Wednesday 9th September - Time to timetable

 The school term is now properly underway, (except for those schools where it has stopped again due to COVID-19, but let's not get too particular).

And I am back to my annual timetable construction game. I used to feel like writing all the interdependant variables into ping-pong balls, and throwing them up into the air over a grid maked off into days and times and then seeing where they all landed. It is much simpler this year - I don't have to factor in all the minutiae of differnt schools having different start of day times, lunchtimes and end of day times, and how long it takes to get from one school to another (allowing time to park at thebottom of the hill and walk up to the school with a djembe, samba drum, speaker, laptop and bag full of music books).

No, life is so much simpler; just 17 private pupils and 13 available time slots, no, wait, that doesn't work...

I have resigned myself to having to teach later into the evenings on some days, to allow for the extra time it takes to establish zoom connections at the beginning of lessons. So, a 30 minute lesson needs a time allowance of at least 45 minutes to allow for the changeover, mentally and networkally. Add in Saturday mornings and now I have enough teaching capacity including a supper break.

I'm wondering how the art and knitting and crochet and writing and piano practicing will all fit in during the day time...

The cats have become very elderly and rather stiff in the joints  over the summer. Leo's fur gets a bit matted on the parts where she can't get to so easily, and I have to tease it out. If I comb it she swipes at me with a paw, and I swipe her back, and she tries to swipes me again - it all gets a bit childish...

They are a bit like toddlers - do you remember the shouts of 'Mum, I've done a poo!' requiring instant action to go and assist with nether cleanliness. Ours now come and sit on the hearthrug and wail in a certain tone of miaul. We have learned to drop what we are doing, do a 'cat-grab' which is a special kind of double-handed method of lifting said cat and inverting it so that one can deal with whatever needs dealing with. Whichever cat is being subjected to this treatmeent PURRS, I kid you not. 

Oh well. They are 17 and a half now - we got them when the 2013 SARS epidemic was in full epidemicking. It's good training for when we are 17 years old, or whatever the equivalent is in human years. 

I've always found cats to be a good preparation for parenting - the way kittens rush around and destroy things and refuse to obey simple commands were a training for toddlers, litter trays were a sort of first steps towards dealing with nappies; fur balls for, oh, let's stop there...

There's been a bit of art on the go - I try and do a page a day.

Saturday 5th, St Martha's-on-the-hill 

Sunday 6th September

Monday 7th September - I'm pleased with the way this came out

Tuesday 8th September; I have a book called '5-minute watercolour' that I am working through with more and less intensity. I chose it because the title of the book chimed with the length of my attention span and the depth of my engagement. This was learning how to to 'wet-in-wet' skies.

 I'm procrastinating - can you tell? I've managed to get a few things done today - back bedroom windows washed, some plants watered, oh, and that timetable constructed as far s possible and all the parents emailed...

... there are other jobs that need doing but all I want to do now is eat cake.