Gave some kids a US today and I thought they were not actually going to do well. We have a double period, and tend to revise in the first, have lunch and do the test seCd. And everyone who sat it properly passed(ie one student only put his name down and did not do anything else on the paper). It was quite gratifying.
Had a haircut tonight. Was thinking about a hairdresser I used to go to in Auckland, back in the days when the husband and I had TONS of money. I think I paid $70 each time, and that was at least ten years ago. But I still remember the head massages this guy there used to do while he was shampooing. I can't remember the actual massage, but I can remember the pleasure I used to get from it. It might be one of the few times I can't really remember the event, but I can remember something more emotional associated with it.
The husband was snoring less than 15 mins after going to bed. He went to the doctor today and was told he was not 'allowed' to go to Waiouru and blow up tussock this weekend. He is absolutely delighted!, and is planning to do lots of assignment work instead...
Stayed home with the senior son again today, and actually spent the time wisely. We read a lot of books, did some vacuuming and generally chilled out together until R came to do the afternoon shift. I picked up the vital necessaries to do the afternoon class, having got an order form and rung school to find out where to go, and had the order rung through for me by the technician. The class went really well, but I am urgently seeking another lesson to do with them next term... biotechnology anyone?? Tonight at home we ate well - C helped cook - and then played family games till the boys went to bed. Its like the perfect day for the kids, and everyone gave me five minutes of putting stuff away before they went to bed, and now the whole house is picked up too.
Two days of school to go, and I have a sore throat. But I don't think I can ring up and have another day off...
Home today with the sick child. Last night he was running a fever and it was obviously too much for his brain - he was wandering round his room and up the hall way looking for his class. Definitely delusional. Much better today, and I have been drugging him regularly which has certainly helped. He's stayed in bed for the morning listening to the radio and spent the afternoon watching videos. He's home again tomorrow, but I will go to school for the afternoon.
Finished seperating the stormwater today. I've buried a perforated pipe in the ground, which works pretty much like a soakpit but a long skinny one rather than a short fat one. It seemed better to put the water into our very free draining sandy soil which never ponds rather than putting it into the stormwater system. I guess it might come back and bite me if it doesn't work - but at least I met the council deadline. R thinks it will fill up with sand real quick and then not work. Time will tell, but we won't ever have more rain than we did the week after I put it in, and it worked okay then.
Just finished a biography on Margot Fonteyn. It was good but too long... 588 pages.
The weekend was fairly pleasant. I actually offered to take the family on an epic journey - this involved going to four different shops all together. On the same journey. R and I tend to start waiting for each other in shops, and then we see things we are interested in and then we get to full scale drifting around. This eventually drives me completely wild, as I WANT TO GO HOME. And he loves drifting around shops. Could do it all day in fact. Then the kids blood sugar drops, his drops and mine plummets and there is grumpiness. From all four. And it tends to happen in the middle of the mission, so either things don't get done, lots of money gets spent on increasing blood sugar or we just go with the screaming and fussing round the rest of the mission.
So I don't often invite the whole team on the Saturday mission. But I did and it wasn't too bad, as I had already planned on eating out. When I know the expense is coming, it doesn't worry me so much.
One of the vital missions was to decorate the cat - she now has a very bling collar, with rhinestones and blue to match her eyes. And elastic so stretchy we can remove the collar without using the buckle. The bell has gone - knowing where she is at all times was an over-rated pleasure.
Sunday was spent by me and the little ones at a friends place while R went to Palmy for a re-sit for a test. He drove an hour to say five words. And then an hour back. Not efficient. Had a lovely day though just mooching round. Kids watched a video, which meant the grown-ups had a grown-up type Cversation for a while. Enjoyed that!
Now back for the final week at school. I suspect that, at times, I'm not going to enjoy this.
Must remember never to borrow anything from father again - posted it back today and felt 'good riddance'. Mother emailed - subject "About time" thought it must be father, but also didn't make sense as how could he have got something I only posted 3 hours ago. Mother happy and quilting madly, inside, away from the cold.
By crikey, its really very cold now. I have the school heater going a lot, and the house fire going whenever possible. And we were still making steam clouds when we breathed at the table (which was reassuringly regular).
I've been reading a book about Margot Fonteyn. So far she is just getting started really. there is a comment in the book about how really good performers are often if not always backed up by a more or less pushy mother. I would like the kids to excel at something, and certainly at this age the push would have to come from me. Delayed gratification is beyond comprehension for little kids. i don't want to be a pushy mother, more a supportive one, so it seems that the kids will have a fun childhood rather than a rigorous one with training of any kind being pushed down their throats. I guess they are kind of lucky, cos they get to have fun, but they may miss out on the satisfaction of being really good at something. Like violin, which C is already too old to be fantastic at. And he's six.
And they might not care, because they might be happy balanced people with no particular skills, but a satisfying life. And they might be bitter and twisted because I removed their opportunities by not pushing them in their youth.
Who is to know at this end of their childhood?
Some of the kids are Ccerned I don't have any friends. So they got hold of my phone and put their numbers in, so that even thought I still don't have the right number of friends, my phone Ctacts list 'looks' better.
I had a very pleasant and long Cversation with a friend today in a free period. (see I do have some friends). He is twenty years older than me at least, and has some very good advice to give. He also doesn't have the commitment to me taking his advice that my father does - so I don't feel nervous about asking for advice. If I question father, it is not acceptable to him if I don't do what he suggests. He gets grumpy and shouty and yells about why did I ask him if I wasn't going to do what he said. The Ccept of how advice can be weighed and taken or not has passed him by. I'm rapidly coming to the Cclusion that my father is actually an asshole, and I should deal with this reality instead of trying to keep the rose coloured glasses. Mother is overly organising, but father goes the next step. His latest epistle which included the phrase "don't get pooh faced" was such that anyone would get annoyed, and saying don't get pooh faced doesn't excuse or remedy bad manners.
But anyway. With most of the SMT away tomorrow there is a particularly half assed scheme for the day, and I'm really very glad I won't be involved in it. I'm teaching year 8 kids, and for once, I think that is a good thing.
I nearly managed to get through this term without having to fill in a single time out form - but today the students Ccerned would not be quiet and when I suggested that if they could not find their manners they would have to leave, they said they would rather leave, and so they did.
Apparently I am now in a bad mood.
My father sending rude emails did probably Ctribute to a bad mood, and losing a free tomorrow, and having another class that wasn't particularly good, and there are only two weeks to the holidays - which is a plus and a minus all in one.
I'm going back to the quilting. Its kind of peaceful even with this monofilament stuff that gets stuck in the machine...
Got a letter from the pay assessment people and you know what - I don't get a pay rise after getting the PhD. I'm not very happy about this, as I have been looking forward to getting more money. Counting the chickens I guess, but it seems wierd to have increased my qualification by so much and then get nothing. Will check with the union...
Had no classes this afternoon as there was a Ccert in the hall. This was good, as my classes are still okay places to be, but some of the clients at school are losing the plot and becoming extremely silly. The end of the term is nigh, but nowhere near nigh enough.
The beloved husband person is absolutely exhausted, and planning to be on ambulance tomorrow night all night. He went to bed before the children! Must go tidy the house, and make this a better place to be. Too much mess results in very unhappy families.
Someone who has just joined the school has apparently been offered a MU, while self has not. When I asked husband as to why he thought this may be said "He's a man". And there you have it. This place IS a boys club. Its been noted several times before.
My estimeed department head is taking the day off. Today is open day. And yes, those two sentences are very closely related. The technician has taken today off too, but that is because she is doing exams. That leaves me and another guy who is hoping to be made redundant at the end of the year to set up for open day. Woot. Not
Had long chat with a friend last night and actually feel good. She is such a good listener but also a very good talker, and it makes for very interesting Cversation. She also seems to have a very active emotional life! She's up and down like a yo-yo.
Will not be going home till 9 o'clock tonight. Dangnabbit.
Today is really very cold for Wanganui, and the kids have no where to go at interval and lunch. I suspect quite a few of them will find somewhere to go, and that place is called home. The forecast is for it to be wet for the rest of the week, culminating in a really wet day on Friday. Some of the kids are really hoping that the rain will be Csistent and persistent, and then we will close the school because of flooding. Me I think that sounds grand.
Finished the quilt top for c and am going to the quilt shop this afternoon to get batting and backing and a quilting pencil so I can draw on the quilt. Should be interesting. Then I can have a go at quilting properly, doing patterns and stuff. Should be interesting.
The doctor recommended that the youngest stay home for the rest of the week. So today a reliever took my classes and I stayed home. The only real sign of him being ill today was the sleep this afternoon. He went to bed at 12 o'clock and did not wake till four thirty. And all with no lunch.
We did housework type things this morning and then went out to a cafe for a cuppa. Also to get the kid out of the house, otherwise he gets bored and very horrible. We seem to have finally found a cafe in this town that suits both of us. Hooray.
I have been doing patchwork this week and have only two squares/patches to go on eldest son's quilt then I can do the sashing. Amazing quick. And i bought a quilting magazine to encourage me and have found something I want to make. Harakeke applique pattern. Have no money though, so may have to carry on with stash depletion quilts for children/charity. IE until I have a case of stash no more.
I was having my shower last night and found myself having this internal debate about whether my biggest problem is that I am fat, or that I am ugly. One of my internal voices chimed in with perhaps I am both, but at the time, the issue was which was the biggest problem. Fat or ugly.
I've checked the supplies - I'm due my period today.
Not so long ago I used to take these debates a lot more seriously - these days I recognise the thinking pattern and go check the calendar.
But I do find it pretty incredible that my hormones can affect my thinking patterns so strongly - and wonder about other thought patterns and what their basis is. Is it that I have read many books, and have become a fairly well balanced person, or am I just lucky in the way the hormones balance out? Am I optimistic because of Cditioning and choosing, or is it simply chemistry?
Is my mind a victim of biochemistry? Do I Ctrol my body or does my body Ctrol my mind?
You can see in the first paragraph that I am fat phobic. there's a woman here on staff who is enormous. She can't wear safety belts because they don't go round her, and she does peculiar things to the suspension of cars. She has an apron of fat that flaps around when she walks and covers half the length of her thighs when she sits. Some days I can't look at her, it makes me feel sick. I'm guessing this is partly because of the media obsession with thinness as beauty... and my family is pretty neurotic about not getting fat. Fat is lazy, and lazy is bad where I come from.
I've recently been reading the weekly essays on The Edge and this weeks one is about the web. Its an interesting look at the usefulness or lack of the collective thinking of websters. It appears from this persons perspective that individuals have better thinking than the whole population.
He could be onto something there. I've noticed the average student here, which is a reasonable view of the average person in society is fairly uninterested in the higher thoughts about any subject at all. Celebrity lives and soap operas occupy a great deal more of their thinking time. If the direction of the country was dependent on their thinking we wouldn't go far.
I wonder though, if they had more resonisibility whether they would start to Csider global issues like pollution, eComics and human rights?
I have just taken the fourth form class out to do a rubbish patrol. They certainly do a really good job, even when they don't actually have gloves. We were looking at what percentage of the litter was plastic, and we guess somewhere between 70 and 80 percent. Which Csidering the slow breakdown of plastic is not a good sign for the planet. The school looks a lot tidier now. Shame we did it before lunch...