6 weeks of the 10 week term down – four more to go until vacation time.
Yes, we do count down…
6 0f 10
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Category Archives: Friday on my mind
you love me, you love me more…
Hello, Beautiful Common People!
MIL made it through the operation and is still on this side of the white light. Tough old bird, my mother in law.
Happy International Women’s Day – the one day of the year that I allow other women to feel like a goddess. Enjoy it.
Been too busy to worry about politic watching. Quality of my life has improved. Hallelujah.
Off to spend quality time with Petit Fille tomorrow. Ok, ok, I am a push over for that little girl, but what Grandma isn’t? Don’t take it as a sign of weakness though, the stick hand is still strong.
Two straight days of sunshine! Luxury!
Three weeks until Easter holidays. Two weeks of vacation! Hallelujah. Hallelujah. I am going to bake and garden and sleep and visit Petit Fille, and eat lots of chocolate.
I wonder if employers ever understand what trouble they cause when they hire an outsider over an insider. The poor outsider enters the organisation completely innocent of the back drama and is thrown to the wolves like an unsuspecting lamb. Has happened to a colleague who started the same time as I did and twelve months later she is still dealing with the fall out and she shouldn’t have too. Luckily I replaced an insider that everyone detested!
In my next life, and yes there will be one, I am going to be even more beautiful, brilliant, witty and wonderful. Hard to believe that could be possible, considering how perfect I am, but I will achieve it. I have preordered a life on a grand scale. I shall not to be denied. I think the Big Whatever owes me.
I have a student who is a self harmer. Her arms are full of scars and she has only just returned to school after a long absence. She is in grade 11 and she has a couple of spare classes so they have attached her to my year 8 class in the library. She studies while I teach the younger class. In the beginning she would just lie with her head on the desk, but gradually she started to listen to what I was teaching my class and then she commenced her own studies. Now she comes to me out of class to ask for help with her studies. It is a gift to watch her reclaim her life.
Through the open window I can hear the train climbing the hill – I think I can, I think I can…and then it disappears into the distance. It has become such a familiar background that we all miss it when the trains are stopped during the flooding. It almost becomes a comfort sound in the night. How surprising.
Sleep tight. You can worhsip me on the morrow.
FD
Village life
Daughter1, now just eight weeks away from her due date, drove out from The City to spend the day with us. The Friday markets that I drive through every week on my way to work were on in The Village and so we decided to go down and have a look.
We were able to control our spending until we came to a garden stall where the plants were lovely and the prices a fraction of city prices.
I bought the lavender to plant in the large pots to sit outside our front door, and also some agapanthas in tubes to fill in a couple empty spots on the terrace. Agapanthas are considered a bit of a pest plant by some, but they are also said to be a good fire break around a property. I have no idea, and truthfully with our tall trees I don’t think any agapanthas would be much of a barrier – and let’s pray we never have to test the theory. I love their purple pompom flowers and that is the reason I bought them.
Daughter1 purchased three large gardenia plants for less than the price of one in The City which made her day as well.
We had a quick lunch in a rock ‘n roll themed café where it was all Elvis and the 1950s. The menu was written on replica vinyl records. We ordered American hotdogs, and D1 a milkshake, while I opted for my tea. It was quite pleasant, but somehow seemed out of place in our little Village.
Daughter1 had to get back to The City as this weekend she and Mr Boy are participating in an intensive antenatal class that started Friday evening and continues all day Saturday. She is feeling the pressure of time running away and an endless list of things to do before the baby arrives, but as a friend advised her “what you don’t get done before the baby arrives, you will just do after the baby arrives”. Wise words. Enjoying the journey is part of the experience, especially with a first baby.
After D1 left, Mr FD and I went shopping for Christmas dinner items. We ordered prawns for Christmas lunch, and Mr FD went freezer diving and surfaced with a large leg of ham. We almost needed to elbow another couple out of the way to get to it as they were taking forever to make up their mind about their ham, but I pushed Mr FD into the freezer, promised I would hang onto his ankles and gave the other couple a withering stare to move over yonder and they kindly moved onto the roast beef section. Ham in the trolley, we threw in a large pumpkin and headed off like triumphant hunter gathers back to our cave.
Christmas lunch will not be made by the faint of heart, or the slow at the meat section.
School’s out!
End of the school year – holidays until Jan 23rd 2013!
Happy? Who, me? Hell, YES!
Let the real country life begin!
hear ye, hear ye… oh forget it…
Today is the last day of school for our year 12 students. The entire school body and parents attended a final school assembly for them this morning and then made a guard of honour to the front school gate for them to pass through. Basically, we pumped them up and spat them out.
The school leaders all made wonderful speeches; one even remembered to thank his Mum and Dad, and all four teared up as they told their classmates how wonderful they were, and how the world was theirs.
All I could think was, “poor fools, most of you will sink into obscurity”. They leave today, full of anticipation of “being grown up” and rush off to various holiday spots to party hardy for a week. The year our eldest daughter graduated from her girls’ school, at least two of her classmates returned from “schoolies” pregnant. Not a great start to post school life, for anyone.
Not that obscurity is a bad thing. Let us be honest, that is where most of us spend our lives, and at times it has a lot to be said for it. Not everyone desires fifteen minutes of fame, Mr Warhol (though, I bought the cup at a not too distant art gallery store). Not everyone can bear the burden of being a goddess, and many who try, shouldn’t have. Some of us set new standards though.
It just seems unfair that we pump these kids up over twelve years so that we can sell them a bill of goods – that the hard work is behind them. Then again, why would any of us bother to get out of bed on any weekday if we were handed the rules on day one? What’s the saying? Life’s a shit and then you die? Not all bad, but not all good either.
No, I am not on a downer. I am actually pretty smug about my life right now. Come New Year’s 2013 I will be ticking a few items off the off resolution list (though not the exercise and food thing, and maybe not the time wasting thing either). There are a couple major stress points that I am trying to pretend aren’t circling me, but hey, who isn’t? Okay, if you are, shut up, NOW. On the whole though, I am fortunate and I am grateful.
Can’t ask for more than that, can I? Can I?
Anyway, back to my point. Graduating high school is about the only time in our life when we believe the worst is behind us. I guess they have the right to believe it until life smacks them in the back of the head, poor suckers.
Happy Graduation, Class of 2012, the rest is yet to come.
Gut instinct or stick list?
Sometimes, is best to go with your gut instinct, or just go to the Stick List?
Minerva [the library aide] has been away ill all week, and I was solo for most of it, then someone with the power decided they would arrange for an untrained casual to come in “to help me catch up”. Kind thought, poor execution.
I tried to circumvent, but the arrangements had been made, and unlike the real world, they wouldn’t renege on the deal. That’s what I get for working for a religious school – they have a Christian spirit. Who would have thought that, in the modern workplace? Sssshhhh.
I know that most people think that people who work in libraries sit around reading books and magazines all day, but in truth a lot of very detailed work goes on in the background, both physical and technical. Sending me a person who knows next to nothing in a moment of crisis is not a help. She is a lovely woman, and wants to be helpful, but there is no way I am going to allow her to mess with Minerva’s systems. You saw Minerva, she eats casual employees for morning tea, if they last that long (she is my kind of woman, but only if I am her boss).
The time to send a casual employee is when we are not pushed to the edge and have time to train people; otherwise it is a little like trying to teach someone to swim while you are all drowning.
The casual is a very pleasant woman, but she wants to work in the library on a permanent basis. She mentions this every two minutes. The pressure from her repeating her want is almost worse than the fact that she can do little to assist me without me showing her first. I have taken to hiding in my office, which is not easy as it has glass walls. At other times I have banished her to shelf reading, which is one of the most tedious jobs in the world, up there will counting the grains of sand into an hour glass.
The fact that there is no vacant position and no plans for another library aide in the near future is not deterring her. I told her to find out about studying a library technicians course, as that is who I would be looking to hire if I have any input, when the time comes. I would need someone who has some real IT skills, to maintain blogs and web pages, and of course catalogue books, websites and electronic resources. I hope she takes the hint, because she is starting to get under my skin. STICK LIST annoying.
Let’s be honest, the best way to get a job is to take every opportunity to impress while you are on the job. I have been quite happy with the work that she has completed, but there is just something that my instinct is trying to tell me – that she might be one to slacken the pace once through the door. I can’t cite evidence, but my Flamingo Dancer instincts just suspect something. High alert!
What makes it more difficult is the fact that she is also one of the parents. We have to remember that she is a customer as well as an employee and I do wish they wouldn’t employee parents in this manner. We need to be careful what we say, as they are in the parent cohort and of course the gossip spreads like a virus, so we say no evil, which in itself is an added stress. Worse still, it means I have to do extended periods of nice, and we know how I deal with that, don’t we dear reader? Not well.
So TGIF and a rejuvenated, hearty constitution to Minerva!
roll it, and fold it, and knead it away
Friday night, the start of a three day weekend and I have just returned from an hour of massage. I feel like a molten butterball. Within minutes I intend to be beneath the sheets and shall slumber until noon if that is my whim.
It doesn’t get much better than this.
say cheese, eat cake
My adoring entourage paid homage to me, as they should.
One of the office staff, who share part of our library building, baked a cheesecake as a belated birthday cake for me. I was surprised with it this morning, along with a chorus of happy birthday from the people I work closest with.
As I have mentioned before, I have been given the gift of landing in a wonderful school this year, and an opportunity to work in the field that I love (libraries!). The circle of staff that I share each day with are the most amazing people that I have met in a long, long time. They are open, honest, humorous, selfless and intelligent.
It has been a difficult week for us all. We are all still reeling from the shock of our colleague, who also shared the building with us; and I have had my Mum’s health issues (still in hospital) to deal with. I think it was good therapy for all of us to feast on decadent cheesecake and laugh together for awhile. We all stepped lighter for the rest of the day.
Our friend’s funeral is on Monday. They can’t officially close the school, but they have offered the students the choice of staying home, or attending the funeral accompanied by a parent. However, there will be a few students who can’t stay at home and don’t want to go to the funeral. I am one of three teachers who offered to stay back at the school to supervise any students who come to school that day. I felt that it was what our friend would have done, and something I could do in his memory. It will be a sad day for all.
So, a sugar high was gladly welcomed today as was their gift of friendship.
Of course I am Flamingo Dancer, what is not to love?
Morning thoughts
here kitty, kitty
The rain is pouring down outside. It is the type of night that makes a person want to go out and buy a kitten….
… to eat on toast with gravy.
