Pictures of Cute Chicks!
2010-06-23, 10:47 p.m.
After promising so much in my last entry (proper updates, regular and everything) Ive failed in an epic fashion.Oops
There�s plenty to tell you, of course, but none of it so fascinating that it merited a whole entry all to itself.
The self employment thingy is going ok��..well, alright. I made myself some letterheads and some blank invoices and they�ve got a little logo at the top of them and everything, and my name in nice big writing. Im dead corporate, me. Havent actually earned any money yet but Im sure its only a matter of time. Ahem.
I met up with barefootruby (locked � sorry) who is a D�land friend who happens to live only about a mile or so from me and so really needed to be a RL friend as well. We had a few scoops in Wetherspoons and it was all jolly jolly and nice. I was a bit pissed when we left but I think I got away with it � especially as I am generally a bit loud and opinionated and giggly and stupid and so wasn�t exhibiting any major changes in behavioural patterns throughout the evening. He might tell it differently, of course.
I started my voluntary work, round at Jooj�s school. The first morning I did basic numeracy and literacy with six kids, one after the other. All of them were at different stages and are in different year groups so there was an awful lot of chopping and changing between the various levels of expected achievement. All a bit knackering but I thought I�d done OK. Later that afternoon, the head of the ILN department phoned me to ask if I would be interested in a job that�s coming up in September; doing one-to-one assistance with a year 11 boy. The salary is a third of my usual pay rate but that doesn�t seem to be worrying me too much at the moment, which makes me think I may actually have found something that I WANT to do. At least for the time being.
The second morning was all Maths GCSE with a couple of year 10 girls. All was fine until I flippedover the question paper and they both looked at the next question and said �How do you do that, miss?�. It was mid-points of coordinates and my mind went completely blank. It might as well have been GCSE Hieroglyphs for all the sense it made.
I just fessed up. �Sorry girls. I haven�t seen one of these for over 30 years. I think we might have to go and get the text book and look it up.� They both laughed and we went through the text book together, until we ALL knew how to find the mid-point of a bloody coordinate.
Today was maths project work with a mixed ability group (mixed ability = 1 who knows what to do, 1 who went red every time I asked him a question and was completely tongue-tied through the whole morning, 1 who was keen to �design� the project presentation (which meant he spent the morning colouring � and not very well, at that!) and 1 who was so naughty I wanted to slap him. I understand that might be frowned upon. Im hoping for something a bit less�ummm�mathematical for tomorrow. The Year 9 drama project looks ever more enticing. Fingers crossed.
On the home front, L and I swing between puke-making lovey-doveyness and me wanting to stab him repeatedly, pretty much on an hourly basis. He�s done some really fucking stupid things over the last couple of months which Im not going to commit to �paper� here � if I do that will mean that they are real and he really HAS been that stupid. Don�t worry yourselves, its nothing that cant be fixed but it does mean a whole load of extra work/stress/sighing for me and some VERY large slices of humble pie to be eaten by him. Oh, and I cut his credit cards up. He was relieved.
Im trying to condense the last couple of weeks down into a manageable pr�cis, so I�ll bung in a few photos to distract you from the tedium of reading this bollocks.
We�ve been looking at birds in the garden. Like jays ferinstance (its there, in the centre of the pic):
and their babies
and other kind of birdy babies, too. Blackbird? Starling? Whatever � they all taste like chicken (and this one has Mah-hoo-sive EYEBROWS!)
and speaking of gardens � is there really any need for one tree to have this much blossom on?
My mum says that if there�s lots of blossom there�ll be lots of berries and that means a hard winter�s on its way. Whilst my mother is outwardly an intelligent woman, I am not sure how much credence I can give to the notion of pyrocanthus trees being in some way meteorologically psychic.
When we�ve not been gawping at birds or stocking up on loo roll and pop tarts in readiness for The Big Freeze of 2010/11, we�ve been wandering the countryside (about half a mile from our house!)
and finding little gems like this
which is a disused quarry (and so not safe for swimming) � no matter how picturesque
Oh and there�s always time for a walk along the river on the way back � to nosey into the gardens of people with riverfront houses and marvel at their rhododendrons (we know how to party, we do!)
and to generally be amongst some fairly tame, yet very pretty, bits of nature
There�s also time for being practically creative, and making stuff that I don�t usually have time to make, like maxi-dresses for Jooj�
(See how, in that picture, the pyrocanthus has lost all its blossom. I don�t know what that means in �weather forecasting� terms. �It was a bit windy� would be my first guess.)
�and a similar one for Treac (but she wasn�t at home to model it when I took the pics). Oh, and a rather fetching red silk chemise for me to wear under my red lace dress. I�d not tried my hand at lingerie making for a while so I was really quite pleased with the result
Pattern/instructions available for both the above � just ask. The maxi dresses can be made to any size but the chemise is my own design and so the pattern is only in one size � mine!
I think Ive worked out how to do films on my camera, which means I should be able to grace your screens with another �Cooking Mama� episode soon. Be still your beating hearts!!
Later
S
x
Oh, and shame on you if you took a look at the title of this post and thought you were going to get shots of ladygardens, instead of just..umm..gardens! And another thing! Apologies that some of the pics are a bit wonky. I'll fix them tomorrow. Probably.
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