Blogging for Scrapbookers: Prompt 13

Note: Yes, I'm still sticking with the Blogging for Scrapbookers class. What happened between prompt 3 and prompt 13? Life. I promise to get them all written up and posted soon :)

This assignment asks us to take a look at what we were doing a year ago, a retrospective. If we can go further back, we are asked to do that as well. Instead of posting photos that could take us back years and years, but take hours and hours to find (will do it though, once I'm organized!), I've found three blog posts. What I found funny was once I located the post about Mama Math, I realized I could write the exact same thing - for all of my kids - today!

So here it is, reposted:

Time: it's a love-hate thing

Anyone who knows me knows I have a love hate relationship with time. I love my clocks. I live knowing exactly what time it is. I'm very much a fan of order and control, that is when time is my friend.

I have four children which is when time is my enemy.

I cannot stand anyone who is habitually late. It is so incredibly disrespectful. It is a physical manifestation of the belief that the time of X time is more valuable than the time of Y. Truly arrogant people are late. That's not a dig, it's a fact. If I'm late there are two options: I'm dead or I've been made late by someone who considers their time more important than mine.

I go crazy when I feel like I don't have enough time. It means I have not managed the time given to me, well. Grr. One thing I am able to do well is manage time so the feeling of being rushed is somewhat foreign and uncomfortable. Makes me very irritable. That is not a good thing.

Time management is something I'm trying to teach my children.

When I collected Cole from school yesterday he was in a surly mood. He had handed in an assignment - a brochure outlining how Ireland would be a good trading partner for Canada. He was given two weeks to complete the assignment. He got the rubric back and received a 3- (translation: B-). Wow, was he ever upset with himself. We had a talk and I managed to calm him down.

Then he said it. The worst sentence ever. "I didn't have time".

When my brain regained function, I took Cole through an exercise. Mama's TIME MATH:

168 are the hours in a week (24 x 7)
70 are the hours of sleep in a week (10 x 7 days)
30 are the hours of school (6 x 5 days)

You cannot change these hours, they are what they are, what's left?

68 hours
8 hours are dedicated to hockey games and/or practice throughout the week

Cole has 60 hours. SIXTY HOURS to do with whatever he chooses to do. Clearly homework is not one of his priorities or it would be done, better. He was shocked when he saw the numbers. Claire was equally shocked.

They have been given an exercise for the next week. Starting now they have to document what they are doing with those 60 hours. I'm curious to see how they actually manage their time. I think they'll be surprised.

The differences this year? Cole is less surly, well, less surly today!

Once I discovered Mama Math it has been used often throughout the year since I first posted. My kids are very clear that "I didn't have time" is not a valid excuse for not getting their homework or household chores done. It doesn't work for me, it won't work for them.

Over on the LINARstudio, which was just getting off the ground, I blogged about the assignment I did for the Cathy Zielske Design Your Life course:

DYL: Real World Colour Assignment 6

This was fun as I played around with coloured photos of Claire and Cole and came up with the look in the layouts. I rarely, if ever, play with my photographs in any editing software. I tend to believe that my photography skills will suffer if I thought there could be a quick fix! But in this case, I thought it would be fun and it fit with the theme of the assignment:

Cardstock: Bazzill; Printed Paper: SEI; Stickers: Thickers, SEI; Font: Creepy, Arial



Cardstock: Bazzill; Printed Paper: SEI; Stickers: Thickers, SEI; Font: Creepy, Arial

 
And that's what was going on in my life, a year ago, on November 20th, 2008. I am not much of a live in the past type - I spend most of my time learning from the present and moving forward. Works for me. But, this little visit has been fun. Maybe because very little has changed?

As for November 20th, 2007? I was surprised to find a post, though I can't for the life of me remember in what context it was posted. Clearly I was just being myself!

Heed the horoscope ...

This is my horoscope for yesterday:

Virgo
August 23 - September 21

Don't be surprised if you are scolded by people who are upset about the way you are handling certain things in your life, dear Virgo. Most likely, the people who criticize the most are the ones who understand the least. They are probably just on a completely different wavelength than you are, and it is not your job to try to change them. Nor is it your responsibility to change your ways because of them.

Probably the ONLY time I should have actually read, and heeded, my horoscope. I should have waited just one day to raise a stink!

Pretty cryptic, but not much of a surprise. At the time I was very involved with an on-line message board. It was more than a little toxic and getting worse by every passing moment. I spent a lot of time making every effort to turn lemons into lemonade, providing huge sums of money for a new gallery in an effort to bring these women together in positive exchange, but those women were clearly not interested in anything but being miserable. It took a few months, but I managed to extricate myself completely from this group in the summer of 2008. No "hairflip" just a very quiet exit, with no goodbye to anyone. I'm told nothing has changed and it continues to be mean-spirited and often cruel.

The good news? Life is getting WAY BETTER and I'm glad I'm not where I was in 2007!

Where were you in 2008? 2007? Do you remember?