Too much work and some arrghs

Tuesday 17th

Little Green Pig Creative Writing, last one of 2013 and some changes ahead too. Parents were invited to attend some presenting/sharing/reading at the end, which was really lovely - an absolute joy for me to see all the different approaches and some people somehow lighting up when they shared their work.
I was working very very intensively, so that was my main non-working bit of the day really. Arrrgh. Did have a short coffee break with M earlier, kept me going I guess.

Wednesday 18th
Work work work, then taking Freya and her friend L on the train over to Hastings to meet J's mum who was treating them to the panto and to pizza. Lovely thing to do, really wonderful! Christmassy treatness.
Anyway I was so behind on my deadline I had to work on the train both ways, before and after delivering the girls to the grandma.
They did have a lovely time though: Dick Whittington (have heard lots of detail about it), then spontaneously Freya's grandma offered them an ice skating session! So they did that too, then pizza!
Lovely time for them, am so glad of that.
Meanwhile, yes I carried on working and stressing.
Poor J's mum after bringing them back, found her route home was blocked off for some reason and had terrible trouble on a wet windy night and I know she doesn't like driving in the dark anyway. Poor thing, after giving them such a good time. Anyway she rang a couple of times and we tried to direct her with a bit of Googling etc. She got home OK but not a nice ending to the night for her.
L stayed over and we made ice lanterns to take to group next day. Freya and L were very good and there was, most importantly, no trouble.

Thursday 19th
Finally having finished my work though not as satisfactorily as I would have liked, arrrggghhh. Livewires was a lovely Christmas session, I didn't get to see what everyone was doing as there was only a short gap between getting ice lanterns lit (nobody has matches these days) and doing my demo paper decorations and suddenly having lots of people at my table wanting to do the folding and cutting. I had real trouble remembering which side to cut from etc. so not the smoothest of activities, but think that was mostly tolerated.
Then home for on the bus - ugh we saw a man pissing against a bus stop at Uckfield bus station. Broad daylight!
Back home short while then took Freya into town for Art, last session of term.
Back and forth picked her up, then later went back that way for meeting about Friday Club. Some issues have come up and it was time to talk about them. I think overall the meeting was positive - at the very least there is going to be more of a regular collective monitoring of it with regular meetings of parents, which I do think will be a good thing. I felt positive about the general willingness of parents to make it work and help, but on the other hand, some of what I'd learned has left me feeling quite depressed.

Friday 20th
Took Freya to Friday Club and this was an extra session related to the adults' meeting of the night before. They gave detailed consideration to questions such as "what do you like about Friday Club?", "What is difficult about Friday Club?", "How can we improve Friday Club?" etc.
It was a smaller group than usual and they all worked away at it. Hopefully we will get some guidelines from it, it has left Freya a bit subdued to see that some people see so many difficulties as she is pretty happy with it how it is. It's hard for both of us really, hopefully when we get some concrete guidelines we will feel better with them.
Arrrrrgh groups, social dynamics, people!
Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh
Anyway no work for me this weekend. Need to go shopping tomorrow morning, J's mum coming in afternoon.