Categories: uncategorized
Date: 01 January 1970 00:59:59
Wow! It worked!
Smudgelets put their things away last night instead of dropping them on the floor.
The bathroom is still clean and tidy.
I can walk ten paces without tripping over something, and I can put things down because there are clear surfaces to receive them (although that, of course, means that the surfaces aren't clear any more, but I'm working on that one).
It's not perfect by a long way, but it's a start.
And my tactic in work yesterday worked too. My Eighth Year class were a pain in the backside yesterday - and they're a group who are not easy to contain but that I seem to have managed to establish a fairly positive working relationship with. They were starting to show signs of being as rude and insolent and uncooperative as some of the other children in the school. So I refused to teach them. I gave them multiplication worksheets to complete, sent the hard working minority in another room to play games, put my feet up, drank coffee and wrote a letter. I also showed them the bag of equipment I had bought them as a gift because I enjoy teaching them and said that I was going to give it to the Smudgelets. And, discovering that the old computers I have in the caravan for maths games have been vandalised, I dismantled them, threw them in the cupboard, and says "Never mind, that makes a bit more space, doesn't it?" Talk about shocked - they were very subdued and I even got a few apologies. You should have seen how polite and hard working they were this morning :-D
I don't think it will last - I'm too much of a realist for that - but it's nice while it does last! Oh, and quote of the week was from a lad who now knows his tables automatically up to 10x10..... "B has been showing me how to cheat on them.... if you can do 4x8 you just turn it round to do 8x4" B is, incidently, one of the hardest boys in the school to teach and on the verge of exclusion. I managed to tut instead of smile, seeing as I knew how important it was to both boys to think they had outdone me.
My Bible reading was messed up again this morning. I wish Fish would get their act together and post the daily readings on time. Tut! I decided to use my time, not in reading from another source but in getting a bit of ironing done and having a chat with God at the same time. An interesting slant to the sermon on Sunday, which was based on the account of the turning over of the tables in the temple from John's Gospel, looking at spring cleaning of all things. Much of the sermon was spiritually based (now there's a nice change) but the preacher actually mentioned real spring cleaning and housework as prayer. People might argue about the theological soundness, I suppose, but for me it was as good a motivator as any.
Foolish move of the week: I have signed up for the staff team for the Race for Life on 1st June. Idiot! Idiot!! Idiot!!!
Thought for the day: Knowing how utterly difficult it was to explain to my children about the war, and to dispel their fears the night before last when they were woken by some idiot letting off fireworks and thought it was bombing, how on earth does a mother comfort a child when the danger of death is close and real? How on earth do they do that, what on earth do they say?
Near miss of the day: Nearly nearly nearly dropping the pill in my coffee and taking my sweetener !!!!!!!