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Friday, March 06, 2009

MIL's gift



If you have been reading my blog for a period of time, you would know that my MIL's 80th birthday is just around the corner and that we are going south this weekend to celebrate. I've put together a parcel for her this week (something to wear, something to read, something to do).

Yes folks, I'm taking my life into my hands and giving her a lace g-string to wear. I think it will complement nicely the Mills & Boon sops she likes so much.

For those of you who are scrating your heads wondering about this this choice of gift, there is a story behind it. For Christmas 2007 my MIL gave me 5 pairs of white Bonds Cottontail full briefs, with the instructions that they were long lasting & that the elastic was easily changeable when it sags. I was kind of shocked. LOL

The note in with the g-string is going to say something like "Cottontails may wear well, but this little number is comfortable to wear and kinda sexy". Even I don't have the nerve to tell my 80 year old MIL that if her husband doesn't like it (her excuse for not doing things she doesn't want to do) that she can always take it off for him (head shaking here in horror at the thought).

It's all in good fun & MIL has been forewarned that she is getting a gag gift. The bundle also includes bedsocks, two Mills & Boon novels, a bumper wordsearch book and money towards a holiday for two to their fave destination.

I've also dyed my hair chocolate brown for the occasion. It must be exam relief syndrome. The MOTH is in shock. He has only ever seen me as a blonde with a few highlights. The thing about having medium blonde hair is that those highlights are often two shades lighter than my natural colour. This time I simply went two shades darker. LOL - not quite Addams family mama yet.

Meanwhile, my sister, Jane, is taking well the news that I'm not going to her birthday party. It's apparently the first party she has had in 25 years! I feel terrible but understand that The MOTH needs support on this one. However, please remind me if I'm ever put in this miserable choice situation again, I'm not missing another of my siblings' birthday parties ever again after this! I'm not giving an inch on my 50th and that damned wedding.

Still no stitching. I've got one more exam next week so then ...

Have a good weekend, one and all.

Happiness & laughter,

Felicity

P.S. (Sunday evening) MIL loved the gift! She had a good giggle. Phew!

posted by Felicity | 6:39 am | 15 comments

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Bus driver takes out-of-control passengers to police station for dressing down

It's about time!
I found this article here

It's such a pity St Mary's administration has its head in the sand.

A VETERAN bus driver has driven his out-of-control student passengers to the police station for a dressing down.

Westside Bus Company driver Graham King said he had originally worried he might get into trouble over the incident, in which he drove unruly students from St Edmund's and St Mary's College at Ipswich to the Yamanto police station on Tuesday afternoon, The Courier-Mail reports.

"They were refusing to put seatbelts on," Mr King explained.

"They were told to sit down and behave themselves ... (but) within a couple of kilometres they were running around the bus and they started pegging things."

"Something hit me in the back of the head, which I didn't know at the time what it was, so I pulled over and stopped.

"I rang Operations and they asked me if it was dangerous, which it could have been if it had gone through the windscreen or knocked me out - we could have ended up having a serious accident."

The offending object turned out to be a hard-boiled lolly, but Mr King said it could just as easily have been a cricket ball.

"Safety is my biggest issue," he said.

"I don't know if you have ever seen where a child has gone through a windscreen or a glass window and seen what sort of mess (is made). Well I have .... and I don't want to see it again."

Ipswich Police District Inspector Kevin Keillor described Mr King's decision to involve them as "fantastic".

Insp Keillor said police had already attended two accidents involving school buses - including one fatal crash - in their district over the past couple of weeks and Mr King's action had ensured that there wasn't another.

St Edmund's College principal Brendan Lawler said Mr King's decision was a positive one and students now faced disciplinary action.

St Mary's College has denied their students were involved.

posted by Felicity | 10:24 am | 0 comments

Friday, February 13, 2009

Oops!


I received an unexpected email today. It seems that when I signed up for my exams to be supervised, I missed booking one of them. The pressure is slightly off because I will have to do it in mid-March.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I've been at nervous breakdown stage for so long, I can't work out if what I feel is relief or increased hysteria.

Let me assure you, the work still has to be done, and every day there seems more of it. I'm doing 3 software language subjects this semester and some basic scientific mathematics. At the moment, the computing stuff is a bit like learning emmersion Russian. I can't make head or tail of it. The maths I can cope with because during my 20s and 30s I had so many maths exam preparation nightmares (which I suppose were leftovers from school days) that having done maths in my sleep for all those decades, it now seems like a piece of cake. LOL.

Out of left field, I've got a question for you, dear readers. Why was it that it was traditionally men who wrote and who read science fiction? I know it's changing now, but why did women only have token or baddie roles in the genre in the past (usually requiring a stainless steal bra worn like Madonna used to) and almost never the 'superhero' role? Or so says one of my lecturers. I really do need your input on this one to write an essay.

Myself, I'd have thought it quite obvious: men who were out saving the world in the past wouldn't have the multitasking ability to take along the wife / girlfriend and breastfed baby to get in the way. No one in the olden days could save the world, contend with deep and meaningful conversations and balance a baby on his hip like the Incredibles can do today. It was simple maths. The man did it all without accepting help from anyone, except perhaps a side-kick robot. It would have been loss of face in those days, so he needed both hands free! And, then again, the kinds of guys who saved the world in sci-fi back then probably were more like that guy in 'The Librarian' films before he realised he was hot stuff. They were nerds. In the olden days, guys had wives and significant others after they were done doing the dangerous work! The babes or other females other than the mother probably weren't part of the scene at all! Can I use this argument? Chuckle. Probably not!

(An aside: there isn't much evidence of homosexuality in early sci fi, either, but that's another story and one I'm not going to dare to explore under exam conditions!)

What's everyone doing for St Valentine's Day?

The MOTH has booked a table at Brett's Wharf on the Brisbane River. We went there the year we moved to Brisbane for St Valentine's Day and it was lovely!

Happiness & laughter to one and all. Enjoy whatever you do this weekend.

Felicity

posted by Felicity | 4:46 pm | 7 comments

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Siblings

Yesterday, I had one of those days that affirms that I have one of the nicest families into which one can be born. My four sisters who live here in Brisbane, our husbands, and my three Brisbane-based off spring gathered to celebrate the life of one of their mothers-in-law who died just before the weekend. When the Graves Girls are really needed, they are there at hand and ready to do what needs doing. That's something really important in life, I think.

I'm also very proud of my off-spring. They all came out of respect for The Aunt and her family, and in memory of all the good times they have had with this particular family, not cos they knew Granny as well as did others at the funeral.

My offspring call my sisters 'The Aunts'. Depending on the day and the mood, there is sometimes a rolling of the eyes when the term is used - but only just for fun to add emphasis to whatever is being said about these women collectively. The Graves cousins (my sisters' children) apparently call us all 'The Sisters'. I occasionally think of these sisters as 'The Drama Queen Quartet', but I love them dearly. The MOTH, who has only known them for 5 years, loves them to pieces, too, and is quite envious of our family gatherings.

I have two siblings apart from those mentioned above: an older sister and an older brother. My eldest sister left home more than 30 years ago and lives the quiet life in Canberra. She's still a big part of the family by telephone, but chooses not to come to family celebrations or funerals (sibling's weddings were the exception) and she discourages visitors because she says she's too disorganised to tidy her house to allow them to stay. Sadly, she's never married nor had kids, so I guess she doesn't have the need to get the next generation interacting. I think she's a bit nuts, but I love her to pieces, all the same.

My only brother lives on the Gold Coast. His wife loathes her 6 sisters-in-law. Being an only daughter, I could understand her reticence that at the beginning, but not now after 28 years of marriage. She uses her sore back and inability to travel the 70km to visit as an excuse to have missed every family gathering we have had in the last 20 years, yet she travels with my brother whenever he goes to Melbourne, Tasmania, New Zealand, sailing the South Pacific, etc. We've been invited to only two parties since they were married in 1982 - and my sister-in-law was horrified that all our off-spring (and mountainous plates of food to feed them all) came with us to help celebrate the events in question. She discourages every attempt I make to come and visit, saying yes to some and then cancelling or flatly refusing opportunities to gather together.

Consequently, my brother's nearly adult off-spring hardly know their Graves cousins. It's sad. I miss my brother a lot but I guess, they know where I live and have a telephone that they can use to invite themselves over, if they want.

Six out of seven communicate really well, and obviously love each other dearly, even if we don't see each other every day. Five of us make regular wine sipping time for each other. We are the lucky family, in my humble opinion.

What about you? Have you been blessed with a vibrant & communicating family, like mine?

posted by Felicity | 6:47 am | 2 comments

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

On my soapbox!

Gosh, I wish that the Federal Minister of Education here in Australia read my blog.

I am a teacher but I don't work full time. Forget all those supposed holidays you hear that teachers get. The 10 weeks vacation that the Australian kids have don't exist for the majority of Australian teachers. We're too busy planning for the next term or marking from the last.

I don't work full time because I don't want to spend my life (not just the official working week) just doing the planning and marking (or worrying about the planning and marking that I could be doing) when I am supposedly doing ordinary activities of daily living which other workers do when they have time off. I want to have time to sleep without feeling guilty about doing so, particularly on weekends. I want to be able to eat my lunch in peace a couple of times a week rather than do what teachers do during lunch hours. I want to go for a drive in my car on weekends without taking with me the 240 or so students' worth of essays begging for attention on the back seat of the vehicle at various times of the school term.

I don't teach full time because I've had one too many knives pointed too close to my throat and have been spat upon at least once too often by 15 year old boys who should know better.

Teaching is a stressful gig for even the most dedicated educators!

Why am I saying all this today? This afternoon, I rang one of my teaching mates, who worked, until mid-December, at a school where I no longer work full time. I rang to wish her Happy New Year but instead of ringing a woman who should have been relaxing because she has just retired, I found my friend still on edge three weeks after school broke up for the summer vacation. Why can't she relax, you ask? Two of our former teaching colleagues have been diagnosed with breast cancer. Sad, huh?

I'm even more gobsmacked to discover that rather than being totally devastated about their diagnosis and the possible implications, both teachers are relieved to have breast cancer (and other colleagues from the same school are wishing that it was contageous) because it means that they don't have to go back to school when it resumes at the end of January.

No job is worth that thought process.

None.

The Minister has supposedly been quoted as saying:

"We believe that there is nothing more valuable you can do for your nation than go into teaching and we want to reinforce that."

She has declined to commit to improving teacher salaries which would improve the profession's status, which, in turn, would improve people's perception of teachers' place in society and possibly kids' treatment of their teachers.

In this day and age, money talks. People who are valued are paid more.

The Minister, however, has indicated that she favours a system of performance pay for quality teachers that is linked to a broad range of measures. This would be negotiated with the states and territories as part of a new national education partnership.

"We want to make sure that excellent teachers are valued," she supposedly said.

I consider that statement to be an effort of splitting hairs.

The Minister is talking through her bum! She is hedging around the issue of paying all teachers more money. She needs to put dollars where her mouth is and cough up funds for drastically increased teacher salaries. She needs to put dollars where her mouth is and cough up for similar working conditions that she enjoys in her office in Parliament House (personal safety, air-conditioning, adequate space for a desk, computers which function, office supplies, resources to do her job, etc); She needs to cough up a teaching wage adequate enough to attract more men to the profession - men who can feed and educate families and pay for houses in the same time that it takes other Australians to do so.

She also needs to acknowledge that teaching is not an easy profession and that the people who do the job need more support, not a pay-by-student-results salary.

I'm going to get off my soap box, now.

posted by Felicity | 8:04 pm | 10 comments

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Harry at 9 months


Harry's arrival - June 2008


Harry at 9 months - January 2009

posted by Felicity | 2:35 pm | 3 comments

Thursday, January 01, 2009

11 Commandments of 2009

Thou shalt have fun, above all - Fun is more important than funny.

Thou shalt laugh at thyself -The truly enlightened take themselves lightly.

Thou shalt go the extra smile - A consistent smile affirms friends and confounds enemies.

Thou shalt listen - Listen with your heart as well as your ears.

Thou shouldst expect the unexpected - Embrace surprises as opportunities.

Thou shalt challenge all assumptions - The difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

Thou shalt welcome thy mistakes - Perfectionism is a killer.

Thou shalt forgive often - It is the only way to be free.

Thou shalt remain focused, but flexible - Hold fast to principles, but be open to many paths.

Thou shalt celebrate everything always - Celebration increases gratitude.

Thou shalt not buy dessicated coconut - There's already enough in the pantry for a life time

posted by Felicity | 6:44 am | 4 comments

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