What stories to tell?

After the fun of gardening last week, I had a quiet one this weekend.

It was the end of my three weeks of doing two jobs at once. And I was tired. Sometimes I wonder if this is getting old. But I am only doing such a junior role and people my age do much more senior things so I am putting my money on lack of sleep not excess of age!

Friday I got a call from school to say that a certain person had not been handing in assignments. That person was having a sleep over on Friday night and the knee jerk reaction was to haul her home and put an end to pleasure.

Instead, after checking with her dad, she was allowed to sleep over- out in the middle of the countryside. That meant on Saturday I gave the new car, Jaffa, a run out of town for the first time.

(When I tell these stories, I sometimes feel like little Ronny Corbet, letting the story wander off and away and leaving you wondering if it will ever come back)

So the Jaffa-out-of-town-experience:

1. Jaffa is a little beauty for fuel economy. I watched her fuel consumption average drop like a stone while I drove. The hour's driving took the 6.7l/100km for half a tank down to 6.1l/100km. That is an impressive drop given that I was already through half the tank. It looks like I am going to be saving about $25 per tank.
2. Jaffa is sad little muffin when it comes to monster hills....

I picked up the errant student and ferried her home. I intentionally left her sister at home as I wanted to give 100% attention. Well there was a lot of weeping and some yelling and some apologising and I didn't do any of it.

When we got home I set her straight to the first task and by the end of Saturday the science was completed. I woke her up Sunday morning and I think it was about 10 minutes before she was crying again about history.

I was in my jarmies scrubbing the house and it had not been my plan to do anything but house work. I wonder why I was willing to give that all up to help with the essay?
So we spent 1.25 hours googling. Type 3 words in. Inspect the suggested links, pick the reputable ones. Teach her which points were the important ones, jot them down, record the web address and move on.
1942
Darwin
2 attacks
first- civilians and harbour
second- airforce base.

Now make that into a few sentences and and you have the first paragraph of the essay.

(Did you know that an awful lot of the defence personal ran away in fright and hundreds were still missing after days-presumably not dead)

It wasn't that easy. There was more crying. But when she got the hang of me letting her do some, skipping the bits that weren't working, doing another bit, coming back to the messy bits.. well in the end we got there. Soooo much easier than doing homework back in my days.

I went to high school 42kms from home. When I got home, there was no internet, no town library, nothing. The only resources were the text book and my memory for the stories that Mrs Denholm would tell us in class. I LOVED that part of history.
Naturally without computers there was no internet and the lovely way you can type bits and cut and paste is brilliant for essay writing!

I loved helping with the home work. It was fun. I loved the research, even though it was very limited and not breaking any new ground. It was interesting. We saw the actually documents where the ministers were insisting that the press be forbidden to accurately portray the gravity of the situation up north during WW2. Amazing.

And now because she stole my precious cleaning time, I have an assistant this week!

:)