I got distracted and didn’t finish my Thursday entry or write one for Friday. Highlights:

Thursday

• Hugh was a bit uncertain about being a total noob at Chess Club but managed to play one game with Sean (assistant coach) who showed him how all the pieces moved and talked about the basis of strategy as they played. He also got to watch me being an almost total noob and learning next to him with Alex (the coach). We left after an hour or so because his brain was full, and he borrowed some books from the library. He does want to go back but definitely wants to be able to leave early and hang out at the library if he gets overloaded by too much information.
• Dan has no roller derby next week, but Silver Words is still on. I talked to Jo, who said Dan is welcome to stay the night with Eli and go to Woody’s in the morning for a function which is on, then go home on the bus (or something). I’m trying to work out an arrangement for next Thursday with Beth regarding sprog wrangling while I’m at the demo, and Dan is trying to arrange something with friends during the day.
• Oze came round for dinner after we got back from roller derby. Dan and Hugh found our chess set and set it up, and Hugh played a short game with Oze before dinner, who showed him the Queen’s Gambit. For once the kidlets actually stuck around for a sit-down dinner (it was burritos so they had to sit at the table with all the foods to assemble things).

Friday

• Quiet day at home (yay!!! that makes it the only one this week)
• Dan remembered to do the chickens at both ends of the day.
• Dan hung out with me and chatted while I weeded and mulched the courtyard. Both of them took the cat out at various times for supervised outside exploration.
• Daddy got home earlier than expected (also yay!) and played a couple of games of Uno with both kids before his brain was overloaded.
• A Cunning Plan for the weekend was made.

Saturday

• Hugh spent the morning downloading Steam updates and complaining about how long it all took.
• Ye Olde Traditional lolly shop visit was accomplished early.
• Dan made Daddy and Hugh a big(gish) breakfast before they all head out to deliver orange balloons.
• Dan and I discussed the issue of Halloween candy and whether or not they want to stop being vegetarian for the day so they can eat the gummy candy (gelatine). We discussed weighing up emotional/mental health and ethics in making sure restriction doesn’t turn into deprivation with knock-on effects on mental health, how having a forgiving attitude towards oneself potentially choosing to let go of ethics in favour of health can make the difference in being able to stick to them (because if you know you can choose, you’re not depriving yourself) and by extension, how having a back-up plan for handling something like this is a self-care measure and can help avert the actual worst-case scenario (eg. how having a plan for how one will deal with an anxiety attack can help you stave it off). Then we came up with the plan that I will buy some of the vegan gummi bears from Billy Hill, and they can swap out their non-vego candy when they get home.
• Dan and Hugh went off to deliver orange balloons with Daddy. There was a mix-up about who wanted to go – Dan went first, then Hugh discovered they’d gone and was sad, so Eric delivered Dan (who had a tummy ache from too much fudge) home and picked Hugh up and went out again.
• Hugh watched Supergirl with Eric.
• Dan has been reading more on the American Revolution. They have internalised what I was saying to them the other day about not imposing modern understanding of sexual identity on historical figures, and ranting about how you can’t claim Alexander Hamilton was gay based on his letters to his friends. They are apparently reading John Lawrence’s letters at the moment.
• Dan also ranted about the futility of activists telling people not to vote but to revolt instead, and we discussed the stupidity of much “progressive” activism in dismissing systems or candidates because they aren’t perfect and spending more time denouncing allies for being ideologically impure than attempting to change things.
• Hugh played Uno with Daddy.