catching up

So I made up a huge batch of butter pecan and choc chip cookies the other day. Christmas gifts for the teachers - you know, wrap them in nice tissue paper and tie a ribbon around them. Just something small. But I've been eating them, I can't seem to stop THEY ARE THAT GOOD, and with every cookie I take I tell myself, 'Oh that's ok - worst case scenario I'll just buy them a bar of soap'. Do you do that?

Please tell me you do that too.



Yesterday I got a bit of a kick up the pants from my Dad. What are you doing next year? What jobs have you got lined up? Where is your direction - your goal? What are you GOING TO DO?

Oh, I said, I thought we were just going for a chai latte. But it's good. I need a push and I need some pressure on me to get up and really think about where I am going in my life, how I think I might support myself and what exactly are my hopes and goals for next year. Nothing like a bit of impulsive life planning on a Wednesday morning down the main street.

I went home and I filled out an application form for a grad dip in secondary education. I might not get accepted.... but then again I might. And that would be exciting because I've been umming and ahhing about just going for that for years now but I'm nervous (nobody believes that I would make a good high school teacher. No. Body. They say 'oh you would make a good preschool or primary school teacher' but I wouldn't. I don't like little kids as much as you think I do. True fact!)

And I've applied for 3 part time jobs as a preschool assistant and if I get that job then scrub my last remarks about not really liking little kids as much as people think I do because I just LURVE the little children. The little cherubs. The little poppets.

Speaking of cranky, over the hill preschool assistants, my son had one the other year. Her name was, ah, let us call her Helga. Helga was a bit old and a bit of a grumpy sultana. She'd bark orders at the kids and just generally be cantankerous. I was so angry at her. I wanted to scream YOU ARE MEANT TO BE OLD AND KINDLY AND DOTTY - BUCK UP, WRINKLEFACE.


In other news. Yesterday I took the kids in to visit my Mum's workplace. Mum has only been there for a few months but she's led the charge in a huge four-floor Christmas decoration competition. They are all government cubicle dwellers and each section has gone all out to set up a Christmas theme - and it was good. It was very, very good. An Italian dude had dedicated his section to making a 'Christmas Mafia with the Mob' .... my kids didn't really get the humour in it but appreciated the pictures of Al Capone with a smoking gun and a bit of tinsel on his head.
There was a Santa workshop and a Santa expenditure unit with the charts up illustrating stock loss and stock expenditure etc. There was the Grinch Christmas, the North Pole (complete with computerised image of a hot fire burning in the corner), there were tables pushed together to house three giant train tracks and Santa trains - there was a White Christmas and all the white tinsel was hanging from the roof. 'Wow!' said my daughter to one of the guys, "how did you get to hang all the tinsel from up there?'
I just stood on the table, he said. My Mum screamed and put her hands over her ears. OH&S violation! I didn't just hear that!
And we all laughed. Ho ho ho.


I love my Mum and I love that she is perky and effervescent and a people person and she tried to make everywhere she goes fun and happy. But I am not like that and after the third building floor and the fiftieth cubicle I was ready to curl up in a corner and suck my thumb. I don't want to be introduced, I don't like to be looked at, I don't want to be the centre of attention. It's my idea of hell. Two of my kids are like my Mum, and the middle one is like me - he stays in the background, he doesn't try to jostle for 'look at me'. He was happy to look at the decorations and he could have skipped the whole meet and greet four departments.
But I did it because it made my Mum happy to take her grandchildren in to her building and see all the fun things everyone has made. It made her really, really happy.


And that's good to do.