Weekend

It's been busy, but lots of little achievements.
Went into town with the girls on Saturday. We shopped at Lidl, which was useful (and cheaper than a lot of places!). We picked up various things we had run out of at other shops too - and a couple of books for the girls as well.
Dyed my hair at home yesterday. It's now a lot darker than it was. I also no longer have grey roots... Wondering how many comments (and what type!) I will get tomorrow.
Did quite a bit of housework too. I really want to stay on top of that. So I cleaned the kitchen floor, cleaned the bathrooms - the kind of things most people do daily, I suspect. Also sorted the laundry, did loads of washing.
Today has been mostly devoted to working - preparing lessons, and doing technical things to enable the students to use our learning platform. They are all uploaded now (the source of some conflict and stress last week) and I have the first lesson planned (which takes care of this week) in great detail. I'm sure they are going to be really enthusiastic about this, and I am really looking forward to seeing in which directions they go.
Lesson planning is done -mostly. I am earmarking a lesson this week to preparing the rest of my Maths lessons. It's really hard to plan these at home without the resources. Last year I tried to do my lesson planning during a non contact lesson I had on Fridays. This year I don't have any non-contacts on Fridays, and I am not in school on Thursdays (it's my consultancy day). Wednesday feels a bit early to plan lessons, but I think I may have to do just that, as far as I can. Otherwise I am going to need to bring lots of resources home. It's a real pain that the curriculum has changed for our Y7 pupils this year (thank you SO much for that, National Curriculum Authority). It means so much replanning in many of the subjects I teach, particularly Maths - which is the subject I find most difficult to plan in any case.
I've also managed to do some genealogy. That has been good.
Am now debating with myself - shall I go to bed and read some more of the new Jodie Picoult book I bought yesterday, or play some computer games. Hmmm.

Shopping and treating

Went in to town today with the girls, to get the last of the pre-school shopping done (mostly for H) and for all of us to go to the hairdresser's. I saw a new stylist today - largely because of the practicalities of fitting all three of us in at once. She's the owner of the salon and it was a good experience. Not just because of the standard of her haircutting, but also because she was easy to talk to. It made it an enjoyable experience.

The rest of the day has been a bit stressful to be honest, and again I have a headache. I really could do with a good, solid night's sleep and am debating increasing the trazodone to see if that will help.

Mission accomplished!

Took the girls into town and had a very successful trip. Got H her dress for her "valedictory ball"(!) plus some new sandals to match. Also topped up her phone for her. E ended up with some new jeans, a bag and necklace for her Prom, and a new phone. The phone is because I was entitled to an upgrade on mine but do not really want a new phone at the moment, whereas E really does need one, hers being three years old and a bit of a brick. I found a new dress for work for myself. I managed to book a hairdresser appointment for E on the day of her prom, and one for me in a couple of weeks - I really need a haircut! We also put in a trip to the library and had lunch out - oh, and got some materials for the end of year exhibition which H is participating in at the end of the term. Hopefully it will all work out well. I do feel a sense of relief at the achievement. Now I just need to buy a present for a friend's birthday - she has told me what she would like and I believe I can order them online, so that is what I plan to do today or tomorrow.

Have just watered the garden and fed the fish; am now going to chill out with some genealogy.

A bit of a wobble

Had a bit of a wobble over the last couple of days. Nothing major, and I have done my best to tackle it by looking at the causes and taking the action I could. But for a couple of days I have felt quite low, a return of the grey cloud.

There's a huge amount going on at work, just from the end of term approaching fast (yippee!) That means reports, trips out, trying to catch up on marking and assessments and all that stuff. Add to that the fact that I am determined to have the learning platform ready for pupils to use. That adds a lot to my work; there are four of us who are administrators but only two of us actually seem to be doing anything, and the other one is completely snowed under with other responsiblities at the moment. So a lot is down to me and I am trying to push things through (like getting pupil users added before September).
Then there is the fact that I have been asked whether I would be prepared to take a secondment for one day a week next year, working to support other schools, and to apply for this post. I'd love it; my head has agreed I can, and I now need to go through the process.
A side issue to this is how my timetable will change to accommodate it; the deputy head has discussed one solution with me which I am really not happy with, so am hoping he can come up with a change (I suggested a couple). His suggestion would involve me dropping the subject I am most qualified in, enjoy the most and have created tons of resources for this year.
H is changing schools this year and E moving in to 6th form - that brings its own challenges. Socially both girls have a lot going on in the next couple of weeks too, which brings added pressures.
I have physical issues going on at the moment. Saw the GP (not able to see either of my usual ones) yesterday and she was good, but it was very difficult to talk about. Hopefully she has given me something to knock it on the head.
Still waiting for a response from the Healthcare Commission.
I'm being kept very well informed by BLPT about the investigation into the poor state of my clinical records; those have been looked at by the Chief Operating Officer who has sent them back to the CMHT to be sorted out properly. However, that too is still in hand.
And, of course, the computer stuff hasn't helped. It took me the whole afternoon to find and copy our emails from the old hard drive and put them onto our new machine. Because we are using Vista the transfer was more complicated (of course!) and I couldn't just export the messages (tried to but it didn't work). So in the end I had to copy them all onto an external drive, folder by folder, and then drag them into our new Windows Mail set ups. Finding them was a nightmare; transferring them even worse! Thank goodness that is now done. The good news is that the hard drives seem fine, though I couldn't boot up Windows on E's machine from the old drive. That may be down to the different motherboard and CPU set up, though. I suspect the CPU/ motherboard on the old machine has died. Not sure whether we will try to rebuild it though.

So that is a summary of where things are for me at the moment. Courtesy of sleeping tablets I had my first decent night's sleep in a long while last night and that has made me feel better. Today I am going in to town with the girls; H needs a dress for her end of term dance and E still needs to get a necklace and bag for her prom. My treat is a trip to the library, though I may look at getting myself another summer dress too.

More shopping!

This time with H. We managed to get her some clothes ready for her outdoor activities course next weekend, plus new trainers, a couple of tops and a book. I got myself some red spotty shoes (!) from Primark. Also took in a trip to the library where I found some books with photos / pictures of flowers, ready for some more fabric postcards. So, all in all, a good trip. Of course, I am now totally shopped out - two days on the run!
Now I'm off to write more reports.