Happy Birthday to my lifelong friend

July 17, 2010 · Posted in friends · Comment 

Today is my friend’s birthday. We live long miles apart and sometimes we don’t catch up for months and at times even years. There are bigger gaps these days in what we know about one another. When we were six and possibly until we were about 14, we shared our lives and have experiences that will never be replaced or duplicated. Every major event in my life she has been a prominent figure, mostly through her presence, yet at times from her absence. Regardless of either she is a part of me.
Today she is 45 and as always she reaches an age six months ahead of me, like a countdown, so if Jane is 7, 8, 9 through to 45, I will be soon. What will 45 be like… well I’ll ask Jane…Ok, I can do it!
She is the MOST creative person I know. her home is always beautiful, comfortable and welcoming. She has been a major part of the village that has made my children who they are. I value her imput and attribute Asha and Tom’s creativity down to the blissful days they spent in her care. She creates home like no one I know. You know those places you can fritter away hours in before you even realise the time. To eat at Jane’s is not only healthy, there is always flavour… she is a magnificent cook.
Jane demonstrates love. I love her.

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Laundry

July 5, 2010 · Posted in home, relationships · Comment 

I started mucking around with my laundry months ago. I pulled down a wobbly ugly cupboard I had in there thinking it would motivate me to fix it up. It didn’t. I’ve had piles of linen and towels and laundry stuff settled in all throughout the rest of my home. Terrible feng shui!

Yesterday Darin and I went to Ikea and got a storage system for the laundry. We also got paint and stuff to paint the walls, cause we want to do it once and for all! The laundry in this house is in the relationship sector if my trusty feng shui compass and calculations are accurate, so I want to get it right. Most of the piles are accumulating in our bedroom, another feng shui problem for relationships. It’s surprising we are still together at all with all the negative energy in the house around relationships. I don’t want to tempt fate though, so I’m really keen to get this done.

This morning we cleared everything out, washed down the walls and removed all the nails, shelves and bits left behind by previous residents. We puttied (not sure if that’s a word) and I sanded back this afternoon while he was at work. It’s a lot easier doing this kind of stuff with someone else. A laundry is a lot smaller than my previous painting efforts also. I’m confident it will be finished by the weekend when we have the kids. I may even share a photo!

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Ah Friday already….

May 1, 2010 · Posted in family, home, relationships · 1 Comment 

The brilliant aftermath of the long weekend is the short week following.

This week was busy. I wasn’t expecting it. It was productive busy though and that makes all the difference. Darin’s treacle tart that I had for morning tea each day this week also helped :-) .

The memorable moments of this week were many. I felt affirmed seeing photos of my son and receiving reliable reports that he’s healthy and doing well on Hamo. I enjoyed the greeting from Darin’s kids when they arrived tonight. They are so affectionate and excited to be here, it’s such a gift to me. A student who was away sick emailed me the assignment on the due date. I hate to be cynical, but usually if a student is absent on a due date… they are at home doing the assignment! Not that I am a big deadline person. In fact I am probably too flexible as a teacher with due dates for assignments. I have always found inflexibility to be an inhibitor.  This student thanked me because they enjoyed the assignment. Not an everyday occurence.  I had a student tell me she got her licence and got to relive with her that exquisite feeling of freedom and power that moment in time brings… I’ve never taught her, but have managed to develop a relationship through yard duties and as a co-ordinater. I had a student I taught last year at the junior campus greet me with such enthusiam! that I missed the place, for a minute, even though I am so happy where I am. The power of relationship building! To teach in a community I am familiar with is a gift. I know students parents and grandparents and Aunties and Uncles and brothers and sisters. It adds meaning to our relationships and helps to know and understand all kinds of differences that others can’t discern.

Someone said to me today it’s good my kids got out of here. I agree. I was in a big rush to do that when I was at that age and I was away for a total of 12 years…. off and on. I am so glad to live here now though. I love where I live. I love that I know a reasonable part of my community. I enjoy not having to line up with strangers(at least you can catch up with peoplein the queue at the supermarket). I realised today in a discussion with a new teacher, how much easier it is for me. There is a richness in long term relationships, whatever the nature, that is enriching. 

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Full Moon in Libra – Tuesday 30th March 2010

March 29, 2010 · Posted in astrology, relationships · 2 Comments 

A full moon in Libra is going to be about relationships from what I read. Paulo Coelho had this great quote today on facebook :

In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame others for what we feel. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it. (Maria in “Eleven Minutes”). 

That really resonated with me.

Astrogrrl has a good post about this moon, tying it in with the previous new moon.  I always enjoy Lynda Hill’s Sabian Symbols for the moons. She is so thorough about all the things going on in the sky. There are so many good astrologers to read. I could spend all day doing it, especially when I’m on holidays.

I have a full Easter ahead with Darin’s parents and children coming here. I am pretty excited to have a full house, especially for chocolate season!  I had better get off the couch and computer, stop lying around reading and eating delicious risotto Darin made for me today and clean the house tomorrow:-).

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Pruning

February 27, 2010 · Posted in family, relationships, work · Comment 

After attending the Cybersafe training day on Thursday I have pruned my facebook of all current students. I was reluctant to do that because I felt that I was a responsible user of social networking, but the implications and lack of control over what others post, creates vulnerabilities for teachers. I like to be socially inclusive. If a person I know requests to be my friend, I would need to have a clear reason for saying no. It’s easier to have no current students than to make judgement calls.

Greg Gebhart the facilitator is very knowledgeable and I highly recommend his site IT Vision for educators. I have completed a few IT courses with Greg over the past few years. He is a great resource to teachers having been a teacher and possessing a practical and grounded view of how to work with IT in schools.

I have also pruned my twitter account on the same basis. I’ve rid my feed of all the people I don’t read or aren’t really interested in as well as students. I don’t read my twitter feed that often though to be honest so I’ve created groups. The great thing about having different groups is that if I only check it once a week or so, I don’t miss as many posts in the areas I’ve created because the fewer amount of people makes it easier to catch up. Does that make sense?

I have also discovered a whole branch of my family on facebook this week. I think social networking is great. I love staying in touch with people who live all over the place. Although I generally have no time for reality TV, a family member is on ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ (vote Nick!), so I’ve been keeping up with his progress.

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Happy 45th Wedding Anniversay Parents

February 20, 2010 · Posted in relationships · 1 Comment 

My parents Ric and Joan have been married for 45 years today. I don’t know many other couples who are as happy together. They have raised 6 children, been much loved grandparents to 4 grandchildren, made a home we can all return to, yet be independent from, retired and holidayed in their marriage and family but I think their relationship is their greatest achievement. They enjoy each other and spend lots of time together. They still smile at each other and are warm and affectionate. They are nice to be around.

When my mum was sick last year, the thing that rocked me the most was dad. He was lost. It was cruel. There was nothing that could be done for him other than mum’s return to health. No wonder they take such good care of each other. They know.

Their closeness is something I’ve always aspired to and wanted for my own relationships. It hasn’t been simple for me, even though I’ve had great teachers! The older I get the more I have valued and been awed by what they have together. I have to confess as a teenager I found it most annoying that I couldn’t play one off against the other.  Most of all I am grateful though to have their abundant love in my life. Their love for each other has spilled over to generosity and love for all of us.

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Weekly Blogging

December 8, 2009 · Posted in blogging, friends, relationships · Comment 

On the weekend I attended briefly (well for a 3rd of the prescribed time) our 25th ’10 till 10′. This annual event has been going on since we left school. The committed have reunited at a local pub for a session lasting all day. Even though I have lived in this town for most of my life I have not attended for many of those years. Last year was the one and only time I have ‘gone the distance’ and that included a nap on the couch. Although I had lost touch with most of my school friends, there is something quite reassuring about catching up and seeing how much we are pretty much the same. It’s like another family. I read a series of articles on ‘Parental Relationships‘ on Goop a couple of weeks ago. It reminded me somehow, particularly the part that talked about our friends seeing how much we’ve changed and grown and our family saying we haven’t changed a bit.

Last night we had an Awards night at school. I think I am too tired right now to appreciate such things. I was pleased to see some students that just made it through year 9, had gone on to blossom and achieve excellence at later stages in their education.

I can’t believe I haven’t posted for a week. I have to confess it’s not just a lack of time. There are so many things going on right now that I can’t talk about publicly. This year has been a bit like that. I don’t know if I’ve become a lot more conscious of my audience or what my dilema is. I don’t know what I think about everything and I haven’t had time to find out. It’s all too sensitive to just blurt about.

I have a week until school finishes and it seems very far away when I think of all the activities that will occur in this last week. Today I am going with the year 9s to our new campus for an orientation morning.

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Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray

October 12, 2009 · Posted in reading, relationships · Comment 

I tried to read this book years ago, but it made me angry. I decided to revisit it when people around me kept referring to it. I heard the title about five times in a week and felt it was a sign. I got it from the library during my long service leave. I’m not sure what plugged me in last time. This time I read it, there were things that made sense. There are still some fairly difficult things for me to fully appreciate. I have accepted men and women are different and sometimes what I think I am communicating is not the message received and vice versa. I finally finished most of it though and returned it to the library last week. Now when someone refers to it, I’ll have a chance of knowing what they mean.

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Sorting Facebook

August 31, 2009 · Posted in relationships · 5 Comments 

Last night I put all my friends on Facebook into different groups. I was inspired by having access to photos of someone I barely knew. Photos that were a touch revealing. I’m not sure I am that open.  There are levels of privacy I want to maintain.

I looked into it,  there are different levels of privacy in facebook but I hadn’t really explored them till then. I have my own criteria for adding friends on facebook, yet within are different groups/types of friends, sounds awful to categorise your friends, but I’m only human. If I know someone I am happy to add them. I don’t need to know them in person, or in current time, past is fine, I need to have some concept of who they are and how they are connected to me. The old ‘everyone’s welcome’ slogan I had when working at the Neighbourhood House, doesn’t apply on my facebook page.

By the same token, just because I know a person, doesn’t mean I want to share everything with them. I discovered last night that for each photo album you upload to facebook, you can set the networks or friend groups that you want to see them. It’s given me peace of mind. I don’t want to wonder about how many friends of friends can see my family photos and who they are.

Having said all that and feeling pretty much master of the universe as far as my privacy goes on facebook, I still wouldn’t put anything I thought would be detrimental to me online. anywhere. I still haven’t worked out how to control people tagging you in photos, apart from removing the tag. I was discussing this in class today. When you are out and about you aren’t necessarily looking around for people who are photographing you with their mobile phone. Perhaps privacy is dead.

What are your settings on facebook? Who can see your photos?

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Behaviour Management Course

August 24, 2009 · Posted in learn, relationships · 2 Comments 

Today I had a professional development day. It was a course in Behaviour Management. I haven’t been on a Behaviour Management course since the first years I was teaching.  I have been more interested in things like technology or learning. It was productive and has given me some great things to think about, especially as a co-ordinator explaining things I take for granted. It reinforced my strong belief that relationship building is really the most important basis.

It reminded me also of something I used to do, but have neglected lately and I think my classroom environment has suffered for it. The initial clear explanation of your expectations is really important if you want a good learning environment. I don’t mean the flakey kind of ‘I expect great things from you’ stuff. I need to clearly explain the behaviours I want to see. I need to be really explicit and model it as well as explain specifically what I expect.

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