Busy busy busy.

What a busy few days! My weekend went pretty much as planned. I didn't see a soul the whole time, though before you think I got too antisocial I talked my my friends widget, Pitsa and Sandy on the phone. I baked so much that I can't fit anything else in the freezer... and I've got a full length freezer... I did a bit of gardening and housework, knitted and sewed. Put me back 100 years and I'd fit right in. Except for the bit where I was knitting in front of a double episode of 'Survivor: China'. Knitting a boring thing like an afghan demands a rollicking two hours of junk tv.

(Incidentally, future Frogdancer owes me a big debt of gratitude. Do you remember a couple of weeks ago I said that I'd put the afghan away for this summer when I'd knitted four out of the eight balls that this mammoth thing demands, and I'd pick it up again next year when it got nippy? Well, I was dying to get started on the two jumpers I've got wool for, but when I got up to the 'put-the-afghan-away' stage, I thought "I'll just get a little bit of next year's knitting done." So far I've knitted six out of the eight balls. Future Frogdancer had better send me some kind thoughts when she's blissfully knitting away on wool that isn't acrylic afghan yarn. I'm so bored with it, but I have to get the stupid thing finished. That girl owes me... big time.)

I went out to the veggie garden and realised that I've left the purple beans for too long. One lot are fine, but the others have started drying on the vine, and the leaves were turning yellow. What an idiot I am. So I frantically picked what I could save, and then brought the really dry ones inside to finish drying on the windowsill. With a bit of luck we'll get perpetual beans out of our one packet of seeds. (Even if the amount of seeds I harvested is a little more than I'd planned.) Ah well, you live and learn. The cucumbers are growing up to near the top of the side fence, and I'm harvesting one a day already, which makes Brennan and Jack happy, as they love to crunch right in to a whole cucumber. The lettuces are threatening to go to seed, so I'll have to pop down to Bentleigh market on Sunday to get some more baby ones. Everything is growing like crazy, and the plants all look happy.

I ended up leaving my quilt cutting and sewing till Sunday. I thought that I'd get all that I had to get done first, and then do the thing I was itching to do. So Sunday afternoon at 1pm I set myself up. The kids don't get dropped off till 6pm, so I had a huge chunk of time. I had so much fun. It's ridiculous when you step back and look at it. All I was doing was cutting out little bits of fabric and sewing them together while singing at the top of my lungs to my shuffling ipod. (By the way... I've got awesome taste in music. My ipod doesn't have one bad track. I never listen to it through headphones; I bought a thingy that lets me plug it into my stereo speakers. I love it, on the childfree occasions that I'm able to listen to it.) I was in heaven. The owl fabric I bought with the chunky, cute yet manly owls was big enough that I could play around with what I was including in the small squares. So I have owls peeping in from the sides, or up from the bottom, or squarely and chunkily in the middle. It looks so good!!!! I got most of the squares done, but then I started to run out of stash. (I can almost hear gasps of dismay coming from the quilting community....) I have about 10 more owl squares to surround with other fabric, and I'll have to go and buy a few more pieces. My rationalisation for this is that I must be doing a terrific job in using up the stash of fabric I already have, because none of the pieces I have left are big enough to use. So my frugality kick is appeased, and sometime soon I'll pop down to Spotlight and have a wander.

Anyway, there I was, singing away, happy in my own little world, when at 4.30 I heard a car door slam. I glanced out of the window, at first casually, and then with increasing shock and horror. Tony had brought the boys home an hour and a half early.!!! That never happens..... Within 30 seconds of them walking in the door my music full of awesomeness was switched off and they were in my face. "Mum, guess what happened yesterday...?" "Mum, where's my footie?" "Mum, I love you what can I eat?" *sigh*

But the extra time I had with them enabled Connor to begin his own blog. Since looking at photo blogs like 3191 , TJ Sky's Photo Journal and the photos on Pleasant View Schoolhouse he's become more and more interested in photography. Since I bought my new camera for Phuket, my old Canon digital has been for family use, and Connor has had his 11 year old self stuck behind the viewfinder, experimenting with different ways to look at the world. His blog is called Swarming With Tadpoles . If you've got a spare couple of minutes please pop over and give him a hello. Keep in mind that he's only 11, so the photos aren't gallery quality. (Yet. He's a Virgo, so he's driven to get better. I don't know who he takes after....) He has full artistic control over what goes onto his site (and it's interesting for me to see the choices he makes about what goes on and what stays off.) Who knows? This could be the baby steps of a future career...

Isn't having kids and watching them grow up the best fun? All of the possibilities they play with.... I love it. With having four kids all close together in age, I guess that this is magnified in my house. They've reached the early to mid adolescent stage where their worlds open up. They're old enough to have developed skills and tastes and young enough not to have boxed themselves off from any opportunities, and now they're exploring everything that grabs their interest. Photography for Connor, and to a lesser extent Brennan; music for Brennan and Jordan, and now Jack has jumped on board with huge enthusiasm too; art for Jordan; knitting for Brennan... who knows what will come next? I think it's fantastic. Life gets busy here but it's rarely boring.

And speaking of rarely boring... yesterday at work I moved desks. I vacated the year 10 office and went back home to staffroom 1... back with my besties. I'd forgotten how nice it is to be with a whole lot of people instead of just one. I'm back to back in the same aisle with Scott , and the rest of the staffroom is dotted with the people I really like here at work. We asked Widget to move from staffroom 3, but apparently she likes her desk because she can put her feet up on the windowsill and correct work in comfort. That sort of indecorous, wild and free behaviour just wouldn't do in our staffroom, so she's staying where she is.

Ho hum! It's seven thirty. Time to wake the primary kids and get them moving.

Purple beans and Breadcrumb patties.

Look at my harvest! Enough beans to feed five people, and there are plenty left on the plants. Brennan and I ate a couple while we were picking them. Bright green inside. I made some breadcrumb patties for dinner with mashed potato and steamed carrots and beans. Look at how the beans turned out...

Green! Isn't nature an amazing thing? Who would've thought that simple beans would evolve over thousands of years into something that can change colour with the simple application of microwaves. How did the beans know that microwaves were going to be invented? Imagine if humans slipped up and missed how to use microwave technology. There all the purple beans would be... hanging from the vines, really cross that no one would be able to appreciate the amazing colour change they were capable of. "All that trouble manipulating our dna for nothing", they'd fume. How lucky that some science guy tinkering with stuff in a laboratory discovered the key that now lets them mystify and delight my family instead. Ahh, the fun you can get from simple veggies!

The bread crumb patties are something I make very rarely, but the kids love them. Mum used to make them when she was flour/egg and breadcrumbing schnitzels in the olden days. Any of the coating left over she'd mix together and fry along with the actual dinner. Absolutely gorgeous. Last night I came home at about 5 so I thought I'd use the beans and have a meat and 3 veg meal. Just like Mum used to make! I was a bit tired so I wanted to do something easy.

Breadcrumb Patties.

All I use are packaged breadcrumbs, eggs, parsley (my parsley plant went to seed, so I threw it out. I used the leaves from the top of a celery instead), salt, pepper and a bit of milk. Mix until it gets to a nice consistency, drop into a frypan in pattie sized portions, and there you go! Great with tomato sauce. (Don't make them too thick, or they might not cook in the middle. Then they're not so nice, as you can imagine.)

We're into the last stages of interviews now. The difficult ones. These are mainly the kids who wouldn't work for an ipod with $1000 strapped to it. Of course by this stage of the game they can't rely on natural ability to get good marks like they may (or sadly, may not) have been able to do in the past, so these interviews are a wake up call for some. Most end up getting a bit of a shock and walk out a bit shaken. Others walk into the room with their head so firmly buried in the sand that you can practically see the bucket full of the stuff they have on their shoulders.

There are only three kids who we simply can't promote to year 11. They are totally different, except for the fact that they've failed just about every subject. One is lazy and hasn't done a stroke of work since year 7, one just doesn't have the wattage but she's a lovely girl who tries reasonably hard, and one covers those two bases but is also covering a world of other problems. I'm dreading her interview. She is a head burier. In fact I think she's buried everything but the tip of her nose. She hung up on me yesterday when I told her it was pointless to have an interview with just her, and I rescheduled it to tomorrow so her Dad could be there "to talk about her future". She'll have to either repeat year 10 or maybe go to TAFE. Trouble is, I don't think she's mature enough to handle TAFE. But she's not mature enough or bright enough to handle the work at year 11 either. It's an awful situation. I really feel for her parents. When I called her Dad at work to organise the new interview time, the weariness that came into his voice when I said who I was and why I was calling was sad.

The other girl is a totally different story. She and her parents opened up the interview by saying that they all feel that she should repeat the year. She's new to the school anyway and she's one of the youngest in her year level, so they don't see a social problem with it. She's happy, so are they and I can't tell you how relieved I was! Problem solved before I even had to bring it up. I love clear sighted parents.

Heigh ho! With a bit of luck these interviews should be over by the end of the week. Then I just have to write student managers reports on the front of 130 kids reports (bleuch!) and then the rest of the year will be a smooth ride down to Christmas. I'll be preparing for next year's classes, moving back into staffroom 1 (I've hopefully got a desk right near some of my friends) and looking forward to the holidays. Only 4 weeks to go till Christmas!!!

My son the artiste.

Here's what Connor and I did last night............

we cut each other's hair. He looks so bizarre in this photo. He's got his orthodontic plate in, and he's enjoying the power rush. There's something a little unnerving about handing over your appearance to the tender hands of an 11 year old, but he behaved himself and it turned out fine.

Look at these fine leeks! I put them in the ground in July or August, and they're STILL not huge and fat, but they're getting there. Yesterday I read somewhere that there was a nun who was interviewed on tv who said that she experimented with cutting the leeks off at ground level, and so far she's got 3 crops out of the

same leeks. I got wildly excited. That's my sort of gardening. It's kind of like the gift that keeps on giving.

But I tried this a while ago with some spring onions. My friend Judy told me to plant the root bits and they'll sprout and voila! more spring onions. I did this, and now they've got pompoms on the top of them. They don't look like this in the shops. Maybe I'll harvest the seeds and start again.

Here's one bed of the veggies. The caulie at the front gave its life last night so we could live. It was beautiful.

My friend Sandy came over yesterday for a coffee (Hmmm. Maybe she's in cahoots with Scott too? But it was all to no avail. The novel has lurched itself off again. 15000 words. I want November to end so I can get some sleep.)

Anyway, she said that her 15 year old daughter was talking to her, and said that she wanted to have kids one day, because "after all, that's what we're here for." Sandy was pleased, though she did mention to her that she didn't have to start sprouting them right away!! Her feeling was that if her daughter was wanting to one day be a Mum, then that must mean that she is doing something right as a parent.

I nodded, and said something appropriate. How could I tell her that Jack keeps saying that he NEVER wants to be a parent? What a good job I must be doing........................

Pottering around.

A busy day yesterday. Nothing was accomplished that was earth-shatteringly huge, but I kept moving all day and got a lot done, particularly in the garden. Weeded the vegie patches, then fertilised them. I've decided that Saturday is going to be 'Fertilise Day'. At the moment I've only got green leafy things in, so I wandered around with a bucket of water, some Thrive and a cup. It took about 20 minutes, but its nice and quiet, and I can really see if anything needs doing. (That's when the weeding thing happened!)

Mum and Dad are coming back from Bali today, so yesterday I gave Murphy (and Molly) a bath so he can look beautiful and smell deodorised and homogenised when he goes home. The picture is him enjoying the sunny spot by the back door. He's such a funny boy. He is Molly's half-brother. She's so quiet and he's so gregarious. For the last couple of days every time I see him he's had a toy in his mouth. It's fantastic. I'm not a soft toy person, and as the boys slowly outgrow their affection for the toys, Murphy does his bit by taking them out to the backyard where they're never seen again..............................

It was Jordan's birthday as well. I gave him a bathrobe, (yes, I know it doesn't sound exciting, but he loved it), and we just had a quiet day at home. He's going to Chadstone with a couple of mates today.... the whole teenage social life thing has started. Connor's birthday is tomorrow... I have no idea what to get him. A gift certificate for a present from Phukhet might be the answer??? Bit boring on your actual birthday, though.....

One of today's jobs is to make an obscenely large batch of cookies, for a couple of reasons. I promised both the birthday kids that they could take enough for their classes. It's funny, but we're all told by advertising that kids prefer bought packaged stuff in their lunchboxes. It's just not true. Brennan says that his friends say that I should open a biscuit shop because his playlunches are so yummy, and Jordan says that every recess he has to take to his heels to be able to eat the biscuits without everyone circling him asking for a bite or trying to pinch them.

Jack is doing Business Studies this semester, and one of their tasks is to have a business venture, where they have a stall and sell things to the year 7s on the last day of term. He's going to sell the biscuits. Today we're going down to the supermarket for him to buy his materials (it all has to be costed out just like a regular business), then we'll go into production and freeze them until Friday. I'm really pleased that he's chosen to do this. His original idea was to sell fish and chips, but when I asked how he was going to keep them warm, and suggested that maybe the biscuit route was the way to go, he took my suggestion. For those of you who know Jack.... you'll know that this is (almost) unprecedented, at least without an argument. He must like the taste of the biccies too!

For the last two nights we've been playing board games. Connor loves them, and both nights he appeared clutching Monopoly with a pleading look in his eye. No-one else could face the thought of a three hour commitment, so Friday night we played Trouble, (my all time favourite board game) and last night we played Upwords. We had so much fun. Jack and Jordan played with us both nights, while Brennan stayed in the back room battling for a high score on some playstation game or other. I have to state that my kids are complete idiots. I haven't laughed so much in a long time. They're such good company, and they've got a quick wit that keeps the conversation scudding along.

There is trouble on the horizon though.....

When I booked our holiday for Phuket, the thought of the AFL Grand Final didn't enter my head. Why would it? It's just footie, and Carlton were never going to make it anyway. But now, after last night's game.... Jack's team (Port Adelaide) and Brennan's team (Kangaroos) play next week for a spot in the Grand Final. And whoever wins will be playing for the ultimate prize the following week..... while we're out of the country. Oops.

(The funny thing is that last year when we went to Bali we left while the Commonwealth games were on. Jack was disgusted. Now he's beginning to think I'm doing this on purpose!)