Being a terrible maths teacher

I refuse to have a session.
I then insist it is just 10 minutes.
I get all enthusiastic and write out the solution way too fast and am demonstrating, not teaching.
I use unusual words to describe what is meant to happen.
I make up rules like "If it isn't written down, it isn't maths."
I yawn.
I make myself a cup of tea.
I eat apple, which H hates, while he shows me what he's doing.

He tells me I go too fast.
He tells me I should be helping him.
He tells me I should be explaining better.
He want to do maths when I just want to do my own stuff online.
He wants to do maths after 11pm.
He won't let go graciously.

We argue.
I want to see very neat handwriting and carefully laid out lines of maths, one alteration per line.
He wants to hold the pen from the wrong end and do it all in his head and expect me to follow it.
He rattles off some numbers and I can't follow what question he is on, so he has to start again.

Packing up a badminton net and poles to send it to school

This has not been pretty.

After a bit I announced that I would do it on my own, with absolutely no interference from anyone else. I was not going to waste a single brain cell on untangling then re-untangling the net and strings. Or on explaining my reasoning.

Now it is very neatly and carefully stowed in a big sports bag. Each stringy part has its own plastic bag to keep it separate from the next stringy nightmare. I have said that only the most logical and talented person at school is to touch it and set it up.

It took me about 3 minutes. The arguing beforehand took longer.

Standing on the kitchen table - Photo of the day

That's better. I have removed the mountain of papers and camera equipment from the table, put a cloth on it and reclaimed the space. When I stand on it I have to bend my head over. The children used to be able to stand upright on it. When they were really small they had to reach up with their arms to touch the ceiling. Fun times as T likes to say.

I have become a font of all knowledge all of a sudden

Today I quoted the line 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' in the car to H on the way to school. He asked me how I knew it. From having it read out at my school when I was 15 or so.

Two nights ago we had some intensive Periodic Table learning. He asked me what various initials meant and I got a good many right. He was most impressed with me. I was impressed with his new passion.

That poster of the Periodic Table has been up on our wall in the kitchen since the first days of home education, gathering grease and dust and making the place feel home educational. I carefully cleaned it off and gave it to him on his sofa. I shared my wisdom from the other sofa.

It's very gratifying to find that this one poster has finally come in handy. It seemed important to me to have it there on my wall as a statement.

Here's a tip on family life: have 2 sofas. That's it. How did we manage for 16 years with just one sofa in the sitting room? Smaller children fit with one mother all together on one I suppose, all under one duvet, using both ends.

Badminton on the front lawn - Videos of artists talking

Badminton

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/inshaw-the-badminton-game-t03189

This used to be on a particular wall in the Tate. It was just there, I don't remember looking at it carefully ever. I just walked past it and liked it as I walked past. No trying hard.

We are back to playing badminton in the late afternoon when it is cloudy and there is no wind. The birds sing happily around us. The grass is slightly damp. Mainly I play in thick socks, just in case I stand on an acacia twig or a bird poop. It is out in nature after all.

Videos

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tateshots-artist-rooms-vija-celmins

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tate-britain-commission-phyllida-barlow

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tateshots-kiki-smith

I particularly enjoy watching and listening to people discussing what they are passionate about. It's all true, nothing made up or hard to understand, just how things are for them. I don't have to read between the lines.

Crash course on Adnan Al-Sayegh

5 min film by Wooden Films, 2007, 'A passage to exile'.

Audio of short poems in Arabic spoken by Adnan Al-Sayegh and in English by his translator Stephen Watts.

Footage of the threat delivered to him in public at a Poetry Festival in Basra 2006.

Both English and Arabic typed versions are given on his Facebook page. To find it, do a search using his name.

The English lines up neatly with the Arabic. So a word on line 2 in the Arabic will be somewhere on line 2 of the English. I love translators who make it easy for learners. Or rather poets who keep ideas within the boundaries of a line.

.....

After reading a little of his writing I get the feeling that he breathes in events and breathes out the words to react to them. He seems to have no barriers which dam up and hold onto thoughts and feelings.

Yet is this true? What is still held back, frozen beneath the surface? In any case, living or rather getting older brings an endless series of events and changes to process. Why am I even asking that question?

...

I did some stressing about the seminar with Adnan Al-Sayegh I want to go to. My son H wisely and wittily said I should learn the Arabic phrase for 'I don't speak Arabic' just in case I get spoken to in Arabic and haven't a clue what I have been asked. How well he knows me. Does this count as home ed or just life late at night in our kitchen? They are the same thing.

لا أستطيع أن أتكلم العربية حتى الآن

School's out - sense of freedom - Work begins

Even though I went to school and left at 18 I don't remember this incredible sense of freedom that I'm getting as a parent.

I am out of The System which I have feared and had to deal with without showing my fear for so many years. Even when the system is as good and thoughtful and well-meaning as possible, it is still a place of control and fear. Maybe it's just me, but even so, what a difference!

I feel as if we are a family again. I am a parent again. I hadn't been aware of how much I'd lost since 2000.

The home education of H continues in its highly autonomous way. That's just our household and goes on through the seasons.

T starts work tomorrow morning, so is not making the move to uni for a year. That makes it feel like Christmas, all of us still here under one roof, putting beds together, doing things to the MG. Which has just given off pretty noxious exhaust, I even smelt it at my desk at the far side of the kitchen... so much for lyrical moments!

The sweetest sight

...is seeing people lying and chatting on the bouncy castle in the garden. My parents will be along later to see this too.

The right moment

It's funny how telling someone something at the wrong moment can make them nearly froth at the mouth. If you catch the right moment they are glad to have something simple pointed out to them.

So a reminder about internet food shopping was just the thing for my father today. And I was glad to be reminded that I like washing up and that it was time for this job after the shared lunch at the Wallingford Quaker Meeting. We worked and chatted in the kitchen and had a lovely time.

H likes to be told that it is time to get up and earn his early waking money. T told us just now that he was on the train back to Didcot, so that set in motion all the arrangements to meet him at the station and go for a pizza.

Face-lighty-up type smile

Half an hour ago H came to the kitchen and said he didn't feel well, then went to his room.

After 2 hot water bottles by his feet, the duvet pulled up to his eye brows, the baby white polar bear put on the pillow next to him and his lap top brought close...he beamed at me.

It sounds like teenager-itis, a chill and or all-too-much-all-of-a-sudden-itis. Or all three at once.

I forgot to mention the tv beeper and a new pair of warm socks. They are part of our medicine cupboard round here. Slow medicine is what we do.

Next to me I have a mug of bright orange vitamin C to boost me up just in case there is a lurgy going around.

You don't have to brush all your teeth...

Just the ones you want to keep!!!

This is my new mantra to encourage better and more frequent toothbrushing. T found it on the web, spoke it out loud to me and I have been over-using it ever since.

Clearing the table = making art

T and I accused each other of piling all our stuff on the kitchen table. So we gradually cleared it off! What a difference now I have polished it and put a new table cloth on it.

I forget how every corner of our house needs frequent and regular clearing off, polishing and creative re-arranging. It is a permanent set of duties. I am ok with laundry, washing up and hanging up my coat, but there is soooo much more to it than that.

My grandmother Raymonde used to take the fallen leaves off the low bushes as she walked slowly in one of her care homes. So even then she was re-creating order as she went about her business of being 80+.

The cat licks herself clean often, it never stops.

I feel I must not remove old decorations from the top shelf of our dresser because: some one gave me the wooden item, someone else gave T the cards, all guilt of one form and another. Actually it is perhaps ok to make a new display every month or season.

Me, territorial???

I looked out of the kitchen window and saw that my husband S had put his cycle helmet on the roof of my car. I made a big shout of 'Nooooo!' and went out to put it on a nearby hedge.

Is this the difference between people who have a sibling and an only child? I regard taking someone else's territory as an act of war, but S presumably just thinks the roof of someone else's car is a convenient close site for his helmet.

How easily people get in a lather!

Ball of Wool and The Talk

I offered a ball of black wool to our visiting black cat today. Her eyes lit up and her ears focused forwards immediately. She bit right into it a few times and grabbed it with her front paws, kicking with her back paws. One happy hunting cat! That was a first for her, I could tell.

Other news, I am having many versions of The Talk, we have covered most topics now, but it is the one topic whch never dies, so I expect to learn a lot over the next few years/decades. I have realised that I am bisexual when it comes to cats, but strictly monogamous. One cat is enough in my life, but male/female makes no difference, I just love the current one's personality, fluffiness, ways, bad habits etc.

I also discovered that syphilis is rife, hmm, that is a change from 30 years ago. Off to google when I can summon up the interest. This whole topic is more medical than ethical or psychological. Actually, is it even true? Maybe I am being told all sorts of tall tales and believing them all.

I am fighting back with a new love of tadpoles. There must be 100 in my tiny pond. They move, but on the spot. They have not yet moved away from their bobbles.

Waiting for instructions

Earlier I was down at the cafe in Sainsbury's reading, knitting, sewing together some knitted squares and drinking hot chocolate. I had collected the dry cleaning and bought essential supplies of pizza. I used my mobile to find out an eta for T. It turned out to be much later on!

I spotted a tiny girl trotting off on her own away from her parents and into the cafe. I pointed to show the father where she was and in which direction she was heading.

Then I had time to kill back at home before the second attempt at collecting T from the station. So I have been listening to Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd. It is like having miniature holidays here and there, grabbing chances. Hot tea and delicious curry, then more sewing.

It is my reward and peace between all the other momentous events and sorrows online and elsewhere.

Brilliant idea

I was having a chat with my mother about all the self care which goes out of the window from 1st December onwards each year, only to be picked up again very gradually during the January.

I shall make myself an Advent Calendar based on all the actions which are of direct benefit to myself for that month. I would need a row of actions across the top and a list of days down the left hand side.

I would put boxes to fill in because I read that if people fill in a box rather than simply write a tick it has greater power. Maybe they are more keen to do the work of completely filling in the shape and so are correspondingly more keen to do the task required first.

The boxes could even be stars or crowns to beinkeeping with the season....

Embarrassing moments

T and I had a long discussion this evening.

After the actual discussion we got on to embarrassing moments from my past:

Dumping a holdall full of books at Victoria Coach Station on the ground beside the desk of the member of staff who, rightly, had refused to guard it until my mother arrived to pick it up. I had to go on with my journey for some reason. I have never stropped in public at a complete stranger before or since. It was back in the days of bomb scares, 1980's, so unaccompanied luggage was a no-no. I can't remember any comment at all from people around me, or from my mother who did get the bag from where I had left it.

Literally stamping my foot on the ground in fury at ds2 at home time at his primary school. The whole of the school and parents were in the playground at the end of the day and there was that same silence from the onlookers!

Monopoly - every game is different

We are back in a playing Monopoly phase. It is laid out on our kitchen table permanently.

This evening we had a rerun of the 'but you must show everyone else the Community Chest card for long enough for us all to read the details' argument. I am the one who gets aggrieved if I can't read it!

Then we had the 'the game WILL stop at 9.30' statement from S.

We had a clash over no one else wanting to hear me explain how my very interesting variation on Free Parking and Go To Jail affected the choices players made.......zzzzz

Finally we agreed to just pull the rest of the crackers and a wit created a last fake one out of two ends put together. H and I fell for that one.

So all's well, that ends well. If your family can survive Monopoly, then it gets a medal.

Polar bear on my desk

I brought home a mother and a baby polar bear a couple of weeks ago. They were instantly adopted by T and H. The big one has been sitting at the table with us and just now is taking up all the space on my desk in the kitchen.

It is nearly time for me to start really creating mid winter chaos. I will shift my piles of paperwork and "stuff" to make way for my parents' visit tomorrow. Then more stuff will be shifted out of the way to allow for the cards to be displayed. All the laundry needs to be hidden too. My parents are shocked at clothes drying in our kitchen, so I hide it all.

H would like the drawing room to be a Christmas room and I like the idea of us each having our own tree to decorate.

It feels as if it might snow, the sky was an eerie grey and there was just-about-sleet on the car windscreen earlier. My hands are about to get all dry and my hair will be full of static. Time to feed the birds and put water out for them.

We have just moved the bear back to his place at the head of the table. He needed a coat so T and I put his furry arms in the arm holes and did up the zip. Very cute!

S has some books for his team, so it looks as if he is starting his own book group!

Busy crashing

I finally settled down to do some research for the Amnesty Christmas Tree I am decorating for the Tree Festival at our village church.

There is a certain irony in this. Were I not trying to do a PR job via a tree, I would be doing some actual letter writing. I have already promised 5 letters for the Amnesty USA Write-a-thon happening right now. There are 3 new actions for Bahrain too. I am half way through reading the BICI report, but had to take a break when I found it too dense. So that is on hold too.

Last night I was so exhausted I lay on the sofa for 6 hours. I spoke and moved my hands a bit as gestures to go with the speech, but that was it. No eye opening or laundry, washing up, cooking, tidying or general organizing and communicating with others operations.

The lesson I draw from this is that it is a good thing different people are full of energy at different times. Overall it will balance out. If sofa time is needed then so be it.

I did manage to light a log fire though....and collect a pillow and duvet.