Secondary school bus conversation of the day:
Girl: does he know I like him?
Boy: everybody knows.
Girl: but does he know?
Boy: everybody knows.
Girl: but does HE know?
Now, by Leibniz’s laws from logical papers 1690, she already knows her answer. Her question is obsolete.

Facebook post from the InfantPhenomenon.

Usually I’m good at problem solving.  Just got that sort of brain.  I like maths, crosswords, logic puzzles.  If x then y.  Is it plugged in?  Is it switched on?   The InfantPhenomenon is similarly wired and when she’s not teaching maths to primary kids she’s working on her Masters Philosophy dissertation on Logic.

But the problems that I’m wrestling with at the moment are not responding to logic.  Or, at least, when I think I’ve got the solution, and have underlined the answer neatly with a ruler, a great big But sends me down the snake to the start.

I’m trying to make decisions about my job and whether it can be made more manageable.  Or whether I can manage it better, which is not quite the same thing. Wrestling with what to do for the best now and what to do in the near future.  What is certain, is that I cannot go on like I am: either working or feeling guilty about not working with no inbetween.  Or, to be more precise – and precision is a good thing – define your terms – I don’t want to go on like I am.

There are options, of course.

Take an early retirement. But that would reduce your pension for ever.  But you love teaching and you’re not bad at it.  But you’d miss your mates.  But you couldn’t abandon your class mid-year.  But you wouldn’t want to be at home all the time. But could you manage on the money?  But who would do the ICT at school?

Do less hours, now. But that would mean cutting out some of the ICT lessons you currently teach.  And that would mean putting yet more pressure on your workmates who are just as close to cracking up as you are.  How could that be managed? Could you make yourself detach?

Do less hours from next September.  But can you hold out that long?  And what might you be doing?  Would it be any better?  Would it be satisfying?  But you really enjoyed your job last year.

Put up and shut up.  But I do want to have some time to enjoy retirement while I’m fit and the PD is behaving itself.  To read and garden and paint and write and do the galleries and cross-stitch and visit the Hearts.  And to be with ActorLaddie and enjoy the company of the Aged P’s.

But.  But.  But.  I’m like Harris, lost in the Hampton Court maze and constantly coming back to the middle.

Talking of which, ActorLaddie was looking up clocks on Amazon this morning.  We’re thinking of buying each other half a clock for Christmas. Hopefully not the same half, or it’ll never be bedtime.  He couldn’t work out why he was faced with a string of posters showing ladies’ bottoms: the tennis girl and so on.  Then we remembered that I’d been searching for a replacement lid for our water butt.

Sometimes, even computers get it wrong.