Twenty minute blog

Migration, Phase I

Goodbye sis!

Yesterday we began the half term of school. It was really interesting to get everyone back and into the saddle again. There was gardening and looking at handbells and sorting tunes out - and there was maths and studying the eye and today there will be cooking. Life is so busy in our little school.

It always astonishes me, yes I know we work to the bone, but how much breadth and variety the curriculum allows a child to do and how much teachers are asked to do. We cook and bake and knit and sew and math and literature - the kids do woodwork and games and German - it is really a rich fabric of life we have and it is something which I never take for granted.

As the weeks have passed, where I felt exhausted in the first half term, I feel like I'm getting my mojo back. The first half term is all about finding your sealegs. Getting used to the rhythms of the years, seeing how much the children are able to learn, checking things out, and then the rigging is sorted and the tacking is done and from about the second half of the first term it feels like we are now catching the wind and away.

There is so much to be done in this term, so it is just as well.

In the meantime, Ma and Pa will be here and I can't wait. They will be bringing Aurelia and she will be away fro home for over a month. So I don't know how she is going to cope. However I am looking forward to having her and pretending I have a daughter.

Ghin is feeling better so he'll be back to school. I dropped into see Emma yesterday and plans were once again reformed and remade for travel. It is always good to dream.

It was so lovely, yesterday Oisin told me that he was thinking of designing a new clothing range. He showed me a sketch. It appears to be something of cross between Japanese anime and active Parkour wear. It sounds really good. Never have I ever wanted to be about the clothes, but it surpises me even more than Oisin who has never BEEN interested in clothes has suddenly developed an interest in it. I should let him know Mama sews. And she is very good at it.

She could show him how to do it! Yes!

I went for my run yesterday in the rain - running first thing makes all the difference, although it is hard on my joints I have discovered. I need to be careful. Not for too long. No gardening yesterday as I cleaned Ma's house instead. It is now all ready for her. Can't wait for them to arrive in. I'll probably end up staying the night with them.

I need to ask Ghin where my iPad is. Sigh. He may know.

Well, what else is there to say? I am now going to nail down the day. I was too tired after doing work at Ma's, then the laundry back home to do very much else. But things are now back to normal. As normal as they will ever be.

I am currently reading Homer's The Odyssey and it is fascinating. After all these years to return to it and to now be so familiar with the storyline, the characters in the stories, the archetypes, the gods and goddesses. It is fascinating the role of the male/female as well - women are really relegated to the soul force world where things inspire or serve and the male is very much the active will force. It is also interesting how involved the gods are in the world of humans. It was astonishing to me to realise that Athene was with Telemachus all the way really in his own quest and that she was very much looking after Odysseus. It was also astonishing how the desire to know more, to wish for more knowledge, compelled people to sacrifice so many animals as well as to encounter the divine so much. When I see us today and how much we have achieved by way of knowing, especially on social media, it seems more like a curse. The seems like we are plagued too much by knowing, like to has almost driven us mad. Perhaps madness is a human affliction - and I mean madness as in the inability to reasonably deal with our emotions. Whether it is to suppress them or to be driven mad by them.

When I think about my own journey with emotions, it seems strange to say that these forces are now in abeyance. I hesitate to say this because I may well be tested, but in line with nothing being able to truly surprise me anymore, one of these side effects is to no longer overly react to the stupidity or provocation of people. This doesn't mean that I don't get what I need to done, I just do it with a lot less drama. There may be a modicum of drama involved, but only a teeny-tiny bit. Much less than what used to be. I think that teaching has also made me more in control of my feelings. There has been so much of teaching in my own art of letting go.

Oh man, it is REALLY raining now. I'll still go out for the run, but its great I found my Mac. It is so nice to be back in the running routine again. OK, I need to get cracking on school today. Can't wait.