Happy New Year

I have had a very quiet slow start to 2016 in terms of not teaching, and being socially in my cave. But my writing is going great guns. I'm getting my next thing ready to go to the publisher, as well as starting a brand new thing, which actually has been rattling around my brain (parts thereof, and characters) for about thirty years.

We didn't go away, but we've been doing driving lessons (P is 19 now and has just cracked 20 hours. We are pathetic.) We've been walking, an hour or more, at a fast pace, and this is good. Except the weather has been too hot recently to do anything but night walks and by the time the sun goes down I'm usually too tired, or not in the zone, to walk.

Clokes is back at work - he had two weeks off - the kids are in and out of the house. P's book shop job seems to have faltered. She went away and he said to get in touch when she got back and she did, and he said it's the quiet time but that he'll get in touch if he needs her. Sounds like a fob off to me. She said he was a difficult boss, was hyper critical and she's not used to feeling incompetent, and that his scrutiny and picking up tiny little things, while not seeing the larger successes she achieved, started to make her second-guess everything she was doing, and not enjoy it. It's interesting. I said that she will come across people who aren't smooth - for whatever reason - in life. I told her I was glad the difficulty with him was of this type, rather than him being an outright bully (but it did sound to me it could have devolved to that) or a sexual harasser. She was learning processes and it was a steep learning curve, she felt he didn't see the good and only saw the bad, of which there was little. Any mistakes she made were either small, or rectified, and were not numerous. This is life.

She's also gone off in a bit of a tangent regarding her uni studies. Started talking about wanting to do medicine towards the end of last year. Because of the challenge, but also because she would be interested in the work. Medicine! This is the first time she's EVER talked about it, so I was wary but didn't appear to be so. Was encouraging, but pragmatic. So she's decided - after trying to see whether she can get the subjects needed (ie prerequisites to apply for medicine) within her Arts course (crazy) and she could have if she'd realised this last year, but now she's going into second year, it's not possible, without serious overloading and serious cost, that isn't covered by HECS. So yesterday she decided to do a chemistry subject and see how it feels/goes. It will be out of her comfort zone for sure. (She did biology and maths last year, in her IB course, but hasn't done chemistry since probably early secondary school, and never as a subject on its own but just as a part of Science.) So. Interesting. I told her that if she finishes Arts and then finds she still is thinking about Medicine, then to consider having a break, working somewhere, then if she still wants to, do a Science degree. But I do really think she will just stick to the Arts. Who knows... I remember also not knowing at that age.

Haven't played chess for quite a while. We have watched some stuff on television, including The Quest (loved it! Yes, it's cheesy, and a weird kind of format but once you get used to it, the payoff in the last episode is magnificent!)

Just had a phone call from Channel Nine about a documentary on sex ed later in the year. We had a preliminary chat and I said YES to the suggestion we appear on the program. She emphasised it's not a crappy Today Tonight program, which was going to be one of my questions. LOL. So that would be great exposure.

I think that's it. Have to get onto some sex ed work now... we are writing an article for an education magazine and I've been putting off looking at what my partner has drafted. Also we are developing our programs for a new school this year that will run sessions from Prep to Year 6 (Not sure if I've mentioned this.) So I have to put my primary school teacher hat on, and think of activities for little ones. Will be fun. Pin the vulva on the donkey? Hahaha. Oh. That's given me an idea for how to use the outlines you did for us Alex. Awesome.

Bye for now. What's your news? What are you reading? Suze, you did ask about my book but I don't have your email. If you want to email me at worldoysterstage@gmail.com and I'll give you the info!