franceslievens | Entries tagged with personal

We were late on Tuesday. Usually we leave the house on our bikes at eight. The trip (a little shy of 2km) takes us about 10 to 15 minutes, depending on how fast LB rides. I drop the kids off and cross the canal, except on Tuesdays, when I work at the same school my kids attend. Tuesday is the worst day for traffic, with cars sometimes lining up on my street, especially when it rains. So most days I ride on the pavement behind LB, carefully dodging street lamps and pedestrians, and all the while shouting instructions to the young cyclist in front.
But that Tuesday we were late. It was almost 8:15 and school starts at 8:30. LB pedalled frantically and we made it with enough time to spare to put my bag in the teacher's lounge, where I found my colleagues in front of the computer: "There have been explosions at the airport. They haven't determined the cause yet." Those remarks were the start of a strange couple of days.

I started with the middle group that day: 8, 9 and almost 10 year olds, who had no idea what had happened. It's the last week before Easter break and I'd promised them a film. I couldn't help myself and checked the internet, while they watched Jim Henson's Labyrinth, and saw the story unfold. Friends from abroad already asked if I was okay. Towards my pupils I kept my mouth shut. Not saying anything before we'd decided on a strategy or else we'd get panicky horror stories circling around the school.

At 10:20 we had a break. Kids were playing outside and my colleague advised me to update my Facebook status. I'd already read a Twitter message from my sister saying she had escaped tragedy on the metro. Worries started flooding my mind. Every message from others was a relief. Only

nwhytewas unaccounted for for some time, but surfaced soon enough.

From 10:40 till 12:10 I had class with the little ones: 6, 7 and 8 year olds. The headteacher had made the decision not to tell the kids just yet what had happened. She wanted more information to be able to deflect the panicky reactions of the kids. So I gave my lesson, had fun with the little ones, while in the back of my head fear and anger simmered. This was the hardest: not being able to express my distress, let the adrenaline rush through my body. My hands kept shaking.

During lunch break I called my Mama. She knew I wasn't anywhere near the bombs since I don't take the metro to work. She was surprised I could get through. I must have been the only one at school who could phone with the network overload.

And after lunch I cracked. Friends missed the bombs at Maelbeek through a stroke of luck. Hiding my distress from the pupils had taken its toll. I quickly composed myself for my playground duty. Pupils were informed over lunch, and they played on, as kids do.

At one I went back inside and we watched the news. The horror of what had happened left us dumbfounded. But we could go back to our classes as informed as possible. I had the eldest pupils – 10 to 12 year olds. They'd gone inside over lunch and looked at the news sites for themselves. I was really proud of them: they'd looked up information from a reliable source and understood what had happened. Most of them had phoned or texted with their parents, so didn't have to worry. I only had to correct them when someone declared the phone networks were closed down. So I explained it was a system overload and not deliberate. And then they just wanted to go on with the lesson. I had promised them a free afternoon the week before!

Because of terror level 4 there was no after school care. We all stayed till 4 to make sure all kids were picked up. Some had already gone home at lunch. And then I cycled back home with my girls. We watched Karrewiet together, the children's news. It's the only news I've watched the last couple of days. It gives information without the speculation, nor the graphic images. On Thursday it featured several of my pupils drawing at La Bourse and saying to the camera why they found it important to do this. Again I could be very proud of those kids.

Wednesday was a day of silence. There were hardly any pupils at school. We let them express their grief on the playground. Most of my colleagues take the train and were very frightened. The mass of people trying to get in and out of the stations would make anyone nervous and claustrophobic. But they still come to school, because that's what we do: we're here for the kids. We teach them. We are a community. As a community we took a hit, but as a community we'll get up again.
Not so long ago that community held a picnic in the middle of the street to reclaim the place de la bourse from the cars. We got our wish, and now we made the square the epicentre of communal grieve. Grand place is for the tourists, Bourse/Beurs is for all of us. It has always been a meeting place, a spot to shout your protest to the world, a place to celebrate, and now it's a place to grieve, because this makeshift place, is the perfect spot for our makeshift community to come together.

#BrusselsAlive

Sometimes it's easier to think with colourful pens: a list of sorts to empty my head, keep my sanity in the coming year and remember what my priorities are supposed to be. You tend to forget less once you've externalised your memory.

From pseudonymous blogging to ubiquitous real names.
From open access sites to walled gardens.
From desktop to mobile.
From email to message apps.
From phone numbers to Skype (and then FaceTime).
From furiously backing up at 3am to cloud computing.
From unemployed aspiring writer to full time teacher.

A decade?
Really?

The deal I made with myself somewhere at the end of December or early January, was this: first I'd write more often than I had been doing the previous year, and second I'd try to write as often as I did before. Writing used to be a means to arrange my thoughts, but there was work, children, extracurricular activities driving me nuts. So the deal became a pact: I would start writing down whatever bothered me, as I had done before, thus getting it out of my system, and clearing my head.
So far so great. Now I needed tools. Those tools had to be easily accessible at every time of day: pen and paper? I'd already mislaid the notebook I got myself for school, and I wouldn't be able to jot things down on a filled underground train. My phone it would be then. The tool: Day One.

I had noticed Day One before on the app store, but didn't think much of it then. I had my online places to play and write. I had been journaling for years, had seen it taper off and didn't feel much for starting it up again. But now, searching for the right tool to start up my journaling, I could see its appeal. Day One shows you your journal entries in the order you entered them – it is of course a journal – but it makes those entries searchable. You add tags to keep things that relate to each other together. You can add pictures, links, whatnot, and best of all, you can easily export your entry to share it with others.
You don't have to share of course, so I stopped worrying about what and how I wrote things down and wrote again. I was taking pictures with captions that didn't make it onto twitter, writing down the bad days I had with the girls, which I never shared on LJ. Best of all: I started looking for things to write down. Did I see a lady with strange pompoms attached to her winter boots on the platform? I'd take my phone and write. I started to notice things again.

Day One syncs flawlessly between my iDevices. I haven't installed the app on the Mac, but am very tempted to do so, since I started relying on it heavily this week to breath some life into my almost defunct LJ. Recently a feature has been added that lets you create a web page with whatever content you've written in Day One. This is a great workaround to let you share longer entries with added pictures on twitter or Facebook. I haven't tried it. Yet?
Day One is in the first place my private journal, where I stash ideas, worries, random thoughts. I find it is a very easy way to reflect on things. In stressful times one's mind tends to run in circles because you want to remember everything at once. Day One helps me bring order into that chaos, because I can externalise the thoughts. I have done this before in simple note applications, but they never have the strength of a journaling app, where you can go beyond the simple lists.
Maybe Day One has given me back a bit of my sanity.

One of the best features of The House is its garden. Along with the fact it was conveniently located in the same street of the apartment we used to live in, the garden was what really made us decide to buy this house two years ago. For a city garden, ours is rather big. It has three different trees. It used to be more, but the previous owners cut two of them down and the apple tree died on them.
The trees provide much needed shade in our South-West oriented garden. On Sunny days it can get very warm, but in the shade of our laurel tree one can always relax.
I'm on break at the moment and had some very stressful weeks before it. The garden was always the place to be to charge the batteries: digging in the dirt in the vegetable patch, sowing, weeding. Cutting down the raspberry bush before it takes over the lawn. And of course, hunting down snails before they eat my precious seedlings.

On this evening while the church bells ring to mark the end of Easter vigil (I remember being an altar girl during that mass and attending with all the girls and boys, all of us ringing the bells, a magic moment, even if you're not religious), I am left pondering the other myths that are part of this feast, the ones I tell my children. Tomorrow morning we'll do an Easter egg hunt for the first time. Having lived in an apartment up until now, we never had the opportunity to let LB hunt for hidden eggs. Now we do, and she's really looking forward to the Paashaas* bringing eggs. But where does her Paashaas come from? We haven't actively spoken of the animal, only mentioned hunting for eggs, but somewhere she picked up the notion of Paashaas. I'm not one for discouraging it, but it's different from my myth. I grew up with the story of the bells returning from Rome laden with eggs that they'd drop over the gardens. Later, seeing numerous bunnies and hares on television and in stories, I incorporated the Paashaas in my story as the one responsible for making sure all the eggs were placed nice and tidy in the gardens. Bells throwing eggs tends to become a mess. The Paashaas featuring more prominently in LB's myth is probably caused by secularisation**. The bells returning from Rome is a distinctly Roman-Catholic myth, so it leaves the stories told in LB's state school. Would she have a different myth had she attended a Catholic school? One can only guess, but I am confident most of the myth making happens at school, whereas parents are left to encourage or discourage what pleases and displeases.

Extra notes to ponder:
- On Easter not being the pagan celebration of Spring some neo-pagans believe it is. (Via Stephen Fry's twitter feed).
- Local schools encourage myths surrounding Sinterklaas (television is also on that one) and Easter. Should secular state schools do that? Especially state schools where a large part of the population isn't from Belgian origin and doesn't get presents from Sinterklaas or goes on egg hunts, could take these sensitivities into account. (I have made up my mind on this one, but I'm wondering what your opinions are).

* Note that in Dutch, like in German we speak of a hare and not a bunny bringing the eggs. Speaking from personal experience, I must add that for children hares and bunnies are usually one and the same.
** I have talked about the bells coming from Rome and bringing eggs. LB laconically answers the bells lay the eggs and the Paashaas distributes them. That's another mystery solved: which bird lays chocolate eggs? The bells.

Matching outfits for the girls is something I try to avoid for several reasons. There's the practical side of things where it's impossible to find matching outfits for kids aged 4 years and 21 months respectively. Apart from that I try to stress the individuality of my girls. They have different temperaments and talents. And I want to spare them the strange comments on their matching garb I had to endure as a kid.

Little Bit couldn't disagree more. Walking past Benetton I spotted a nice Summer coat for her. Once inside we only found them in smaller sizes. "Oh, let's grab one for Wriggly Bum instead and search for another coat for you." LB agrees and decides on the yellow one. Some moments later I find the bigger version of the same coat. "Shall we pick a yellow coat for you, and choose another colour for your sister?" I ask, willing LB into agreeing with me, so I won't have matching daughters. "No," she answers, "I want the same. That's nice." I try several more times, but Little Bit insists: yellow is her preferred colour and WB will like that one best too.

All set then. That lady with two adorable kids in matching yellow coats? That'll be me this Summer. And whoever comments on their cuteness will hear me muttering half embarrassed they chose their coats all by themselves.

While my pupils watch a film I've already seen, I'm sat behind the iPad. Little Bit and I had some hard words this morning. With little time to spare LB wanted to look for her sunglasses. None of us has any idea where they are. We really needed to leave or wouldn't be on time at school. So there was shouting, and dragging her down the stairs to put on her shoes and her running back up the stairs to be sulky. Bear accompanied her to school. She was very grateful for that.

I'm left feeling like a bad Mama. Little Bit needs patience. She doesn't like being told what she must or mustn't do. That is also a constant cause of conflict at circus school. LB is afraid of heights, and fears the trapeze. I tell her she must try it once, and then we quarrel.
Usually we quarrel because there is no time to sit down and talk and come up with a compromise. Or I'm tired of having had these exact same disagreements at school, and want my kid to listen to me.
But toddler school is stressy too. Her play friend is very demanding and bosses her around a lot. LB tells her off (like she does with me, but not as strongly), and ends up being told she can't play along then. (I teach at LB's school on Tuesdays. I have witnessed this behaviour.)

So I end up going to a quiet place where I write down what irks me about me and I hope I find strength and patience again. We'll have Easter break next week. We all need it.

I finally seem to have some semblance of a schedule. Got some nice classes, some not so nice ones. Got to hand in the first batch of marks on Monday. School is going great apart from that one little thing which annoys me, and I don't know how to come up with a solution. The Islam teacher is always late. Usually we don't know whether she's late or absent, and because she's frequently late we (the other teachers of the world view courses) wait. We can't leave the children on their own, but we can't send them to another teacher either, because if we did, they'd be off the minute she arrived. School starts at 8:45. Because of miss Islam's tardiness, I frequently only start teaching by 9:05. The Head doesn't notice, or doesn't care. Miss Islam comes up with an excuse for every morning she's late, usually traffic or lack of parking space. When you teach in Brussels, and live in another community of the region, you do get stuck in traffic and parking space is hard to find. That is why I decided to start cycling to work. Whenever someone comments on her being late every single day, she considers this an attack on her self. So we don't say anything, which of course leads to her being even more late than usual. How do I tell her I don't like waiting? Do I just take my pupils and let hers stand on the playground? Miss Protestant will cover anyway, whether I leave or not, not giving any message to Miss Islam. What should I say or do?

But on a low burn...

First month of school has flown by – or cycled, as I've been doing four days out of five. My schedule's still a jumble. I've got four teaching hours doing something else than morality, but what that something else is, no-one knows. I'd like to use them to start on a project or whatever, but no-one cares. So I spend more time at school than ever, for less teaching hours. Hurrah!

Singing is going great, when I find time to practice. When we move house (in a month) things will be better. I hope.

Eight pairs of trousers did I put in a bag yesterday to be donated. All of them size 34 (UK size 4, US size 2) and most of them I haven't worn since Little Bit was born. Another pregnancy later I have gone up a size, which I don't mind so much. I now have a butt to show off and can wear things I'd previously be pouting about because the smallest size would be too large. I hope people will stop calling me too skinny now.

Various boxes filled with assorted toys now have labels, so everyone knows what goes where. I'm quite proud of those homemade labels: they're laminated pictures of the contents of the box. Nothing will be put in the wrong box ever again!

To rule them all: I upgraded my handbag into something bigger that can carry not only my life, but that of my two rascals as well. Another upside: it can double as school bag and singing class bag. It is the bag that can make all the others obsolete. (At least not the Big Rucksack I use for school. It'll never hold as much and still be comfortable.)

So today I was able to:
* Toss two worn out bags I still used because I hadn't found a good replacement for them.
* Repurpose a third bag as plaything for the girls.
* Clean the mess on the top of the fridge (which doubles as out-of-reach shelve for the kids – LB can reach it standing on her chair).

As proven by Profgrrrrl and taken up by

sister_ray decline ring works best when you do it in public. Therefore I'll give you my accomplishments in trying to get this house move-ready in a couple of months.

Monday
* Cleaned out one drawer and threw out various t-shirts with holes in them (why do I keep those) or that are so old that I don't wear them anymore (why do I keep those)
* Did the last bits of ironing

Tuesday
* Turned some fabric into a bag

Our apartment's been for sale since last week. We had the grand total of two interested visitors. One of them did return yesterday evening, with lots of questions and wanting to try out our rather small garage box. We had a very positive feeling, but of course today we get an email stating the visitor didn't want to buy because of the garage. I understand. I've scraped the car several times. It's such a shame we put so much time and effort in trying to woo this customer. On to the next couple of visits on Saturday. If you know anyone willing to buy a three room apartment with garage box in Brussels, do drop me a line.

It's July. The girls are away staying with the grandparents. I'm planning next school year. Am I finally giving up my horrible ways of deadline fucking?

In a couple of hours we'll move our household South for the next ten days. I don't expect to have any internet connection, so will be even scarcer. Have fun while I'm away. I hope to do the same. And happy birthday to those that are celebrating. We celebrated on the fourth, when Wriggly Bum turned one. She's an atypical one year old: hardly stands up, no inclination to walk, but we're convinced she already starts talking. Little Bit is one proud big sister, but doesn't like how the Bumster gets her hands on everything that's supposed to be for t he big kids. Our household is a very typical one.

Almost, almost... I have to go in this afternoon, and tomorrow, but there won't be much teaching. The house is a mess. I've got numerous things I'd like to do, but can't find the time to do them. I'd love to write more often for one, but my head's never clear. My last writing stint were the pupil's evaluations. I survived those, even though it took me till have past one in the morning. That's what happens when your head-teacher forgets to inform you to hand in evaluations. Ah well, I'm getting into Summer groove. Will have to make plans, or will have nothing done when September comes.

Has it really been that long? More than eight years ago I took my pseudonym from one message board to a blog service and here I am, still. Not really going strong these days. I don't think I've got the readership I used to have – if I ever had any to take seriously. Those of you that stayed with me, have seen a life unfold: changing jobs, starting to sing, buying an apartment, having two daughters. In between there have been rants on teaching, politics, the internet. Sometimes I write often. Sometimes there's hardly anything worthwhile to mention. Recently I've come to miss this place.

In eight years I've seen the internet change. I haven't quite figured out yet what it's become, but its appeal has broadened. I find my colleagues and old school mates where previously there was just me and my fellow geeks. I've started out in an age of pseudonyms, happily camouflaging my online life for co-workers and students alike. These days it's all about presence. So I live on Facebook with my real name, mingling with real life acquaintances. After a couple of years of zealously trying to guard my privacy, I've come to miss the ease of the pseudonym. It gives me the ability to speak freely without being caught out – especially now that the Big Boss has decreed we can't criticise our work conditions.

I also miss taking time for writing. It's all become reading at all times. In the past decade the internet has become larger and bigger and there's even more to read. There exists an information black hole that sucks up humans looking for simple things to write about. Once caught in the net of instant conversation, there is hardly any going back to the long thoughtful post. Facebook is instant gratification, where a blog post that requires some thought from both writer and reader, can sit without any replies. Why would you reply when you can't simply click "like"? Do blog posts need agree-buttons?

Information overload needs insightful posts. It balances the immediacy of current social networks. Blogging is a delayed conversation. You can think before you talk. Thats why I like it, and have never ceased to like it – sometimes I simply preferred not to think. I want to hit that ten-year-mark with stories, anecdotes, readers. There's a new house we'll move into in Autumn. I've got a new toy to write more, currently used to read more. I do hope you'll be here too.

He's at the top of the hierarchical chain at the firm. He only comes down from his ivory tower to scorn the pedestrians who stepped out of line. When face to face with his subjects, he hardly listens, looks right through, already thinking about his next appointment. He's the Big Boss. He wants no criticism, especially not on social media.

So he issued a badly written note, scaring his subordinates into treading carefully whenever they spill their words on their screens. Taking into account Facebook started up in 2004, LiveJournal in 1999, he's awfully late. His youngest employees have been writing on the web from when they were still studying at one of his schools. He warns them, though, not to talk too much with their pupils or students. Who knows what might come of that. If only someone had pointed him towards danah boyd or the twitter account of Alom Shaha.

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Frances

April 2023

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Overeducated & Unemployable

Frances Lievens -- sporadic thoughts with pictures

Entries tagged with personal

A strange couple of days: my account of 22/3

2015: a peptalk

Ten Years

Blog Week: The search for the perfect tool for writing

Blog Week: City Garden

The hare or the bells?

The same

Still on

The latecomers

Yes, this thing is still on...

Wardrobe Emptying

Declutter Daily

One Bag

The Great Big Move Daily

Apartment for sale

Planning

Signing off

School's Out

8 years

Big Boss