mutteringhousewife

Yes, hasn’t it been a while. And I want to get on and tell you all about why half of our roof is in a skip bin in the driveway and there’s a man up there under the tarpaulin who looks like he should be pulling soy chai lattes in Surry Hills rather than up in my roof with a team of unexpectedly well groomed henchmen. But before I do that, I feel that I should mention a few of the circumstances that have prevented me from blathering at you in my accustomed manner.

1. Work. Yes, that’s right. I’ve been kind of pretending to work for quite a while now, popping in to sprinkle some scientific knowledge on a bunch of fledgling primary teachers once or twice a week. But I got a bit over excited and was teaching two six week courses plus a thirteen weeker which saw me teaching four days a week and my dears, I don’t know how you non housewives do anything other than work, pop into the supermarket on your way home and do a load of washing at 10 at night. On top of that was a rather frantic week and a half in which I marked sixty reading logs, sixty ePortfolios, eight twenty page units of work, sixty Sociology exams and eighty Science 1 exams. And look at what I had to put up with.

I mean, really. By the end of it I had petrified into a lumpy C shape, it took me days to be able to stand up straight again.

2. Study. My boss suggested that as I had a job of sorts teaching university students, it might be rather topping if I actually had some education qualifications. Accordingly I enrolled myself into a Graduate Certificate of University Teaching. This semester’s work has included quite a lot of crapping on about stuff that has happened at work. Or, as they put it, “reflecting on your teaching practice”. It’s kind of exactly the same as blogging only with an actual point and without most of the whimsy. Some may have sneaked in, I don’t know. I could have plonked it up here, but how many of you really want to know about the value of unintended learning outcomes and how to assess them? Yes, I thought so.

3. Kitten. I did think that once I got a kitten I’d start blogging about that, but when it actually happened it turned out to be vastly entertaining to watch and really very dull to write about, so I spared you. “oh, look, he tried to jump on the lounge and missed!”, “see, the dog is running away from him!”, “oh, sweet, he has a dead spider stuck to his chin!”. You get the idea. I couldn’t do it to you. Yes, you can have a picture.

4. Baking frenzy. Once I actually finished work I had to catch up with my baking. The poor children were reduced to eating fruit! So in this last week I’ve made chocolate chip biscuits, peanut brittle, chocolate brownies, caramel icecream, ginger biscuits, a batch of yoghurt, bread rolls, orange and poppyseed friands and my first fruitcake, which is almost gone. I am again ready to fill lunchboxes and entertain guests. The housewife is back.