Just Now: Friday morning

Just Now...


Current time: 11.50am 


In my mug: coffee 


In my belly: Cheerios, blueberries and milk


In my ears: Nothing so far today except the sound of the washing machine. This week I have been listening to Abba (good housework music!) and Jethro Tull's Christmas album


Out the window: grey, gloomy and cold. I am very glad I don't have to go out today


On the editor: wedding photos that I am editing for Christmas presents


Last watched:  a quite disturbing but thought-provoking true story about a woman who befriended a mass murderer 


Feeling good about: the weekend. Looking forward to a visit to a handmade fair and Farmer's market, and taking some of my recent decluttered objects to their new homes 


Feeling bad about: nothing really, unless you count that I forgot to take anything out of the freezer for dinner so goodness knows what I will feed everyone tonight...


By my bedside:  Simple Abundance and Romancing the Ordinary, still reading a little each day. No fiction book last night, I was so tired I didn't take a book to read in bed, unusual for me


Making me think: today's date, 11/11/11, anniversary of the end of the Great War

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 

At the going down of the sun and in the morning 

We will remember them.

Thursday Inspiration: beautiful

i love this quote.

there are so many wonderful definitions of beautiful

besides the standard version.

here and there: favorite teacher

I didn't have a school photo to put here, but I pulled this one out of an album I had that is of me in high school which is when I am writing about.  I look so young!!

My favorite teacher's name was Mrs. Clark.  She was my high school Grammar teacher.  She created huge dioramas in her classroom.  She had long bushy blond hair and long flowing skirts.  She was a free-thinker.  She made sure we thought outside of the box.  She wrote brilliant commentary along my creative writing assignments each week and I remember at the very beginning of Grammar class she told us "first you learn all the rules, then you can break them".  I have always remembered that through this very day.  Mrs. Clark is the reason I feel it is okay to forgo capital letters in my blog and write in fragmented sentences.  For this post I will use capital letters in the correct places and try my best at proper grammar in honor of Mrs. Clark.  

My nemesis in writing in high school was commas, too many of them.  I put them everywhere.  She was always crossing out commas.  When I write now I still find too many commas.  I'll read a blog post over and realize, oh there shouldn't be commas there but I leave it.  I like to write the way it sounds coming out of my head.

Mrs. Clark looked like SARK if you have ever seen her.  I remember years, many years, after my school days I came across a book by SARK and I thought "OH my gosh, it's Mrs. Clark".  She looked remarkably similar, but no, after further research I found out not Mrs. Clark.  But SARK encompasses the same spirit that she brought to our classes.  Be creative.  Don't be afraid.

I loved literature and writing classes.  I loved climbing into books and discovering what they held and I loved trying my hand at writing, especially with someone so supportive to encourage you.

In your Senior Year (last year) of high school  there are only so many credits or courses you are required to have to graduate, so you have a lot of freedom to either a/ take goof off classes or b/take the classes you like.  Goodbye physical education!  Hello English!  I had all my required English credits,but in that senior year of school I took British Literature, World Literature and Grammar.

When I suggested that we write about our favorite teachers this week I knew exactly who I wanted to write about.  I have been lucky to have some really good ones, but this is the one that really stood out to me as leading me where I wanted to go. 

Here and there: my favourite teacher

This is a photograph from when I was in Infant School. I was in the same class, with the same teacher, for three years. I think this may have been a taken before we left to go to Junior School, aged about 7. The lady on the left is my teacher, Miss Roberts, on the right the Headmistress, Miss Hobson. I am the very tall girl at the back.

I loved Miss Roberts. She was quite strict, but fair. This was back in the days when teachers would smack a child if they were naughty and I narrowly escaped one time. Miss Roberts had to leave the class room for a few minutes and me and my friend Mark, for some reason decided to get up and stand on the table. On Miss Roberts' return, the other children told her. She asked us if it was true. I always told the truth (until I was a teenager, anyway!) so I said yes, I was standing on the table. When she asked Mark, he denied it, and received a smack. Can you imagine a teacher being able to smack a child these days?  It was a whole different culture back then.

Miss Roberts was, I guess, in her mid thirties then, so younger than I am now, which seems unbelievable to me now. I remember I used to finish my sums early, and she would get me to mark the other children's work. I also remember being called out to stand beside her desk and read to her. The reading scheme was called Tip and Mitten, and was about a cat and a dog. I will always be grateful to Miss Roberts for teaching me to read, and instilling in me such a love of stories. As soon as I could read, I was away! I permanently had my head in a book for my entire childhood, and pretty often even now.

I still either know or hear news of, several of the other children in the photograph. In fact last week I bumped into one of the boys in the supermarket car park, and I have had met up with two of the girls in the past month. Strange to think we have known each other almost forty years. Miss Roberts and I still exchange Christmas cards, and I would love to see her again.

From the weekend: Bonfire Night

Saturday was Bonfire Night, the night when here in England we commemorate the anniversary of the day in 1605 when Guido Fawkes and his friends attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The Prof and I went to a bonfire party at the vicarage of a church that my friend attends. There were fireworks and a bonfire, though no 'Guy' this year, I wonder if it's becoming a bit of an un-PC thing to do these days, burn effigies on bonfires. Not the best example for the children, probably, though I didn't even think about it when I was a child! The bonfire came in handy keeping us warm, it was freezing, and also for toasting marshmallows - I had never had toasted marshmallows before, and I should not have left it so long to try them.

sunday going home

(karelyn and grandmom)

(after grandad adjusted her seat and filled her tires)

It's been a beautiful fall.  I took the girls to my Mom's house Sunday to ride their bikes.  The lane to their house is about 1/4 of a mile long.  My sister and I used to ride our bikes back and forth and back and forth.  I don't know why I didn't think to take the girls and their bikes there before, but then again this has been the first year both girls are on two wheels.  It's a most definite thing that next year I need to get a bike and join them....that and a bike rack.  After this my Mom went shopping with my sister and the girls and I took their dog Elijah for a walk through the woods.  Karelyn told me this morning that Grandmom's was one of her favorite places to go.  It reminds me how lucky I was to grow up there.

Just Now: Friday morning

Current time: 11.40 am

In my favourite mug: real coffee

In my belly: Cheerios and mik. There would have been raspberries, but they had started to go mouldy

In my ears: This morning, silence. Last thing I listened to: Loreena McKennitt, in the car

Out the window: the sun is struggling to break through grey cloud and sometimes succeeding for a few minutes

On the editor: nothing, at the moment, as I haven't taken many photographs lately. I seem to have mislaid my creative mojo 

Last watched: Kirstie's Handmade Britain

Feeling good about:  Country Living and Mollie Makes magazines on the coffee table, ready to read

Feeling bad about: overwhelming list of things to be done, as usual

By my bedside: Simple Abundance and Romancing the Ordinary by Sarah Ban Breathnach, I am reading a little every day 

Making me think: I've been thinking how lucky I am to be able to be at home, although this is through my illness, and wondering how I can make better use of this time and enjoy it to the fullest, whilst also staying within my energy limits. Also, these words I came across today:

"What we think, we become"
-- Buddha