98%
Well after feeling like utter crap last week i am now feeling almost better. It turns out i wasn't having burnout, i was just being ill and powering through it. The cough is almost gone and my leg is almost better. I feel much better, full of energy.
In fact yesterday i did two weeks' worth of laundry, hoovered the house and cooked. I had not cooked for nearly a week. It is odd how i didn't realise i was really ill though. I don't like talking about being ill because to me it is pointless. You are either ill or you are not ill. But it is the relentless nature of my life i think which makes it confusing between being very tired and ill.
In any case, i am NOT ill.
Which is rather the point.
I love doing laundry and i did think to myself. Hoovering. At first, i was really - god i'll hoover when i get back, but it was doing my nut in and i had to say to myself, if i hoover NOW, it will be done. And you know what, it was. Just like that. Less than half an hour, the hoovering for two weeks was sorted. The thing about hoovering is that it has to be done at least once a week. If you let it go for more than three weeks the dirt is ground into the carpets and you have to hoover like heck. Time is not saved - you have to make up for all the times you did not hoover.
So, today, i am going running when i get back. Running and cooking. There is a great running route around where we live that is short but pleasant. It isn't as nice as Belvoir Park Forest which can never be beaten as a running route - oh the dips, the hills, the river, the trees - but yes, it is a pretty cool route. It goes into the Comber Greenway and around the street i live.
Yesterday we were in West Belfast - the Falls Road. I had planning to go to Bog Meadows and we were diverted into a chicken eating place. Ghin wanted some chicken and we got there. West Belfast is more diverse now. There were Chinese people, there were black people, there were Polish people. I wonder if Belfast is beginning to open up a bit. When new people come into a place en masse it can be quite bewildering for the people who used to live there. I understand this now having lived in Quigley's Point. People are happy to say hi to one or two new faces, but if you start moving new people wholesale in, that's when you get conflict. I mean even yesterday, we saw three boys, who could not be more than 12 years old, throw a cup full of drink at an open top tourist bus and shouting profanities at it. These City Sightseeing tours bring people from all over the world to look at the murals and gawp at people's realities. The realities of West Belfast on a sunny day seem ok, but there is still a lot of litter, a lot of self harm, a lot of local crime. The urban environment. I often wish i could start a Steiner school - not call it a Steiner school but let it run on very strong Steiner principles.
Like academics - the way we teach academics in the morning - and work with the hands in the afternoon. Bring families in, especially fathers to help with things like craft. It could run both a Men's Shed as well as children's craft workshop daily. Do music - guitar lessons, lyre lessons. Eventually moving onto piano and violin, slowly beginning an orchestra. And honestly these things don't cost more money. They just need to work smart.
The current education system is not efficient at all because it works against the child's inclination and social interest. For instance, our school grounds - we don't have someone looking after it, but thankfully we have great parents and a gardening programme. As a result we have great grounds. The gardening programme has enabled us to not only teach the children, but to also keep the grounds looking fantastic. If we had a Men's Shed and a craft workshop, we would have managed to maintain the school building. All you need is someone to see this and organise it.
It is about building connections, helping people to work with other people.
It is interesting because i am also now passing into a new phase in my life. Peter has more or less just continued to do what he does. I have more or less put most of my life on hold for the boys. As Oisin gets older, i am trying to be more present for him as he transitions into adulthood. I often think that if i have chosen to take this role as parent on, i must be there to fulfill it so that in the future i can say to myself i did everything i could. If that was not good enough, the so be it. The mistake for me at least would be to say, sometime in the future if it all goes tits up with him, and let's face it, it could, i regret that i didn't spend more time with him because, who knows, it could have all been so different... i think this was my mom's strategy as well. If she looks at us, she can at least say she did her best. The rest is up to the child as the adult.
So as this phase intensifies over the nest few years, i have also been thinking about what i would do after it passes - with Ghin as well. So there is at least another ten years. But it will start to slack off slowly, what then? I think the reform of the education system is something i would really like to get involved in. To start schools which are about children, not about results. Schools which are not producing results anyway because it is just too much for these children to be expected to achieve these standards too early in life. If they don't have well-educated, middle class parents who are willing to drag them to every play going or read to them every night, then how the heck are they expected to do as well as those children who do? And also, children who do have all these advantages, then, well and good. Working with their hands is what they need most desperately so that they don't become overbearing know it alls.
Time to get started with the breakfast. I need to do a quick shop as well before we leave for school
In fact yesterday i did two weeks' worth of laundry, hoovered the house and cooked. I had not cooked for nearly a week. It is odd how i didn't realise i was really ill though. I don't like talking about being ill because to me it is pointless. You are either ill or you are not ill. But it is the relentless nature of my life i think which makes it confusing between being very tired and ill.
In any case, i am NOT ill.
Which is rather the point.
I love doing laundry and i did think to myself. Hoovering. At first, i was really - god i'll hoover when i get back, but it was doing my nut in and i had to say to myself, if i hoover NOW, it will be done. And you know what, it was. Just like that. Less than half an hour, the hoovering for two weeks was sorted. The thing about hoovering is that it has to be done at least once a week. If you let it go for more than three weeks the dirt is ground into the carpets and you have to hoover like heck. Time is not saved - you have to make up for all the times you did not hoover.
So, today, i am going running when i get back. Running and cooking. There is a great running route around where we live that is short but pleasant. It isn't as nice as Belvoir Park Forest which can never be beaten as a running route - oh the dips, the hills, the river, the trees - but yes, it is a pretty cool route. It goes into the Comber Greenway and around the street i live.
Yesterday we were in West Belfast - the Falls Road. I had planning to go to Bog Meadows and we were diverted into a chicken eating place. Ghin wanted some chicken and we got there. West Belfast is more diverse now. There were Chinese people, there were black people, there were Polish people. I wonder if Belfast is beginning to open up a bit. When new people come into a place en masse it can be quite bewildering for the people who used to live there. I understand this now having lived in Quigley's Point. People are happy to say hi to one or two new faces, but if you start moving new people wholesale in, that's when you get conflict. I mean even yesterday, we saw three boys, who could not be more than 12 years old, throw a cup full of drink at an open top tourist bus and shouting profanities at it. These City Sightseeing tours bring people from all over the world to look at the murals and gawp at people's realities. The realities of West Belfast on a sunny day seem ok, but there is still a lot of litter, a lot of self harm, a lot of local crime. The urban environment. I often wish i could start a Steiner school - not call it a Steiner school but let it run on very strong Steiner principles.
Like academics - the way we teach academics in the morning - and work with the hands in the afternoon. Bring families in, especially fathers to help with things like craft. It could run both a Men's Shed as well as children's craft workshop daily. Do music - guitar lessons, lyre lessons. Eventually moving onto piano and violin, slowly beginning an orchestra. And honestly these things don't cost more money. They just need to work smart.
The current education system is not efficient at all because it works against the child's inclination and social interest. For instance, our school grounds - we don't have someone looking after it, but thankfully we have great parents and a gardening programme. As a result we have great grounds. The gardening programme has enabled us to not only teach the children, but to also keep the grounds looking fantastic. If we had a Men's Shed and a craft workshop, we would have managed to maintain the school building. All you need is someone to see this and organise it.
It is about building connections, helping people to work with other people.
It is interesting because i am also now passing into a new phase in my life. Peter has more or less just continued to do what he does. I have more or less put most of my life on hold for the boys. As Oisin gets older, i am trying to be more present for him as he transitions into adulthood. I often think that if i have chosen to take this role as parent on, i must be there to fulfill it so that in the future i can say to myself i did everything i could. If that was not good enough, the so be it. The mistake for me at least would be to say, sometime in the future if it all goes tits up with him, and let's face it, it could, i regret that i didn't spend more time with him because, who knows, it could have all been so different... i think this was my mom's strategy as well. If she looks at us, she can at least say she did her best. The rest is up to the child as the adult.
So as this phase intensifies over the nest few years, i have also been thinking about what i would do after it passes - with Ghin as well. So there is at least another ten years. But it will start to slack off slowly, what then? I think the reform of the education system is something i would really like to get involved in. To start schools which are about children, not about results. Schools which are not producing results anyway because it is just too much for these children to be expected to achieve these standards too early in life. If they don't have well-educated, middle class parents who are willing to drag them to every play going or read to them every night, then how the heck are they expected to do as well as those children who do? And also, children who do have all these advantages, then, well and good. Working with their hands is what they need most desperately so that they don't become overbearing know it alls.
Time to get started with the breakfast. I need to do a quick shop as well before we leave for school
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