Freezing out

It is absolutely freezing outside at the moment. The car iced up in just 2 and a half hours. I have just come home from book club. Our 150th meeting. We are all celebrating by going out for a meal on Saturday, and that is when we will do our vote on the best books we have read in those 150 meetings. The short list is long. Well, about 30-40 books. But if you think that there are well over 1000 in "The Book", then that is doing well. You will get the top ten on Sunday and then the top 3. And of course, our winner too.

Teaching today was fun. I had a ball, and I think the kids did too. So now I have met everyone I am teaching, and we are beginning to understand each other. Like the fact that I call the shots. However, a senior teacher was laughing when he told me it might be wise to get one of the kids to tell me when we were 10 minutes from the end of the lesson, as we all got so involved that we were late finishing and clearing up. Yes, indeed. I have 17 coming in tomorrow at lunch to finish making their bags. I think that is quite a good sign, as they are all volunteers, or rather, they all begged. AND I collected the laptop after school. Unfortunately I was in a rush, and completely forgot to ask the tech man how to log in away from school. Sigh. I will have to go back and find out tomorrow. Absolutely useless piece of metal when I can't get into it at all.

It appears that my year 7s (about 11-12 years old) have never used the sewing machines before. I refer to the pedal as an accelerator with my little boys. A stroke of genius, I feel. They tend to like sewing once they are called "boy racers". Unfortunately they did not get the concept of "steering" the material either. And here I was thinking they all knew what to do after 6 weeks. Do you know what happens when all the machines seize up in 2 minutes all at the same time? Chaos. Shrieks of outrage. They didn't know that the foot had to be lowered. I did my road runner impression as I zapped between the machines, hair falling down, hacking the tangled thread out of the bobbin casings, and one little cherub said..." Miss, you never stop moving". I think I am going to wear one of those pedometer things next term to see how many miles I do in a day. Or buy those shoes with wheels in them. Then collapse in a darkened room with a cold cloth over my eyes.

I wear anything with large pockets to work, so that the lethal things, like my scissors and roller cutters are never out for them to play with, and I see today that I now have a 2 inch slit in said pocket, so the scissors now dangle out of the bottom, attempting to carry out minor or major surgery on my legs as I walk. This is a trifle inconvenient, as the pockets also house my board markers, pens, pencils, extra bobbins, needles, thread and a zillion other essential items, which are now scattered through the school. Sigh. A fashion plate I am not.