Gotcha!

So...yesterday I had finally had enough!For three days in a row I have had to fix cuts in the fairy lights at the back of the house and whatever was doing it had the cheek to bite/nibble through the wire right next to the places where I had rejoined it with tape!I had to rejoin the wire in three places yesterday which was a an escalation of mischief from the previous days so I put up some chicken wire to protect what appeared to be the most vulnerable bits and brought out the rat trap and placed it nearby on top of the bottle wall.I was not convinced it was a rat because, as I have said before, I have not heard any in the house recently. I was inclined to thinking it was the possum but Will was sure it was a rat.He was right...for there this morning, looking very guilty, was one bedraggled rodent sitting in the trap.I have tested the lights and they are all in working order so I think we have our m̶a̶n̶ rat!I dropped it off two kilometers away on the way to school this morning....

'Hell on wheels!'

So...Will was woken at 7.30 am by his phone ringing.It was a call from a National Kindergarten company asking if he could cover for an absent teacher today. He signed up as a supply teacher for them ages ago but had heard nothing until today.He accepted and after a mad dash to get ready headed off to Warwick about an hour's drive away to get there for 8.30.He returned just after 4.00 pm saying it was 'Hell on wheels!'It sounded pretty awful.Oh, the things we have to do!

Bush Laundry.

So...Jenny the generator has changed our lives. No longer do I need to spend an hour at the Laundrette waiting for my washing and watching the Rubenesque manager languorously drag on her fag while sitting on the step outside.Jenny's arrival means that we can now do our washing here at Frogknot. However, getting the washing done here is not as easy as I have been used to.Firstly I have to start Jenny then attach an extension cable to her and plug in the washing machine. Then I have to connect a hose to the outside tap and connect the other end to the cold water pipe on the washing machine. This task is now much more successful since we purchased the correct connecting piece. Last week ,without it, it meant that I had to crouch for 15 minutes by the machine holding the two bits of hose together to allow it to fill up with water.I did try filling it up with buckets of rainwater, and this was slightly quicker, but it always seemed to have to do the last bit itself through the hose.Once the machine is going I can leave it for awhile to do the wash cycle but when that finishes I have to dash back to attend it. The machine drains the wash water into a large tub so that we can collect the used water for the garden. I have to spend the next 5 minutes ferrying buckets of water to another tub or trug before the first tub overflows.When the wash is over the machine fills up again for the rinse. Again last week I was back filling with buckets of rainwater or holding the two hoses together until it was full...then the rinse cycle begins. I am able to go and get on with other things until the rinse cycle is over and the machine drains the rinse water and then it is back to emptying the tub with buckets and storing the used water elsewhere.When the spin cycle starts I have to stay with the washing  machine because if the load is not equally distributed the machine stops, Jenny is screaming at this point and sometimes she just gives up the ghost altogether and the machine stops and I have to restart the spin cycle again.Finally, if all goes to plan the spin cycle comes to an end and I can hang out the washing to dry.

Revenge?

So...something keeps nibbling through the wires of the fairy lights that run around the verandah on the house.Yesterday I fixed the lights by the shower and today I found two more broken wires.I thought it was Galore up to mischief but Will thinks it is rats.I haven't heard any rats in the house or ceiling for ages but we did catch a mouse again the other day.I have put my rat trap outside to see if I can get the scoundrel!

Abandon all...and Hope!

So...yesterday was the second of my two days this week in Toerag's and Fidget's class.I must say I was dreading it but the silver lining was that they had an hour of PE and an hour of Music and I did not have to take them for both of those lessons.Mason arrived before school with the note I posted yesterday. His Mum said that it also said that 'his own class teacher was pretty good too' but she made him rip that bit off.Y came in with his family who had come to see him get certificates in that mornings 'Parade' (Assembly). Straight after roll call (for the last two days there has been no Hope) we headed off to the stadium for 'Parade'.The stadium was basically like a huge barn and it was freezing! The whole school had gathered and we had to sit on frayed bits of carpet that the children picked at the whole time we were there.We started off by standing for the National Anthem which for the life of me I could not remember except for the 'Advance Australia fair' bit and only when it had finished did I see the words were up on the wall at the front....Doh!Then we had to endure endless streams of children going up for certificates for 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 175, 200 and 250 gotcha bands. Just when I thought it was all over it was announced that we were now going to practise getting into position for the following nights Eisteddfod. We had to sit and wait while  each class practised walking up to the choir stand and back again. Parade normally takes 30 minutes but we were there an hour.We got back to class at 10.00.Thankfully there was a teacher aide in to work with Y and so I did not have that to contend with though his antics and constant loud interruptions made it very difficult to get on properly.We did some follow up work on time and then some more mental maths. One boy who had finished his work and was doing an 'early finisher activity' came up to me with the picture he was colouring and said "I am going to give this to you when it is finished.""Thank you" I said."On the back," he continued "there is a word search and you have to find three words in it. I will give you a clue. The words are 'Mr' 'Allen' and 'Awesome' but you will have to look diagonally for them."Soon it was time for Morning Tea. Both Toerag and Fidget were not allowed to play and had to go to the office due to some misdemeanour the previous day.I had thirty minutes of peace and then they were back....well, all of them and Fidget but I was told that Toerag would not be coming back, cast, no doubt, into the Pit of Doom!It was Reading Groups time. Again the parent who was supposed to come did not turn up and one of the Teacher Aides down on the planning did not come because she was not supposed to at that time and I had the Teacher Aide who had been in for the rest of the morning instead. She was supposed to work with Group 2 and Y but somehow I ended up with him in my group.It was a challenging 30 minutes keeping him on his chair and trying to get the book read. In fact we did not read any of it and I only just managed to pass the time talking animatedly about the pictures and the animals in the story. Y wanted to control everything and he thought knew everything.I asked him to tell me about giraffes and he said,"Well, they are robots. I am a robot and in my head I have pain, anger, sadness." He pointed to different parts of his forehead.He suddenly snatched my glasses off and peered at me intensely and said"I bet the people in your head don't wear glasses."I realised he was thinking of the Disney film "Inside Out" and his comments suddenly seemed much less disturbing.Eventually 12.00 came and they went off to PE. I was off the hook but as I was being paid for the day had to go over to the Prep class to cover the teacher for an hour. I got a lovely welcome and it was a very calm hour supervising them copying and creating patterns where I was mostly sharpening their pencils.At 1.00 it was lunch time and I had no duty. They were back at 1.45 and had to go to Music. I took them over with the Music teacher to the Music Room who, poor thing, had them all on her own.Then I had to go to a Year 3/4 class to cover another teacher for an hour.The Business Manager had said that they were a nice class but as I walked in I didn't get that impression. They looked me up and down as if I had just crawled out of a swamp. The teacher looked about 15 and was wearing jeans. She was sprawled across a desk tapping away at a laptop and calling the roll. When she had finished she sent them to their desks to get on with something while she spoke to me."Oh, you have a cruisy afternoon" she said, " we are doing English and you will do some more work on 'Adverbials'. Sorry the planning is not very detailed but you should be OK."It was my worst nightmare! The planning may have said "up chuck thacka wacka poo chuck thuck!" and I would have understood it better.I slowly walked to the front of the class and coughed."Er, hello. You probably don't know who I am.""I think I know who you are," said a girl."Are you Mr Allen?"" I am" I said, " and how do you know?""You are teaching in my brother's class today," she said. It turned out her brother was the boy with separation issues. He has always been fine with me."Well, yes I am Mr Allen and we are doing English so who can tell me what an Adverbial is?" I tried to pick someone who looked intelligent but failed. I was no wiser after their explanation.I suddenly saw something in the planning about writing sentences using words like 'only', 'at first' and 'exactly' so said,"Good, so you know about Adverbials, well we are going to put these words into sentences today" and I wrote only, also, at first and exactly on the board.I just winged it from there for half an hour. I patrolled around checking their work. One girl had written'I only ' and what looked like 'up chuck thacka wacka poo chuck thuck'. She told me it said 'I only like chocolate' so I translated it underneath.One know it all girl kept saying "Finished!" so I added more words."Finished!" It was almost as annoying as Y was."Well, write a sentence with at least three of those words in," I said.For the last 15 minutes I had to take them to the Library, which was a doddle and their teacher relieved me from there to go back for the last 15 minutes to Fidget's class.I spent that time collecting in the gotcha bands they had collected that day and trying to stop Y from stealing them from other people. I was again completely on my own and wanted to shout to him but not really knowing his routines and the ways the school dealt with him was worried it might escalate things.I finally got all the bands collected and their reward cards stamped and the bell went. Y immediately took off out of the door but I couldn't run after him because I still had all the other children to see out. They all went fairly quickly and I frantically rushed off to the Office to tell them Y had run off."Oh, he will be down with the Taxi's" they said at the Office. I had been expecting someone to collect him at home time and take him to the taxi but no one had told me what usually happens.It was the last straw. I didn't have to put up with this kind of thing so I decided there and then that I would no longer accept cover in that class again.I am abandoning all....and Hope!