Talkin' 'bout procrastination

That whole efficiency thing I had going for a while? Yeah, that was just a phase. Regular service has been resumed. I am hopelessly inefficient.

I started my 7 week block placement today and realised I hadn't yet made contact with my Link Tutor - the guy who has to come in and observe me teaching 3 times over the next 7 weeks. We were told to make contact with our tutors over a week ago. Oops!

Also I was supposed to have read through the school's policies and medium-term plans. Yeah, didn't do that either. Also I need to purcahse some kind of sandwich filling this evening, otherwise my sandwiches are going to be pretty, well, empty and tasteless tomorrow. I feel so disorganised that I don't think I will ever get organised. It frustrates me so much.

But school was fun. One of the kids has this weird patch shaved out of the side of his head. The teacher and I were debating whether or not he'd had a lobotomy over the holidays, but it turns out his dad accidentally left the cover off the clippers and instead of giving the kid a number 2 all over, gave him a 0 in this one single stripe, but then the kid's mum wouldn't let the dad do 0 all over, so the rest was done as usual with the clippers on a number 2. But the poor kid has this practically bald patch. It does look funny.

I got to leave pretty early as my teacher had netball club after school so there wasn't much for me to stay for. Instead I got to deal with the crazy people who drive down the country lanes I have to take to get to school. It's insane. Most of the lanes have a 40mph limit, which personally I think is crazy as they are rarely wide enough for two cars to comfortably fit down side by side and are full of blind corners that are so sharp you have to take them in 3rd gear. And yet some maniacs still whizz down there at 40, practically taking my wing mirror with them. Not to mention the idiots who seemed to conveniently forget that when a car is parked on their side of the road I have right of way, but just continue bombing it down the road, swinging out around the parked car and nearly plowing into my front bumper. Get off the road, morons!

Well I'm going to sit down and have a cup of tea and then try and get something productive done (we'll see!) before I have to go out again. I've been going to a new church for a couple of months and one of the girls there invited me out for dinner. I'll check back in later if I have anything interesting to say.

A little something to make you smile...

I found this on Metrodad's blog. It made me smile so I thought I'd share it with you. Hope you're all having a good weekend.

Productivity down 50%, Amusement up 200%

Well, it has been a long couple of days. I haven't stopped and yet I really haven't got very much of anything done (story of my life!).

I met up with my friend J in London yesterday and we had breakfast in Cafe Rouge before heading across the river to the Tate Modern. It is often said that as a nation, we Brits like to queue. OMG, the queues! The slides on the lower floors had massively long queues to get on them (mostly children, flippin' half term holidays grrrrrrrrr) and the slides on the upper floors required a ticket, which was free, but there were none left. Wah! So we didn't get to go sliding after all. Which was so annoying because the slides looked so cool!


We went to the bookshop there because I wanted to see if I could find useful stuff for school, which I didn't. Again, totally unproductive. But there were these totally cute lego-type figures of artists with their artwork. They were available to buy for the bargain price of £325! But they were cute. Here is Dali with his lobster phone:

So we then decided to go to the Saatchi gallery. We considered getting a boat down the river, but ultimately decided a stroll down the South Bank would be quite pleasant, so we walked down to County Hall. Before we got there we decided we were quite hungry, so crossed the Hungerford bridge and ended up walking right up to Covent Garden and had lunch in Walkabout.

After this we walked back across the river and up to County Hall. Only the Saatchi isn't there any more! I can't believe we didn't know this. Again, totally unproductive. So we walked BACK across the river and headed up to Leicester Square. I did however manage to take some pretty cool pictures from the many bridges that we crossed.

These are the best I think, but I may well upload the rest to Flickr at some point in the near future.

Anyway, we went to Leicester Square and possibly the best place in the whole of London - the Haagen Dazs Cafe!

And we saw the pancakes and everything was good. Then we ate the pancakes. Oh, man was that good?! Then we walked back up to Covent Garden to meet another friend of ours.

I'd hoped to have had my car back and to go to the cinema with Ali last night, but my car was still at the garage, not being worked on but just sitting there whilst my mum and step dad tried to contact another mechanic they know of. So I was carless and figured I may as well stay in London.

The three of us went back to Walkabout and had some wine. Then we went to Victoria to meet some other friends - friends I hadn't seen in about 2 years. So it was proper reunion-styley! The wine did flow and J came back to stay at mine, being slightly the worse for wear.

This morning I had to go and pick up my car and book it back in for next Thursday. I'm going to have to figure out what I'm going to do for transport whilst it's in the garage. Ugh, so much to think about!

So then I dropped J at the station and then drove to another friend's house so we could go shopping. I spent the day with her and got home at like half ten this evening! Madness I tell you! But fun madness.

I leave you with a picture of me on Waterloo bridge. The wind is blowing my hair and has crafted it into a suspiciously mullet-like shape. I nearly wet myself laughing when I saw this picture. But as you can see from the picture below, I in no way shape or form have a mullet. Okay!

I don't do mornings....or afternoons....evenings I'm okay with!

It's been a busy weekend and I am still reeling from it. One day I will stop feeling tired. Don't know when that might be though. Maybe I am diabetic or have Chronic Fatigue. Or maybe I just need to get more sleep and stop being such a hypochondriac, haha.

I am so grateful to have most of this week off, although I still have lots to do. A huge backlog of housework being a major part of that. I also have to do a whistlestop tour of the London art galleries to do some background research for art. This may or may not be influenced by the fact that the Tate Modern currently has an exhibit consisting of actual slides that one can actually slide down.

WHEEEEEEEEEEE!

The weekend was okay. Being with my family is never exactly a walk in the park, but it was bearable and I was able to help my brother and cousin celebrate their birthdays, which is the important thing. They're 22 now - makes me feel so old! They were born on the same day, the two sisters (my mum and my aunt) being down the corridor from each other in the same ward of the same hospital. My brother is older by 9 hours. There was an article about them in a national paper when they were born.

I was supposed to go to a party when I got back last night, but after the two hour drive back I didn't feel much like getting dressed up and going out, so I caught up on all my blog reading instead. I know, I am the epitome of coolness.

However, I am about to go out tonight, so need to rush off in a minute to sort my hair out (cursed rain!) and reapply my makeup.

Portrait of the artist as Dorothy

Today has been a looooooong day. And I have been badly organised with my time and have just come home about half an hour ago and had to pack a bag because I'm going down to my mum's new house tomorrow straight from uni.

So I won't be around for a couple of days. I'll miss you guys!

Today was good, we had art and music. Both were fun. We had to take a photo of ourselves to art and as soon as our tutor started talking about self portraits I died a little inside, because, as you all witnessed yesterday, I am rubbish at drawing.

BUT, we weren't drawing, we were painting. And we had Van Gogh for inspiration and then had a variety of different paints to create different textures, eg. mixing with sand or sawdust or wallpaper paste and only the primary colours. It was brilliant and I was really pleased with the result, check it out!



So, I'm gonna be off for a couple of days now, but I'll see you all soon, hopefully with something interesting to say. Haha.

School Daze

So, I finished my first day of school. I have another placement day to do next Wednesday and then I start my block placement on 30th October and carry on until Christmas. I'm with a Year 3 class, which is nice, but I was with Year 2 last year, so it won't be that different, even though they're the next National Curriculum KeyStage up. The school is small - only one class per year group - but it's in an area where most of the kids have very disturbed home lives. A lot of them are Travellers.

Today during lunch, one of the Year 4 boys peed on another one. Right up his back so it can't possibly have been an accident.

During numeracy I sat with a girl who has a lot of problems focussing. Their task was to estimate and then measure straws of different lengths. Each straw was colour coded so they could colour code their answers on the worksheet. I held up a straw.

Me: Okay Sharon (not real name, could get in trouble otherwise!), how many centimetres do you think this is?

Sharon: Purple!

Me: Umm, okay, yes, it is a purple straw, but how LONG do you think it is? How many CENTIMETRES?

Sharon: Purple!

Me: *sigh*

To be fair, she did estimate a fair few and was pretty close to the mark, even when she wasn't, they were still reasonable estimates. But a few times she did just repeat the colour over and over.

At one point the teacher was asking the whole class about using different units of measurement. For example, what units of measurement would you use to measure a stamp (millimetres), a cup (centimetres), a garden (metres) and a journey (kilometres).

Teacher: So why wouldn't you use centimetres to measure from here to the moon?

Kid: Because there's no oxygen.

That kid's on the ball! I managed to learn all their names in one day, but I bet I forget most of them by next week. I'm still kind of ill, but not as bad as yesterday (thank goodness!). I got my dad the funniest card for his birthday. It's so apt.



Outside says: Here it is Dad - the latest breakthrough in birthday cards. Inside reads: You can read it without taking your eyes off the TV!

SO TRUE!

Maybe crusts do make your hair go curly

You know, when I was a baby, my hair had a subtle wave to it. It was never curly, but it might have been described as wavy. By the time I was three it was more or less straight. From 5 onwards it was dead straight. Poker straight. See exhibits 1 - 3:

Exhibit 1: Top infants school photo

Exhibit 2: Me playing twister aged 8

Exhibit 3: Me at New Year's aged 22

I was always a fussy child and refused to eat the crusts off my sandwiches, despite my mum telling me "They're the best bit!" No kid believes an adult when they tell them that. My friend used to tell me they make your hair go curly. I think that was supposed to encourage me to eat them, but it put me off even more. I didn't really believe it, but I thought well if it was true it gave me even more reason not to eat them, because I liked my straight hair thankyouverymuch!

The weird thing is that about a year or so ago, I noticed that my hair, which I usually tended to let air dry, wasn't exactly dead straight any more. Okay, so I'd usually tie it back when it was wet, but not always. I bought a hair dryer, but I just couldn't get it to really dry straight straight. In the end I bought hair straighteners, which I love and couldn't live without and for the most part I wash my hair, blow dry it and straighten it all at the same time (not literally at the same time, obviously, but one after the other when I wake up in the morning).

But from time to time I've let it just air dry after washing it and OMG. It is really quite curly now. How did that happen?

Exhibit 4: Me half an hour ago

On your doorstep

There is a park near me that I quite often walk through to get to the High Street. It takes about the same amount of time to get there, but it's a slightly more scenic route with the grass and the trees and the ducks and the pond (which hopefully doesn't stink, as it tends to do when it dries out!). During the summer it's really quite a pleasant walk.

But I don't know if I'll be making that particular trip for a while now, after this happened. It's scary. My area isn't the nicest area around. I live at the more chavvy end of town. But I don't think twice about walking for 15 minutes down to the late night garage just before midnight if I'm craving a milkshake or something (the 15 minute walk makes up for the calories consumed!).

It's so scary to think these things can happen so close to home, and even first thing in the morning you're not safe. What is the world coming to? Seriously?

**UPDATE: The guy who stabbed her has been arrested. So at least that's good news!