oh my

Today I did a brave thing and looked after my friends' two kids, aged 2 and 4. Not for an hour two while she went to a doctors appointment or got her hair done, no, all day, from dawn to dusk. From morning porridge to bedtime stories and lights out, while parents were far away celebrating her 40th birthday with their third child, who is still a teensy baby.

I got here last night and did hand over with my other friend who had them yesterday, we did tag team over breakfast, and she left by 9.

What are my impressions of carer for a day?

- my legs and feet are sore! I usually sit on my bum all day, this involved a lot of standing, slow walking
- gee the shifts are long aren't they - from 6.30am to 7.30pm I was on active duty (the 2 year old has a nap, the four year old doesn't, and is curious, and can hike chairs around to get into cupboards, so even that 2 hour block of just one child needed supervision) and now after a glass of wine and shower I'm off to make the lunches for preschool tomorrow and pack their bags
- the day goes slow but has so much jam packed in. LIttle attention spans make for many activities. I think we did three separate sessions of drawing and painting at the table, made cubby houses, played in actual cubby houses, played in swings, went for a bush walk, explored the garden, had a picnic afternoon tea, read multitudes of stories, made pizzas, ate, did nappies and wet cloth changes ad nauseum, and ate just about every two hours - busy!
- kids are grubby and their storms roll in and blow over fast, they growl and laugh at their farts, they eat off the grottiest floor or fingers, they are fascinated by things, and sybling dynamics are dynamic and complex

Hats off kid caring mates, you do an amazing job to do this day after day!

howdy doody

Well howdy from the girl whose blog is a little dustry and cobwebby around the ears.

No excuse really, but trying to study this Semester while working and finishing oodles of extra curricular work related publications has taken the sparkle out of my typing fingers. Sad really.

So studying. What's that like? Well, I think Drew at Toothpaste for Dinner has summed it up nicely here except that while he was probably taking the piss, I'm thinking 'yah, bring it on'. Studying is well, very studious, involves lots of reading and writing. Very little sculpting of concepts in 3-D modelling clay. Very little diarama making or poster decorating or making macaroni necklaces in the style of ancient Egyptian Phaoroes. Very little spontaneous, or creative expression of any kind. And mores the shame really.

Which is probably why I've come to the decision to STOP DOING THAT KIND OF THING very shortly. To that end I am browsing a wide range of courses that I day dream will be more hands on and fun - faciltation/ therapyish/fine arts / design style courses for the most part. Mostly shortish (ie not full degrees), vocational, applied. And once I've finished this Masters I plan to do soemthing along those lines instead. Which, I know will mean more study, but hopefully studying something just for interests sake, not as a carefully chosen career building and save the world strategy will be more fun. All my dreams of 5 years or 10 years into teh future don't ivolve sitting at a desk all day writing reports, so I figure I better change something to get me moving towards the kind of stuff I think I might like to do.

But new ideas are tentative and a bit fragile in the wind, so be gentle with your comments, supportive or otherwise!

Apart from studying I am probably also a little less bloggy these days because I'm in a relationship with someone who I talk to pretty frequently, so lots of my gripes and observations get scattered out into the telephone ether rather than marching across the page here. Also, in a new relationship I feel like I don't want to jinx it or cheapen it by talking out it's details here, and yet to blog about my life and not mention it feels strange.

I have been doing a wine course lately and have found a few of the experiences there kind of funny, was thinking about sharing those with you, so stay tuned... I'll post about that next.