's special education autism centre. A teenager walks in, followed by his dad. The boy makes straight for me and, with a big grin on his face, says he wants to drink the can of coke that's on the table next to me. I'm embarrassed, I want to tell him that it's not coke, it's got pencils shavings in it, but I don't know how to say that in Turkish. So I just tell him that it's empty. That it's rubbish. His dad comes up and provides me with  few key words. He shows him the rubbish bin. It's like that, he says. The dad looks quite relieved that he doesn't have to wrestle my coke from his boy. The boy, still smiling, then asks me if I can give him a cup of tea instead. He's thirsty. He doesn't want to wait and I'm clearly a drinks person. I say he can get tea in the kitchen upstairs. His dad confirms, and they both go up.