freecat15 | A lot happened...

It's been a while...
I had some busy and exciting weeks, so I just didn't find the time to post anything. Two weeks ago school started again, and the only one of us just going back there as before is my third son (a seventh grader now).
My oldest son graduated from high school in July and starts going to college in October. My second son left junior high school and is a sophomore student at high school now, and my daughter went from elementary to junior high (or middle school? I'm not really clear on what it's called. She's in fifth grade now).

And I, I said 'good bye' to my fourth graders in July, too (they also left elementary) and 'hello' to a new class of first graders last week which will be my class for the next four years.

I'm positively surprised by these students. I'm working in a school in a social hot spot with all the challenges you'd expect to have there, and my last class was - difficult. I loved them, but it took a lot of strength to work with them, even more than usual. The new ones seem to be a lot calmer and ready to observe the rules, and while there were some really aggressive vibes from day one in my last class, this one didn't show any sign of that until now. A LOT better start than four years ago, so I'm pretty happy. Of course there's the highly traumatized refugee boy who kind of does what he wants (and comes when he wants...), but he does it friendly. There's this other refugee boy that doesn't speak much German, but I gladly switched to English for the important things once I realized he speaks some. Also, he smiles all the time and is generally totally cute. Then there's this boy whose stepfather already threatened me and the principal (because we believed his son who said no one had beaten him, go figure), but his son is a little weird, but not aggresive at all. And the others are pretty normal, cute kids. Good times.

Meanwhile I got some more banners *beams* :

banner WE149MC.png

They are all made by the wonderful

red_satin_doll, and as always with her banners they are not just gorgeous, but bring out the icons even better than they are solo!

And then there was the first challenge over at

btvs_lims, and what I never expected - I survied it, without a single vote against my icon at that! There was really tough competition, awesome icons all around, so I'm beyond happy I still survived! Tonight is the deadline of the second challenge with the voting probably posted tomorrow, so go have a look and maybe even vote.

To complete the good things happening to me lately - another one of my fics has been nominated at

wicked_awards ! It was my entry at seasonal spuffy - A New Life. It's not that I see any chance in winning anything there, the competition is way too strong, but just being nominated means someone thought it worthy, and that is just neat! So THANK YOU whoever did it!!! You absolutely made my day!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Congrats on your icon awards and your fic nomination.

Thank you :)
I always feel a little weird bragging around here, but I just don't know where else to put the beautiful banners, and I'm absolutely stoked about the nominations and needed to thank the ones who did it.

(Also, I'm pretty proud of the awards; I'm doing this since...May (?), and I've never done anything art-wise before. I'm still stunned by any vote for one of my icons in challenges...)

Glad to hear you seem to have "easier" students than last year.

Congratulations on your awards* They're all very much deserved! And you did a lot better than I did in the first lims challenge, as my icon was voted the almost-worst of the bunch! Which one was yours, if I may ask? I thought almost all icons in the challenge were very good.

*ETA: and nomination!

Edited 2016-09-11 00:55 (UTC)

I liked your icon much better than mine (it's the BuffyBot) and was really, really glad that only one maker had to go this time! I thought the not-quite-sharpness of yours together with the not really identifiable shadow in the background gave the icon a dreamy quality, which I really liked!

I think it's a sign of the overall quality of all the icons that people latch onto what can be seen as a fault, which in this case was the lack of sharpness, deliberate or not. It's exactly what I feel right now, trying to decide which one of the new icons to vote out while thinking they are all very, very good. It's nitpicking, and since everybody nitpicks according to their own personal preferences it doesn't really say much about how good an icon really is. Difficult.

I liked your icon much better than mine (it's the BuffyBot)

Thanks! I wasn't very satisfied with my own icon though; it was really bland compared to the others. (And yes, it was deliberately blurry, but I should have been more subtle about applying the blur.) I much preferred yours. I loved the text and the background in combination with the perky Buffybot.

I completely agree with what you say about nitpicking / looking for faults. I am also having a really difficult time selecting two icons to vote out.

'compared to the others' - This is often what happens to me; I'm fairly content with what I did, and then it's displayed between all the others, and suddenly it looks too dark, or too saturated, not sharp enough or too sharp. Or, you know, too bland (and I don't agree with you there, even though I can see why you would think so).

I still love it :)
Also, I still love very much this Willow icon (and it's so much better than the one of the same cap from the first challenge (which I voted out). Apart from the other reasons that were mentioned from those who voted it out, none of which applied to your version, yours emphasizes so much better Willows loneliness in that moment! I really love it and it deserved to be mod's choice in that challenge.

There. :)
Good luck for this round's voting!

Thanks! I've got to admit I'm quite happy with the Willow icon myself. And I still love yours a lot too! The idea behind it is so great and so well-expressed.

I've cast my votes for the second challenge, but I'm not at all sure about my second vote... I didn't really want to vote against any of the remaining icons. Tough choice!

It really is. I voted yesterday, but it took me more than half an hour to write the comment, because I changed the votings about ten times...

Wow, it has been busy for you!! How many children do you have? Four? Your icons look great, and congrats on the nomination!

Thank you :)

It kind of always is busy for me. I think I felt it more during the last weeks because I was really anxious about the new students and how my second son's new class will turn out to be, since he had some difficulties during the last years with his classmates. Fortunately the new ones were all completely unknown to him before, so it was a really fresh start for him which went pretty well :)

Yes, I have four children, three sons and the youngest is a girl. I call her my bonbon, since she wasn't really expected to join the family, but decided otherwise and as a bonus turned out to be a girl after three boys :)

Congrats to the new class. Bad beginnings don't mean that you can't turn things around, but it sure must feel much better to work on positive attitudes that are already there from start. Hope you got everything ready for your new class - and that you still were able to actually relax and enjoy your holidays too. I'm slowly getting more energy now and have started that necessary big cleaning of my home, one project after the other. Things are relatively good at work. And the weather is tropical!!

' it sure must feel much better to work on positive attitudes that are already there from start' - it sure does!!!

I had everything ready, and all the work I did during school break is really paying off now. I'm surprisingly relaxed considering tomorrow starts a new week :)

I'm glad things seem to be good at work (sent you an email...)!!
And I guess the weather is the same as it is here, and I love it!!!

Good Luck with your new students - teaching children and being responsible for them is something I could never take on. You Are A Very Special Lady. LOL, just the idea of driving kids around scares me.

Congratulations on your winning icons - I love the Anya Bunny but all are very good.

Thank you :) They are nothing compared to your wonderful art, though...

'teaching children and being responsible for them is something I could never take on ' - well, I think I couldn't do anything else. Sitting in an office every day for eight hours or more for example sounds cruel to me.
(And there's really nothing special at all about me.)

*breezes by a week and change later* Wow, good luck with all those first-graders! It's wonderful and delicate work you're doing (I know for a fact I couldn't pull teaching off, much less taking care of a class of such young kids). I hope it's going well!
And congrats on all the nominations and awards! That's getting to be an awful lot of people who all happen to think your work is good. ;)

For the last four years with my last class I sometimes doubted that I could do this much longer myself. But with these it's totally different, and I finally remember why I used to love this job so much!. (And isn't that a great thing to say?)

'people who all happen to think your work is good' - after 17 years being in a relationship/marriage with someone who permanently subtly, but steadily belittled me, always communicating how bad I am in everything I did (and who I was), I can't even tell you how very much this makes me happy!

Awesome, both things. I'm so glad for you! Isn't life nice? \o/

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