英语博客(A cup of English):049 Do not enter!

　　Beginners.

The other day I was walking by my children's bedrooms, when I saw a sign on one of the doors. It said, "Domini and Robert, DO NOT ENTER!" One of my two oldest boys had become impatient with sibling 1 intrusions. Sometimes they walk into their bedrooms and find a terrible mess. Colouring* pens often will have their tops missing, so they will be dry. Lego creations are in pieces on the floor, and, some things are just missing. Hudson and Cass, the oldest boys, get furious. They storm into their siblings 2 rooms and create another kind of trouble. I, of course, being their mother, have to get involved to sort out the fights and the conflict. Oh, for peace and quiet!. Well, now my six year old is learning how to write, so he also puts signs on his door. We have three doors with 'Do not enter' signs. My little girl doesn't know how to write, so, I suppose, she still feels free to be the intruder and mess maker 3. One day, there was a big commotion 4 upstairs, with lots of screaming and running. I ran up to see what was going on. It turns out that Domini had stolen one of my son's favourite*toys that he had had since a baby. He was chasing her to get it back. It was like an episode on Tom and Jerry, the cat and the mouse. I think it is about time that I left some notes myself.

Grammar notes.

*Colour/ colouring and favourite are English spellings. U.S spellings miss out the 'u'.

Related vocabulary: the other day, sign, door handle, lock, key, mess, peace and quiet, intruder/ intrusion, impatient, conflict.

Advanced.

"This place feels like a prison," complained my husband one day. He had caught his foot on a metal gate that I had put up between the kitchen and the dining room. The gate is for the dog, to keep her in or out. It is a necessary evil that is supposed to make life easier for everybody. The trouble is, the gate is small, and my husband is large. We have a similar situation upstairs. My two older boys have, according to them, precious possessions, intricate legos that took a long time to build, and other breakable objects. So, because there had been so many incidents of little siblings sneaking 6 in their rooms and wrecking 8 the place, we put locks on the doors. Everything worked for a while. Unfortunately, it didn't last long. Both boys left the keys to unlock their doors locked inside the rooms, along with the duplicate keys. Oh dear. It was time to get the tools out and huff and puff 9, and bash and bang, until we managed to take off the door handles completely. Well, they haven't had locks for a while now, and wreckages are taking place in the bedrooms. Today a little friend of my daughter came to play. He sneaked 10 into Hudson's room and poured his lizzard's food all over the carpet. A few people were not happy about that. Needless to say, I have locks on my list of things to buy.

Grammar notes.

Verbs: to complain, to catch (catch, caught, caught), to leave (leave, left, left), to manage, to sneak 5.

Exs: They complained about the poor service.

He caught my eye, and then asked me to dance.

I caught my sweater on a rusty 11 nail.

I left my keys in the car.

He managed to lift the heaviest weight.

The burgler sneaked into the empty house to steal the silver.

Useful expressions: the trouble is, to have a situation, according to..., to wreck 7 the place, needless to say.