Yet another all-consuming hobby.

There's no denying that I'm a very lucky person. Remember my plan yesterday to go to a quilting shop and look around, despite my (very real) fear that they'd point their fingers and laugh at me? Well, mid morning I rang my friend Sandy (she only works 3 days a week, so I knew there's be a good chance she'd be home), and asked if she wanted to come with me.

"There's a shop in Burke road I've heard about," I said. (Thanks for the comments yesterday, everyone.)

"Hang on," she said. "I think there's one around the corner from me."

And so there was. And what's even more important than it being around the corner from her is that it's just down the road from me. (It's all about me, Sandy....) In Centre Rd Bentleigh, number 281 (near Wheatley road), there's a shop called amitie. We went in. I've never been so nervous. But we had a great time. Sandy's been wanting to go there for ages but never had a reason to, so that's obviously why she has me for a friend.

We wandered around looking at all the amazing fabrics, talked to a lady who works there, started choosing fabric for a black and white quilt, when Sandy discovered some little packets of coordinated pieces that they'd put together. All up they equal 1 metre of fabric in total for $20 a pack. Much easier for a novice to work with. We chose two packets to make a boys quilt. (I needed fabric with muscles. No sissy pinks and mauves for my family!!)

When I was up at the counter getting the pattern for the new 'all boy' quilt, I asked about quilting classes. Sandy (who will one day take up quilting, even if she says she's wedded to learning to play the piano at present) has loaned me her sewing machine, so the only thing stopping me from beginning this thing immediately is a little thing called know-how. Plus I have to learn how to drive the sewing machine. So from next week Thursday nights are going to be quilting time. The poor things. Next Thursday I'm going to rock up to class, clutching my muscular fabric pieces in my small little hands, look at them and say, "So what do I do now?" I hope they're prepared for total ignorance.

(Though I read in 'Quilting for Dummies' that I should wash fabric before I quilt with it, so I'll have that step done.)

Connor came home from school first and claimed the quilt as his. So now I'm committed. Actually, I'm pretty excited about it. So is Sandy. She rang up just before dinner to talk about it again. I suppose that means that I'm doubly committed. Or should be committed....

And yet another exciting thing happened.
While I was talking to Sandy, I checked my emails and guess what? Harper Collins has a reviewer program where you register and they send out a soon-to-be-released book for you to review. My first one is being sent out even as I speak! How amazing is that? I'm going to be a book reviewer!!! I'm really pleased about this one. I can't remember if you simply get the book or if they also pay you a nominal amount, but I'm happy either way. firstlook@harpercollins.com is the place to go (I think.) I registered a while ago so I'm a little hazy on the details. (I actually forgot I registered until I got the email telling me my book was on its way.) I feel so important. My opinion matters. Whoever would've thought?


Just before I go to start another weekend full of racing from gardening to baking to housework to knitting to dog food making (thanks a bunch, Sandy. You OWE it to me to take up quilting now after getting me into the BARF food for the pets), I thought I'd share a blog I discovered this morning about quilting. Oh My God. This woman is prolific with the old needle, and she's made some fantastic things. I'm torn between being totally excited about this new area in my life and being totally intimidated.
Crazy Mom Quilts has kept me royally scared and in awe for the last hour or so. I particularly like the icy-pole quilt she has pictured on Flickr. I can see something like that on my bed. (It's too good to waste on the boys.) Just as an aside, are there any other Australians who find it really hard to spell 'Mum' as 'Mom'? It's something I have to concentrate on, and it's ruffling, because it totally feels like I'm making a spelling mistake. And making speeling nistakes is something I hate to do.

But enough of whingeing about those whacky Americans and their crazy spelling rules. (They make damned fine quilts, though!) I'm off to wash my masculine fabric pieces and dream of starting my new (all squares) quilt. Have a good weekend everybody!

My day off.

Ha! Didn't I tell you that I was suspicious of Connor's sudden illness? Turns out I was right. (Thank goodness he wasn't deathly ill, because he did all the housework except for some of the folding.) Turns out that he had a "How to..." project due yesterday, and due to circumstances beyond his control he didn't do it. (I'm guessing the urgent need to beat Brennan on some PlayStation game or other was probably to blame.)

But get this.... he had the whole day off to get it done... Does he? My answer to that (non)rhetorical question is NO. We were lounging around in front of the television after dinner, and he pipes up with an "Oh no. I forgot to do my project."

After a few pithy words from me about the pitfalls of lying about being sick (he confessed) and then the stupidity of not doing the task that you took a sickie to do in the first place, he worked on it till 9.15. He'll be woken up in about 20 minutes to keep going on it. Ah well, it's how we learn. The information on the project will be the least of it.

But guess what??? My big news is that I have the day off!!!! Yay! I went into the boss's office and asked for the Correction Day I didn't take due to interviews to be transferred to Friday. Which is today. Why I still woke up at 5.45 is a mystery, though it might be because last night it was warm, so I left the front door open. Those birds sound like they are using megaphones this morning.

So what are my plans? I'm thinking first up I'll do some knitting. I've nearly finished one of next year's balls of wool on the afghan (mmmm yes, that thing), so I'll finish it. The ball, I mean, not the afghan. There's still 3 more 200g balls to go. I was knitting on it yesterday during Brennan's guitar lesson, and it got too hot to have on my knee. This means that summer is just about here. So I'll finish that ball, and then I might start on something else. Something smaller, so my knees remain cool and ladylike. The package from Bendigo Knitting mills arrived yesterday. I was delighted. I tore apart the packaging to reveal this!

I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but these balls of wool are bigger than my head. I was a little disappointed in the colour, as there's a touch more yellow in it than I thought. I was worried it wouldn't suit me, but when I held one up against my face in the mirror it was ok. I looked hideous, but no more than usual, and I've made my peace with that.

But the best thing was the colour charts they included free of charge. (My wool shop charges $17 for one of those, which is why I don't have one.) Connor's already picked out the wool he likes and I can see I'll be making a few more orders. It took 4 days for them to deliver, which is fine by me. Some of the wool shades are lovely. I chose a very plain pattern, as you can probably see. There's a cable detail in the bands and neck, so one of today's jobs is to buy a cable needle. I may have one, but I've only ever tried cabling when I was a wee slip of a girl, so I don't know if one is hiding at the bottom of the box I keep my knitting needles in or not. So maybe over the course of the weekend I might cast on for a new jumper.

But what I'm thinking of doing sometime today is to go and have a look at a quilting shop. I think there's one on Burke road in Malvern, and the yellow pages listed one in Camberwell somewhere. Should I go? I don't know what I'll do in a place like that. (I'm a bit nervous. I'm going to look like a goose as soon as I open my mouth. I'll probably call fabric 'material' and they'll throw me out.) I'm determined to learn how to quilt, so I have to go sometime. I'm a quarter of the way through 'Quilting for Dummies', so I guess that means I'm slightly less stupid than I was a week ago. (I'm not kidding about being nervous. I know next to nothing about sewing. My sister sews for a living, and mum has sewed (sewn? sewered? ooo, maybe not that last one!) ever since I can remember, but I stuck to knitting. The only thing I ever made that I was proud of was a calico doll for year 8 needlework. I embroidered a face on her and everything. But that's a far cry from doing a quilt.)

I've actually got a slight feeling of butterflies. How ridiculous. I can raise four boys on my own, tame a lawn mower and paint a house, teach masses of kids taller than me, take four kids overseas on my own not once but twice; yet I'm scared of going into a place where they'll use words like 'thimble', 'selvage' and 'mercerized'. (I don't know what the last two mean. I pulled them from the back of the 'Quilting for Dummies' book.) I'll let you know if I face my fear or if I chicken out and wait for Mum to come back from Queensland so she can hold my hand while I whimper.

One last thing.

Jordan's piano teacher is finishing her uni course this year, and she's said that she might not be able to teach him next year. She'll be working, and of course she doesn't know what when or where at this stage. Panic stations!! I don't know if the school can fit him in to the piano course next year or not. He'll be doing grade 5. Widget, if you read this before I get a chance to call you, can you ask if Jordan can be fitted in? Otherwise I don't know where we'll go. Why do kids want to do interesting hobbies that enrich their lives? All it does is create panic when their parent least expects it.

Panic notwithstanding, I'm off to enjoy my day off.

Lunchtime with the YMTs.

Connor is home alone today. An upset tummy, so he says. I have my doubts... it just seems funny that every time he says he's thrown up it's always when I'm in the shower or in the loo. I come out into the hallway and he's mopping up a patch on the floor where he says he splattered on the way to the toilet, or I hear the sound of a flush and he totters out to tell me the news. I never actually see the event.

So when I left today I gave him a list of things that he had to have done around the house when I arrive home. Run the dishwasher and then unstack it, do the folding (the clean washing pile is looking horrendously large), hang out the load of washing in the washing machine, etc. If he's there, he can spend a bit of time being useful. He'll need a break from the Playstation anyway. The rules for kids at home is that everything has to be locked. No phone calls and definitely no leaving the house. I'm only two minutes drive away if anything goes wrong, and my work number and mobile number are by the phone.

I was in the staff common room at lunchtime and remembered that he was home, so I picked up the phone in there and gave him a quick call. I was near a group of teachers, most of them young males, who were sitting having their lunch.

Phone rings. Connor picks up, says "Hello?" warily.

"Hi Ugly, it's me! How are you feeling? Have you been sick again?"

"Yes...."

"Yuck! Did you make it to the toilet?"
(Young Male Teachers (YMTs) start laughing. Connor can't hear them.)

Yes, I did."

"Good! Have you eaten anything today?"
(YMT start saying things like "Well, by the looks of it I had carrots, some corn, some curry"... "I had a Big Mac, some cheesecake"... "Do you want to hear about my diarrhoea?" etc. I start laughing, and can't hear what Connor's saying.)

"Look, Connor, just cook yourself some 2 minute noodles without the flavouring. You'll be fine. Now, have you done the housework I asked you to do?"
(YMT's fall about in disbelief. "But he's sick!!" )

Connor says "Ummm... no." It's obvious he's been playing the Playstation and completely forgotten.
(YMTs say things like "Great mother you are..." and "Have you thought of hiring a maid?")

Mainly for their benefit, I say, "OK. Do this bit by bit. Run the dishwasher. Hang out the washing. Make sure shirts and Tshirts are on hangers. Do the folding. Now honey, you know I'm only getting you to do this so you don't get bored."
(YMTs start killing themselves laughing. "Gee, thanks Mum."... "Thanks Mum, cos the Playstation and the telley just weren't cutting it..." Then they crank it up a bit further. "Mum, you're breaking up..." ..."Mum, I'm driving into a tunnel. I can't hear you...."))

Connor, a little mystified as to why I'm laughing so much, says "Ummm, thanks Mum."

We hang up and the whole staffroom is laughing.

"Well, I'm bringing up my kids to be independent," I say defensively to the room at large. I go and sit down at my usual table.

"How can he hang the washing out if he's got to keep the whole house locked up? asked a Maths teacher. (Trust one of them to have a diabolical eye for detail.)

I got a mental picture of Connor at home with this list of things to do, and the rules he has to follow. I started laughing.

"Wouldn't this be funny?" I ask them. "I get home and he's done all the housework, and he's expecting to be told what a good boy he is. Instead I rip into him. "You fell into my trap! You know you're not allowed to leave the house!!! Just how did this washing get hung out???" Can you imagine his face?"

The kinder hearted among them say things like, "You can't do that to him!" while the others who know me better just laugh. They know I'm not going to do it. It'd be funny though. But I couldn't do it.

He'd never do any housework for me again....

Apologies for the Boring post to follow...

Phew! I was a bit worried that Scott might be a little perturbed about my post yesterday, but thankfully he appears to be fine. I'm enjoying blogging, but sometimes I think the dialogue that goes on in the comments section is even more fun. He left another very funny comment ysterday, which begged for an answer....

Interviews at work are just about over. Today we're just mopping up the remnants of the kids who are left, (those who were too vague and disorganised to come to their first interview and so they've been threatened with death on the phone by me yesterday, and one very sad case of a Chinese boy who's been here a year, and his English is still so bad that he can barely make any sense out of what's being said to him. We've strongly recommended that he stay down in Year 10 for another year to give his English time to kick in. His parents are very reluctant, but there's no other way. He wants to do medicine, so his results have to be among the best in the state. He's failing or scraping by with a bare pass in everything at the moment.)

I am so looking forward to the weekend. My partner in the student manager job has been away riding in the Great Victorian Bike Ride with a group of our students, so I've been left with everything. (The Great Vic is a ride where hundreds of people take off for about 8 or 9 days and ride over a course that takes them over much of the countryside. They ride roughly 80 or 90 kms a day, ending up back in Melbourne on Sunday. Our school always sends a team of kids, and a couple of teachers to supervise. It's fantastic that he wants to give up his time so that the kids can experience this. It's just my bad luck that it falls when we're doing interviews.) The house will be quiet. My first totally free weekend for over a month! No kids here on my child-free weekend. Yay!

Jack's already gone. His Dad picked him up yesterday to work in the shop for a few days, and he'll come back with the other boys on Sunday night. (I haven't heard an apology from Tony about his insinuation that I was ripping him off about the braces, just a text message that he received the letter with all the bills in it, and thanking me for sending them.) Last night was so peaceful with one of them gone. We had dinner, watched tv for a while, and then Connor wanted me to lie on my bed while he gave me a neck massage. (I've strained my neck a bit. It's sore.) The others came too, so we ended up lolling on my bed watching Dr Phil with some losers who were "judgemental". What a pack of geese. (Oh no. I think that judgemental thing is catching...) Then they went to bed, and I watched Oprah who had Suze Orman on. They talked about financial rescues for people who have been spendthifts to the max. My frugality kick was beaming. I love this stuff.

Well, it's time to wake the kids up and get off to work. Only two days to go until the weekend. Whoopee!

Our Books.

Connor took this shot a while back of the books that we have on the dining room bureau. There's one for each person. In them we write nice things about that person, as a record they can keep.

I'd like to take credit for the idea, but it's one I saw when I was teaching at a primary school in Clarinda for the day, before I got the job I have now. They'd been having trouble with bullying, so they called in a team of youth workers, and this was one of the things they did with the kids.

We've been doing it since April '04. (This isn't something I know off by heart. I just had a look at the first entry in my book.) They don't get entries every day.... sometimes a couple of months might go by... but gradually gradually the pages are being filled. Connor is the one who especially loves them. He writes in mine a lot, and gets downcast if his book stays untouched for a while. He wrote in mine last night. All spelling mistakes are his:

"Mum. You are the best mother anyone could wish for, and even if they don't wish for you they will still want you as a mother anyway. But there are some things that are bad about you.

1. You could kill someone by making them laugh and run out of breath.

2. Does their need to be a number two?

3. Same as number 1.

4. I can't say anything bad about you. that's why your really bad I can't put you down.

By the way congradulations on your blog. You should open a bottle of shampagne when you beat

Scott's total viewership.
oxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxo"

Sorry Scott. I laughed my head off when I read it, but now I'm a bit worried that the friendly competition Scott and I have between each other is starting to rub off on the next generation. And any 'shampagne' about bloggishness will be opened in Scott's company. Or maybe we should make that a nice bottle of red instead?

His last entry was much shorter.
"Mum how can I say enough to thank you with all the help and support you have given us. I thank you for that."

How great is that? I don't remember what prompted it. Maybe I cooked something he particularly likes for dinner or something. But there it is for me to read when I'm an old lady and he's left home and forgotten all about me.

The rules of the books are simple, if anyone out there wants to try it. Each person has their own book. Only positive things must be written in another person's book. Things about what that person has achieved, great things about their personality, acknowledgements about funny or nice things they might've done with/for someone else... the list goes on.

When I took the three younger boys away to Mt Buller for a holiday while Jack was at Central Australia with the school, we took the books up with us. The kids read them in the car going up, and they had so much fun. They were laughing at the spellings their younger selves used, remembering things that happened and generally having a real 'warm and fuzzy' family time.

Well worth the effort of the initial set up.

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 squandered day off......

A photo from Phuket. It's a lump of an island.



I could have today off. I should have today off. It's report writing day and I've finished my reports already. But I put my hand up and volunteered to come in with the careers teacher to get more year 10 interviews done. I need my head read. Damn these students and their irrational thirst for knowledge and their ridiculous desperation to be placed into their chosen subjects for next year! Except for Jack. His thirst and need are totally understandable.


Just as an aside from my whinge about voluntarily giving up a holiday (I can assure you that this has never ever happened before), on Friday we had Jack's second interview for his subjects for Year 11 next year. He wants to do a year 12 subject next year, and we have guidelines about the study score average (8.5) and behaviour/conscientious/maturity levels that each kid has to reach. He has been a real twit over years 8 and 9, and it's only been this year that he's started to pull his head in and knuckle down. (With some inevitable slips back. He's a boy, after all.) He's improved a lot, but it's hard to reach egghead levels in one year from a standing start, so he was a bit short of where he needed to be.

In his first interview he was told that he had to get a certain level for his exams, to prove himself. He'd already started studying, but after that he was galvanised into study activity. He even gave up going to his Dad's on the weekend before the exams to study. (Like me with today, this has never happened before.)

Anyway, the exam results showed that in 3 subjects, he'd made it, and in 2 subjects he was only 1 mark short. In his second interview we had the other year 10 student manager, the careers teacher, and myself. For this interview (as opposed to his first) I had the Mum hat on. I went and sat on the other side of the table next to Jack, because even though I'm his student manager, in this interview I was going to fight for Jack.

(In his first one, I was on the other side of the table helping the others stick the boot into him. Well, he deserved it. He had to prove to me as well as the others that he was prepared to fight and work to get this subject.)

He really wants to do Year 12 Further Maths and he's more than capable of doing extremely well at it. He's into statistics (it's amazing that this kid has any personality at all considering the subjects he loves!) and this subject apparently has statistics all through it. After a lot of discussion, and Jack putting his case very eloquently (maybe he has inherited something from me after all!!) he ended up getting the course he wanted. He also dropped accounting to take up physics. He's thinking he might become a pilot, so he needs physics more than bean counting.

On the way back to the car he asked ,"Did I only get Further Maths because you work here?"

I was honest. "You showed that you've lifted your game, which was good. I think that they gave you more of a chance to show what you can do because I was here. But I wouldn't have gone in to bat for you if I didn't know you could do it. Now your job next year is not to make us look like idiots."

He's so excited about next year. He can't wait to have a course that's totally chosen by himself. His course is truly revolting. English (well, that's the only good subject. It's compulsory), Year 12 Further Maths, Maths Methods, Physics and Economics.

I know. Hideous, isn't it? If I was enrolled in a course like that, they'd find my body swinging from a tree with a noose around my neck. But he's a strange child. He can't wait for next year.

And as a teacher and as his parent, that's something I'm so very pleased to see.....