Photos

This afternoon I stepped out the front door and saw that a whole lot of pink flowers had suddenly appeared in my front garden. This may have happened because the last week of school was too stressful for me to pay attention!

Anyway, this led to a jaunt around the garden taking pictures, accompanied by Jemima, who made it clear she was following me while refusing to let me get close enough to her to potentially grab her and bring her inside!

Enjoy :-)

First One Gone

Well, I did it. I've just finished my first full term as a primary school teacher.

The term has been very full and busy, and I'm glad it's over - I was very tired and really needed a break!

I'm looking forward to next term - the theme is "Plants and Gardens" and we're going to have so much fun - we're studying "The Secret Garden" in literacy, botany in science, gardens around the world in SOSE, healthy plant foods in health, and we're going to design and build a veggie garden for T&E (maths will link in to various aspects of this, but we’re focusing on number & place value for that). The art teacher is going to do plant-themed art with them, and I’m going to teach them a garden song and also some plant-themed interpretative dance. It’s going to be a very fulfilling term and far less complicated than this one! I’ve also noticed that Arbor Day is this coming term, tying in beautifully with my theme, so we’re going to do a whole-school planting day. My first whole-school initiative, woohoo!

But for now I’m just intent on enjoying my two weeks off – I’ve got programming to do for next term, but otherwise I’m just going to relax and be happy. I’ll be going down to see S next weekend and the weekend after, and in between times I’m going to enjoy myself thoroughly.

But I still can’t believe an entire term has gone by! ¼ of the year . . . wow.

Close to the end

The term is almost over. Two more days, and that’s it. And they’re not hugely difficult days . . . we have two assemblies tomorrow (our class assembly then a pre-emptive ANZAC Day assembly with the Catholic school and the wider community) so I don’t have much in the way of teaching time on those days. It’s nearly over.

I’m so tired I can barely think, and I’m looking forward to several days’ serious relaxation over the next two weeks.

I can’t believe I’ve taught for an entire term already. When did that happen? What 10 weeks?

Of course, my holidays will go quickly too. *sigh*

Just gotta hold it together for two more days . . .

I wonder why . . .

. . . human beings feel such a need to attach a value judgement - 'right' or 'wrong' - to feelings?

With some feelings, the reason is obvious - we consider that feeling of just wanting to throttle someone to be 'wrong' in case the deed follows on the thought. But other feelings are far more ambiguous.

Yesterday I found out that a fatal car accident that I'd heard about on the radio on Saturday had involved someone I knew. I only knew him slightly - I'd had about three shifts with him when I was working at the optometrist's - and I actually loathed him. I thought he was loud-mouthed, full of himself, patronising (to someone older than him!) and generally a pain in the butt for someone with my personality.

So I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening feeling absolutely dreadful, because I was having the wrong sort of feelings about this guy's death. My feelings can basically be summed up as "well . . . yeah. Okay, he's dead. And . . . that's all." I certainly don't feel glad but I also definitely don't feel sad. It is what it is. He drove stupidly with bad tires on the rainiest Perth day for 5 years, lost control, hit a tree, and is gone. And that's it. I feel sorry for the people who are affected by his death, like his kids, but beyond that . . . I actually don't feel anything, and we're taught that that's the wrong way to feel. We're supposed to be sad about a person's death, but whether it's because I'm so overwhelmed and exhausted or just because I barely knew him, it just hasn't affected me.

Why should that sort of feeling be subject to a value judgement? Why should we be expected to retrospectively like and grieve for the dead if we couldn't like them in life? Why should we feel that our feelings are wrong? Why can't we just have feelings that are what they are, without judging ourselves for them?

Thoughts, anyone?

PS: S and I have totally sorted out last weekend's fight, and have had a wonderful weekend - we're so much stronger as a couple after having come through that. It's all good :-)

Feelings

You remember my former best friend, the one who metaphorically kicked me in the guts one time too many and was thus kicked to the kerb?

Well, lately I’ve been dreaming about her from time to time. While I don’t for one minute regret having stood up to her and told her how her behaviour affected me, I am sad that her unrelenting temper means that we will probably never make up. I’ve always forgiven her – that’s how this all started, because I was enraged that after all of the hundreds of times I’d forgiven her for stuff she’d done to me, she was unable to forgive me for something not all that serious – but she is often a judgmental and unforgiving person and I doubt she will ever choose to let go of her bitter feelings about the argument we had.

(You may ask why I would even want to rekindle the friendship given what I’ve just said about her. She does have redeeming qualities even though I spent countless hours either being furious with her myself or defending her to other people. I’m not really sure I would want to be friends again, but I would like to know whether there is anything worth saving).

After I defriended her on Facebook she blocked me completely for a while so I couldn’t even search up her name or click on it in other peoples’ profiles. Today I noticed that she’s clickable again, and I can read her profile, but after a while I discovered that I can’t message her or post to her wall, so I’m still partially blocked. I was considering sending her a message about what to do with various stuff she abandoned in my care when she moved out, but I can’t.

I’m a bit upset about this. She was my best friend for more than twelve years, and she was nice to be with in between the brush-offs, insults, tactlessness, rudeness and failure to stay in contact when it wasn’t convenient. And we shared a lot in the year we lived in the same house. Although I don’t think I’d ever be stupid enough to be the doormat of a best friend again, I would like to think that one day we could at least have a civil conversation or even be at the same event. And we can’t do that while she’s blocking me.

*sigh*



ETA . . . hmmmm. A re-read of this made me realise that I am still very angry with her, generally for all the crap she put me through over the years, and specifically for the fact that she can't forgive me when I've forgiven her so many times. I've also realised that I'm angry with her because she WAS a good friend sometimes, and she betrayed the good-friend-ness over and over again with her narky behaviour. She trashed my trust time and time again, sucked me back in time and time again, and then in the end said that she no longer cared to see me because of something I’d done a year earlier and which she’d never tried to talk to me about. Despite all she’d put me through I thought she was better than that. I’ve always thought she was better than she was, and she’s always let me down. To then blame me for letting her down is so hypocritical that it chokes me up.

. . . perhaps I’m not really ready to make contact yet, after all.



 

A first

As of today, I play netball.

This is a circumstance that has never happened before.

When I was a kid, 99% of girls did either netball or gymnastics, and most did both at one time or another. Netball was HUGE. And I never, ever played. We did it at school a few times and I was clumsy and awkward, couldn’t keep up with the game or the rules, and could never keep my feet on the ground at the right times. And while I was always encouraged to be active – tennis, soccer, gymnastics, ballet, other forms of dance – no one ever even asked me if I was interested in netball. I think Mum’s dislike of most people the hair-makeup-housework-shopping style of woman, which comprised most of the school Mums and therefore most of the netball Mums, would have been a strong reason in her mind to keep me out of netball anyway.

So I’ve always felt on the ‘outre’ with netball, and I only have a vague idea of how the games go. But I need a sporting activity to get me off my butt and doing regular exercise; I need some sort of community activity so that I meet more people; and I need to do something on weeknights that isn’t a) marking, b) planning, c) chatting to S, or d) sitting at my computer blogging, message-boarding or generally doing not much at all.

Carlene, the year 2-3-4 teacher, decided to do netball as she used to play, and in a snap decision I decided that I would, too.

Now I’m a member of Little Country Town’s B-Grade weeknight netball team. Yikes!

We had our first training session tonight, and I’m so sore and tired, but it feels good too. It’s been a while since I’ve done an hour’s solid aerobic exercise! I tend to do more of the slower exercise, like walking. But I’m sure it’s been good for me and I’m looking forward to next week’s training. Games will be on Thursday nights and start in about a month. It’s kind of exciting :D

I'm alright . . .

. . . and we're alright. Not totally sorted, but getting there. The relationship is in no danger, at least!

Sorry if I alarmed anyone yesterday.

Adding: err, based on the comments it sounds like I implied that S had done something wrong. Actually it was me lol. He was upset with me and I drove down to sort it out.