Presents for teachers - salt dough or Swarovski??

I have a rather sore neck from packing gift bags. 30 gift bags for the children in the class I teach once a week. I hope they like them - its probably not what they imagine in their wildest dreams, but I wanted to get them a token of my affection after the year we have spent toether.

I tend to try and make something for the children - gingerbread glittery Christmas trees for Christmas, shredded wheat Easter egg nests at ... Easter and last Summer I watercoloured portraits on book marks which I laminated.

Apologies for the awful photo.

I don't spend lots of money on these things, but I do take time and care. It made my day today to see one of last year's boys using the bookmark I made him a year on.

I am so fortunate each year that children and parents give me gifts too. Part of me feels very embarrassed to receive them, after all - how many people are given gifts for just doing their job? Another part of me, and this is the larger part, feels very grateful and incredibly touched that people take the time and effort to think of me and give me a gift. I am not the teacher after all, but the T.A and although I think I do a decent job I am definitely the oily rag as opposed to the mechanic!!

I certainly don't expect it and am usually pretty gobsmacked to be given anything. I feel bad that parents these days sometimes feel that they have to give. Its certainly not the case for me and I would rather people didn't spend money on gifts - although who would say its not lovely to receive them?

To be honest I appreciate the small things more than the extravagant. I am so touched to be given a hand made card by a child, a Christmas decoration made from salt dough - something that will always remind me of that particular child. Something that I know they have spent time on for me. I have a special box filled with cards and drawings from over the years and I could tell you who gave me every little ornament or picture.

I know some people get quite cross at the thought that they are expected to give presents to teachers and teaching assistants. I would feel cross too if I felt it was expected. I would hate anyone to feel that way and my advice to any parent would be that you shouldn't feel that way. No teacher or T.A I work with expects anything. Why should we be bought gifts or vouchers?

I remember feeling quite stressed out when my boys were little. I had no money and coming up to Christmas the last thing I needed was to have to fork out for yet more presents. Some of the mums in the playground who obviously had more money than me seemed to think that putting £5 in the collection was reasonable. For me it was a point of extreme embarrassment as I couldn't afford it. I remember instead making a box which my son decorated and which I filled with homemade chocolates. I so wanted to show my appreciation for my sons' teachers and teaching assistants and I think that my gift ended up meaning a lot more than a fiver thrown in a collection.

Of course I might be wrong! It may well be that they preferred the John Lewis vouchers!! But I was always brought up to believe that its the thought and care that counts - not how much something cost.

Please don't feel you have to buy presents for school staff. Its a really lovely thing to do, but you will not be thought of badly if you don't. There should be no pressure. 

Give a little love ...

Today I came across a quotation from Maya Angelou. It struck a chord with me and made me think about life as it is at the moment ...


“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”   Maya Angelou


I saw Ruby Wax being interviewed on tv about her new website Black Dog Tribe and her words took me back to the time when I was suffering from Post Natal Depression. The Black Dog Tribe website is designed to be a place where people suffering from depression can meet on-line, talk, find help. Ruby is raising awareness of the issue of depression - trying to lift the veil of shame.


I remember the day I finally sought help for my depression and I will never forget my doctor and the way she made me feel. She was so incredibly understanding and somehow had just the right words. She told me that this was the first day of the rest of my life and that far from being the failure I believed myself to be, I was brave - I had shown the courage to seek help and take the first steps towards recovery.


Her kindness and care have left a lasting impression on me. I try to live my life doing the same for other people. I am not a religious person and I do not believe in a god, but I do believe that the least we can do with our lives is to make other people feel good, feel safe and feel loved.


When I was in the depths of misery, drowning in the darkness of depression and overwhelmed with a sense of failure and shame, my husband enveloped me in love. He gently took over, washing, cleaning, cooking ... and never once made me feel guilty. He made me feel so loved. Whatever else happens in our lives I will always remember that love.


I want to be remembered and regarded as the person who gave love and care too. I try very hard to make people feel comfortable and respected when I am with them. I want to be the person who always had a smile, a friendly word, a caring touch. If I could make a difference to someone's life in the way my doctor or my husband made a difference to me it would make everything worthwhile.


The funny thing is that by giving in that way you actually get so much from other people. 


When I was really down I can remember wondering why I bothered. I could see no point in my life, no future. And now I count myself so fortunate that even when times are difficult for various reasons I can see the point of my life totally. Its in the smile from a friend, the hug from a child. Its in the simple joy created by kindness and care.


Maya Angelou got it right when she said that people will remember the way you make them feel. It doesn't take much, but it does take a little bit of thought, a little bit of selflessness. Its about trying to make someone else feel good and about putting yourself second sometimes. It doesn't mean you have to be a doormat or a walkover, but the feeling you get from making someone else feel good about themselves is worth millions.


Just a thought ...

Happy New Year from Secret Housewife!!

Here we are... January 1st, 2011. I remember when I was a child, thinking that when the year 2000 came around I would be the grand old age of 35. And here I am, 11 years past that landmark. I spent last night surrounded by friends and family, happy, dancing, singing, totally at ease with myself and those around me.

After my last post Bozena commented that life should be spent singing and dancing the way you would if nobody was watching.I took her words to heart and last night I did just that.I was not the most gorgeous, the slimmest, the youngest woman at the party, but I may well have been the happiest.My friend sang Mustang Sally and asked for 5 women to come on stage and dance. I was up there like a shot with 3 of my friends and danced with a smile on my face as wide as the Pacific.My husband sang and had the whole party up and dancing - I was so incredibly proud of him!

Who knows what 2011 will bring.I know that I will write about my life this year and there will be times when I am miserable. There will be times when I am frustrated or bored, but hopefully there will also be more times when I feel the way I feel tonight, comfortable in myself and actually aware of how bloody lucky I am.

I have a beautiful, kind man who loves me and I have 2 boys who are just lovely.I have good friends who accept me for who I am. I know that I am far from perfect. I am impatient and insecure at times. I am lazy and obsessive. But I am also kind and funny, aware of my failings and of course hugely modest!! I have come a long way from the woman who started writing this blog 4 years ago.

I hope that the New Year brings you happiness and comfort in your own skin. I hope that we are able to cope with whatever the year brings us - let's hope its good things!

All you need is love.

I was watching some tv programme the other night, probably one of the many dreadful reality tv shows that I watch and enjoy, when one of the participants told the other participants that she loved them.Endearing as this was, bearing in mind the fact that she had been acquainted with them all of 24 hours, it set me to thinking.

Theses days we bandy around the 'I love you' phrase as though we had a job lot and had to get rid of our box of phrases before delivery of the next order.I think that if I made a tally chart of the number of times I hear it said during the course of the day I would run out of tallies. We 'love' food, we 'love' tv programmes, we 'love' our phones, our i-pods and our new shoes.

When it comes to people we 'love' even more. We 'love' celebrities, whom we have never met, to a jaw dropping extent.Teenage girls 'love' boy bands to within an inch of their lives.'Oh, I just love them!' we gush, about people we have never met, never will meet and only 'know' through their own press machines and carefully selected nuggets of information.

Its strange, isn't it, how things have changed? As I grew up I am sure we didn't bandy about the blanket 'loving' of anyone we found vaguely attractive.'Love' in my family just wasn't something we talked about... When my dad died he had never told me that he loved me, but that didn't mean that he didn't. It just meant that he didn't talk about those sort of things.To him 'love' was not something to be taken lightly. You didn't tell all and sundry that you loved them.

Of course I am being a tad disingenuous here as the fact that he didn't tell me he loved me really bugged me.If  I am being honest it cut me to the core.But there is the difference for you... There is a huge difference between 'love' and.... 'love'.There is the everyday appreciation of things we like, people whose company we enjoy or whose lifestyle we envy. When we say that we 'love' our new Jimmy Choos ( I should be so lucky - please reinsert Marks & Spencer Footglove groan...) we all know that we don't really love them.We just like them a lot.

Its just that the word 'love' has got mixed up and over used.Most of us know that real 'love' is what we hold deep in our hearts.I remember the first time I told my Man that I loved him. It took a long time to build up the courage to say the words and I wanted to be sure that I really meant it.I knew that without him my world would be an empty place, that my heart would ache with an indescribable longing.

When my Dad had died someone told me a story about him.For some reason they had been discussing films and they had got onto talking about Sophie's Choice - a film where Meryl Streep plays a woman forced to choose by the Nazis between her son or her daughter.One would have to die...My Dad, apparently, said that he would never be able to choose. He would rather die with all his children than live on without one.That's it isn't it? The love that causes you to feel so strongly that you would die to protect someone - that's real love. I was choked when I heard that he had said that, and sad that he couldn't tell us to our faces.

To me, love means that 'self' is put to one side, that the other person is all important. And that doesn't happen very often.Very rarely do we really love and we are very lucky indeed to be loved in that way.

My love.

I am sitting by my back door in the kitchen with the sunlight streaming through and the gentle swish of the washing machine rhythmically filling the silence.It has been a while since I wrote and the reason is that I have been back to work this week. A week of work, study and child taxiing that has filled my life to the brim.

I should really be cleaning my bathroom or hoovering my hallway, but the lure of my laptop was too much and I find myself sitting here guiltily tapping away, reading blogs, checking Twitter and visiting forums for the Open University.

My cheeks are salty with the stains of tears as I write. Not, I hasten to add, because of anything bad in my life, but because of something I just watched.The lovely Mr London Street posted a link, on Twitter ,to a video of a love story.He did warn that it would be moving, but I watched it anyway and found myself sobbing.

I suppose stories of love, of long relationships and loves lost touch a chord with all of us. Sometimes, when I wake up in my bed alone because my Man has gone to work at some ungodly hour, I wonder about the day when one of us will wake up alone every day. I know... its really rather morbid. I don't allow myself to ponder this thought often, but sometimes it does pop into my head.

There will come a day when either my Man or I will no longer be here.The bed will be empty, the coffee cup will stay on the mug tree.My plan is for both of us to pop our clogs together, in bed, when we are about 103, after a full and healthy life...but there is a chance that this might not go to plan...

Sometimes I hold my Man tight, as if I will never let him go. When he is at work or away, I miss him.When I hear the door open and he is home again, my heart misses a beat.But there will come a day when his key, or mine, hangs on the hook gathering dust. A time when I cannot touch his foot with mine in the middle of the night. A time when the warm touch of his skin, the scent of his body, the sparkle of his eyes... are only there in my memory.

Listening to Annie and Danny's tape above they talked of their love helping them through bad times. I hope our love helps us.If my plan to kick the bucket... ok, I will say it... if my plan that we die together doesn't happen, then I reckon that the strength of our love, the friendship we have now will see us through.

I know this is morbid. I know we don't want to talk or think about this kind of thing... but it will happen. As sure as eggs is eggs... one of us will have to cope.I cannot imagine him not being here.He is everything to me - my friend, my lover... the person that doesn't let me take myself too seriously. He is here now, making me a cup of tea and oblivious to what I am writing. He is the kindest man I have ever known.... good and loyal and true.... funny and sexy and honest.I don't know how I would cope without him, but not to cope would be an insult to him.I would try to be strong and positive - even if it was only to the world before me, even if inside I was bleeding for him and his touch, his voice.

My Dad has been gone for nearly 10 years now, but I can still see him in my head. I still find it hard to believe that I will never see him again.In my dreams he is always alive and I always chide myself for thinking him dead. 'You fool!' I think... he was alive all along. Maybe one day I will think like that about my Man.

Oh my God. I can't believe I am writing this.That is enough.I don't want to think about this. I don't want it to happen. Ever.I cannot imagine it. I don't want to imagine it.Enough.