Sunday Morning

Only three more mournful Mondays to go - tomorrow and the two after Labour weekend. My Mondays have been diabolical this year - house group, four classes (don't have my best class on Mondays) and then lunchtime duty and then a non-contact in which I am usually too tired to be very productive and then - very often a staff meeting. With my other responsibilities, it's quite a heavy day and hangs over me (or used to - I don't care much anymore) all Sunday. Then on Tuesday I have an identical day but with my best class first and without my most difficult class. It's not til Thursday and Friday that the pace lets up a bit.

Tomorrow I have offered to do some scholarship coaching while someone takes my house group so it'll be an even busier day. But I think I'll get through all right because my attitude is that it just doesn't matter so much as it used to. If I perform badly - well - too bad! (I really want at least one of our kids to get a schol though - it would be a nice legacy.)

We have been flat-out streamlining and tidying our house for the official launch of the auction campaign tomorrow. It's been fun but exhausting and really - it's all I want to do. I helped very little while Allen demolished our worn out bed settee that not one 2nd hand delaer woud touch and we couldn't get it out of the house, Too heavy. I rememver Levenes delivering it 8 years ago via the veranda - soemthing we could NOT do. We took it in bits like a dismembered body to the dump but I put the almost unused foam mattress under the sheets on our spare double bed. It now looks surreally high like the bed of the Princess and the Pea. Looks good though, I think.

Picture today is an oyster catcher from Whangarei's Ocean Beach

Are we there yet?

Three days out of four and a half weeks. Getting there. After that time the seniors will have left and things will be so much easier. I've picked up a bit - marked a film today - always very difficult to give someone's creative effort a grade. Hate it.

Asked three people to write me a reference today. They agreed avidly so that's good. I'll be all ready to put in my CV for relieving as soon as next year starts no matter where we are living. Here, or up north.

A pic of Fatso, aka Onyx. How is she going cope if we move. It's a helluva long way to Whanga!

Disappointed with Helen's performance in the debate last night. John Key looked more confident than usual and she came across as a bit mean.

Tidying Frenzy

No school work in last few days! Such a change from my normal obsessive preparation surprises even me.

But I've thrown all my energy into tidying up the house - painting even - for the market onslaught. The photographer is returning tomorrow; all the agents will do a walk-through soon after and the sign will go up too. No open homes for almost 2 weeks but there COULD be someone through and so firm is our decision to move up north that we desperately want to sell.

I was so disappointed with the last pics that I took a few myself today. On this blog is a photo of the main bedroom. We have cheap and nasty bedding but I borrowed my best cushions from the lounge and covered the bed with a fluffy throw I somehow acquired a few years ago. It's a great room - I'm not being deceptive - I've just been too mean to buy expensive quilts etc and we usually have a mountain of books and untidy belongings on each side of the bed anyway.

Je ne regrette rien

Well, actually that's not quite true - I regret lots - but I don't regret deciding to retire and can't wait for the end of the school year.

Last night I went through the weeks in my head, counting on my poor old numb fingers (nerve damage). Two weeks to Labour weekend, then a week to our first important open home, a week to til the election, a week after that to the last short week of seniors at school. After that, the work load goes down to a reasonable level. You can be an English teacher and still have a life. I saw that as a heading on the English Online Forum - too late for me to read it now.

Pic is of a wild beach up north.

Sleepless in Spring

Can't sleep. Keep thinking about what I want to do with the house to make it look better. Even went down to basement at midnight and moved all the camping gear into foyer to take to storage shed tomorrow and put ugly things that were piled on top of cupboards and on floor into the cupboards - cat's cage for example.

Also dread the thought of doing my marking and so on - just want the next two months to be over - successfully. Hard to believe how I have changed in one term.

Have a dream

Got back from Whangarei on Friday night after a great week away but a nightmare journey home where we were stymied by not one but three road-closing accidents. I should feel sorry for the victims of the accidents but they are kind of anonymous and we were just stunned at the huge detours we had to make. One of them was from the East Coast to the West Coast (narrow part of island but even so ...)

Anyway, the trip up north has just confirmed and intensified my desire to retire. I only wish we were richer and that I could give up work 100%. I have to consider proximity to schools for relieving teaching and rising petrol prices mean that I can't live too many miles away from places of work.

SO - Whangarei is shabbier than our town and has - I think - less salubrious suburbs than we do here BUT what a glorious hinterland. There is also much of interest in Whangarei and a fantastic new library. Not only that but a great "Classics" bookshop and two second hand bookshops selling quality lit.

If our house sells we will have to live in a humbler abode up there but we have found possibilities in central Whangarei and on the coast at Ruakaka.

We want to live where we can see Mt Manaia. I just love that mystical looking rocky ridge at the ehad of Whangarei Harbour.