Happy Birthday wishes

October 23, 2012

A huge Happy Birthday to my best friend, my soul mate, my Nigel.

Haven't really seen much of him so far - it was a hasty open of cards and gifts (very small gifts as his real present was his iPhone that he had a few weeks ago) at 6 am this morning but I think a toast or two might take place later.

It won't be to toast the Pirates, sadly, as they were defeated last night, after being winners of the league throughout the season. Such a shame, but that's life. We'll see how they do in the knockout cup tomorrow.

I thought we ouight to have a page of the birthday boy today really and so this is a page I made a while ago but never uploaded. It uses a Dawn Inskip collection called Breathless and documents when we finally made Lymington and did a walk we had had to abort a couple of times.

and as the theme of this post is birthdays I can also share a page made for this week's UKS challenge which was to scrap a birthday. OK so it doesn't LOOK like a birthday page, but it is. It was how I spent my birthday this year - at Discovery Cove and this is me feeding the birds in the awesome aviary.

Today I am thankful for

Nigel - plain and simple really. He is the greatest blessing I have.

and the page a day calendar today

For several years I taught a workshop called “Clutter Be Gone.” I was embarrassed at first because I came to do it almost by accident. After all, I was no expert, just someone who’d struggled with the problem herself. But when I spoke honestly about having hidden piles of papers in the bathtub one night and my students responded with similar tales, I knew I had something to offer them. Still, I struggled with shame around the topic. “God,” I pleaded one night, “help me help these students.”

A few days later, my mother sent me a clipping in the mail about “National Clutter Awareness Week.” (I think it’s in November, but I misplaced the clipping, of course.) Mentioning that curious fact to my friend Louise, I said, “Can you believe it? There’s a holiday just for clutter. How are we supposed to
celebrate? By cleaning the refrigerator?”

“Now, if I ever cleaned out my refrigerator, that would be a holiday!” Louise quipped.

Continuing along that silly vein, I said, “I wonder if they’ll close the banks and schools?”

“They would,” said Louise, “except nobody who celebrates the day can remember where they put the keys.”

As we chuckled, I realized that I wasn’t feeling quite so gloomy over the piles of laundry in my room or
the mail I hadn’t sorted yet. That was the answer to my question: Use humor in your class. Making light of the subject doesn’t mean that it’s not a serious problem, it just means that you can have fun while working on it.