Does the cake stay the same : or are we playing an age game?

What if we didn’t count weeks and months and years? What if we didn’t celebrate birthdays and did away with calendars? Would we fear ageing in the way that we do, if the numerical stacking of years did not occur?

Would we live each day as it was, and our todo calendars would contain just days, not years? Would anxiety fall, would life be simplified; would we not divide lives into what lies ahead, what might remain, but focus on what is now?

If age was not a number, if the average life span was not communicated by digits, what would the human mindset be? Would death still be feared as always on the horizon?

Would our careers and usefulness still have a use by date?

Just wondering…

 

The icing to the cake has changed flavors. But if you really look at the cake itself, it’s really the same.

John Oates

 

Does the mind replay what the heart can’t delete?

I remember:

Watching The World of Disney on a Sunday evening.

Being allowed a sip of beer from teeny, tiny liquor glasses on “special” occasions.

My Mum sitting by my bed as I ate vegemite sandwiches and drank a glass of milk, when I woke hungry in the middle of the night.

The places our imaginations took us when playing with my best friend on her farm. Nothing like a ute (utility truck) to become a boat, a space ship, a caravan,or an island.

My nose starting to bleed in the middle of My First Holy Communion.

Being diagnosed with Scarlet Fever.

Visiting the library for the first time.

My first and only Barbie doll. She has dark permed hair! And yes I still have her!

Kneeling on bare wooden floors to recite the rosary in grade one.

My Grandmother’s fruit, jelly and ice cream desserts.

Feeding the pigs with my Grandmother.

My Grandfather telling me mixed up fairytales, and laughing.

Cousins, lots of cousins and always playing.

Wishing I had a baby brother or sister, so I would’t be the baby and I wouldn’t be lonely.

Our family doctor making house visits and teasing my sister for the Beatles posters on our shared bedroom wall.

My parents always helping, opening our home, to the children of friends and family in crisis.

Never not knowing how to read.

Waiting for each week’s edition of Teddy Bear magazine to arrive.

Reading and rereading my Trixie Belden books.

My father “paying” me twenty cents to comb his hair.

My best Christmas ever when I got a large boy doll and a table and chair set. The doll had clothes sewed by my mother and the table and chairs had been made by the family living next door, but they were perfect in every way.

Sunday visits to relatives, or relatives visiting us.

My Grandfather’s funeral and seeing my mother cry for the first time.

Being allowed to write with a pen for the first time.

The arrival of a second hand typewriter in our house and the hours I spent writing stories.

 

Just a few things that defined my life and shaped me into the person I am today. The beginning of me…

not one to forget

A little gutted tonight. My favourite student, a young man who is just going into his final year of high school, is not returning to our school, but going to a rural state high school about an hour drive away.

He is such a nice young man, and we used to look forward to the time he spent in the library. Very quiet, much more mature than many of his fellow students, with a friendly nature. He wrote articles for an online sporting magazine and sat in on our creative writing group each week, more for the food than the writing, but he was always a bonus.

He said nothing at the end of last year, so I can only surmise that something unexpected happened to force him to change schools. I worry as it is his final year, not a good time to disrupt a child’s education.

Also, he isn’t the most outgoing young man. He had a couple of friends but seemed very secure in his own company. An introvert for sure. How is he going to survive in the harsh environment of a state high school? So hard to break into groups at his age. My heart breaks for him.

I hope I am wrong, and that he has a wonderful experience, but I guess I will never know, now. I wonder if students ever know just how much the teacher really does care, sometimes?

Goodbye and Good luck, I hope you have a wonderful life.

horrors all around.

Or: The second shortest horror story.

 

The students are back, today!

Actually, this will be my story for the rest of the school year. Yeah, yeah, I know, teaching is a calling… whoopee dooo.

It’s all kind of random to me

Random images I have saved in the past few weeks, and not sure why I did! Freud would have possibly had a field day.

Let them eat pav; or an iced vo vo.

Australia Day is one day we love to embrace our Australian cuisine. Our favourite foods also remind us that the simple things are often the best.

Barbecues with meat patties and sausages are a must just about any day of the year!

Lamington cake

meat pie, staple of many a lunch

Fairy Bread. Bread, butter and sprinkles. Every kids party has fairy bread.

Tim Tam Chocolate Biscuits

Caremello Koala – has a soft caramel centre.

Iced Vo Vo biscuits. Great with a cup of tea!

Pavlova. Often topped with whipped cream as well. No party is complete without a pav.

 

No wonder we have become a country of lard baskets!

What would you do with a unicorn head mask?

Oh, let me count the ways.

Wear it to school and teach in it.

Go through the drive though window at Maccas and order a diet coke.

Sit in the public gallery at Parliament House, when the politicians are debating climate change. Just as a little reminder of what can be lost…

Visit the hairdresser and ask for just a little off the back!

Get my nails done and ask for the same colour to be applied to my horn.

Attend my granddaughter’s second birthday party.

Get a new photo taken for my driver’s licence.

Wear it when the school class photos are taken. My home class would be legendary.

Sit in bed, waiting for Mr FD to turn on the light!

 

What would you do with a unicorn head mask? Keep it clean.

 

 

 

Prompt link

 

 

foaming at the feet

Rain had been falling for several hours by the time I arrived at school. Wearing my skeetchers, the first time since I had thrown them into the washing machine for a clean over the holidays, I had to trudge through deeper than expected water on the paths to the library.

My shoes were soon soaked through. My shoes felt slippery and one glance at my feet told me why – white, foaming bubbles were frothing up and over my shoes! By the time I reached the library my shoes looked as though they had been fashioned by the Soap Queen.

I took them off and walked around the library barefoot until my shoes dried out. I can only guess that the rinse cycle didn’t quite rinse all the suds from my shoes!

Note to self : rain boots for next downpour.

 

What things would you never do?

How long have you got?

1. Nothing to do with heights. So that means, hot air ballooning, bungee jumping, climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge, or mountains above three meters in height. Should I go on?
2. Wear a mini skirt. Been there, wore the skirt. Knees now say no. Enough said.
3. Have dinner with any member of the Australian Liberal Party (equivalent of USA’s Republican Party). It would end in mass murder.
4. Marry Prince Charles.
5. Eat an eyeball.
6. Tell my children which one is my “favourite”. (I am so self centred that I am actually my favourite! It would break their hearts to know…actually, I think they do already!)
7. Travel around Australia with Mr FD in a caravan. (That idea has divorce court written all over it!)
8. Run through the jungle (Ooopps, that one slipped in, Mr FD is listening to Credence Clearwater Revival in the next room). I would never “run” anywhere, full stop.
9. Take up line dancing.
10. Get a tattoo. I am sorry, I just think they look sad on old people, and we all get old sometime.  Saggy, baggy, faded.
11. Holiday with a sister in law.

 

What things would you never do?

 

 

 

It was all about the team.

First day back at work after 6 weeks of holiday is never easy, but having to front up to 3 hours of a corporate challenge, Survivor style team activity in the burning, Australian summer, sun, is certainly not adding a welcome dimension to that return.

The teaching staff were allocated into 12 teams of 8 people and we had to perform feats such as using a giant sling shot to land balls in a bucket the entire length of the sports field away; erect a tent while blindfolded, and move the entire team across the field using 8 pieces of wood the size of a neatly placed, pair of feet; trivia questions and words puzzles.

Our team had me, with a sore back and one eye, a guy with two eyes but sight in only one, a gay guy, a man who is so vague that he wouldn’t notice a tsunami going by, two rather obese women, and a female dance teacher who can’t spell the word “Jesus” even though she teaches in a catholic school. She also speaks with a Minnie Mouse voice.

Minnie was the most entertaining, as during the sling shot competition, clad in a mini, sun dress and black stockings (not leggings, but nylon stockings – no, she did not read the memo on sports clothes and shoes) she took the shooting position of sitting on the ground with knees up and legs splayed open as wide as she could manage. Her undies were white. At least, I hope it was her panties I viewed…the other doesn’t bear thinking about.

We came first in the word puzzle, second in the tent erecting, second last in the wood block walking comp and middle of the field for all the others. We got the first trivia question wrong which put us out, but I knew every other question after that, so we would have won, had we just used our immunity beads and skipped the first question. So what colour is the middle ring of the Olympic flag? 

It was an exercise to get the new staff working with the “old” staff, but as there were only two newbies on our team (and I had worked with one at Fanny and Maude’s School for Fine Young Women just over four years ago!) , basically we got to know some people we already knew well, again.

We have 27 new staff this year, as year 7 now becomes a high school class, and no longer primary school to  bring our state in alignment with the other Australian state school systems. I feel like an old hand now, as this will be my fourth year at this school. How time flies when you are almost having fun!

Students return next Wednesday, but we have professional development and planning days until then. Thankfully, this weekend is a long weekend to celebrate Australia Day, thereby easing some of the holiday withdrawal pain. School is great when the kids aren’t there!