09 October 2006

I Was Supposed To Be Doing Something

  • Well now there's timelining the SEN statementing history
  • There's finding the paperwork - picking out the salient sheets for duplication - a pig of a job because its all in two or three big brown boxes and a couple of loose piles from recent use. Darn.
  • There's filling out the secondary appeal form
  • There's getting it copied and posted for Friday - Evil deadline - has to take priority
  • There's liaising nicely with the LEA and letting them know this is just about establishing interpretation of the rules and not about confrontation

  • Then there's trying to get Son's school transport tweaked so he can try an after school club
  • There's emailing the SENCO now to ask first about close home-school communication, what they think it is, who they think should be doing it and who they think should be initiating it (ie would it suit their systems for it to be responsive or pre-emptive)
  • There's working out from the answer how to phrase the small collection of growing concerns
  • Like pointing out that he is already alienating people and his class keep asking him why he talks so much, or why he talks to thin air; when having the breaktime INA he's statemented for would help him not just to avoid confrontation but to change his behaviours...
  • ...unless the support is in place so discretely that it (he/she) has seen all and never intervened, in which case who are they, what are they, what is their training and how can I speak to them. When you have a child with a skewed view of the world telling you how it is, you get to be a good tactician / chess player and you learn to anticipate all possible reasons for a move by the 'opponent', however blatant you suspect one to be, with the end result that you teach yourself to think like an Aspie never making any assumptions or at least considering a trillion possibilities. This means teachers end up needing to speak to YOU in watertight terms, as well as to your child. Hey ho.

  • Then I have to ring the maxiofascial clinic because this tooth still wakes me at night, and plays up in the day and if I don't make noise, I will slip down the list of people hoping to take the space of a cancelled appointment.
  • Then I have to find daughter's leg appointment letter and transfer the info to my diary and calendar (calendar by preference but people keep taking it off the wall and forgetting to put it back) before the letter gets lost completely.
  • Then we have a new fridge and freezer coming at the end of the week, so having taken it easy at home (which others took as their cue to slob out completely and spread trash as the spirit moved), I would like to be pulling out the old ones and scrubbing behind them
  • Which involves a major spring clean in front of them until there's room to pull them out; no piles of appointment letters etc balancing precariously on their tops, etc etc.
  • The Guinea pigs (4 caveys, 2 cages) need scrubbing out - so do the rats. Rat shit stinks.

  • Then I need to make contact with this brilliant man, Richard Robinson, who is arranging next year's Brighton Science Festival; because I promised him a couple of contacts. I went to meet him with a view to doing his admin, but we established fairly immediately that he needs someone ready to do office hours plus (and I am, just not all the way over in Brighton) so instead we spent the hour brainstorming. That's one I want to do sooner and I feel beholden to him simply because he's nice and doing a great job with a fantastic concept and I really really wanted to be part of it.
  • Then there's directing you all to go see Maggie Clarke's photography and to mention that I am feeling decidedly trapped and suburban having met Ms Clarke on the bus going from Brighton to Eastbourne this Sunday. Never look at your own life in comparison if you should happen to meet someone who lives its antithesis. Or no, do, if it'll challenge you to tweak a few behaviours, but I'm heading off at a tangent. Talking about photography and the Moody Blues was fun (fancy having the time, freedom and money to wander all over Europe following a music tour - wow). Even better was the politics, talking to this University Lecturer who defended the weak by arguing that NY air WAS polluted by 9/11, when Government was telling people they had the all clear! Outrageous! How did she put it? Oh yes I think she said the whole place was like there'd been explosions in an incinerator, a crematorium, a plastics factory, an asbestos factory and a metal refinery; all at once. That much is obvious if you stop to think, yes? I imagine this honest outspokenness may be why she felt the sudden urge to stretch her legs from academia and take a tour behind the Moody Blues. Must be quite a balancing act to hold down a lecturing post at a prestigious Uni and publicly defend the weak, all at once. The opponents of the ordinary people seem to be the guys that play golf and bestow bursaries. I'm simply way too impressed, and only guessing.
  • Then I want to duplicate the links because damn, I wish I'd had time to broach the whole Brighton Science Festival thing as I think Maggie would have a ball running a fun lecture or an experiment, for that, if only she were going to happen to be in the UK next February.

But none of these little tasks is the one I am searching for. OK I just cheated and did two of them during this blatant example of masterful procrastination otherwise known as a blog post, but sod it. I have three hours left if the missing 'must-do' has to take office hours into account.

See, I remember Husband ticking and tutting over something I forgot to do on his behalf last Friday, and he said it would HAVE to be done on Monday; and it will and he's right. I think I need to phone him up.

No, before you accuse me of setting feminism back a century or so, this isn't willing servitude - its just that when he started on about his 'oh so important' task, I remember thinking he was bloody well going to have to wait because I had something far more urgent to see to first.

So really I'm only phoning him up to see if a reminder about his task will be enough to jog my memory about the genuinely important one.

Told you those tablets were making me stupid. Graaa.

3 comments:

Cheryl said...

I remembered!
And then my mum phoned and by the time I escaped the Spanish Inquisition I was late getting youngest from school, and now I'm home and I've forgotten again.
Humph

Jennifer said...

Pffft! To quote American comedian Steve Martin, "Well, it must not have been very important!"

Hugs hugs hugs~

fineartist said...

Oh good Lord girl, you are meant to be mending and relaxing, but life does go on, doesn't it?

Oh how it does go on.

Hon I can go from one room to another and forget what I was going into the room in the first place for. I can also go half way across the same room and forget. Hell I can stand up and forget why I'm standing, truth be told.

You need a secretary, an errand person and a house keeper, I wish I could get those people together for you, but as usual I'm all good intentions and wind.

Hugs across the ocean, Lori