cats are crazy creatures

Monday evenings are fun.

Its been a busy day at work. I used to love being a teacher, but today... not so much. I want to be a good teacher. This I know I'm good at. When did this include strategic management of subjects and piles of paperwork?! rubbish.

This calls for..... Pizza wine and TV!!!! ok so i did nearly 2hrs of work first. and now i reside in the sinfully happy world of duvets, Gok wan and sleeping cats. Soon I shall head to sleep and hope tmrw proves to me that being a good teacher is good enough.

Click my heels together 3 times, they sparked a little but nothing happened. There's no place like NQT, there's no place like NQT.....

INTI

How metre sticks have shrunk.

I have discovered today that my perception of space (and probably time) seems warped in my old age.

Today after eating a hearty roast dinner with Steph, where in we had roast ham and pigs in blankets, we capped off this feast with the traditional dinner relax, and watched the posieden adventure.

This is where the discussion of space and measure was started. When Mrs Rosen swims through the passage to the engine room we mused as to what 35ft looked like, as i said i was able to hold my breath for a whole length of 25m swimming pool so would have been able to do the passage no problem. We mused as to how big 35ft was and i said "well there are 3 ft in a metre" causing Steph to gafaw and mime the length of a metre. I then said a metre was much bigger and was "this big" ( visual mime here... not good for writing purposes i realise, but i mimed bigger....) Hilarity ensued and we ended up using string and tape measures to find out how wrong I was. It turns out i think a metre was 135cm.

I was wrong, and i remarked how metre sticks had shrunk these days and Steph agreed.

Too many pigs in blankets were consumed for lunch methinks.... hmmmm.

Apologies for this rather strange insight into my life.

I liked it though... it made me giggle!

INTI

DISCLAIMER

It would appear that the high pressure nature of yesterday got to me.

I would like to sincerely apologise for the exceptionally bad spelling and writing in yesterdays blog.

I am ashamed.

INTI

i need a ha ha ha hideaway!

The evening of wine tasting has arrived. STOP. I write to you from a secret hideaway STOP. I am in mis this y attic STOP. I have supplies STOP. I have made pork and apple casserole STOP. this is now in my stomach STOP. I also have guiness STOP. and crisps STOP. I wonder if this is how fugatives feel?!!!!

So far the lunacy of what i am doing has not taken over. Well maybe a little. I will now tell the tale:

I sped home from school knowing full well that i have 500g of diced pork in the fridge to cook before it went off.... challenge anneka prevailed... "laura has 45 mins to safely cook dinner and set up operation hide from wine tasting man!! will she do it?! who knows?! stay tuned!!! SO i got in and set up the house> heating >lights> note on door apologising for having to go out, please level contact details etc> then i started cooking with a head torch on. I must say i have truly created a great pork and apple casserole under such high pressure situations!

So at 7pm i brought everything up to the attic put on the tv and sat waiting for THE KNOCK.

It never came.

At 7:30 i got a phone call on house phone which i didn;t answer.

&:40 cama and went... no knock....

At 7:45 i got a succession of at least 5 phone calls whcih i didn't answer..... hmmmm me thinks creeepo wine man is cross??!

Maybe... but i'm happy up here now... who cares if wino doesn;t wanna come play.... HELL not me thank you!

So now I sit in PJs planning on sleep in the near future... hmmmm.

INTI

Hi all!!

I've had a particularly nutso few days so thought i'd share it all with you.

On friday last week i spent a lovely evening in with the lovely miss stephanie, where in we acted like total slobs and ate souldfood and watched tv. I realise this sounds dull, but i luuuurve the slobtime on a friday. Now sould food is supposed to make you happy, however i overindulged. it would appear that you can seriously damage yourself with mashed potato. i consumed probably the recomended amount of mash for a family of 7 obese elephants, and was very very ill for most of friday night and saturday day! poor Steph had to put up with my constant moans about poorly belly. glad to say this has all now passed (took awhile tho.... sorry too much info probably!)

Next I have somehow managed to agree to a wine tasting visit to my house on thursday evening. Wow i hear you all cry... well yes, if it weren't one man two glasses and little old me. I am allowed to invite as many people as i want however i have discovered i have far too many people in my life who currently a. don;t like wine, b. can't come over c.have given up wine for a while d.are non reachable. This has left me with the sad state of affairs whereby tomorrow night i will be hiding in my attic pretending i am not home as mr wine tasting man knocks on my door! I feel spending the evening drinking wine in my house with a complete stranger is a really really bad idea... so i am doing what i do best.... Hiding!!

I will let you know how this goes!

sleep time now.

INTI

Long hours of darkness

Hello all!

It has been pointed out to me that i have been a bit neglectful recently of many things and my blog is one of them. So here i am in these long evenings of darkness and heating returning to my blog! woo hoo! I can't believe its been well over a year since i first wrote on my blog!

I thought I'd take this opportunity to look back at my blog and note the major changes.

In this past year many things have changed, although reading my blog from this time last year, it kinda seems many things have not... Main things in my life that are different are i have far more work at school. I now have a beautiful girlfriend who is clever, slengthy and makes me smile even on my darkest days. I have a beautiful little Niece, called Isobel, who is now 2 months old. I also now have one of the traveling three amigos back from the wilds of the world. Pacamama returned and since her return has been away again... crazy.. glad to have her back again tho!

Other than that, many things have remained the same. This time last year I had been on half term for 3 days and spent them all under a duvet watching tv... same has nearly happened this year too! who said teachers are boring! lol.

And so here i sit at stupid o clock on the sunday before it all begins again, wondering where my half term went.

The half term week of a teacher in factoids:

2 pumkins carved
too many hours slept
over 25 cups of tea drunk
100s of sweetie products eaten
12 times i laughed
4 times i cried
5 hours of work done
35 hours more work i should have done
4 cats i spent time with
1 friend i caught up with
4 relatives i caught up with
1 girlfriend i spent a full weekday with! woo hoo!
100s of pounds i pilfered in the name of entertainment
100s of pounds stephanie won during the same week
1 injured foot i gained while manically tidying for parents
6 piles of cat sick cleaned
1 stomach worm (from cat) disposed of with aforementioned sick
1 panic phone call to vets
12 loads of washing
7 moans about the weather
5 times i visited the same clothes shop but still bought nothing
2 bum cheeks hanging out of a gay man's jeans spotted in a huddersfield cafe
6 cat induced scratches on my wrists... honest guv
8 bags of clothes given to charity
4 rodent kill brought in by cats (hmmmm... now about that stomach worm....)
5 times i have lied about the amount of work i have to do
50 times i've moaned about the work i have to do
23 'other' jobs i've done instead of doing school work.
1 lamp thrown out
1 blind thrown out
3 bookshelves resigned to the cellar (any takers?)
1 surf board finally packed away for the winter
£93 spent on 3 days shopping... not sure how that happened.. thank goodness for ma and pa!
7 days spent doing nothing productive!!

so now i shall fall into a pre panic sleep and have nightmares of unresponsive children and stomach tapeworms killing me in my sleep!!!

Job swap anyone?!

INTI x

Red team on the stairs!

Isn't it interesting that rest actually seems to force me to do more in a week than i would normally? Must be that inherent British gene that forces all us good old Brits to go hell for leather when given extra holiday... much like the endless queues that form in B&Q on a bank holiday weekend!

So here i sit, having just eaten a bacon and mushroom omelet, drinking a huge cup of tea out of a big yellow mug, suddenly realising its thursday and i feel i've achieved nothing this halfterm but having been on many adventures. As a result I will have to break this blog up into manageable chunks with this over view at the start.

I pride myself on if not adopting a more european attitude to life, at least trying to. However this week I have been particualrly British and done all those favourite British pasttimes:
1. Had a picnic
2. Sun bathed without suncreme and burnt to a crisp
3. had an ice cream from a van
4. Visited the seaside and stood on the beach shivering in a good northern wind wearing only a short sleved shirt
5. Potted up vegetable plants with pride
6. Had a BBQ wherein i cooked far too much food, became obsessed with it "not being hot enough", and burnt everything to a crisp


ADVENTURES PART 1
On Saturday I went with Stephanie to spend a whole day being a big kid. Now as I type this i realise that quite a lot of what i did was not very child like, but the overall theme of the day felt very kiddie. To start with we went for a bit of a wander around and had a beer (at 12.01... no drinking before 12.00pm) then played on games machines. After such fun we went and got a 99 with flake and strawberry sauce from an icecream van. While eating these we browsed round shops and danced to dirty dancing music like idiots. This kid day out was then topped off with a visit to LAserquest. Now please realise when i did this... Saturday. Saturday afternoon. Staturday afternoon on the first day of half term. Saturday afternoon on the first day of half term in laserquest.

Arriving in laserquest we were confronted by that wonderful mix of screaming child, fried food smell and children clutching plastic cups of toxic coloured slush and attempting to drink said slush through a straw resulting in puckered faces and iminent burst blood vessels. Ah the bliss. We registered and paid and waited for the call. We watched the screen results of the current game flashing across a huge progector scrren at one side of the waiting area and discussed the merit of the gamer names. I quickly decided I didn't wanna be on the yellow team... elf goblin, wizard, warlock. This style of fantasy really ain't my bag... I liked the look of red team... shadow, stealth, hammer etc. yup!

The siren went off and in we went followed by obnoxious teenagers, small 5 year olds and their 'trying to be cool' parents. At this point the teachwer in me reared its ugly head as the game instructor tried to explain the rules of the game while all the teenagers next to us made comments under their breath and talked constantly. GRRRRR. I whispered to Steph that if i had been him i would have said "Hi, .........(pause)....... did you want to play?......(pause) ..... oh really well you don't seem like it, cos if you do you'll shut it now. Thank you!" Hmmmm. Well we were then divided up into teams and we were both put with 5 small 6 year olds and thier asscosiated parents! formidable team!

After packing up Stpeh and I headed out into the arena first and Steph showed her true stealthy talent by disapeering and attacking a base even before anyone else found her. I (in my pure lack of unagressive talent) tried to hide but stupidly forgot that I have two huge flashing lights on each shoulder. I was quckly found by spotty teenagers and shot. This quickly became the norm. Found a hiding spot, shot a few kids, got shot myself. I rapidly became frustrated with this and at one point stomped about the arena like a big kid muttering "stupid game". This wa compounded by the fact the yellow team (made up of afforementioned sniggering teenagers) took to the ramp and decided to occupy the bridge. This then meant if you went up the ramp you got shot, if you walked anywhere in the open you got shot and in certain hiding spaces you got shot. I however took this on the chin and responded by picking on the players i could hit. Small 6 and 7 year olds who were mostly bewildered by the whole experience. I'm proud to say I very regularly shot them in the back and gained my points that way! hahaha!

As the game was over we headed out to discover that Steph had trully excelled and called on her military heritage and manged to rank 3 out of 35! I however made it to the dizy heights of 15th... At least it was in top half!! My stats sheet informed me that I hit others 45 times and got hit 40 times. Basically I sucked at laserquest.

Tune in for more later!....

INTI x

landlocked pirate finds keyboard shock!

Morning all!

Hope those of you out there in your various corners are keeping well and enjoying your varying degrees of temperature and precipitation... (how very british to talk about the weather!)

Well over here in landlocked west yokshire, you find me sitting under a duvet with a stinking cold. First proper one i can remember in a while. There was of course that initial panic on tuesday when had a temperature and constant sneezing bout, that I had infact got Swine flu. Dilegently i reached for the government advice leaflet on swine flu, (which has been pointed out to me by Abi, appears to be the Avian Flu leaflet in disguise... i pointed out that probably some little civil servant used the 'find and replace' feature in word... "find 'avian'...replace with 'swine'... ok. There job done for the day!" man i want his job!") It tuns out i probably have a cold, but am taking all necassary precautions... bar wearing a facemask. I feel this only opens me up to ridicule from an already unbearably sarcastic Year 6 class!

And talking of them....
This week has been SATS week for my lovely year 6s. Here is the week in facts and figures:
9 papers,
78 children,
nearly 7 hours of tests,
24 discarded sealed plastic wallets,
6 panicattaks,
2 boxes of tissues,
100 pencils,
12 pencil sharpeners,
5 rubbers,
12 adults,
4 fights...2 serious pull apart jobs,
25 bags of multipack crisps.
134 times i squealed with frustraion at answers children were putting,
12 2 ltr bottles of fizzy drink,
3 cans of redbull,
5 sausage sandwiches,
14 times i shouted at children
2 giddy dances i did over the course of the week!

Its been a fun week... think the children have done ok... we'll just have to wait and see. Won't find out til july.

In other news... Saw wolverine this week. I love Xmen movies! woo hoo! superheroes rock! Wolverine is a great film, and one perfect for when you can't d anything due to lack of breathing ability and neccisity to carry tissues around everywhere!

Was hoping to get out on the bike this weekend. Was gonna join Abi for a mini ride yesterday as she now has her cannondale too, but the weather and cold defeated that plan. Am hoping cold will subside enough so i can ride to school this week. Starting to feel a bit lazy and don't like it!

Right... Time to shake a leg and show this cold who is boss! ooo and go do my food shopping from local businesses as Sainsburys is shut... I'm really excited to go to a greengrocers, butchers and a deli! how cool! :)

Laters crew...
INTI

Snow man capers...

Ok so i have really outdone myself this afternoon on the boredom front. I faced boredom and laughed in its face!!!

At 1230 i headed over to Louisa's house and met abi, wherein we made a snow man complete with space man hat and snow dog. The snow dog had even pooed little brown lumps!! tee hee!!


This burst of kidness was dully rounded off with a snowball fight. Now I suck at snowball fights generally, and even more so when i wear the wetsuit gloves. They tend to make my already tragically girly throws into horrific throws at the floor, or at least 3 foot wide of a target... jeez. needless to say i was pelted with snow and laughed at alot. hmmm

After a small coffee on return to the house I decided enough was enough and i'd show my neighbours just how much of a geek i was, by building a HUGE snowman on our shared field/grass patch. He took me about an hour and a half, got me stared at many times and had me using every tool known to man to shape him right, But here he is in all his 5'4" glory!!!


He has not yet been named, and names are more than welcome! I am now going to go make a cup of tea and thaw out a bit before making bangers and mash to celebrate my achievements!

HURRAH!

INTI

Snow days and inadequate building materials

Wow... Been a long time since i blogged! Gonna try and get back into it, as reading back over previous posts has been pretty good fun.

So instead of trying to recap over the past 6 weeks blog hole, I shall merely state current conditions. Current conditions are snow filled! Really really really snow filled.

This morning I leaped out of bed as I spied that really weird light that you get through curtains when there has been a snow fall. I got dressed and squealed with delight as i saw at least 2 inches of snow all quietly settled outside. Why does snow incite so much excitement?! I really hope i never get bored of it!

I got myself ready and put sensible head on for five minutes. I made an adventure bag! Now adventure bags of youth were a great thing and I have had many a conversation about what was in them with friends. I think mine had string and a pottery tortoise and probably some bread. These are all of course essential items for any small person adventure! However, grown up adventure bags have to be a little bit more sensible... kind of. My adventure bag today consisted of a blanket, some chocolate, some warm water, a pair of socks, a scarf and a plastic bag. I feel these covered all eventualities. So with adventure bag packed and put in car, I prepared for the drive to work. This was short lived as I then recieved the GOLDEN TEXT! 'school is shut-stay at home' OH YES!!! snow day!!

So I ran inside, and got my snow building gloves on (these live a double life as wetsuit gloves during the summer) and prepared for snowman building. I fully intended to beat the greatness that was my snowman of last year (complete with legs and arms!... proper walking in the air material!) However this joy was short lived, as i discovered that despite the HUGE snowfall and the 3 or 4 inches that had settled. It was woefully inadequate in the building material department. It just fell apart. BOOOOOOOOOO. So I decided to go for a walk in the snow and then tuck up for the day with some tea and daytime TV. Occasionally I go out to remind myslef how exciting the snow is, but here is where being a teacher on snow day falls down: everyone else is at work! I have no-one to play with! sucky suckyness. Hmmm. Maybe i should try and find a way to visit all those people near me who have to work, so i can spread a little of the snow joy around!?

Did I mention I love the snow. I love kicking through it like autumn leaves. I love the silence you get, especially at 630am, when no-one else has really made it out, and you stand in the street surrounded by smooth expanses of white fun. How i don't throw myself down and make snow angels is beyond me! I love looking up into the air and watching snowflakes getting closer and closer and then rushing past my eyes like giddy kids chasing each other in the payground. Snow generally makes me want to be around children... i get very jealous of my friends who have kids when it snows. Earlier I walked up to Co-op to get some food, and saw so many dad and son combinations all having giddy giggly whooping fun in the snow. Sentimantal i know but these things are what real happiness is made from, similar to babies giggles and contenteted sighs, all of which should be bottled!

BAck to my day of nothingness... So far since 6am, I have only played in the snow, done some shopping and watched TV. Am very excited tho as In the Night Garden is about to start on BBC2!

In the night garden rocks! In this episode Makka Pakka is cleaning the pontipines faces! Now to me this would have been a very tricky task as The pontipines are only about the size of an acorn and Makka Pakka is about 4 ft! His sponge is the same size as the pontipines house! I feel this programme is wasted on the toddlers of today. After discussions with friends who legitimately watch In the Night Garden with their children I have discovered interesting themes running throught the night garden: First, Makka Pakka clearly has OCD- he washes and stacks every stone he sees., Secondly, Upsy Daisy is clearly attention seeking and should not be encouraged. Thirdly the Pontipines are a very strange family who seem to be able to fit 2 adults and 10 children in what appears to be a 2 bedroom semi detached house, and only speak in farting noises.... draw your own conclusions.

I just love all the names, and I like the fact that i now know all the names of the characters. I think i most like Makka Pakka, although I do like iggle piggle cos he has the best name! :)

Ok enough of this madness for now. I shall try and be productive for a bit and reorganise my SATs timetable for this week. I'm sure the little kiddies all think they're getting out of having to do practice SATS by school being closed... alas no... just means full days of tests, rather than half days... Sorry kids!!! :)

Ok i shall leave you with pictures i have hastily taken this morning.

LAters
INTI