Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals

Hello my darling angel friends,

I am having a truly lazy day.  It’s very much a me day, and I suspect that by the time I go to bed tonight, I may be slightly discomfited by the fact that I have achieved nothing.  Nah, scratch that thought.  I may very well have thrown our PC off the kitchen balcony onto the rocks below.  There’s a whole bunch of (rather pointless) multitasking going on here.

Picture Yours Truly, wearing her awesome new Christmas headphones so that I can maximise the sound of the music I have elected to play on You Tube (because seriously, what is adulting about if you can’t play the music you want at the volume you want, when you want? Right?  And I only say this because by now we’ve wised up to the fact that you can’t listen to your choice of music around the dinner table or in the car, you can’t blast the loud speakers so much that the neighbours bang on your door, and you really do have to be available at the end of the day when the kids are home).

On my PC I have iTunes open so that I can look for the music the girls have chosen as Christmas presents (how times have changed since we would take a R100 note to Musica to buy the latest CD that took our fancy?) I also have my photo editor open trying to decide if I should post an old picture onto FB in order to send birthday wishes to Bethy’s bestie.  And on my Chrome browser, I have WordPress open, You Tube (because I just don’t buy cd’s like I used to), and Google Maps because we’re heading to Ireland at the end of April.  But, our PC crashed in December- we burnt out the USB port while trying to charge a battery pack, but the whole thing crashed.  And while we paid to have it repaired, gosh damn, its SLOOOOOWWWW.  It may or may not be a result of slow internet speed today- is the very bizarre weather we’re having playing havoc with our fibre?  Who knows, but it’s quite frustrating.

I’ve given up on my iTunes search for now- it’s impact on the speed of my typing here was just too much, so now I have elected to play Linkin Park on You Tube.  The track just coming through now is an incredibly moving concert video of “Crawling”, done with piano backing.  The video was posted after Chestor’s suicide, and if you look at the video, it’s interesting to see how many people have been moved by his (their) music.  I don’t know how many times I have thought this in the months following his passing- do all artistic people have this darkness within them?  And by artistic, I mean pretty much across the entire range of creating stuff.  Musicians, actors, people who paint, people who write, people who create food, people who design clothes, people who create adverts.  Maybe there is a little bit of a line- there are obviously artistic people out there who don’t live their lives on the verge of destruction, but maybe those that we consider quite legendary, are in fact those that live on the edge?

My Alex has to do an oral project in French class this year.  They were tasked to choose an artist, or if they couldn’t, they were allocated one.  We didn’t know about the project (or maybe I did, and completely misunderstood the teacher at the meeting in September), but Alex didn’t choose an artist, and was thus allocated an artist by the name of Francis Bacon.  The object of the project is to research the person, provide a bio to him/her, and to choose a few pieces of their art and be able to discuss it.  I sat down with her to do the research, and it turns out Francis Bacon certainly belonged to the group of artists that lived on the edge- a violent disapproving father, he was beaten because he would wear his mothers dresses.  He left home which was Ireland and England at 17 and his first home was in Berlin in the 1920’s.  Afterwards he went to Paris and then returned to London.  He didn’t seem to really be inclined to earn a normal income, and spent days as a pickpocket, and socially with wealthy men.  He was a furniture designer for a while and then gave that up, and when he was in his 30’s, started with his art.  But dark I tell you.  His major themes seem to mostly involve the title ‘Crucifixion’, but he was by and large, a gay atheist.  He ended up dying in the 1990’s in a Spanish convent, pretty much alone, although not quite destitute I think.

Clearly, he was a sought after acclaimed artist of the time, and had a circle of well known friends of the 1960’s.

But damn, just how on His green earth do I try figure out how my Alex should approach this project, in French, nogal?  Gay atheist who painted dark images of a crucifixion?  And many, many self portraits.

This project aside, this 4th year of school for Alex (5th, if you take into account our Grand Section is the equivalent of Grade 0), has been the most challenging year yet.  The sudden leap in the expectation could may well be the most ludicrous ever.  Or not I guess.  I remember Standard 4- basically Grade 6- the year that I had to start working for myself, that I couldn’t just be present at school, that I to research stuff, and learn for tests. And even then, I don’t think I ever really realised it, but the big fat zero out of 40 I got for an incomplete Geography assignment caught me off guard.  But I was 11.  Not 9, going on 10.  Added to that, I didn’t have Mommy and Dad every night to assist with homework, and although I never became a uni student, I haven’t turned out that bad have it?

Needless to say, I am having largely angsty moments with parenthood at the moment.  I had to attend a meeting with Alex’s french teacher this week.  The teacher didn’t (doesn’t?) speak a work of English, so I had to try make myself understood in the quite broken manner that I speak.  Which I found totally unfair while trying to defend the honour of my first born child who is the most sensitive person in our house.  Her teacher basically addressed her, and told her that she’s falling behind because her French reading, and thus ‘orthographe‘ is not up to scratch.  I asked if need to take Alex to a specialist- the French LOVE a little bit of ‘orthophiniste‘ time (speech therapist.  SA’s do occupational therapists.  The French do speech therapists).  She said no.  She also said no to a tutor.  Alex just needs to read more french.  The teacher then addressed Beth, who was sitting diligently reading her English book, and chatted to her for a short bit.  And proceeded to exclaim how eloquently Beth speaks, and then told Beth that she and Alex simply must play together and speak french.

As a result, I am so completely torn in 2 pieces.  Yes, I know that Alex doesn’t read enough.  I just don’t force it, particularly if I do try suggest a little quiet time to do some reading, the girls will claim that they want to go and play outside.  Who says no to that?  And then by the time other homework is finished, Beth has demanded enough of everyone’s attention, we’ve eaten, and taken 45 minutes to watch a TV program as a family, it’s bed time, and mostly everyone is too tired to hold up a book, so I have basically neglected my job as a literary enforcer.  So yes, I do know, Alex doesn’t read enough.

However, if Alex doesn’t need a therapist, or a tutor, she can’t be that far behind can she?  And surely her teacher should do just that- teach?  Also, what do I do with the knowledge that Alex is not alone in her dislike of her teacher.  Yes- Mme Halm is currently on Alex’s list of “My Worst Teachers Ever”  and she is the only person on the list.  Unfortunately, there have been other friends who have also had a difficult time in this year at school, not just in her class.  Alex’s BFF cries every Monday because she doesn’t want to go to school.  Another friend has had massive fights with both of her parents every evening while getting through homework because they’re German, and just can’t help with the French work.

I guess this is the next level of parenting isn’t it?  Not only are our children growing up, but we’re also learning more about ourselves at the same time.  And bad habits that are easy to ignore if it’s just you that may see it, are not so easy to hide when you have the plight of your off-spring in your hands.

To veer off the subject somewhat, I decided that my resolutions this year would be to be more open-minded.  What this boils down to is that I would quit being gossipy because gossipy seems to come from being judgmental in my case.  So I have to stop being all judgy and stuff.  I have a tendency to be critical of parents who push too much homework time, because if they don’t get into the right school then they will be nowhere in life.  I probably feel like this because a.)we can’t afford this for our girls but also b.) life is too short for that kinda sh1t and c.) it plays right into the stigma of (white) privilege which is so largely taboo in this era.

I do realise however, that some people just do need that.  And so what?  We are all in this boat under a different set of circumstances, and we all have to do things that work best for us.  Yes, society expectation still does count a little- or does it?  In this era of Millenials and being able to have just what we think we should have, just how much does societal expectation really count anymore?

Wow.  I apologise, didn’t really mean to off-load like this.  These words sort of rambled off the keyboard while I sit here under the influence of awesome music and grey wintery clouds outside on my patio.

I am going to leave it here today.  I guess I haven’t given you much news at all, but I think I needed to talk to someone.  Wish I could talk to Mom about my Alex, but in her absence, you’re It, so thank you for this.

Best wishes to the kiddies, may their year ahead at school be a really good one, will be thinking of them in the months to come.  Also, to your northern hemisphere kids, hope that winter comes to an end soon.  It has been a very strange one so far hasn’t it?

All my love to you and yours, God Bless, and take care,

Love

Me.