Birdies

I got the know-how to make these little darlings from here... have a look at Elvie's plagiarism story, by the way. Isn't it tragic? Just goes to show how careful we all need to be in this age of internet inbreeding!

In any case, I find these guys incredibly soothing to create, a kind of hiatus in stressful times... you should give it a try:

Remember that time when...

...the till at Pick and Pay went on the fritz and started adding VERY EXPENSIVE red cabbages to our grocery shop... LOTS of them!

Great hilarity between ourselves and the staff as they desperately tried to stop the madness (it didn't work), called higher and higher up managers (all while the invisible cabbages continued to mount up) and eventually had to crash the system and had to start ringing up our groceries from scratch on another till!

I guess with 66 giant red cabbages the cabbage party is at our house?

Though maybe we can't afford to have a party now that all our worldly possessions will have to be sold to pay off the cabbages...hmmm...

Certainly provided enough laughter for the weekend!

Pictures from a Sleepy Week

...someone still thinks he's enough of a baby to sleep in dad's marking box..

(it's a bit more crowded than he remembers!)

...Valentine's Day, and a somewhat revamped kitchen...

(plus our special weekend otees!)

...magic on Rondebosch Common...

(remember last time I posted about the Common? quite a contrast!)

2013? Really?

Hello everyone!

So apparently it's 2013 already - and the internet is full of focus words, resolutions and general planning goodness. Far be it from me to buck the trend.

(Some of you may have noticed that I've killed Out of Perspective - splitting my attention was a silly idea in the first place. But I did import all the posts, so nothing lost!)

So, on to some of what 2013 holds for me:

teaching english

Yes, this year I am teaching THREE English classes (grade 8, 9 and 10) and only TWO Maths classes (grade 9 and 10). While this is a good thing (I've been wanting to wriggle into English teaching, and yay! no grade 12s), it is also a VERY VERY stressful thing. I've been teaching Maths for almost three years. How much experience do I have teaching English?? Zip, zilch, nada...

Prep time!

teaching maths

So I'm still teaching a fair bit of Maths though, and will continue to lead the grade 9 Maths team at my school, which means a lot of resource creation and general admin. I'm pleased with the plans we've set in place to tweak the ordering of the syllabus, and this year I will be teaching a top-set grade 9 class - yay! Last year I had all mixed groups in terms of Mathematical ability - pretty demoralising when at least half my kids failed every exam. So although I enjoy teaching kids who struggle with Maths, it will make a nice change. 

As good as a holiday? We'll see. This past holiday will be pretty hard to beat.

family

...which doesn't only consist of my cats, believe it or not!

My younger sister is getting married in April (yikes), and then moving to England with her beloved! Very exciting times, but also a bit sad and definitely stressful. So this year will be full of family things, at least for the first part, and I want to try and prioritise them as much as I can...

"Family" also covers my mini family (husband + two cats) and home, and trying to leave work earlier as often as possible (5pm, please? maybe??) so that I can spend time at home and hopefully not leave such chaos behind me when I go to bed at night.

creativity

Last year I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time, and absolutely LOVED it. So come November 2013, all else being equal, I will NaNoWriMo again! Yay!

But I also want to get into the routine of getting creative work going regularly throughout the year, starting with the editing of Mending Hedges (my NaNo novel from 2012). I've also got some other interesting plots and plans up my sleeve but we shall see... dum, dum, dum...

ALSO, I want to get back to a more regular blogging schedule. To that end, I want to stop putting pressure on myself to create one type of post or another at any particular time - just to write and create whatever springs to mind based on current events. Realistically, I will be trying one general post and/or one writing post per week (depending on work situations). Mainly posting on Saturdays, as far as I can make out my schedule, but obviously trying to gather material throughout the week and mainly construct the posts over the weekend.

Anyhow, I'll give it a decent effort for the first little while, and hope to hold up my end when the school work gets tougher.

sjoe!

I think that's quite enough resolution-type things for me for one day...nap time?

Old World/New World

So you may have noticed I have this thing about dream boards at the moment...Discovered a free online tool called Polyvore, which is awesome, fun and easy. It's a bit like going on a shopping spree but without the cashflow dilemmas. Check it out!

*warning* I've also found Polyvore to be mildly addictive...