My Sexy Notice Board

Just like someone once 'sexed up' a Dossier about Iraq I haved just sexed-up my notice board. Hopefully it won't lead to any suisides or wars though.

I challenge anyone to have a sexier notice board than mine. It's important to have an attractive looking to-do list so that doing borring things seems more atractive, (although I think I did this to pospone doing other things.) The only way I could improve on it is by having a life sized Dan made from cork for my lip shaped post-it notes to go on. He might find it a bit weird though, and also if it was too realistic I might get cork Dan and real Dan confused and start sticking post-it notes on the real Dan.

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Families Collide!

Dan has had the event 'Families Collide!' in his phone calender for a couple of weeks, but now they have collided I thought I would tell you about the collision:

Although I have met Dan's family lots of times and he has met mine quite a few times, the families have never met each other or really even bothered to learn eachothers names, but as we're officially engaged and they will most likely be sharing a grandchild sometime in the next decade, we though it was about time they met.

We met in Southport where Dan's family live which by a weird coincidence is also where my mum grew up which meant we had to go a visit "auntie" Chris who is a fake auntie of my mum's that we only see at funerals...but because no one has died for a while we haven't seen her. I don't have grandparents so I've forgotten that old people exist, and this trip was a little reminder of what old people are like, which can be ok in moderation. So I remembered that old people have tea cups with saucers, and extra flowery wall paper and they have a trolley that helps them bring in the tea, and they have a very good selection of cakes and biscuits including Christmas cake...which was presumably still around because of their lack of interaction with the outside world. Bless...I hope they don't read Internet blogs in their spare time.

After our educational trip to "auntie" Chris' we carried on with the journey to Dan's house. I had given my family a few handy survival tips for example 'Dan's Dad can only make really milky tea, if you don't like milky tea don't ask for tea' but my Dad seemed to take this tip and turn it into a challenge. We all met and introduced ourselves and Dan's family showed my family round the church next door where we're getting married and then it was time for a cup of tea. 'Can I have tea with just a little bit of milk?' said my Dad, as I gave him evils. 'That might be difficult for me' said Dan's Dad in a jokey way.

What do you think is the correct response to this?
a) a polite smile
b) to say 'I know!'

and what do you think my Dad did? durrr. The tea was brought in on a tray with milk in a jug so we could pour our own.

Apart from that it went well. I was particularly pleased when the story of our gerbils tragic electrocution came out that the full ending of the story was not as detailed as it could be. All the way though I was wondering if the coffin made from a tampon box would come up, luckily it didn't. Phew.

My Long Term Underwear Strategy

I can't believe I've had my long term underwear strategy in place for around 6 years and never blogged about it. As my my long term underwear strategy has recently become my medium term underwear strategy I though it was worth a mention.

So the 6 years ago version me was similar to me now but I hadn't met Dan, I didn't have a blog, I'd only just got an email address (not because the technology wasn't there I was just was quite stubborn/lazy about learning new things) I was also quite angry about the middle east and was a bit less girly than I am now. Just setting the scene.

Anyway I've always been quite business minded and I think if I was a bit more money motivated I could be a good business person but the problem is I view fun as my currency for life and therefore I would only be interested in making more money if it resulted in me having more fun, and on balance I don't think it would. Most successful business people spend the Marjory of their lives wearing grey and and working in greyish rooms and I just can't take that lack of colour. So I use my strategic business knowledge in my everyday life decisions such as underwear purchasing.

My long term life goal (underwear wise) is to be able to wear matching underwear everyday when I'm married.

If you are a woman you have probably already spotted the potential difficulties arising here which is: you change your knickers everyday but you only change your bra every couple of days.

There are several ways round this problem you could choose to wash your bra everyday, you could choose to only wash your knickers every few days (but that's gross) you could buy all your underwear the same or you could do what I have done and implement a 3 to 1 ratio of knickers to bras. This means that instead of just buying underwear randomly I would buy it less often but I would always buy 3 pairs of knickers and one bra at any time I needed underwear.

This worked ok for a couple of years and I began to build up a good collection but then there was a few months when I lost my focus and was lured buy those nice topshop 3 really pretty knickers for £9 but they don't match any thing offers. So I got a bit lax but now that I will be married in 6 months it is time to reintroduce the magic 3 to 1 ratio and make my long term underwear strategy into a medium term one.

A special thank you to Helen and Rachel who have supported me in my dream from the very begining and have even invested a £20 la senza voucher to the cause. xx

Negotiations

After becoming engaged to Dan, we have started the nitty gritty negotiations of our future life together. The main things were discussed before engagement, we both want children we both would like to live abroad, neither of us want to eat mushrooms ect ect. But now the really negotiations have began...the stuff we don't agree so clearly on like I like semi-skimmed milk and he like full cream....we tossed a coin- I won which means we will have a life of semi-skimmed. Although now I feel a bit mean now maybe we could do a re-toss in 10 years time. We also negotiated that he would clean up all our future children's sick, in return he wanted me to clear up all poo but I think that's a bit unfair because poo happens more often than sick so we settled on me being in charge of plasters...I got off lightly I feel.

In other Han and Dan news, today he became my employee we dressed up like members of CSI and built an elephant.

Engagement- The Official Story

Dan and I got engaged! This is the official story of how it happened from my side:

If you haven't read 'The story of Han and Dan' in March 2009 that is the prequel. I will start this part of our life story on Monday 6th December, when we both had a day off work and went for a lovely walk on Winter Hill- which is a wintery hill with snow and horses near Bolton (I'm not sure what happens to it in the summer.) Dan had been acting suspiciously for months and we had talked about getting engaged quite a bit, although it was all a bit in code, we used the word 'marriage' very rarely but we'd quite often discuss issues that are further ahead than that such as: would we find out the sex of our potential baby before it was born?- this implied marriage but was a bit less scary because it was more hypothetical.

From my detective work I had worked out the probability of him proposing on the Winter Hill day to be around 70% and I have since discovered that he was planning on doing it then but the ring didn't arrive in time. So we had a lovely day but no proposal. I wondered after that day if it was ever going to happen, and then came the actual day that he proposed. (19th December.) This day was the last day before I went back home to the midlands to see my family and make a life sized elephant. Dan drove from southport to Liverpool to visit me and we had our pretend Christmas where we exchanged gifts. We decided it would be fun to dress up so Dan dressed as Santa and I dressed as a elf. What I didn't realise till afterwards was that he had to stop at the service station on the way to buy credit and then phone my Dad to ask his permission. It didn't go as well as it could of because Sarah picked up the phone (who sounds like me) so then Dan thought he had accidentally phoned me and started talking to her as if she was me before realising, then he introduced himself as Daniel not Dan which further confused my Dad who didn't know who he was.- he did all this dressed as Santa, only to arrive at mine and see me in my normal clothes coz I was too embarrassed to be a elf on my own in my house before he got there.

We swapped presents and stuff and then Dan for some unknow reason (now I know) wanted to go to my room, so we went up and I was tiding the room around him a bit and then he said 'I've got an extra little gift for you, close your eyes' so I did and when I opened then he was down on one knee saying 'will you marry me' holding a ring. I was very surprised but said yes straight away. I'm glad I thought about my answer before though, you can't really decide something like that on the spot, especially as in the moment their was so many weird emotions that if he'd have asked something less important like 'is a sausage dog a type of dog or a type of sausage?' I would have found that very had to answer. I really have no memory of what happend in the next 1o minutes or so, I know we talked and hugged but I don't think either of us made much sense because of all the adrenalin.

After that time we started telling people which was really fun. We phoned his parents first just to give me Dad an extra few minutes to digest the fact that Dan had asked permission, before he had to digest the fact that I'd said yes. Then we went to our church carol service and told people so there was this lovely scene of candles everywhere and the gospel choir singing and then someone would scream or jump up and down because we'd just told them. afterwards we went to a bit of a party at Tina's and Luke bought us some champagne to celebrate. That night I only got 1 hours sleep because I was so excited. Here is the ring, I love it! (even though my sister says it looks like a uterus)

p.s Some people might think it's weird that he proposed dressed as Santa, but I think that everybody who proposes should be dressed as an old fat man because it's easy to say yes to an attractive man in their 20's ...but you have to remember they will one day be old and fat so by agreeing to marry an old fat man anything else is a bonus.

My Made-up Curriculum

This week was my last week working in schools before the Christmas holidays...then my job will be making a life sized elephant for a protest. I love being an artist.

This week in school has been interesting. I'm more used to secondary school aged children I've forgotten how much little children don't know. They really don't know anything, there's no way they could function on their own without help, we should really come up with some kind of system by which they can learn all the things they need to know in life. Sometimes I forget that they have to learn stuff in stages and I can't just talk about art at university level to them, although I have tried.

I'm not into the whole 'lets talk to children in a different voice than our normal voice' thing. Do teacher's actually know they're doing that? I find it amusing when I walk into a classroom and teacher is talking in this very sing-songy patronizing way, and then I have a little bet with myself about whether they have a normal voice that they use for adults or not. So far I've only met one teacher who has no adult setting on their voice box. it creeps me out talking to them, I feel like I'm in trouble all the time.

My method is to just talk normally but try and change my vocabulary a little bit so they can understand, as I don't generally use long words this is an easy task for me. The curriculum for art is very vague I figured I can teach what I like, I do the usual school stuff like Picasso and Monet ect but I like to throw in the odd Mentally ill Japanese instillation artist or contemporary political Palestinian artist into the mix. My students may not know how to colour neaty in the lines but they are at least very socially and politically aware, which is what you need if you're going to be an artist. You don't go to see the turner prize to see very neat colouring in do you? It was yesterday when I used the phrase 'born in exile' when I realised I had gone to far. 'what's exile?' what's a refugee?' 'why are they refugees?' 'when did the artist make a Islamic prayer mat from a bed of nails?' I realised in that moment that you can explain why an artist would make a Islamic prayer mat from a bed of nails, to people who still believed in Santa.

Miss Marshall the Christmas Decoration

This week I taught a lesson where the class had to invent a new product and make a poster to advertise it. There were a lot of funny ones but this was by far my favorite if you can't read it it says:

'With the Miss Marshall Christmas decoration your home will never be dull on Christmas, she will brighten up your mood and melt out the sadness in you. Act now and get a free Miss Marshall doll. Miss Marshall Christmas decoration costs £1.50. Song: she is Miss Marshall the snow girl and she loves to play.'

How cool is that?! I know it's a bit big headed, but I'd buy one, in fact I might buy a few dozen and decorate my tree entirely in me dolls.

I love working in primary schools, it's kind of like being a celebrity, you walk into a room and all the kids are like 'Miss Marshall's here hoary.' I don't think that is just because they love me, I think it's got a lot to do with the fact I bring paint and glue guns and bags of sparkly bits with me wherever I go. Children are like magpies when you get out shinny things.

But I do love it, some kids made me a christmas card this week, and because it was my last week in that school they were really sad. I like it when they say they enjoyed the lesson or they tryed something I taught them at home, but there's a couple of girls that take it a bit too far and say that I'm pretty or I smell nice, all nice things but a little weird coming from a random 10 year old. It does make a change from my old job where I got two bikes vandalised by students I taught, and death threats, and one student was overheard plotting to 'bang me' (which by the way means beat me up, not get it on with.) I love this new freedom of going into work with a spot, and knowing that it probably won't be pointed out.