Having a week off?

Tonight I am rather upset about last week. It was initially a good week: a week off work. But having a week off, when most other people are at work has side effects.

Last week was for me a week off because we had Autumn Break. Back in the days, when I grew up, we used to call it “potato break” because it is about this time of year, the first week of October, it is time to harvest the potato fields.

Nowadays this week off is about travelling somewhere, for those who have saved a week’s vacation, or to worry about where the kids should spend the day, now that school is off and parents have to work. So, I have had a week off work, and I can’t wait to get back in action.

I had such great plans for this week. I had a long list written down:

·         Dig up and sort out the last flowerbed

·         One long walk, or mountainhike, every day

·         Clean the windows

·         Clean furniture

·         Clear out and sort the wardrobe

·         Review papers: getting ahead

·         Improve and edit tasks and exercises

·         Cook proper dinner every day

·         Write (for my own pleasure)

·         Clear out old toys

·         …. And then some

The list of things I would have loved to do, mostly because they are things you need to do to have a fairly organized home, was extensive.

Did I get any of it done? Nah, not really.

I did get the last flowerbed sorted out. Maybe I should explain why this is something I had to do: Thing is, through the last few years I have bought hundreds of flowerbulbs I never saw any sign of, after I had planted them. I couldn’t understand why, until I dug up a flowerbed to plant a plumtree. Deep down I found a lot of bulbs, which have slowly sunk into the ground. I wondered why, but a kind soul told me that soil is washed downwards into the ground, due to the land my house is built on is blasted rock.

So, what I had to do is to dig up my flowerbeds, put flowerbed fabric, and then add soil, before I plant the flowers and trees again, and new flowerbulbs (and the old ones I found). Very tedious, but I expect my garden will look stunning next spring.

Anyway, since school was out and my kids were at home I got a lot of help. Trust me: getting help doesn’t mean work is done fast. It took me several days to do something which would have taken me a few hours to do by myself.

In addition: many schoolchildren don’t go to before- and after-school care (my youngest do, but he wanted to stay at home because he knew I would be at home doing something he wanted to participate in…sigh. I can’t very well kill the initiative, can I?). The kids in the neighborhood knew I was at home, and my kids were at home, and they didn’t want to be alone at home while their own parents were at work (do you see where this is going?) so to make a long story short: I ended up having a house full of kids all week.

My kids had a lot more friends this week, than they usually have. They have a lot of friends (I feel blessed), but not the come-around-to-the-house-all-of-the-time kind of friends. The friends they have who come around are not plentiful. Just enough, and they are not moving in, so to speak.

One thing is to have playmates coming over. It is a totally different story when they show up before breakfast.

I can’t help but to be astonished by how messy some kids are when they eat. My dog had a feast which lasted for a week! And it took me quite some time to get the kitchen back in shape after each meal. Yes, we are talking breakfast, lunch and what we call dinner (we have supper in the evening). I could have chosen not to set the table and invite them all, but in my house there is no tradition for doing that. Children need to have meals, at least that is my rule and philosophy.

A lot of my time was spent on all this. One thing is to serve my own kids, to serve a house full of kids is a totally different story.

I can tell my own kids to go get a glass of milk themselves, I can’t very well say that to strange kids. One thing is to know their way around my kitchen, another thing is to have kids rummage through my cupboards.

The hikes I was planning on, came to nothing. I could have told everyone to join me, but they didn’t have shoes or clothes fit for a hike. I didn’t want to leave the house either, so the plan failed.

When you try to do something, and are constantly interrupted, continuity is broken and things just don’t get done. Not in the speed you predicted, anyway.

Maybe I am just frustrated. Mostly because I see that keeping up the house and the garden really doesn’t get up to standards. I wish for so much more than what I have time to perform. Having a week off makes me predict a week of getting up-to-date. When it doesn’t happen, I just get disappointed in myself.

Thing is; this is nothing new. I should have learned what staying at home will be like, by now. What I really should have done was to plan on spending quality time with my kids.

A Teacher's Doodling

I always bring a writing pad with me when I go to meetings. Chances are there could be something important, I need to remember, said. I don’t bring my Ipad, as I haven’t got one, and I don’t bring my tablet (I have a gorgeous Android tablet). Many do.

I, on the other hand, know myself well enough to know I most likely will fall into the trap of “entertainment not on the agenda”, which is common to do.

I would play Sudoku, check on my Facebook for new updates, write on my blog, check headlines on various newspapers… I see many play Candy Crush and Farmville… even a game I never understood, but apparently; if you tap the screen 1000 000 times the egg will crack… and something will pop up.

Anyway, I got my writing pad and a pen. Very old fashion, but I imagine it keeps me attentive to a much larger extent than if I had some digital tool… or toy if you will.

But, and I am honest enough to admit this, so I should not be judged too harshly: I doodle.

My mother is a skilled talker on the phone. She can talk on the phone for quite some time. She doodles too. Her address book looks like something out of this world because when she is out of free space, she writes on top of what she wrote before. The pages are gradually turned blue and black, little by little, through the course of each conversation. She doesn’t make drawings or patterns; she writes words which catch her attention. Over and over again, until another word stands out. Quite fascinating, as you can follow the contents of her conversations by reading her doodling… if you can single out the words, that is.

There is something rude about withdrawing into a bubble, excluding yourself from what’s going on and embrace your own world. I think I pay attention, but sometimes the person next to me plucks the pen out of my hand to add something he or she thinks is funny or something I have missed or left out. For a split second I realize I to some extent entertain those surrounding me, as well as myself.

I searched on Wikipedia for doodling. It says that:

“A doodle is an unfocused or unconscious drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be abstract shapes.

Stereotypical examples of doodling are found in school notebooks, often in the margins, drawn by students daydreaming or losing interest during class. Other common examples of doodling are produced during long telephone conversations if a pen and paper are available.

Popular kinds of doodles include cartoon versions of teachers or companions in a school, famous TV or comic characters, invented fictional beings, landscapes, geometric shapes and patterns, textures, banners with legends, and animations made by drawing a scene sequence in various pages of a book or notebook. Many geometric doodles are really subdivision rules, where you repeat the same pattern over and over in a nested way.”

Seems to me my mother and I are classical examples of doodlers.

I am kind of relieved reading this, as I notice (and get confirmation) that I still pay attention, as doodling doesn’t steal my attention. It is rather harmless, as opposed to focusing on a game or a social media. So I stick with my old fashion writing pad.

I found one of my old writing pads the other day. On top of each page there are optimistic headlines in bold size and font, telling what the meeting is about,  but then the rest of the page shows how fidgety my hands really are, and how busy my mind actually is.

There are symbols, like a heart, with additional supplemental features: legs, winking eyes, mouth, busy hair, a hat, a big smile… I have drawn caricatures of animals from behind. Entangled flower vines… quite pretty, but totally senseless and absurd. Yet kind of cheerful.

I don’t have any clue where I get it from; I don’t even really know how to draw. Being a teacher I am fully aware that most of us are kind of fully trained pastime psychologists. Well, no one can find out anything about me by trying to do some kind of  interpretation of my doodles. They are, indeed, like Wikipedia says: unfocused and unconscious. It slightly worries me that it takes place when students are daydreaming or losing interest during class, but only slightly.

Since I have this interest in words, I thought I would see what Wikipedia says about daydreaming. There is something romantic about daydreaming, like the beautiful girl; resting her chin in her hand and gazes into nothing. Well, the explaination is not quite that romantic:

“Daydreaming is a short-term detachment from one's immediate surroundings, during which a person's contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake.

…the characteristic that is common to all forms of daydreaming meets the criteria for mild dissociation.”

Ehm… dissociation? That doesn’t sound very attractive or positive, does it? Again Wikipedia:

"Boredome is whereas anxiety
is a state of uneasiness and apprehension,
boredom is a condition of mental weariness,
listlessness, and discontent. "

“Dissociation is a term in psychology describing a wide array of experiences from mild detachment from immediate surroundings to more severe detachment from physical and emotional experience. It is commonly displayed on a continuum. The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality – rather than a loss of reality as in psychosis. In mild cases, dissociation can be regarded as a coping mechanism or defense mechanisms in seeking to master, minimize or tolerate stress – including boredom or conflict”.

Further on, as I look up boredom, same source (A tiny bit embarrassing this, as I always tell my students to try other sources than Wikipedia: Find an authentic source, I tell them) with more worrying information:

“Boredom is an emotional state experienced when an individual is left without anything in particular to do, and not interested in their surroundings.”

Did I just now find out why my students are so eager to engage in social medias during my classes? That WORRIES me A LOT!