just another morning here

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Yesterday someone rang me up and offered me my dream job, and I turned it down. I guess I had thought about it since the interview and realised that it was only my dream job when I existed in some alternate reality, not the one where we have three children plus a business or two to run already. I didn’t ever even find out what the hourly rate was, let alone whether there was a staff discount!

I really would have loved to work at the Apple Store, I’ve talked about it ever since I knew one was opening here, even before Josiah went back to school. I love the products (no comment, Mr P, please), would have loved to learn more about them myself, and I like to think I’m pretty good on the dealing with customers side of things too, so I would have enjoyed it as a whole.

But even more ideal would be a school based job, one that runs to school hours and term times, because it would fit in to our family life better than anything else. Not only that, but it is probably the thing that I would most enjoy, because, funnily enough, having done a degree in education and then had all the home education experience, and generally being quite fond of children, education is probably the best field for me to be in. Admittedly one could argue that demonstrating computers and gadgets to people would be education in a way, but the hours involved in a retail job were always likely to be annoying at one end of the day or the other, or during the school holidays, etc.

So anyway. Over the weekend I noticed a number of posts being advertised at a school where I would really enjoy working. And while I don’t even know if I will get an interview, let alone any of the jobs, I know I’d rather do a school based job than a shop one, even if it is the Apple Store.

So when Apple rang I was completely honest and said I didn’t want to mess them around only a couple of weeks later, so I didn’t accept their job offer. I guess most people would have taken that post and then waited to see what happened, but I couldn’t. Got off the phone and cried for an hour (must be hormonal)! Just hope I’ve done the right thing. I think I have, but it doesn’t feel very nice, as I’m back to square one and left with the choice of housework or the garage for the moment, while praying hard for one of the school jobs I’m holding out for.

We got home very late last night (early this morning?) from a good week away. We were incredibly grateful for a week of fantastic weather, bar one night of very heavy rain at the beginning of the week it was great. Finally!

The wet night did make the whole site a bit muddy for a couple of days but nothing too terrible on our side of the site anyway. My parents did have a bit of a Kessingland week in their awning though, and ended up throwing their groundsheet away rather than cleaning it! Think swamp mixed with cowpats and you have the general idea, yuk.

We were camped with friends from one of the other churches in the network, which was nice, because we were the only campers there from our own local church, so it meant that the children had friends to play with, I had more hair to braid (!!) and we had friends to laze around and share coffee and wine with

Saw a number of old friends throughout the week which was nice, and we also saw rather a lot of my youngest brother as well, who clearly had too much time on his hands and kept coming back to be clambered on by small girls – lovely to have him around though.

The organised ‘churchy’ activities (for want of a better word!) consisted of various meetings most mornings and in the evenings too, as well as sports and other stuff going on during the afternoon. The children all had groups to go to, which they really enjoyed and got lots out of. I was on a team helping with the 3 and 4 year olds during the morning sessions, which was a lot of fun.

Managed to get to most of the evening meetings as well, and generally felt like it was good for me, the spiritual kick up the backside was long overdue.

We had a couple of free days as well, where we escaped the site (it was *so* noisy!) and did our own thing. On the first day we went to Herstmonceux Science Centre where we met some of the Screamteam and most of the Monsterteenies, and had a fab day there. (I didn’t ever get my email from the Art Machine by the way, what happened to that I wonder?!)

From there we found a swimming pool in Hailsham – decided that was the easiest way to clean all our children at once

On our other day off we ended up in Eastbourne visiting Ros & Tony at Bonners Music Superstore. Steve made himself at home immediately and made a long phonecall but for some reason didn’t want me to take a photo Anna made herself at home too We didn’t spend too much money though!

Mooched around Eastbourne for a while, then went swimming again, then ended up at Pevensey Castle on the way back to the campsite. Fab castle with lots of interesting different parts added over the years. Tried desperately to get a picture of all three children looking nice at the same time but after four attempts I gave up!

We spent a fair bit of time enjoying Ashburnham again; it is a gorgeous site. Tried hard to get the camera to do things it isn’t really cut out to do with the lens I was using but the results weren’t too bad, all things considered.

As an aside, my Flickr post bar has miraculously sprung back into life tonight after months of not recognising me as a user – don’t know what happened there but I’m very glad to have it back!

Got a bit of washing done today but generally lazed around as we were fairly exhausted. Our wonderful neighbour(s) had done a fantastic job with the guinea pigs which was an extra blessing.