10.24.05
A day off
One of the best things about the new Agenda for Change pay system is that if you have given 10 years service to the NHS you now get 33 days annual leave a year (well sadly the best bit isn’t going to be a massive pay rise). So today and Friday I am using up a couple of days, of course I need a break from the grindstone and I had nothing in my diary for these two days. It also happens to coincide with half term, and these days I am not required at home for the whole week, infact that would be positively frowned on by the resident teenager.
Anyway, last Friday he took delivery of a new playstation game which had just been released and which apparently he is unable to wait till Christmas for. Today he has decided he must connect said playstation to his computer (don’t ask me why he didn’t just get a PC game), so we have walked round PC World and another electronics shop looking for the correct parts then have ordered them off eBay and Play.com (apparently 3 parts are required). What a useful mother I have turned out to be in taking today off, and he has now had an advance of £57 on his pocket money.
All this has got me thinking about how different ateenagerss bedroom is today than the mid 70’s when I was the same age. My room was, as it is for Matt, a place of my own and for me a place to escape my irritating brothers, but it contained little in the way of high tech equipment unless you count my little portable cassette player from which the Osmonds, David Cassidy and David Essex blared. There was no TV, video, computer, stereo system, but there were books and plenty of them as well as board games which I played with my friends. Having said that, Matt also has lots of books and seems to still read from time to time (school work permitting) and board games like Risk which he plays with his own friends. The music which I can hear all over the house is a little less tame than my own was, not sure how he came to like hiphop, or why most of the music he buys is by people who are now dead, but perhaps it is a phase; after all I have moved on from the Osmonds myself! Check out those suits, what on earth were they thinking?!
One slight complaint about my weather pixie, she is wrong, it is not sunny as she has suggested all day. If I went out showing my tummy like that I would be sure to be laid up with a cold (ok I am a nurse and I know that you don’t get a cold from going out in wet weather, but I am also a mother and it is the thing a mother would say)
Kim said,
October 24, 2005 at 11:45 pm
I love the Osmonds - still! LOL! Although I have to say the fashions leave much to desire. Did you see Donny on the Kumars at No. 42? Hilarious. Did you know Alan has MS, Wayne had a brain tumor (with surgery) and Merrill has a heart condition? LOL - I’m full of Osmond trivia. My daughter (age 15) has Orlando Bloom all over her bedroom walls….
Julie said,
October 25, 2005 at 6:03 pm
Yes I watched a TV programme about the Osmonds not that long ago. I have to say the 70s wasn’t a period of cool fashion, but at least it was bright and fun.
Dean said,
October 29, 2005 at 3:34 pm
The Aging Service Project is conducting academic research for the purpose of improving services to the elderly.
http://www.medio.us
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has made a call to action in Crossing the Quality Chasm. This project aims to show one way we can take a step with integrated continuing care for the aging.
The project can use your help. The results are confidential and the report will be published at the site.