FUD: Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt

Week One: Complete. Sanity: Intact. I think. February 23, 2007

Monday: This is so wrong. I don’t belong here. I’m obviously in the wrong place. Wait, there’s like, a dozen people here I know! Sweet!

Tuesday: Ugh, this is boring. Can we get started already?

Wednesday: Still boring. Wait. Uh, school visit? What? Where do I withdraw?

Thursday: Eeek! School visit imminent! Can’t think about anything else!

Friday: Huh. School visit surprisingly undramatic.

I’m going to cheat and copy/paste this from my personal journal. Here’s some snippets of things I wrote while decompressing this week. Mike’s been in Florida so I can’t vent at him.

First day: “It was mostly a day of catching up with other people, getting the gossip on last year’s classmates, seeing who was in and who wasn’t, complaining about the university expecting us to traipse over there to do any paperwork whatsoever when the college used to have perfectly adequate facilities in place.”

Third day: “Tomorrow I have my first school visit. We’re to spend the morning at Riccarton Primary, which is nice and close, observing in a classroom and chatting to small groups of kids. The idea is that we get an idea of their interests and where they’re at in the curriculum, then on Monday we return and read a book and run through an activity with them. It’ll be fun, but I’m nervous.”

Today: “The school visit was eye-opening, mostly in a depressing “WHAT ARE YOU PARENTS DOING TO YOUR CHILDREN?!” way: a low-decile school in which the turnover of children is up to 50% per year — transient low socio-economic families moving constantly from place to place. Hungry children who came with no breakfast beforehand, or bought a bag of chips or a Coke on their way to school. Children whose morning tea consisted of sugary pre-bought junk that was obviously thrown carelessly into a bag. Children who see a new friendly face and think it is appropriate to say, “I’ll KILL you. I’ll kill ALL of you,” to seem cool. Kids — 7, 8 and nine years old — talking gangsta and wearing hoodies and bandannas over their faces. Kids who seem to have no chance. It was a real contrast to the school that Ethan will attend next year — yet they are less than a mile apart. I almost cried.”

So yeah. I’m pretty sure I can stick this out, ignoring external factors. Today was amazing in a bunch of ways, and next week I go back to these mini-gangsters and sit back down and run through a session with them…a session of my design. It’s great to be thrown in the deep end. Curriculum studies don’t start for another week, though, and that’s what I’m looking forward to right now. I’m also learning that T-Col schedules are very, very loose compared to the written versions, and that bothers me because I preplan my day to the exact second. Yesterday I almost hyperventilated because the lecturer ran our class 25 minutes later than the written timetable stated. Apparently I have some major adjusting to do.

Stab stab stab February 17, 2007

We recently acquired a secondhand Windows laptop for Mike to use for coding stuff. This is BAD, because it came with Spider Solitaire installed, and I have always been a sucker for Spider Solitaire since cards were invented the year I got my own account on the university computers.

The good news is I have been stabbed in my mousing finger by my evil arch-nemesis, the rose that lives in the corner of the front garden. Every time I weed that patch I threaten to pull the whole damn rose out and throw it away, and the rose is like, oh yeah? and I’m all, yeah bitch you better reckanise. Today it stabbed me in a futile effort to extend its lifespan.

It is so dead.

I have a thorn embedded in my fingertip and efforts to dig it out with a pin only served to push it in more as well as widen the crater it formed, so when I finally gave in and swiped Savlon cream over it so it won’t fester in my sleep, I may as well have used Polyfilla.

The reason it is good news is that I can still write. So I’m guessing now that it was probably the best thing to happen two days before university starts. No solitaire, mucho writing.

Also, Amy just came in and looked at me like she was expecting, I don’t know, some sort of service? Then she strode purposefully from the room and returned to hand me to following items in order: one clean nappy; one mohair jersey that doesn’t fit her any more; one pair of pink shorts with frilly cuffs; and one polo shirt. Then when I failed to react she all but rolled her eyes and went into the lounge to extract the baby wipes from under the couch.

If she could, she’d just change her own nappy her own damn self. Yo.

I am a sucker for memes. I really am. February 13, 2007

So Amy, whose blog I read because she always sounds semi-hysterical like I imagine I do too and because I like how she sometimes writes whole sentences in capitals like I do too and because she has a very cute son who’s slightly younger than my own Amy, posted six weird things about her. It goes around the internet like those chain letters that used to threaten how if you didn’t send them on to eighty different people, your house will fall down on you while you’re doing number twos and you’ll have to call for help and everyone will come and see you and I think I just summarised my childhood nightmares.

Anyway. This shouldn’t be hard, and this list could be longer: Six Weird Things About Me.

1. I loathe corn on the cob and always have. I can’t stand the taste of it.

2. Vacuuming is like meditation for me. It used to be more relaxing before our vacuum started shrieking whenever it came in contact with a horizontal surface. Every day I look forward to vacuuming and I like to admire the debris-free carpet afterwards.

3. I screamed like a little girl all the way down Splash Mountain at Disneyland, and in my panic at the top of the ride I tried to climb out. I was 23 at the time. Now the story of Br’er Rabbit gives me the heebies.

4. Both our children are named after minor characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Half by accident.

5. I still have every letter and birthday card ever written to me from when I left home at 18. I’m working up the nerve to throw them out and have been for two years.

6. The meanest thing I think I’ve ever done was sneak out of school early in form one and let down both tyres on another girl’s bike after we had a fight. I probably wouldn’t feel bad about this if I hadn’t been spotted by a teacher.

A general update for the sake of updating February 8, 2007

It’s funny how, as soon as one little thing is done, everything else just falls perfectly into place.

Yesterday I called the university because my enrolment still hadn’t come through, and classes start in ten days. I was transferred to someone at the college who emailed someone else on my behalf using big words like “What’s going on???” and “Student loans” and the next thing you know I’m enrolled. This is a huge relief, obviously. Today I called Studylink because I have no faith in bureaucracy at all and checked that they hadn’t thrown out my loan application or denied it on the basis of my unacceptable shoe size, and they said yes! Great! Take our money! Have some more! Let us heavily subsidise your daycare! Be in interest-free debt to us! And I laughed at the massiveness that is my debt to the government.

And now I am ready to be a student again.

Ethan is at morning kindergarten. He started yesterday and I got to be the proud mother that everyone hates, because Ethan went straight to the rollbook and wrote his own name in it, then refused to let anyone but himself write his names on things that needed his name. He argued with a teacher who automatically picked up the crayon to label his painting, and I must take a photo of the writing of a child who is barely four. And you can all hate me for my smugness. I know you do.

His lunch wasn’t so successful. The morning kids have lunch at kindy on Wednesday and Friday, so I packed a healthy (if bland) lunchbox covered in Superman stickers and when he came home he’d eaten the apple and the hot cross bun and left the scroggin and cheese-and-relish sandwich (which he calls “pickle rubbish”, oh ho). Fortunately he ate them willingly enough for afternoon tea. Suckah. Today I forgot it’s not a lunch day and packed his lunchbox again, duh. He is loving it thus far, all two days of it, but the novelty will have to wear off soon enough and he will be begging to go to school.

Amy and I paid a visit to the daycare at the college — our second visit and this time there were actually children there. Amy met Julia, who is one week younger and very quiet and speaks little English because her parents are Italian. The teachers greet Julia in Italian, so I am delighted to think that Amy will soon be riding a Vespa and saying, “Ciao!” a lot. I’ll make sure she always answers the phone with “Pronto!” Those Italians are so crazy.

Those are the current main events in our family life. Other, smaller but probably funnier, things have happened but I am never in the vicinity of a computer when they do. Suffice to say that today we have renamed our children Child Prodigy and The Snot Monster.