In-Noo-Shook

I have to tell you that this studying stuff is for the birds… the birds I tell you! I am exhausted from spending three hours studying solidly today. I am currently doing a post- graduate course for professional development (meh), so I can wax lyrical all about gifted education and definitions and things that are factors in the fairness of training or the discrimination of not having specialist teachers for gifted students. Yes, I just knew that would prick your ears up and having you positively panting for more! For the first assignment (reports on the first five weeks worth of work) that is due in four weeks, there is the minimum of 3000 words for the whole five weeks. For week one I wrote 2600 words and I could have said much more, but I decided I had to stop and start week two. I don't think that I will have any trouble fulfilling the word count portion of this course. In fact, I'm finding it really interesting so far, but of course, by week 10 I could be bitching and whinging and you will be able to say “I told you so’s” all over the place. Just remind me that when I'm whinging that at the end of week 12 I have two assignments due, shut up and get on it with!

There. Does that count as a blog update? Because I truly cannot think of anything entertaining to write about.

Do I really want to write about how damn hard it was to leave Sweatpea with my friend Nurse today so that I could go out and study? Hell no. I want to forget that darling little face, screwed up in grief. I really don't want to write about the wails of “Mummah! Mummah! Mine!” that broke my heart and had me driving away in tears as I walked out the door and Nurse having to cuddle Sweatpea in her arms to stop her from running after me. I do not know how mothers can leave their children every day to go to work. I can only imagine how much of an emotional drain it must be to leave your child every day in the care of someone else if or when the maternal instincts are kicking and screaming madly to go back, wrap your arms around your baby and never walk away again. I'm not saying that there is anything bad with women who do it, either because they have to for economic reasons or they really, purely enjoy their jobs and want to keep their careers on the up and up. I just can’t imagine how you deal with the leaving of the child when they clearly don't want you to go away. I'm just really glad that I don't have to do it, and despite the financial hardships, despite my career being screwed around, I'm glad I get to spend the next few years with Sweatpea. And my respect for mothers who work outside of the home has grown. As I said, I'm thankful that I can be a stay at home mother for now. Having said all that, I'm also glad that I can study part time at university so that when I'm ready to go back to work, I will have better qualifications. Of course, by the time I finish my courses (at one subject a semester!) I could be too old and ready to go onto the old age pension making my studies worthless, but it keeps my brain active, or shattered depending on how much study I've done for the day! :)

Seriously, there was nothing exciting that happened today, but I have to get back into the habit of writing here rather than the paper diary that I've been working on. Actually, its part of my life coaches homework for me. I have to write ‘morning pages’ every morning (fancy that!) and I am finding that after writing them (by hand no less) I have pretty much purged out most of my thoughts and have nothing left to rant and rave about here in the online diary. Not that that’s a bad thing. I would love to have this diary filled with things that are lot more upbeat, positive and happy. The morning pages come from a workbook that I fear is going to take me positively years to work through called “The Artists Way” by Julia Cameron. Its supposed to be a book on how to reconnect with the inner artist we each have inside us. At least, that is what the book suggests. All I know is that I really struggle to call myself a writer, I don't believe that I have any talent whatsoever and I don't value the talent and the gift that God has bestowed upon me with my writing. I'm not sharing this with you simply to solicit notes of “but you arrrrrrre deeply talented” in a Holly Golightly manner. I'm sharing this with you as a mental inukshuk, (meaning "image of a man's spirit" in the Canadian Inuit language of Inuktitut). of where I have been now so that in my future I can look back and see that I've moved forward. Now that was a truly profound sentence. But I will, in the interest of full disclosure, admit to you that the first word I wrote initially was illicit, rather than solicit. Talented wordsmith am I not?