Bereaved and bereft.

My car has shuffled off its mortal coil and other engine parts and left me in need of new wheels but with no permanent job or sight of one this could prove to be difficult. Have a tiny little Nissan Micra as a loaner with an option to purchase at a fairly reasonable price. Downside is that I would not get my weeks' shopping in it let alone the girls and the shopping - so that's a no-no. Will be going to look at a Peugot 206 - slightly younger, not too drastic price but want to drive it about before making plans. At the same time I have been notified that I will have to apply for a job with the council again this year and go into the bulk interviews in March along with all the others in my position (and we are Legion) and this year's Probationers! All for 'some jobs in various locations from August 2009' according to the intranet page of jobs. This could be a very tight summer - no work - no money - no car - no chocolate..... sob, sob, I can't bear it, I have to go and lie down in a darkened room. Or go visit a friend and drink copious amounts of wine...... Hmmmmm.......
Gotta go.
Till next time.

A long forgotten dream...

Been back at work one week and already the hols seem like they were months ago. It's been going like a fair and tons of things are popping up all over the term and most need kick off action now! The Scottish topics are paramount - this being the Year of Homecoming, what with it being Rabbie Burns 250th anniversary. (Shamefaced I admit, I don't know if that's of his hatching or despatching!) All the scottish slang, doric and broad scots language is rearing it's Nessie like head and baffling the denizens of Primary 6! All Scottish born and bred but have no inkling of 99% of the words! Not that they are, themselves,beautiful speakers mind you, in fact some of them could do with a lot of speech therapy - it would help immensely with their dreadful spelling! If ye canny say it how de ye expect tae spell it? Then there's the football and basketball tournaments coming up in the next few weeks, a trip to Edinburgh Castle for our Jacobites topic, assemblies, Valentines Day, Mother's Day, our class enterprise Auction, Easter Celebrations, and the School centenary celebrations to prepare for in June and the rest of this term vanishes into a haze of projected pandemonium...
Meanwhile back at the ranch the rehearsals for The King and I continue apace and we have only 8 weeks left to get the whole thing pulled together. Spent time on Saturday sewing costumes and there will be more of the same this Wed and then at various intervals until they are all created and we can relax (?). Cannot rave highly enough about the team who all throw their lot into the ring and work like exceedingly hard working things for incredible lengths of time to get all these things done for the good of the children. It's hard to type with crossed fingers but I do my best!!
Feel like I could have a long sleep and wake up when it's all over but that would require being in a coma and, unless I was guaranteed significant weight-loss and a new wardrobeful of clothes to enhance said weight-loss, that's not an option.
Have finally finished watching all four seasons of Desperate Housewives and am only waiting for season 5 to come out so we can complete the collection. Can't wait for the new series to start!!!! Now we can start on the Will and Grace set that Jennifer got! Then we have the complete set of James Bond films so ironing will no longer be the boring chore it used to be! Always assuming, that is, that there is actually something for ironing - we do eventually catch up and have empty baskets for, oh, let me think, at least 6 hours!
Well the evening has frittered away and it's time I slipped off up the staircase hill to Bedfordshire. It's not this sort of fun at 6 in the morning....
Till next time,

They think it's all over... It is now!

So that was the holiday. Two weeks of nothingness, right down the tubes, nothing accomplished, completed, finalised or any other form of closure! Well, unless you count the bottles of wine that clink emptily in the recycling and the peanut bags in the trash! Have spent too much money on stuff I don't really need, like DVDs and CDs and new trousers and jackets for work, and spent too much time slobbing out in front of the telly instead of getting things done. (The laundry is really gettting on my wick now!) And it's back to work tomorrow and the last lap of my Maternity cover supply job. I've been looking for jobs to apply for but there simply aren't any in the area. (I've decided, in a fit of devil-may-care-edness not to go for the ones up in Aberdeen - the commute is just a tad too far, especially in the winter...) I'm hoping against hope that there might be a sudden change in staff in my school and an opening appear, or that my colleague might change her mind about coming back full time and want a job share, 'cos I'd do that just to get a permanent post and a dedicated salary, however truncated. And I still have to compose my application forms for South Lanarkshire so that if a job hoves on the horizon I have the blurb ready to go, ditto West Lothian and Borders. It's a difficult thing to do, I find, to blow your own trumpet loud enough to attract attention and bag the job but not to sound totally full of it at the same time. A complex tightrope to trip along I think. So many folk have told me there will be a sudden surge in jobs in the New Year I am really concerned I will miss out if I don't get on with it! So.... as we all know, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, so that must be where I'm off to.........
Till next time,

and a Happy New Year....

Two o'clock in the morning and here I sit trying to type correctly after a half a bottle of Baileys and three glasses of wine. No party, just a heavy session watching the second series of Desperate Housewives and having to make the very difficult decision not to start watching series three until tomorrow!! Went up to the bonfire for a short whiley and supported the Biggar Big Bang Samba Band!! It was okay but truly once you've seen/been at the bonfire you've seen/been at the bonfire and there's not much else to do once it's been lit! It's a great tourist attraction and it's great to take visitors up to watch, if you have some, mainly because they can't believe the size of it and that it's so close to the buildings, and yet nothing gets burnt down! Mind you, every year we say, " Gosh, look at the size of that! They'll never be allowed to light it at that height, the police will make them take some off." But the police never do and every year this two storey sized pile of wood, old pallets and assorted flammable crap is built in the car park in front of the Corn Exchange and set alight shortly after 9pm on Hogmany, attended by, at times over a thousand people!! It's even been on the telly!! Fun and frolic, frazzle yer front while you freeze yer bum! Ain't that the way with fires? Anyhoo, going off to bed now to have a long sleep so I can get up in the morning and watch the next series of DH before I go back to school on Monday!
To all who peruse these meanderings, a Peaceful and prosperous New Year and may it bring you all you wish for yourself, and more.
Till next time.