Sunday? NOT a day of rest this week!

It poured with rain all day today (happy June...) so I woke late because it was dark in the bedroom, and stumbled downstairs to find the kids already up and dressed. (Not so unusual at the weekend, apart from the "dressed" part!)

Seiju needed to go into Sapporo to buy some memory for my Maccy-chan and his computer at work, and he'd decided to buy it second hand. So he took the kids out at about 10am, and I promised that I would dig the living room out, and get to grips with the MOUNTAIN of laundry that built up last rainy week. I also unearthed the final two boxes of summer clothes and they all needed washing, too.

I was just about to get down to it (just one more cup of coffee, just one more email, it is the weekend, after all!) when Sachiko rang to say that she was feeling much better, the babe was asleep and could she come right now to get going on the mountain of work that accumulated in her absence? What could I say but yes?

So I welcomed her into our super messy living room with laundry (clean and dirty!) breakfast dishes, toys and papers all over it, and she picked her way to the back room which has the computer in it. She then opened up her files and told me her plan of action which turned out to include me getting off my backside and catching up on stuff with her! Oh dear. So she whipped me through my paces for over three hours, and I have to say we got rid of stuff that had been waiting to be dealt with since before Christmas, and we caught up with all the ins and outs of tuition fees and such like that has been haunting me for three months. She left with 80% of the money details transferred from numerous bits of paper to the one central file that is supposed to be updated daily (hmmmm) and the rest of the stuff chucked or filed. There are a few non-payers who need calling and there are also three people who I cannot remember if they paid or not, and they need calling too - my punishment for not keeping good records while she's been away.

When she'd gone, I was on a roll, so I continued to update my central student file, which had got into a real mess with kids changing classes, days and times, not to mention addresses, fee scales, new students, quitters etc. That also is now about 80% done and it feels much better!

Seiju and the kids came home with icecream for me (yum) and we all took a break. Seiju had a well deserved rest.

Now here's an interesting thing - Yoshi called me from Sapporo saying that his long awaited Sim City 3000 is out on sale, and he had enough money to buy it, so please could he? I said yes but the computer ban stays until the 22nd June, after the kanji test. Of course as soon as he got home the nagging began!

Then Yoshi suggested that if he did a mock test and got 140 points or more (the pass mark), could he be allowed to install the game? Well, seeing as the past three weekends his scores have been 123, 119 and 115 I thought there was no chance at all that he'd get 140, so I agreed. He worked really hard on the test, wrote carefully and thought about it, and he ended up getting 135 points!!!

This left me feeling a bit sick. On the one hand I am greatly relieved that if he pays attention he can get near to passing. (On working on his corrections he also found five points worth of silly mistakes and has conned me into letting him try again on Wednesday night.) On the other hand, it also proves that he is a lazy pig who will only respond to great big juicy carrots, and I resent having a kid who has to be bribed every step of the way. If he does get the computer game before the test, will he be bothered to keep trying? Actually I forstalled that by saying that he'll get tests on Wednesday and Sunday from now till the test and if he gets over 140 he can have the game, but if he falls under 140 the next time, I'll take it away from him, and he agreed!

So, no game today but very, very close... 21 days left to the test. Can he continue to pull himself up by his bootstraps??

After that little drama I made dinner (boring, a repeat of last week virtually by request from Seiju) we ate, he left and the boys and I settled down to two and a half hours of study. Yoshi got in his kanji test corrections, 12 more characters worth of practice, 2 pages of 2nd grade maths problems and a practice English listening test. Harry did the English listening test, 4 pages of 2nd grade maths, two pages of diary, two pages of school maths homework, a practice kanji test (148/150 - he's not worrying me!) his piano theory homework and a good chunk of piano practice. I got the joy of two loads of laundry's worth of ironing while I shoved them on from job to job.

I talk a lot about Yoshi's study, but Harry is doing incredibly well. He is also developing strong study muscles (oh how we should have begun this with Yoshi in the first year then we wouldn't be stuck trying to catch up in the last few months of 6th grade...) and by the end of June he will have finished the entire 2nd grade curriculum for maths. He has already finished the kanji. They only began in April!! Once these tests are over and the tutor is back from his teaching practice, he is going to start him on 3rd grade stuff. I am going to have to watch myself - having had a kid who causes contact from the school on a daily basis, who constantly fails targets and forgets his stuff, I am so relieved to have a bright kid that I want to use him to say to the school "See! I am NOT a stupid useless foreign mother! I got this one right!" But Harry is not my little trophy and I need to not be tempted by these unworthy thoughts.

Now they are vegging in front of the television for half an hour while the bath is run and I have a cup of coffee, then it will be bath, story and BED!