*drumroll please*

I GOT THINGS DONE TODAY!! I know, shock horror, please no one faint. Today I have:

• Taken notes on the autism books I got out of the library
• Done even more ironing (and yet still the pile seems to get no smaller. I have enchanted laundry!).
• Done a whole pile of washing up that has been in the sink for way too long.
• Gone for a walk in order to not be a total slob and actually get some form of exercise today (I considered going for a run, but really, let's not get too carried away, eh?).

Anyway, that's actually pretty much all I've done, but it took a long time, so there. I also managed to sleep through meeting my friend for breakfast. That was quite an accomplishment. Apparently, when I set my alarm last night I managed to turn it off by accident and without realising. Yes, the same alarm I have had for about 3 and a half years and have used every day since then. I woke up at 20 past 10 when my friend text me to ask if I was on my way as I was supposed to be there at 10. OOOOOOPS!

Tomorrow I am meeting another friend at lunchtime (aha, can't possibly sleep through that one!) and going out with some other people in the evening, so I need to ensure that I once again have a PRODUCTIVE day and do some USEFUL things.

I have made a decision about moving. And I have decided to go ahead and move in with the girls. Which feels a little scary, to say the least, but I think it'll be good. As trite as it sounds, I think it is character building to live with other people and put up with their habits and idiosyncracies. And have to deal with their reaction to yours. But it all got a bit crazy because I spoke to the girls just before Christmas and they said their landlord wasn't happy for me to move in after all because I'm just a student and don't work. My lack of a steady income beyond my student loan would put his insurance up apparently. Anyway, it finally all got sorted a week or so ago, with the landlord agreeing that I could live there but not have my name on the contract and so I got a text message saying it was okay for me to move in. On the 10th February.

THE. 10TH. OF. FEBRUARY!

That is just over a month away! So alongside having to get this assignment done, there is also a lot of practical stuff I need to get on top of and don't even get me started on the state of my car, which the garage have pronounced "unfixable" WITH THE SAME PROBLEM THEY ALLEGEDLY FIXED BY REPLACING THE ALTERNATOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO!!! Or whatever, not unfixable, but fixable at a price WELL over the value of the car, which equates to the same thing really.

So I need to sort out a whole load of stuff in order to move, like, for example, what am I going to do with my cooker and my washing machine and my sofa? And do they have broadband, please say they have broadband. Part of the point behind breakfast this morning was to chat about details like this with one of the girls I'm going to be living with, but of course I had to pick today to have a complete meltdown in terms of alarm clock operation.

So I still have lots to do. But the excitement doesn't even end there because I got back from my walk to find two of my neighbours in the lobby because the fire alarm kept going off. Every time they reset it, it went off again, which, you'd think, would indicate an actual fire, but the light was flashing to indicate a fire in the communal area, i.e. where we were standing and there was a surprising lack of fire or smoke. So we ended up calling the landlord so someone could come out and reset it properly, and setting the alarm to "silence" which is a lie, because it still beeps quite loudly every 5 seconds or so, but not as loudly as the piercing squeal of the actual alarm.

Anyway, the day's not over yet, and maybe I will attempt to convert my copious and illegible notes into the beginning of a legible leaflet. Or maybe I'll just do that tomorrow.

Unauthorised absence

Dear Brain,

Please get a grip. I know you are tired, although God knows why as all you seem to do at the moment is sleep - particularly whilst I'm awake. There is only one more day of school to get through so please return from whatever corner of my skull you have chosen to hide yourself and get with the programme.

It is not helpful that you tell me all day that I have a choir rehearsal tonight when it is, in fact, tomorrow night. I can only be thankful that your absence is recent and you previously had the wherwithal to WRITE THINGS DOWN, because otherwise I would have looked a mighty fool at 8pm, standing around outside an empty building wondering 'Where is everybody?' like the giraffe on that old British Airways advert.

It is a point of fact, dearest Brain, that this absence is quite unacceptable. You are - unfortunately - quite indispensible and irreplaceable as I tend to need you in order to form coherent sentences and hopefully avoid that gut-clenching feeling of social inadequacy.

I know that hours upon hours of wrapping up brightly coloured pencils for the children in my class may well cause you to slip into a trance-like state of sheer, unadulterated boredom, but I'm afraid it can't be helped. There will be time to sleep next week, and to think about nothing more strenuous than what to have for lunch, but until then I must insist that you return to full functionality immediately.

So here's the deal, Brain, let's get through the next couple of days and then you can relax, maybe even take a holiday, on full pay of course. Just don't abandon me yet.

Sincerely,
Laura

Blah blah tired blah

I know. I'm totally slacking. But do you have any idea how tired I am? Man, I feel like I could sleep for a week! I slept really badly Saturday night and was just too exhausted to get any work done on Sunday, so I ended up going to bed at 6:30PM!! I set my alarm for 4:30 so I could get up early and get my work done then - which I did. But even getting up at 4:30 gave me, like, 10 hours sleep. And I am still exhausted and drifted off in front of The Simpsons tonight. What is wrong with me?

I don't have much interesting to say. Only two more days of school and then it's the holidays. I will be SO relieved and may just sleep for a week. Except for that pesky task of Christmas shopping that really has to be done at some point.

The kid's Christmas play went well. They looked really cute. Tomorrow we are decorating Christmas tree shaped boxes and making finger puppets. Aww. There's no real teaching to be done from this point on, so it should be a laugh. And we have our staff Christmas lunch tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to.

Hopefully I'll have something more interesting to say then...

"Emmett: Mishaps and Musings" will be out in hardback in the spring

Okay, I'm lying about the book. But it is a great idea. It would totally sell. Well, I'd buy it, haha.

It's been another long and exhausting day. My class teacher is on a course again tomorrow, which in a way feels quite a relief because she won't be there to watch me and I'm not feeling 100% inspired right now. I just want to get through the day. The Friday I have a university-based day, going over classroom layout and timetabling (woohoo! I know, can't you just feel the excitement bubbling up!) which still means leaving the house at the same time in the morning, but I finish at TWELVE, people. That gives me a whole afternoon to myself. Yay!

I am nearing the end of week four of my placement. I am now just over halfway through. You cannot believe the relief I am feeling thinking that. I know I want to be a teacher, and teachers generally are in school 5 days a week, however many weeks a year (39?) but it's all the ridiculously detailed planning and evaluating that is wearing me out so much, and that's not a prerequisite for teaching, only for learning to teach.

On the plus side, there is a school trip to the cinema in a couple of weeks and I get to go. So that should be fun. We're going to see Flushed Away, which does look quite amusing.

And I'll just leave you with the picture of Emmett, painstakingly copying out his joined up handwriting practice and failing to join up ANY of the letters. Not a single one!

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.

I am the lizard queen! *

* First person to correctly identify the quote in the title wins a year's supply of Cillit Bang. Why Cillit Bang? Because it is funny. At least, it is funny to me in my sleep deprived delirium.

It is possible, perhaps, that I am a little off the planet, having amassed an impressive 1 and a half hours sleep last night (or really it should be this morning as I drifted off around 9). Actually, it may be 2 hours if you include the half hour I snoozed the alarm. Which I don't. Because really, sleep that only lasts 10 minutes without interruption is really not worth counting.

So I got up at around 10:50 this morning. Mostly because I had a training meeting to get to this afternoon, but also because this whole being awake all night thing? Yeah, it's wearing a little thin.

So I crawled out of bed, bleary eyed and requiring vast amounts of caffeine and managed to make myself look semi-presentable (if you ignored the suitcases under my eyes that concealer just would not, like, conceal!). I walked down the road to the bus stop because due to complicated travel arrangements I had to meet a friend of mine in the next town, where she would have her car and then she would drive me, and others to and from the meeting, dropping me home afterwards.

I hate the bus. The bus sucks. But at least I got to chill out with my iPod and try not to fall asleep to the gentle roaring of the engine (which I decided to sit above, smart move). The worst thing about the bus, though, is the old people, who get on in their droves and then proceed to give me the dirtiest looks ever because I haven't given up my seat for them, even though there are like, 5 other empty seats all around!! At one point I looked up and they all seemed to be really scowling at me and I was all like What, my iPod is NOT that loud! But afterwards I looked at my phone and saw I had a missed call and realised that was probably what the evil eye was all about. At least when my friend calls me my phone plays 'Get Happy', which they should appreciate, it being an oldie and all, and not some crazy techno hiphop concoction that exists solely of swearing and sexual references, like the phones of most teenagers seem to these days.

(OMG I'm getting old!)

More disturbing than the assortment of moody old biddies on the bus, however, was the old guy jogging down the road. He wore nothing but a pair of fetching blue shorts, ensuring all who saw him got a perfect view of his saggy, jiggling man boobs. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.

The training meeting was good. It's training for a charity I sometimes work for as a volunteer, who do assemblies and RE lessons in Primary schools. We were discussing the things that influence today's children - good and bad - and how this affects our work within schools. It was a fascinating discussion that brought up some interesting points of view, but the highlight for me was my friend's story about her little boy.

We were talking about the pressure children have to face these days that wasn't so prevalent before the National Curriculum, such as the fact that 7-year-olds have to take SATs. Her son has just gone into Year 2 (the first SATs year) and his teacher sounds like a bit of an ogre who is convinced she can make her whole class achieve level 3s (what the average 9-year-old achieves). A lot of the children in Dan's class have felt the pressure and there have been a lot of tears by the school gates in the morning. Apparently Dan was praying the other night, before he went to bed and said, "Dear God, Please give me a sore throat so I don't have to go to school tomorrow."

My friend said she was so shocked by his ability to think this through that she just went, "Errrr, amen!"

Kids say the funniest things!

Well, I'm off to wallow in my sleep-deprived delirium some more. Hopefully I will actually sleep tonight!