Losing the plot....

Here is December and all my carefully formulated plans to be organised and on top of all the guff are lying in sad little tinsel coated heaps around my feet. The tree and decorations are not yet up - that was last weekends task, the turkey is not cooked, carved, portioned and frozen, neither is the soup made and frozen. What? So I like to give myself a day off on Christmas Day and have the bulk of the cooking done before hand! I still stand in the kitchen for large portions of the morning plootering, listening to the radio and slurping down Cava....
School is particularly manic with the ever daunting Christmas Nativity/Assembly looming on the horizon. In an effort to address the whole 'A Curriculum for Excellence' (hereafter known as ACfE) thang thats going on in our authority I've pulled my topic work, drama, citizenship and all sorts of other things into ours. We are performing, if that's the right term, a potted version of Scrooges' story, highlighting the plight of the Victorian child and the poverty of the time and so on and so forth - very uplifting what? Of course in the middle of it all we have the story of the Notivity just to lighten the message and turn it into one of hope for the future. A few thundering good Christmassy songs and there y' have it. End of Term - sorted!!! Just the forward plans to write, the evaluations and assessments for 28 kids to formlulate, the ineffable Christmas decorations they all have to make and the Christmas activities to create and collate for the little dears to occupy themselves with during the last week - after all we can't possibly expect them to do any real 'work' can we?
At the same time I'm fighting off the dreaded cold/flu/pneumonia thing that's been lurking in my chest for the past five weeks, a house like a jumble sale ( the girls are both as busy as I am and the housework has gone by the bye ) and - how did it happen? - the Christmas Revue to take part in!! I truly had no intention of taking an active part in the show this year but when they were looking for material to fill the evening I recalled a wee Potted Panto thing I had written for a school I used to work in, revamped it to add dialogue where there had only previously been a narrator and offered it up to them. One thing led to another and I'm narrating, so that's four nights of having to be jazz hands and sparkly! I don't know if I can cope! Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the laundry piles grow ever taller and the kitchen grows ever grimier. Roll on the holidays - I may just manage to get it all done then.
Looking forward to the Junior Workshop Party - it'll be the only one I'll get to this year due to the Revue, missing the Staff night out and my class' trip to the Panto in Edinburgh because of it!! The things I do for that Workshop!!
Hey ho, time to go. Off to collect my holly wreaths in Lanark, then it's down to Motherwell to the cemetary and then over to Mid Calder to the cemetary then up to visit Mum for a short while, a fast barge round the Shopping Centre and then home to collapse for ten minutes before rising up again to begin the furious round of Christmas decorating..... will I never learn?
Till next time....