Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

This week I got into my stride with the Astronomy. These topics this year are topics which I myself have had to study closely. My knowledge patchy at best, certainly scattered. It takes time to have a firm grasp of a topic, and by the time you do it, it is, even with all the reading in the world, understanding how to teach it doesn't begin until you actually teach it. Then when you begin, it takes a couple of days, sometimes more, before you have the bit between your teeth - and finally, like in Astronomy, it has taken me all of three weeks to finally fully understand what I was doing. Anyhow, I know I have finally gotten to understand the subject when I start to enjoy teaching it. And yesterday, a fellow teacher told me that she had heard from a sister of a student of mine, that he wanted to be an astronomer when he grew up. So, you know, that's good to hear right? With the Astronomy Main Lesson, I had decided to do three things: teach the current science of it, do the art...

Breakfast One of the BEST things about being a Steiner teacher is learning things which you have always wanted to learn but never really got round to it. This year I have Alexander the Great, Ancient Rome, Astronomy and Physics - Light and Sound. In fact most of this year's curriculum is have had to look into. And of course you could say, you only have to teach 12 year olds, but I really need to know a lot around the subject because the children will ask questions and it is good to be able to answer them. For instance, we were doing the introduction to astronomy and they began talking about black holes and dark matter. It was nice to be able to talk about the nature of black holes and what we know about them. Just a little bit.  This week we will be doing Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton. If I have time we will do Herschel and Hubble. Then it will be cram time for Ancient Rome.  In fact I think I'll go only up to Keppler. It just makes sen...

I was just about to head upstairs when Ghin came in looking for dinner. Today's a relaxed day so dinner times aren't really enforced. You are hungry, you ask for the food. Today's food is Gingster's pasties. Yesterday's dinner was steak. My family aren't not vegan or even remotely vegetarian. We eat meat on a regular basis and we don't make a big deal of it. It isn't meat and two veg at every meal, but we have meat a couple of times a week. Being a mom is without doubt the most rewarding and difficult thing I have ever done. It calls upon every fibre of your being to be the best you can be, but also to see the best in your kids, without turning them into assholes. It is only when I am coming to the end of being a mom for full time children that I can see how much I am going to miss it. I'd like to think I have been a good enough mother. I tell my sons how much I love them all the time, just like my parents did, and I put them first - I would do a...

It is now the third week of January. Last week, I felt amazing. It couldn't be more different this week. This weekend sees me feeling dreadful. I have no idea why - everything has been the same, nothing has changed, and this week my brain has decided I am to feel dreadful. Sigh. I recently saw a great quote - Your heart knows how to heal - it is your mind you need to convince to let things go. This is true. I also now know that healing is not a striaghtforward path. You go backwards and forwards all the time. Sometimes it seems like you are landed back to the day after the catastrophe. Sometimes it is like another lifetime away. A million miles from everywhere. And so it goes. I was lying in bed last night, feeling shite, but then I thought this is nonsense. My life is fab, what am I on about? I suppose everyone feels like this. It wouldn't be human if we didn;t right? If we felt great all the time? Only very few people are blessed like that. Mostly living in Stepford, proba...

Coffee, is Go Juice. I know that this is obvious, but really, today, I discovered what this meant when I had a double espresso at General Merchants after going for my run. OK, so, the great news is that I have found my running groove. Now going for the run is easier than NOT going for it. I went running in Belvoir Park Forest today, the most gorgeous 200 year old arboretum and mixed woodland, which is found in the heart of Belfast. Where the Lagan enters Belfast and for the most part of it, on either side of the river is forest and parkland. Whether this is happy accident or just sheer expedience, who would want to build on wetland and on a river which rises and falls, perhaps both, I do not know. But we are very very lucky in Belfast. Most of this land was once owned by plantation families and now most of it is under the care of the Lagan Valley Regional Park. In addition to this, The National Trust and Ulster Wildlife Trust also managed quite a lot of land around the area. So we ha...

It has been literally 8 days since I made my last entry. The week has just flown with the start of school. Before I knew it, it was Wednesday and then Friday. The super good news is that I have been running for almost three weeks now. I think, two and a half weeks. I have come home from school and just put on my gear and gone out for between twenty and twenty five minutes. The first week was hell. And then the second week, which was the last week of the holidays was hard going. Last week I felt like I was making myself go, but also needing to go. And finally, today, it happened - I went, i climbed over heads to go running - and I feel AMAZING. I feel like i now have speed in my run, I feel lighter, even though i am not sure if i've lost any weight at all. I feel happier, chemically induced (serotonin, dopamine) no doubt, but I also feel more confident. I sort of feel the way i used to a couple of years ago. It is all heading in the right direction. All I need to do is just to k...

Yesterday I had too much coffee. I had an espresso, followed by two Americanos. This resulted in no sleep till around midnight. I don't think I am going to do that again. I just had coffee to keep my parents company anyway and after that I went to a cafe to write a letter. In long hand, with a fountain pen. I love doing that - writing long hand using a fountain pen. Today is Day 11, i think of running. I had one day I didn't run because of overdoing it, but already I can feel my fitness levels soaring and my situps no longer feel like I have no core. I just need to keep going over the next few days - till around mid Jan and it will all kick in the automatic running - it is already starting to do that. It was not THAT hard shoving myself out of the door at quarter past six this morning, into the frost. I have been starting to gen up on astronomy. The skies are beginning to look very interesting. If there is a clear night tonight I am going to head to a dark spot to do som...

Today's bird is the Great Tit, or Parus Major, subject of a hundred birdy geek memes since time began. Worn on T-shirts or hoodies, it is a play on the genus' name. I have one Great Tit at my feeder and unlike the smaller tits who take about five minutes to extract a single morsel - they jump from branch to branch, back and forth until they are sure that it is completely safe to sit on the feeder, grab a seed and scoot off somewhere safe to consume it, this Great Tit has great directness and determination. It alights on the tree and after a few seconds, it flies down to the feeder, take the sunflower seed and flies off. Oddly enough it has only been seen twice.  Maybe the offerings did not impress it. It has, of course, the most distinctive call - the tea-cher-tea-cher-tea-cher - which resounds, not only across woodlands, but also in films. As a birdsong extra it will appear in any period drama track. Sometimes it is too obvious and then it is replaced, unaccountably,...

Cyanistes caeruleus The Parae elicit much laughter from both adults and children alike - mostly because they are called Tits. I have been countless radio interviews where male presenters will be questioning me about the Big Garden Birdwatch and I will come to mentioning the Tits and they will then barely be able to suppress a smirk. It appears that the age which this occurs and then is never gotten over is 12. This year my class dissolved into laughter when I mentioned Tits - which they had never done before. What is so funny, I asked? You know... the word Tits... they offered helpfully. Yes, I replied, innocently, what about it? It means something else. Well, what does it mean? And they never got round to telling me what it meant. Ah yes. There used to be RSPB T-Shirts which could could buy for women, which said Parus Major on them - meaning Great Tit. You could have two Parus Majors which meant Great Tits. The birds nerds thought this was very amusing. What did I think? People sh...