12 of 12, July 2015

It had to happen eventually.

I’m sure everyone has moments where you want to turn back time so that you can repeat a day and do it differently.

And not even spectacularly differently; this time all I’d change is taking a few photos every now and then.

Yes, for the first time in nearly 6 years I don’t have 12 photos for the 12th. I don’t even have one. I completely forgot. 🙁

You can, however, use your own imagination.

Photo 1: Helen wakes up, but in the spare bed in the second bedroom. She has guests occupying the main bedroom: her good friends Anne and John from Oxford who are here for a week to attend a conference in Hobart that Helen has been involved in organising.

Photo 2: Helen is in the kitchen, dressed to head off to church, but is chatting to Anne and John to help them make plans for their own day.

Photo 3: (I couldn’t have taken this photo, anyway!) Helen is clearly rather weary, as evidenced by the fact that she has drifted off a bit during church.

Photo 4: Helen is chatting to the other members of the Relief Society presidency in a quiet moment, and realising that she’s not on top of Relief Society stuff at the moment because work demands are getting ridiculous.

Photo 5: Helen comes home and has lunch: probably a ham sandwich and an apple if I remember correctly.

Photo 6: Helen turns up at uni and, fortunately, gets a text message to tell her where she is supposed to be going before she starts wandering around the wrong building.

Photo 7: Helen is a member of a panel with two other people, talking to a group of about 40 international early career mathematics education researchers about writing articles for publication and how to increase the likelihood that editors and reviewers will receive their work favourably. (She feels a little hypocritical, knowing that she’s not on top of her own research writing at the moment because other work demands are getting ridiculous.)

Photo 8: Helen returns home, to find Anne and John back from their travels, and manages to convince them (without too much effort) to come to “Sunday Family Dinner” at her parents’ place.

Photo 9: Helen introduces Anne and John to her brother and sister-in-law, her sister and brother-in-law, her other sister, six of her nine Hobart nieces and nephews, and her mother and father, and the relatively small loungeroom manages to accommodate all 16 of them, even if they don’t all fit in one photo.

Photo 10: See photo 9, but taken from a different angle (one photo doesn’t capture it all).

Photo 11: Banter is flying wittily in all directions (very hard to show in a photograph, along with some “in” jokes that may have gone over Anne and John’s heads). A set of Cuisenaire rods has been located and although John wants to develop some maths ideas with them, Daniel is more intent on building a model of a train.

Photo 12: It’s the end of the day, all is quiet, and Helen falls asleep while trying to do some work in bed using her computer. Fortunately the computer manages to remain precariously balanced until she wakes up and goes to sleep properly.

(The “12 of 12” project involves taking 12 photos on the 12th of the month (or, at least, that’s what is supposed to happen!). This provides the opportunity to get snapshots of different aspects of your life. I have been doing this since 2009.)