spy life, dyslexia, sherbet, bran loaf and firefly

Have not been posting much later. My mind has been fairly occupied with:

• Putting the final touches on my kid's club - which I did most of the work on back in July. Kids club starts in 3 weeks and 2 days. Put the first advertising out yesterday and have quite a bit of interest already.

• Reading about dyslexia. Trying to separate good quality research from pop-psychology and work out how to best help our boy #2. Trouble is, many experts want to blame parents for not reading enough with their kids in the pre-school years and not helping them with their homework once they are at school. Hurts a bit to read such stuff. In our case at least, it's completely untrue. Even now, I would spend half an hour most days reading to Joel and over an hour on homework. I'm currently reading this much more encouraging book. The dyslexia symptoms fit Joel perfectly - but isn't that the key to self-help books? Suck the reader in by sympathetically describing all their symptoms and then offer the magic solution. Anyone have any knowledge about this kind of stuff? Joel is a very bright boy in many ways, but reading is a struggle and his spelling is worse than bad.

• Working a bit. Today I had year 4's. The teacher left instructions for me to make sherbet with them at 9am this morning. Each kid was meant to make a bagful (containing 20 tsps of icing sugar). I managed to get them to do one between two and not eat it till second break, but even so... Was it some kind of joke the regular teacher was playing on me? Who would feed kids 20 teaspoons of sugar for morning tea and then expect them to function well for the rest of the day?

• I've also been baking. Trying to find joy in domesticity. Realised that there is no joy for me in following recipies. So I make it up. This week I've made a cornflake slice, a peanut butter, cornflake and apricot slice (was going to be biscuits but I couldn't be bothered), and Bran Loaf. Bran loaf is the healthiest. Here's how I made it. Mix together 1 cup of mixed fruit (sultanas, chopped apricots, whatever you've got), 1 cup of unproccessed bran, half a cup of sugar and 1 cup of milk. Soak for a few hours. Mix in 1 cup of SR flour, put it in a tin and bake it till you think it's ready (40 minutes?)

• Watching Firefly and wondering if it really is morally wrong to go around the universe stealing things and shooting people. Malcolm Reynolds makes it look so appealing!