21 March, 2007

Pushing the Elderly in McDonald's

My 14-year-old daughter is OK as far as 14-year-old daughters go, but she is awful when it comes to pushing herself forward. She's had since October to arrange a work placement for July and recently I received a letter from her school asking why she hadn't done so. It would have helped if she had told me about it coolly and calmly in October, rather than telling me in total panic a few days ago.

The letter I received included a website where details of available work placements could be found. My daughter said she'd tried this website at school and it was useless as it had hardly any placements on it. I went to look anyway and found so many it took about 15 minutes to read through them all. She'd already expressed an interest in social work and I found one for that, but the person dealing with it was unavailable until Monday so I tried another one in the care field. After trying that, I went back to the social work one and pushed myself forward a little on the phone, resulting in me being given another number to try.

The end result of this is that my daughter now has two work placements on offer, one working with disabled young adults in a social work setting and another working with the elderly at a nursing home. She has therefore decided to do one week at each. What she likes best about them is that both of the places she works from are situated round the corner from McDonald's.

What she likes least is the fact that when she is at the nursing home she will have to tie her hair back and remove her jewellery, including her belly piercing. She also isn't too keen on the fact that when she's on the social work placement she'll have to work from 9-5, not to mention that she will have to work on her birthday, which falls on the second day of the first work placement week.

My daughter is clearly going to go FAR once she finishes her education and has to work for a living.

Google Mood Ring (Dark Blue): Impassioned, delighted, whiff of romance


18 March, 2007

Cupboard Love

We're starting to get back to normal now. Didn't go to bed until 3.30 am last night (or rather, this morning) and got up at about 10.45, so that's far more like it.

It's Mother's Day here in the UK and my youngest son (aged 10) had hidden various things in the cupboard. When I got up he pretended that he couldn't open it and asked me to help - when I did so, there was a card and various wrapped parcels inside. My daughter's boyfiend had given him some money to get me some presents from him and his sister and I had to laugh because what he'd got me (apart from a box of Maltesers) were clearly leftovers from Valentine's Day, namely a single red rose (artificial) and a teddy-bear covered in roses, hearts, pearls and lace. It took about half-an-hour before he started begging me to open the box of Maltesers, incidentally. It is now rather less full than it was when it was opened.

I got a card from my eldest daughter, with a sarky comment on the back of the envelope, which read: "This is a card Mum, just in case you don't know what one is! You forgot last week!". The reason for this was because, despite quite a few phone calls from said daughter, I still forgot to send her a birthday card. I also forgot to send my mother a Mother's Day card, so I have absolutely no right to complain about the fact that my two eldest sons didn't remember to send me one. BUT I AM STILL GOING TO.

Google Mood Ring (Dark Blue): Impassioned, delighted, whiff of romance