I spent the best part of the weekend with five children (mine plus two 7-year-old classmates of the twins) and no grownup, since my husband is away for work reasons.
I managed to keep my sanity when at 8.30 am on Sunday morning I noticed that the heating wasn't working, and I had no clue how to fix it and no way to contact my husband (who regularly does so, it's a recurrent and trivial issue).
Luckily it started snowing (it never, ever snows!) so all the kids went out to play and I could search for the instructions: when they came back the heating was working.
It was actually wonderful: the boys played, sometimes together and sometimes separatedly, and I had time for a series of long chats with my daughter. She even admitted something I had suspected for a long time, namely that a "friend" of hers tells her she's fat. Now that this is out in the open, I can at least fight back.
Starting to work again and dealing with minor healthcare issues was also not very pleasant. I spent most of the last two days gulping painkillers, and most of today at a meeting - sorry, at two back-to-back meetings. I seem to be much better than I used to at being smiling and polite to people I consider royal a****les.
I even managed to sneak away for ten minutes for a glass of milk - and a discussion with my most brilliant student about how to prove a certain theorem she needs. She gave me the best clue (i.e., reference to a theorem by another genius student of mine) but then it was my turn to put the pieces together. My most brilliant student and I have had tons of communication problems, the main reason being that she's vastly smarter and faster than I (and of most others as well) and originaly didn't understand the purpose of slowing down and other social nicities like using different letters for different objects in a proof. Now we have adapted to each other and it's actually a joy talking to her. Unfortunately, our time together is almost over.
But most of all, I liked this. Sigh. I wish I could have voted for Obama, too. Especially compared with what we have to put up with in my country.
I managed to keep my sanity when at 8.30 am on Sunday morning I noticed that the heating wasn't working, and I had no clue how to fix it and no way to contact my husband (who regularly does so, it's a recurrent and trivial issue).
Luckily it started snowing (it never, ever snows!) so all the kids went out to play and I could search for the instructions: when they came back the heating was working.
It was actually wonderful: the boys played, sometimes together and sometimes separatedly, and I had time for a series of long chats with my daughter. She even admitted something I had suspected for a long time, namely that a "friend" of hers tells her she's fat. Now that this is out in the open, I can at least fight back.
Starting to work again and dealing with minor healthcare issues was also not very pleasant. I spent most of the last two days gulping painkillers, and most of today at a meeting - sorry, at two back-to-back meetings. I seem to be much better than I used to at being smiling and polite to people I consider royal a****les.
I even managed to sneak away for ten minutes for a glass of milk - and a discussion with my most brilliant student about how to prove a certain theorem she needs. She gave me the best clue (i.e., reference to a theorem by another genius student of mine) but then it was my turn to put the pieces together. My most brilliant student and I have had tons of communication problems, the main reason being that she's vastly smarter and faster than I (and of most others as well) and originaly didn't understand the purpose of slowing down and other social nicities like using different letters for different objects in a proof. Now we have adapted to each other and it's actually a joy talking to her. Unfortunately, our time together is almost over.
But most of all, I liked this. Sigh. I wish I could have voted for Obama, too. Especially compared with what we have to put up with in my country.
