The Walking Week!

Little Z and I have been very healthy this week:

On Monday we walked about 3 miles from near to Little Z's school (where we parked our car after dropping Big J off at Nursery) to Shirley Library and back.

On Tuesday, as the weather was supposed to be the best we have had for a long time, we drove to Bournemouth and walked 1.5 miles along the seafront from Bournemouth Pier to Boscombe Pier. We then got the train back as it was too hot to walk, stopped in a cafe for a healthy lunch and then went to the beach!

On Wednesday, we walked about 4.5 miles from home to Shirley and back.

Having read Seany's post on his trip to "the pictures", I decided it was about time I went to the cinema too, so on Thursday, feeling tired and not wanting to walk anywhere, I surprised Little Z by taking her to the Odean Cinema at Leisure World to see Shrek the Third. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. I really wanted to go to see Harry Potter, but although I know some poeple have taken their children to see it, I know Little Z would be frightened by it and would either want to leave part the way through the film, would hide her eyes for the whole thing or would not sleep for weeks! I will probably wait for that to come out on DVD unless I can get a babysitter so Larry and I can go together to watch it.

Today we are preparing for our trip to Bridgwater in Somerset to see Larry's family. His mum turns 60 on Saturday so we are all getting together to make it a special birthday for her. I am not looking forward to it very much as lots of family invariably means lots of bickering and petty arguments and lots of diapproving looks about the way people choose to live their lives.

After that the plan is to take the campervan off to North Devon for a few nights. Not sure where we are going to stay yet, but I am looking forward to the four of us spending some good quality family time together.

We will enjoy ourselves no matter what the weather does!

Snow Way!

My children never fail to surprise me with their innovation. They can be so creative when it comes to play and I love to listen to them making up their own games. This morning they were playing so nicely together that I decided to relax on the sofa for a while as I have been out for 2 nights running now, which I never do, so I was exhausted.

The children played in the conservatory and I asked them to close the sliding patio door to the conservatory as Little Z has a very loud voice. I left them to play. Alarm bells only started ringing when I saw Big J walk past the conservatory door with an empty bean bag cover.

They had created their own winter wonderland. They enjoyed shovelling it into buckets and pouring it into other toys and onto the furniture. They had "snow" fights and made snow angels. They had a lot of fun until I asked them how they were planning to clean it all up.



Now, here's a funny thing, you know, I am not sure they actually had planned to clean up. When I asked Little Z what she was thinking when she tipped all the beans out of the beanbag and who she thought would clean it all up, she said she thought dad would do it. Actually she was half right. After working a night shift and a day shift with no break in between, Larry came home and insisted, despite my protests, on clearing up all the mess. I helped. The children didn't help. The children now have to pay the consequences, which for Little Z means helping to tidy our bedroom (her own decision) which needs a good sort out. Big J is more difficult as it has to be something he understands. I think Big J will have no DVDs for today as we will not have time to put them on for him, being so busy tidying up.

I hope that is the last snow we will see until winter!

Strut Your Stuff for Charity

At the end of last week, a friend of mine invited me to a charity shop fashion show she had organised at her church in aid of Naomi House. Anyone who knows me knows that I hardly ever go out socially and usually stay at home with the family. However, I thought it sounded like fun and decided to go. Little Z said she would like to model something on the catwalk, so we went shopping. I was very impressed with what I managed to buy:



The first outfit she wore was a French Designer Dress (actually, I don't know if it was designer, but it makes it sound better!) It cost £1.49.

The pink trousers were originally from H&M and the top originally from Next. I bought them for £99p and £1.99. So the whole lot came to less than £5.

Little Z enjoyed herself on the catwalk, she got her feet massaged by another of our friends who is a qualified reflexologist and she also managed to win £5 for being voted "Most Fashionable"!

We all had fun and most importantly my friend raised a lot of money for charity!

Leaving School

This week has been very busy, although I have not done any supply at all.

Little Z has left infant school and will be going into Year 3 in September, so I bought cards and gifts for her teacher and LSA. I did not buy a gift for her headteacher, (I refer you to an earlier post!). Buying gifts for teachers, especially as Little Z's teacher is retiring, is difficult. I try to find something which they will not just put onto the car boot sale the following weekend, yet do not want to spend a lot of money. I am afraid I decided to buy chocs for the LSA and found a lovely gift book for the teacher. Little Z also painted them a mug each and put a message on the bottom. I think they liked the gifts, although you can never tell, as they are hardly likely to say, "I am afraid you can take these gifts back, because I just don't like them. What were you thinking?"

Now we have six weeks ahead of us with no getting up early to take Little Z to school. I am looking forward to spending some quality time with her while Big J is at nursery.

And relax...

It's a Dance

I would just like to say, to Little Z.

Larry & I went to see her perform in the Highfield School of Dance Summer Show at Cantell School on Sunday and we thoroughly enjoyed it. She was a field mouse in the story of "Snow White and the Eleven Dwarves.

Although we have to pay out a lot of money for extra rehearsals, costume hire etc., it is worth it when we see the enjoyment she gets out of performing. I admire the way she dances on the stage in front of hundreds of people without any sign of being nervous.

I am now saving for the next show!

A Bad Day continued...

I thought the day had been fairly bad so far, having spent most of it sorting out the PayPal transaction I had not made and getting the bank to do some giving rather than their usual taking! I can't say it got worse, but it didn't get better.

Little Z had had a dressing up day at school. They were having a garden party and had been asked to dress up as "anything to do with the garden". Little Z had gone as a garden gnome. She was very happy as we collected her from school and was excited as her best friend, Little M, was coming to play at our house and stay for tea. They had fun playing dressing-up and painting mugs and after dinner the girls and Big J went out into the garden to play on the swing, slide and trampoline. As we have bark down instead of grass in the garden, it didn't matter that the weather had been wet, because they weren't going to get muddy.

What I didn't know is that we'd had a recent visit (probably several) to our garden by a fox or a cat (probably both) leaving deposits of something which could not be seen because it was all the same colour as the bark. So, in addition to having it stuck to the bottom of my shoes and the children's shoes, the children had managed to get it on their clothes (including little Z's white dressing gown!) as they slid down the slide onto the bark and had also brought it all through the ground floor of the house, across the road play rug (sorry Seany, again!) into the hallway, up the stairs, across the landing and into the bathroom! Lovely. The smell was disgusting and it took all evening to clean it up. The most difficult thing was not so much the cleaning as stopping the children walking through it and spreading it further! Again, I suppose I can consider myself lucky that we don't have carpets in any of those places. Lucky me!

A Bad Day...

The last Friday 13th I wrote a post on a crazy superstition I had read about on the internet. Although I still have no time for such silly superstitions, after my Friday 13th experience yesterday, I am beginning to wonder whether there is something unlucky about that day.

After taking Little Z to school (dressed as a gnome - that's another story!) and Big J to nursery, I dropped off a birthday present at a friend's house and came straight home. The first thing I usually do when I get home (when I am not working) is check my emails. My email box is often full of junk sent by people who think am I interested in increasing the size of my manhood(?) or that I am desperate for a cheap supply of viagra(??).

However, the email which caught my attention was the one from PayPal telling me that my payment of $220 had been made for some photography equipment. Nothing unusual about that, I suppose, apart from the fact that I have not bought any photographic equipment and had not authorised a payment through PayPal.

I then noticed another email from PayPal telling me that the seller had issued me with a full refund. That's okay then. I guess I could consider myself lucky that I was getting the money back. Couldn't I?

The problem though, is that debits go out almost immediately, whereas refunds take several days, so the money is going to debit my account on Monday and the refund is unlikely to reach my account until Wednesday, which would not be a problem if the account had fund in or an overdraft facility, but, as it is not my main account, it has neither. So, I called the bank and spoke to seven different people who between the told me that because this was not my main account and it has no turnover they were not prepared to arrange a temporary overdraft facility for £40 (which was all I needed) for 2 weeks. They also told me they could not stop the payment going out as it had been authorised already, they told me they would not waive the unauthorised excess fee and that PayPal needed to contact them to stop the payment going through.

I had already phoned PayPal who had been very helpful and given me immediate instruction on how to flag the unauthorised transaction to them and how to change my passwords and what precautionary measures to take etc.. They had said that the banks would usually waive any fee once they knew it was unauthorised. They had asked me to contact the bank to let them know PayPal were investigating it and said they would get back to me within a few days.

So, after being passed around at the bank and explaining my situation to seven different people and explaining that PayPal were not going to stop the transaction as they needed to investigate it first and by the time they had done that the money would have come out already and in addition to this, the money was already on its way back because the person who had received the money had realised it was not his and had refunded it (breathe!), I got through to someone who actually listened to what I was saying and agreed that under the circumstances I would not have to pay an unauthorised overdraft fee unless I made another withdrawal which took me overdrawn. Finally!

I completed all the necessary online forms for PayPal and changed my passwords etc. so having spent all morning sorting this out, I then spent most of the afternoon downloading anti-spyware software and running deep scans on my computer. There was nothing there, but I am now quite confident that I have even better protection against anyone trying to obtain my personal details.

Oh Well. All's well that ends well! Or is it???.....

You will answer my questions...

I thought The Doctor might have come to save me. He didn't. I sat there in the Deputy Head's Office at a table with the Deputy Head and the Headteacher being interrogated, thinking that at any moment they were going to unzip their foreheads and reveal themselves as members of the slitheen family. They started by telling me they were looking for someone quite specific (yes, schools usually are!?) but that they did not know exactly which year group they wanted to employ someone for or in fact what the role was going to be yet. Then the ordeal began. When they started asking questions, such as "Tell us about your teaching philosophy" and "How would you ensure the children were making progress?" I said I was sorry but that I had not prepared to be interviewed. They apologised, slightly, but said they needed to see someone and talk to them as they would know who they wanted from seeing the person rather than reading what that person puts on their application. They asked difficult questions for which I had, funnily enough, not prepared answers. I feel I did quite well, but I don't think it really matters. I did not go to the school with a good impression and I have left with my suspicion having been confirmed. Witnesses would probably report having seen me running from the scene. Sorry, I shall not name the school, but I am satisfied that a few of you know which one I am talking about. I am so right to be picky about the schools I apply to, even if it has left me with no job for September!

Who the cook are they?

After watching Most Haunted Midsummer Murders last night I didn't fancy going to bed straight away as I would lay awake looking at the shadows and listening to every creak the house made, so I did a bit of tidying up and Larry turned over to "Big Brother's Big Mouth" guest hosted by Dan Wright and Stephen Marsh. I'd never seen them before, but thought they were quite funny and were doing a good job of hosting the show. A few minutes after turning over, Larry said, "Hey, it's Big Cook Little Cook!" I didn't think it was them. Okay, Little Cook Small has a ginger mullet-style haircut as does Dan Wright, but Dan Wright is quite tall and Little Cook Small is, as his name suggests, only about 3 inches tall! It couldn't possibly be him. Also, Big Cook Ben, although having a similar northern accent to Stephen Marsh, wears bright coloured clothes. I was convinced it was not them, especially as they were both swearing lots and making comments of a sexual nature and I know Big Cook & Little Cook would not use that kind of language.



How wrong I was! How shocked I was! It turns out that Little Cook Small is not really 3 inches tall, that it is just a camera trick and that really he is taller than Big Cook. Having done a bit of research on the internet and found their showreel it also turns out that there are more things we would not want our children to know about their favourite TV cooks. I Don't know what to believe any more. It's got me thinking that maybe Bungle wasn't a real bear after all!

Reports

The advantage of not having my own class at this time of year is that I haven't had to spend the last month staying up all night writing reports. I do however get to read Little Z's school report and feel I can now appreciate how much work the teacher has put into putting it together, albeit cutting & pasting from last year's year 2 reports!

I was very happy with Little Z's report. She has worked very hard this year and has made really good progress. At the end of year 2 she has come out with level 2A in reading, 2B in writing, 2C in maths and level 2 in science. I cannot ask for more than that.

Just to explain a bit about the levels for the non-teachers who read my blog, Reading, writing & maths grades are assessed by the teacher using statutory tests towards the end of year 2. Level 2 is divided into three sublevels for reading, writing and maths 2C, 2B and 2A with Level 2B being the nationally expected standard for most 7 year olds. Level 2 in speaking & listening and science is the nationally expected standard for most 7 year olds.

So, I am more than pleased that little Z is where she should be at the end of year 2. Although I know it doesn't really matter at the age of 7 what grades she gets, I was concerned that if she went to Junior school as one of the lower achieving children, she would be pigeon holed as such and may not have the opportunity to achieve her full potential.

I can imagine for some parents it must be a nerve wracking moment reading their child's school report. However, I always enjoy reading the teachers comments. She said that Little Z is a "delightful girl who has worked hard this year and made steady progress.She is a happy and sensitive girl who enjoys the company of her friends. She is often laughing, skipping around and having fun. She is polite and well behaved and is always willing to help others. She has been a very responsible "playground friend".

I am very proud of her and wonder what Big J's first school report will be like? hmm! I don't really want to think about that yet!

Nothing much...

I've had quite an uneventfull week:

I have had two and a half days' supply at three different schools, one of which I have never been to before and would definitely go back to. It is coming towards the end of term now, and having spent quite a lot of time at St Mary's Primary Foundation Stage, I am quite sad to be saying goodbye to them all for the summer as some of them will not be there in September.

It is looking increasingly like I will not have a job to start in September. As I have posted previously, I have applied for jobs, some of which I have had interviews for and some not. Many schools have not even bothered to write to say "sorry, we have not shortlisted you for interview, but thank you for applying." Considering the applications take hours of work as each one has to include a 2 page tailored personal statement, it is very frustrating to have put in so much work to receive no reply at all.

I feel disappointed, to say the least, that I have not got my own class for September (again!), but I just keep telling myself, I am doing the right thing by being choosy about which schools to apply to and not just applying to work anywhere. I am also a bit frustrated, because many of my friends who I trained with last year, are now completing their NQT year. Some have not enjoyed their year, jhowever, and some have dropped out, so I am sure I am doing the right thing by holding out for the school which suits me.

Plan to take the kids swimming this weekend. The rain has stopped (it seems?!) so may have to go to the pool for a swim!

Hope you have all had a good week.