As we approach the end of the first month of the school year, my distraction techniques have been successful and I am pleased to report that I no longer miss work! Best not to tell those whom I work with, because I don’t want to offend them or send them running away. I miss them very much just not the job!

My days at home are filled with familiar routines similar to those of a working day, however I no longer have the five-minute travel time to get to my workplace. There are no yard duties, staff meetings or work programs to prepare. I have missed the beginning of year pre-assessment of each student and the hours it takes to correct, collate and analyse the data from these samples of student work, in order to know where to start and where we will go next. I missed the beginning of year school picnic, which is a wonderful social opportunity to meet parents of new students and catch up with the parents of those who I had taught in previous years. Being on the staff at my school for fifteen and a half years I am very pleased with the positive relationships I have formed with my pupils and their parents, so the school picnic has never been a drag for me even though it is on a Monday night and does impact on the length of that week by time Friday comes around. I know most parents in our school community are very aware of, and most grateful for our extra curricular involvement with their children.

It is lovely when students see you out of the school environment and scream their little heads off when they recognize that you shop at the same supermarket as them or go to the same doctor or have a meal at the same restaurant or café. Or they are even on the same Qantas flight home from a European trip with me. Yes, not just the same flight but I was seated one row in front of a family of four. Sadly the demographics at my school often means the kids and their families are out and about doing the very same exciting things as I am. It doesn’t matter which night of the week I chose to have chicken and chips from the legendary Hot Wings charcoal chicken shop here in Williamstown there will always be someone from our school community with the same dinner plans. In the beginning I was rather embarrassed but soon got over that when I realised they were probably just as embarrassed and I know the parents lives were as busy as ours given the after school meetings and sporting and dancing commitments with our own kids. The main thing was to ensure that we didn’t have hot wings two nights in a row because that would be really embarrassing!

I knew that 2013 would be a year where I was going to have to find something new to fill my spare time as I had finished my Masters of Religious Education in December of last year. It was the hardest thing I had ever done and I am so proud of what I achieved. Much harder than my first teaching degree oh so long ago.

For two years much of my spare time was spent reading, researching and writing essays as well as keeping up with a very demanding full time job and all of the usual wife, mother and family duties.

Adult Irish dancing lessons were a possibility to fill the void, not that I am in any way coordinated but it would be a fun way to get fit and spend a Tuesday evening. I have so much respect for my daughter and her dancing friends for their dedication to their art form. I know some people may think that Irish dancing is a bit passé given that it was way back in 1994 when Riverdance debuted during the interval break at the Eurovision song contest, far from it!

The dancers live and breathe dancing and their calendar is carefully spaced out. For some dancers at the elite level, the serious end of the competition season begins with a trip to the United States in July to compete in the North American National Championships. Then there are the State and National championships, which happen at home in Australia and finally after qualifying the World championships follow each Easter, this year they will be in Boston.  I am very proud of my daughter for all she has achieved as a dancer at an individual level and as part of the school’s team dancing, especially the two World Championship gold medals (pictured below) in Belfast last year for senior figure dancing.

Or I could follow my son’s passion and audition for a theatrical role in an upcoming production. I have already written about my (not so) staring role as Jacob in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. My son starred as the innkeeper in his school production of Les Miserables. I definitely can’t sing, ask any child who has been in any of my classes.  All I can say is thank goodness for the invention of cd’s so that when I was teaching Prep we could play Hi 5 music without me needing to hit the right note on my own.

So back to my spare time, I think it is safe to say that I don’t have a career mapped out for me in Irish dancing or theatre and at the moment I am restricted with what I can do. So for now my interest in craft work, my favourite television shows, the games I can play poorly on my iPad like Words with Friends, 4 Pics, 1 Word and Candy Crush along with my blogging will suffice to fill in the spare hours while I rest and fully recuperate from my chemotherapy treatment.

I have been surfing the Facebook web for craft sites and it is amazing how much time that can take. You click from one page to another and before you know it an hour has passed. I get so much enjoyment from looking at pretty things and find it hard to resist touching beautiful yarn and fabric. That is why I got so much pleasure from the UK yarn I used to create the large Granny Stripe blanket. This is the only downside of Internet shopping as you can’t feel the products. I do look forward to getting out and about again.

Today my Sunday night Internet shopping purchases arrived in the post, how about that for service, not that they had far to travel from Elsternwick and Geelong!  I am physically ready to lose my hair as I now have 4 new hats and one pretty scarf and it didn’t even take 48 hours. As to being mentally ready well … there is nothing I can do about it now as the process of losing hair has already started!  I also have a brand new Cleckheaton Hats and Scarves knitting pattern book and 10 new balls of yarn in the shades of charcoal, garnet and mallard thanks to mum and dad’s visit across town to Wondoflex Yarn Craft Centre in Malvern (pictured below).

My son now knows all about different sized knitting needles and their reason to be and it was a miracle that he was able to find the three pairs of specific knitting needles I need out in the garage. So once I am finished the primary coloured Granny Stripe baby blanket (pictured below) I will be able to throw myself into knitting three different woolen hats for when the weather in Melbourne cools down.

A small piece of fashion information for you, I have included some photos of the possible hats and would welcome any suggestions as to which I might knit, however under no circumstances will I be wearing a hat with pom-poms!

I also don’t intend to wear a hat (pictured below) with a striped band which looks like it is straight out of a Harry Potter Movie.

And the final fashion faux pas I won’t be committing in the coming months is the wearing a silky scarf as worn by Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie!