I am ill, I have had the beginnings of a cold since some time mid October and finally broke on December 27th leaving me a snotty wretched mess for most of the new year celebrations and is still dragging on.  I had no time to be ill. What with the new job and commute to get used to, the being a Mom and a cook and all round domestic goddess*  and then that Christmas thing right in the middle of it all.

Christmas the time of good will to all men. The time off to relax and just enjoy each others company. Christmas the time my brother chose to declare to the whole family I was a fat slut across the dinner table  (no really), the time my sister ends up with hypochondria an ear infection at the emergency doctors with me in tow , James gets manflu  after playing a  gig, the time for present shopping, food shopping, medicine shopping, gift wrapping, visiting relations, forced merriment and  no time to look after myself so just make myself steadily worse.

I returned to work to hear of glorious tales of Christmas afternoon beach walks, mad uncles playing charades and country get away’s. and all I had to share is a runny nose, annoying cough, slightly depressing tales of a half hearted family get together and a desperate need for more sleep.

I knew it was sleep I craved when I got off the train this morning I looked at the tracks and thought “I could use that pile of gravel as a pillow” while my inner monologue was telling me that the train on the platform 4b is heading straight back to Wolverhampton, so go on, get on it no one will miss you for just one day. But I didn’t I continued on my not so merry way convinced the walk into Digbeth would clear my head and I’d feel better after a hot Lemsip.

It didn’t and all the cup full of liquid paracetamol succeeded in was giving me something to cough into. Thankfully I have a pretty awesome boss and when he arrived this morning to find a sniffling mess choking at the desk  he said I could just go home – just like that – “You don’t need to be here” and I don’t know who was more relieved when he dropped me off at the train station, me as I could, you know, go home, or the him as he didn’t have to listen to my self pitying sighs and hacking cough all day.

So now here I am just before 7pm sitting in the arm chair I haven’t left since getting here shortly before 2, waiting for my dinner, central heating on as I just can’t get warm, tissues on one side, lemsip on the other smelling of Boots own brand vapour rub and feeling sorry for myself. Christmas a distant memory other than the rack full of wine we were too ill to drink, trying not to annoy James too much as he attempts to get some work done at the desk behind me, wanting to sleep but exploding in coughing fits every time I lie down, limping into 2012 in the most lacklustre style!

Happy New Year!

*I am only a part time cook and cleaner James does his fair share around the house too but for the purposes of this post and gaining the most amount of sympathy possible I do it all myself

Anyone who follows us on twitter would know a large part of our time has been taken up recently keeping up with events the other side of the world. More specifically the Christchurch earthquake. Not only do I have family in Christchurch we are also due to fly out to see them in just over 5 weeks time. We’ve discussed the earthquake with Jordan and what that means to our trip and our family out there but we wanted to see how much he had taken in. James wanted to set him the task of writing about it. After some discussion a compromise was reached and it was decided that TBK would, using his knowledge of the earthquake, write a fictional first person account from someone caught in the quake.

He’s only 11 – this is what he wrote:

The Christchurch Earthquake: My Experience

I was minding my own business walking through the park when all of a sudden the ground started shaking, buildings started collapsing and liquefaction started coming up out of the ground. Every where felt like jelly, I was being tossed and turned, I couldn’t move, I knew straight away we were having another earthquake.

It stopped….. Everything had been destroyed. Car alarms were going off, buildings were on fire, I didn’t know what to do! Of course, the first thing that crossed my mind was to run home but there was no one at home, my wife was at work, my children were at school and my mom and dad passed away three years ago.

I quickly ran to my children’s school and they were both luckily fine, I picked them up and ran with them to my wife’s work, it had been completely demolished.

My phone rang, I answered it, it was fuzzy and I couldn’t hear properly, it was MY WIFE I was filled with joy, she had left work for her lunch break thirty minutes ago, she was fine but then everything went silent and I could no longer hear my wife.

I walked with my children to my house, it had not been demolished, only a few tiles were cracked and several chimneys were on the floor in pieces. All the power had gone, I went into the garden to find my wife clearing up the liquefaction, we were all relived to see each other again. We set up our tents in the back garden, as all water supplies were disabled we had to use portaloos, a fire and all the water we could get to ration out between us.

Its been almost a week and we have now got electricity, phone signal and internet connection. The toilets and water supplies are back in business and things are slowly returning to normal, although due to the mess we have still got a lot of work to do.

P.E was out straight away – choosing to spend the final 2 year of my life as the most unsporting person I know in the company of a PE teacher I hated (ahem,  Miss Dickie) oh no no no no that wasn’t going to happen. Music there was no chance I can’t hold a tune to save my life and the coordination to play a musical instrument….forget it, so that left Art or Drama, I went with Drama. I love Drama (being somewhat of a drama queen) and enjoyed being on stage, performing in several shows extra curricular to my school activities, where as in Art I really only ever drew when I felt like I WANTED to draw, when I really felt like I was really interested in the subject and I got to choose when that happened, so I let it slide – sometimes I wished I hadn’t.

Sometimes I wished I’d kept it up and had the skills to capture the images I take with my camera and turn them into something special with pen and paper – sometimes I wished I’d tried harder….

So last year I did.

Leaving work on my lunch one cold wintery day I spotted a leaf on the ground and did what every sane person would do I picked it up and carried it around with me until I returned to the office and snapped a photo of it with camera phone – I don’t know why I just felt like it, it’s not the most spectacular image in the world but I kept it all the same I then threw the leaf away.

That photo sat on my phone for ages……

A few months later I spotted a drawing book on sale in The Works and bought it, I still had a set of nice drawing pencils at home and I had half an idea that I would draw something , I just didn’t know what – then I started looking through the photos on my phone and inspiration struck, I knew there was  reason I’d picked that leaf up on that day, I just didn’t know what until I had my pencils in hand….

It’s not the most spectacular drawing in the world, it’s not even a true likeness of the image on the left, but it’s my drawing,  it’s the first I’d properly attempted since opting out of art class for drama when I was 14 and I was kinda happy with it.

That was over 12 months ago now. My pencils have sat in the box since un-thought of until today when I came across the photo of the leaf again and I thought it about time I gave them another airing. I’ve sat and pondered for a while about what I could draw and after a while I realised I was wasting my time….

…30 year old me is still suffering from the affliction 14 year old me suffered and maybe it will be another 15 years before I pick up my pencils again. I can’t think what I want to draw, what I’d be able to draw so I don’t and as what I draw isn’t as good as what I’d like it to be anyway I think I’m better off staying hid behind my camera lens instead after all I could never recreate this image with my hand!

For years the Christmas season starts for me in a flurry of decorating, the tree, the windows, the fire place….  but do I share a tender moment with my devoted son while we choose whether to have the angel or the star atop of the tree this year?

NO BECAUSE HE’D DO IT ALL WRONG!!

I have to decorate in certain way, in a certain order, lights, then ribbon (NOT TINSEL) the fir cones, then the baubles. If anything, in my mind, is out of place it drives me insane, It has in previous years taken me a a whole day just to put up a tree, but even better THEN and only then can the star or angel be put on top  – and this has to be chosen last of all and sometimes not until the day AFTER putting the tree and the rest of the decorations up because once chosen it has to stay there – no swapping and changing AT ALL so this is an important choice!

The colours have to be evenly spread and JUST SO and the fireplace swag has to match the tree and be decorated in the same order at the same  no compromise – as an example of how bad this is when we unpacked and erected the tree this year I couldn’t decorate it!! We’d managed to leave the swag in the loft and I just couldn’t put anything on the tree until this was down too!!  Luckily for me James is very understanding of the crazy and went back up to hunt for it as I could feel myself become quite silly about it!!

Last year was the first year I introduced colour to my tree in the form of bronze and red to go with the well established gold and ivory theme I’ve had going for years in an attempt for make myself loosen up a bit – I’m insane!

All this causes much mirth and derision particularly from my not so understanding sister and much exasperation and frustration from myself.

BUT IF You think that’s bad I used to be worse, much worse, for instance (and  I’ve worked hard at getting over this one because it was ridiculous as I would hunt for days to get this right), the gifts used to have to colour coordinated – the adult presents would be gold or ivory paper with red ribbon and the children’s red with gold or ivory ribbon and wrapped just so….

Notable insane moments:

• The year I unwrapped ALL the presents and started again because they didn’t look right (unwrapping one or two to start again isn’t a rare occurrence in my house BUT all of them is a stretch by even by standards)
• Taking down the tree and starting from scratch TWICE!
• Letting TBK and James hang baubles only to go ahead and move them when I thought they wouldn’t notice because they were in the “wrong” place.
• Point blank refusing to let James bring any of his decorations with him when he moved in with us as they wouldn’t match mine, and then buying him decorations that matched my colour scheme and still refusing to let him hang them on the tree because they’re just not right!
• Finally succumbing to my OCD and buying TBK a tree & decorations for in his room as I didn’t want him to miss out on decorating his own tree and he can have as much tinsel as he likes!

So with all this in mind imagine how I’m coping this year with two very mischievous cats who are spending their first Christmas with us!!

I took the decision early on not to put out my nativity scene and I’m glad I didn’t because they keep knocking things over and pulling things down. They keep climbing my tree and flattening the branches and knocking off baubles  and chewing my ribbon, and yesterday they discovered if they pull hard enough they can pull my fireplace swag clean off the surround thus clearing any obstacles for them to sit on there – somewhere THEY NEVER CHOOSE TO SIT AT ANY OTHER TIME OF THE YEAR.

This year it’s going to be kill or cure for my OCD as I’m either going to have to deal with it – or go not so quietly insane battling with those damn cats – I’m hoping for the first option but as I left for work nearly in tears this morning as I again found my beautiful fire place destroyed I think odds are I’m currently leaning towards the latter!

…So this December has been decreed Good Deed December, my own advent of good deeds.

Between now and Christmas day I plan on trying to complete a good deed each day and hopefully update here and my twitter feed (@essitam) using the tag #gooddeedfortheday, (when I get around to it, I suck at keeping blogs up to date maybe this is the impetus I need).

I’m sure some deeds will be more worthy than others but it’s important to remember the little things also count……

1st December Carried a ladies bags up a flight of stairs.

2nd December Dispatched James to an elderly neighbours to get her shopping list and went to the super market after work just for her (I needed nothing myself)

3rd December took the lovely lady in the post office a Lemsip, she was suffering when she dealt with my parcels and I thought she could do with it.

4th December held a door open for a lady with a pushchair, no other opportunities really presented themselves today, although James and TBK were more successful clearing and salting both our neighbours paths while I was at work – although does working on a Saturday count as a good deed

(bonus good deed for today, bought my boys an advent calendar, as they hadn’t got one…does that count?)

5th December double whammy today. Sorted out my wardrobe and donated all my old things the charity and while shopping we spotted someone getting into their car whose little boy dropped their gloves so TBK and I left the store to reunite gloves and owner.

6th December Went hunting for Epsom salts for fellow twitter user Jayne Howarth and found some, only to have the benefit of the good deed undone on the way home when browsing twitter I discovered she’d already found some should have checked twitter before I embarked on my search….

….but that’s ok because today I also said I’d help my friend promote the charity she works for, Liberty UK. She asked for the extra push from her friends as all donations made through the BIG GIVE website everyday after 10am between today and December 10th will be doubled (up to £20,000)! Check it out and donate if you can.

7th December Volunteered to walk across town to deliver a parcel so my colleagues didn’t have to go out in this cold weather.

8th December Think my sister might be taking advantage of me, I keep getting requests off her – Can you do XXXX for me….it could be your good deed for today! – But as I spent a lot of the day cooped up in the office and then rushing about I obliged her and as today’s good deed I have arranged printing, delivery and framing of my sister’s mother in law’s Christmas present – and if she gets her way tomorrow’s good deed will be another one for her too – maybe my good deed should  just be tolerance of her abuse of my good deed pledge!

•23:30 and a Bonus #gooddeedfortheday just spent 30 mins on the phone helping a friend fill in another application form. When I say help I mean dictating, she’d make a brilliant PA, we seem to have spent a lot of time recently with her taking down what I’m saying over the phone.

9th December fun one today,. It’s TBK’s birthday so I decided to spread a little happiness to everyone else too, myself, my sister and my friend went to the local town, took a tub of sweets to the shopping centre and offered them to anyone we encountered, fellow customers, shop staff or passers by. It raised a few suspicious looks, a couple of frowns but mostly smiles and laughs, with one guy politely declining our offer only to reappear a few minutes later with a laugh to take some of Haribos finest.

10th December Took the time to ask someone I barely know what was wrong when they looked a little down, spent the next hour offering advise and support as it turned out  they needed someone to lean on a whole lot more than you could tell -  sometimes peoples brave fronts crumble when someone cares enough to ask what’s wrong.

11th December Last night was TBK’s birthday “sleep over” we had six 10 & 11 year olds  in our house hence I use the term sleep very loosely, they were up all night so we haven’t actually left the house today, but I still did a good deed – or at least the last guest to leave thinks so.
One of TBK’s friends parents has had to work all day today and he should have gone to his Nan’s when leaving here but he really didn’t want to,  So despite being kept awake until late, woken early and eaten out of house and home, we volunteered to look after him here so he didn’t have to go.

12th December as she was unable to do it herself I spent a good proportion of today scanning in 400+ old family photos for a friend who wants to send a disk to her brother in America for Christmas.

13th December got home from work and noticed a large amount of broken glass in the street so went and fetched the broom dustpan and brush and swept it all up putting it into the bin – slicing my thumb open in the process – DOH!

14th December This good deed each day thing is harder than it sounds when you spend all day sat behind a desk at work, working through lunch and then rush home on public transport to complete Mom duties – Opportunities to help people out or to just do something nice don’t tend to just present themselves when you’re engrossed in WordPress or excel!

Anyway today’s good deed was part good deed, part self indulgence – I offered and subsequently bought a Big Issue seller a cup of tea – he wasn’t actually selling the Big Issue at the time but I recognised him from when I do buy the Big Issue from him – the self indulgent part was I also bought myself a Toffee Nut Latte from Starbucks to treat myself (and flirt with the man behind the counter) at the same time!

15th December Today’s good deed was used to help someone else fulfil a good deed.

I helped a man plot a surprise for a friend. He wanted to send her a card with a cinema ticket in for a film that she really wanted to see and she thought she’d missed on the big screen but  Light House are re running, but he didn’t want her to know it was from him, So I wrote out the card and envelope in an attempt to help him evade recognition and offered to deliver it on my way home.

16th December it appears when opportunity doesn’t present itself I always have the fall back option to complete one of the many things my sister has asked be to do as my good deed, today I went into town to fetch her secret santa gift… Not a gift for her, but a gift for her to give.

Bonus good deed, just been called upon to play nurse to my brother taking him sympathy and soup to his bed as he and his girlfriend both have the lurgy. I’m a good big sister to my siblings I am.

17th December I didn’t get out of work until late so no chance to do anything really…unless you count the working through every lunch break this week, and occasionally staying late to help cover for the various staff who are off work.

18 December messaged my grandparents to check they were ok and didn’t need to go out in the snow, dropped a note to the neighbour with our phone numbers on so she can get in touch with us if she needs anything so she doesn’t have to go out either, lots if weather based good deeds today.

19th December coordinated the clearing of our neighbours paths of snow and ice … The cold weather makes doing good deeds easy.

20th December went to work on the first day of my Christmas holiday and ended up criss crossing town with a pile of letters to find an open Post Office as the one I usually use was flooded  to ensure people Christmas cards were sent out on time – I’d already posted all mine but well i was asked nicely… evening spent the night selling merch at a bands ep launch despite it snowing heavily and not knowing if we’d get home (we did eventually after our train was cancelled and B’ham

……

……

19 January…It’s now mid January and as you can see the last post update I made was  20th December – so did I fail in my Good Deed for the Day mission, NOT AT ALL.

I completed the full 24 days I just absolutely suck at keep blogs up to date and as Christmas came closer I had less time to sit in front of the computer and blog, and even though I have WordPress for Android installed on my phone I just never got around to updating here. I did keep tweeting though through out the whole advent so if you were following me there you would have seen the last of my “Deeds”.

I thought I’d finish this post of with a “Thank You”, Thank you for the encouragement I received from people who read this, friends and strangers on Facebook and Twitter, Thank you to the people who smiled when I did something nice for them, But Thank You mostly for the couple of people who’ve been intouch to say as a result of this post they’d carried out good deeds of their own.

I may suck at keeping blog posts up to date but I can do nice things for others and you can too!!

Despite it now being March 2010 I still have my 2009 calendar up in my kitchen, not because I’m particularly lazy (but I am) but because it’s about 50 shades of awesome!

Of course every parent thinks their kids work is amazing, fantastic, fabulous, first rate etc, but this is! I like it so much because while it’s not the work of art Matisse, Banksy or Tracy Emin could produce, and it’s no Shakespearean prose, Hell it’s even below the quality of work TBK can produce when he wants to, every time I read I can’t help but smile.

I read it and remember that it’s good to have imagination and to never ever stifle his!

The Magic Box

In my box I will put a massive, dirty and dangereus exploding army tank. The feel of silky, shiny, sparkly, quick Sahara sand and a door leading to a u.f.o.

In my box I will put the smell of super noodles cooking the sight of presents round the tree and the sound of rock music.

My box is fashioned from high tech lock and dinosaur skin cover.

And hinges made from a alligator jaw.

Spelling mistakes are all his own!

I’m going on Holiday in October Term time AND taking my 9 year old son with me. I take him out of school every year for a holiday and for other activity days, as was agreed with his school that I be allowed to do so in advance of enrolling him.

Flexi Schooling is the correct term for it.

I take my responsibility as a parent very seriously and TBK consistently scores in the top percentile in his class  and receives glowing praise every year from his teachers, he has friends in school who come home to play (please read create havoc), and is fully integrated into society, he is bright and articulate, and as bias as I may be as his mother I do have the school reports to back this up, His education and social skills are not suffering because of it, if anything they are prospering.

YET the local paper is yet again reporting on an increase of “Truancy Fines” and while the article itself didn’t really rub me up the wrong way.  As, I will never have to pay a truancy fine for my son  as we’ve the proper protocol in place for our educational choices, But taking out holiday leave from the debate,  it still leaves the question unanswered of WHY these young people feel the need to play truant in the first place?*,  What really wound me up was the ignorance of some of the commentators who posted both before and after me.

These trips or in some peoples eyes “absenses” provide an education kids just can’t get when in school and also teaching shouldn’t just happen, and in our life DOESN’T, just happen from 9am – 3pm in the classroom!

On our holiday, just like last year, we will be teaching TBK Maths (currency conversion), Geography (he knows where we are going and surrounding countries) History, (we often like to visit cultural and historical monuments while away and actively encourage TBK to involve himself in the culture). R.E. (Turkey (this years destination)  is a predominantly a Muslim country) and much more, all on a one to one basis for periods of time he would never get in the classroom.

Previously he’s also been out of school to have the opportunity to attend HESFES, (the home educators seaside festival) where he has taken part in wood work and metal work excersizes,  fabric painting and labyrinth building amongst other things, using skills he’d have never developed sat behind a desk.

We’ve taken him out of school to have a hands on learning experience  as a zoo keeper for the day.  He’s had time off to go to an archery day, and to attend other exhibitions and events. Once, when he was in reception class, I even kept him off school on a Monday JUST so he could have a day off, As over the weekend he had participated in clay building with us, visited a monkey sanctuary, spent an afternoon playing drums and for a child of only 6 this was a lot, he needed the rest!

So how about we stop stereotyping parents who take their kids out of the classroom for any period of time as losers (as one commentator metioned) or selfish (as another did) and look at the beneifts these extra curricular activities can and do provide!

The real time and effort should be concentrated on dealing with the parents who’s children aren’t getting any education through truancy because the parents just don’t care!

* Yes I played truant as a teen, and I was duely punished for it by my mother, But I know why I did it. I hated my English teacher and she hated me, proven fact as she marked all my work down and told me , and my mom, I woudln’t get higher than a D,  myc oursework was sent to the invigulator and came back marked higher and I left school with a B (lit) and a C(lan)  Take that Mrs Smith!

Maybe if I’d have been listened to as a teen and moved to another class I’d have attended those sessions I missed and maybe that tis the answer now, listening to what our young people want!

]]> http://www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk/blog/2009/06/16/educationeducationeducation/feed/ 0 http://www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk/blog/2009/06/04/election-day/ http://www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk/blog/2009/06/04/election-day/#comments Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:44:35 +0000 Steph http://www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk/blog/?p=593

I don’t consider myself much of political commentator,  I don’t think I honestly have anything interesting to say on the subject but,  I do vote every election. I believe in democracy and by voting I believe I’m taking my opportunity to have a little influence over how things are run. I think a lot of people fought long and hard to earn us the right to vote and I don’t ever waste it.

I also venomously believe that if you don’t vote you are not entitled to complain!

If you don’t like how things are going, if you have something to say about the economy or your bin collection is late don’t come whining to me as you didn’t DO anything to change it when you had the chance. As my manager so eloquently put it, “Voting is your license to bitch”

So with my point of view in mind I was shocked today, not by how many people have come out in saying that they have lost faith in politicians , but by the number of people who’ve said they wouldn’t be voting at all. One lady I had and contact with had this to say on the matter

I have voted in every single election! BUT now politicians have lost my respect and all political Parties are as bad as each other in one way or another, It’s not just labour MPs, Tory’s and lib dems have been at it too.

They have robbed the tax payer,we feel like we have been robbed, my husband works full time and pays over £600 a month tax. …

Why should that go towards paying for some MP’s weekly shopping at M&S when there are poor families who struggle to budget for there weekly shopping at aldi or whatever cheap shop they have to go to.

First of all I want to say, Can I have a job where I earn enough to be having to pay £600 tax a month please! Maybe then I could give more to charity to help those less fortunate instead of sitting on my high horse bitching about the unfairness of the tax system,  and secondly I disagree completely with her statement:

The majority of the politicians only took so much because the rules and the system are flawed.  If I had job that said I allowed me to claim for carpets, curtains and a 3 piece suite ,a new outfit for every day of the week and everything else to go with it I’d do it, and, so I believe, would the majority people who end up reading this.

It’s the ones that broke the rules who are the real thieving bastards. The ones who didn’t just take advantage of a flawed system, but who knowingly dodged the rules for profit, Fortunately for most of us,  they’re the ones who are falling over themselves to resign now before the shit really hits the fan.

So what’s the alternative?

By not voting and we run the risk of letting some fascist party like the BNP or UKIP take control because of voter apathy, and then we’d all be in a much worse place than we are now with a few crooked politicians caught with their hands in the till.

My solution is this, look for local alternatives, independent candidates  the green party or vote intelligently….

Vote for the party who have acknowledged the problems with the system, are willing to, and are already making changes. Look for the party with policies you agree with and vote for them!

Taking a walk after it has rained, watching the cat sleep on the sofa, playing snap with the blonde kid or sitting quietly with James listening to some music.

BUT then sometimes I think the things that make me happy mean I am simple.

Seriously how excited can one person get about a new kettle, but in my defense it is awesome, it makes the water glow blue and looks amazing if you set it to boil in the dark!

I like mood lighting, particularly fairy lights and I have 2 sets permanently in my living room. This isn’t a picture of either one!