Category Archives: Daily thoughts

the faraway place

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I am so over this whole responsible adult person role that I have been playing for way too long. I really do think I have been typecast and it is time for the damn second act to allow me a little of improvisation.

Don’t you just get fed up to the eye teeth with the alarm ringing, roll out of bed at 5 am every weekday to climb over the sleeping dog and kick your toe on the way to the bedroom start to the day?

Not to mention, but I am, the deciding of which costume to wear to perfect the character that you need to be that day . Am I professional take me serious woman; learning is fun teacher; reading is not a bore librarian, I have my own style and refuse to be a stereotype and yes I can wear pearls with everything if I want to individual, or my brain has gone on a long beach holiday in a foreign country and left my true identity in control and that is not good I anyone’s book boomer?

What to wear versus what is ironed/clean or fits me. Then lunch…sandwich or wrap, salad or frozen meal? A can of tuna… Onto the highway and its more of that get out of my way I may just drive over the top of you but the thought that it might damage my car and cause me more inconvenience (going to jail will do that, inconvenience, I mean) and why are you all passing me when I am exactly on the top legal speed (my cruise control confirms it) commutes that leave me way to much time to contemplate my wretched condition and as I drive 40 minutes each day I am tired of all my recorded music and the radio is driving me mad with their depressing news and information or inane breakfast shows.

A day of lamenting that parents don’t teach their kids respect or responsibility, or much of anything any more. Kids shouting their rights to you but never considering that maybe you have rights too. A life of buckling under management teams that all seem to be bad copies of each other – all inept, deaf, blind and dumb in the sense that they always have to take to road to nowhere and expect you to sing happy songs as they throw you off the cliff and point fingers at you.

Years of people making promises to fix the washing machine on Wednesday but to call on Thursday and say they can’t make it for two weeks and then still now show up and a world where everyone is willing to critique your performance, your life, your actions, but never stop to self-reflect at all. People in glass houses shouldn’t stand up in the bath, matey.

No suitable ending in sight, except the big light calling, calling, and to some that is no ending at all. Life’s a shit and then you die. Nobody cares, nobody dares, off we go again.

Yes, Friday and not enough weekend ahead to do anything to change my mood, my life, my chances. Drink will rot my liver, pills make the head hurt, chocolate goes to the hips and everywhere else. I long to lie in green fields but the fire ants would bite, the snakes would slither and bite as well no doubt and the crows would pick over what was left.

Turn off the clocks, shut all the factories, stuff the children in the closet. Let’s go to the faraway place where we always expected to be. Burn the bridges behind. I’ll boil the kettle you can get the teacups from the cupboard in the corner. Then sit down, drink your tea and shut up or I swear I will hit you with my stick. I swear I will.

Curse

 

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time and place

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crown ring

Have you ever felt as though you had some link, or affinity for another time, or place?

There are two eras that throughout my life I have been intensely interested in – Tudor England and the 1920s. I spent years reading about the history of the Tudors and English monarchy from when I was about 12 years of age. Later, as an adult, I was pulled to the 1920s anywhere, any society.. In both eras it has always been the lives of women and the minutiae of the everyday lives, who have particularly interested me. My go to genre is biography and memoir.

It is no surprise that these passions led me to being an English and History teacher as well as a librarian then is it?

I read of a theory that memory may be stored in our DNA. If so, is it possible that we could be drawn to periods of history that maybe our ancestors lived through? Maybe there is no “past lives” as some believe but rather DNA memory?

Just pondering – from where do our passions arise? What makes me interested in history and another person interested in woodcraft, or knitting? What draws us along our paths?

The 300 club

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Barbara Goalen 9
Just a break in the ramblings to thank the now over 300 hundred regular readers of my blog. Thanks you for your kindess and your friendship, and your tolerance for my peccadilloes and eccentricities.

And to think I didn’t even have to threaten you with my stick to make you read either!

[Well, except for GOM...]

loss and devious ways

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Arrived home Sunday night, after a weekend of helping with Petit Fille, to learn that my uncle (married to my mother’s elder sister) had died. He was also 90 and it wasn’t unexpected. I am trying not to think about “things coming in threes”.

Mr FD’s cousin declared at MIL’s funeral that “we are the older generation, now!” That was a little scarey and also a little bewildering. She is in her 60s, as is Mr FD and his sister. I, of course am still in my 50s so I am pretending that her declaration does not include me!

A colleague is having some issues with one of the members of her team and is feeling utterly unsupported and actually ill treated by our management who should be backing her up in an issue with the subordinate, and I do feel so much empathy for her, having lived through The Basement of Discontent and an even more poisonous workplace prior to that. The age old story that management actually have to see a number of good staff walk out the door before they realise who the real poison in the workplace is. “Street fighters” can never be handled by taking the moral high ground, better to go where you will be happier and supported.

In a strange coincidence I was buying take out at a highway stop last week when I looked to my right and the “poison” from my previous workplace was standing not two meters away. I don’t know if she recognised me as it has been ten years, and I now have grey hair, but I certainly recognised her – and utterly ignored her.

My natural instinct would be to be polite and say hello (and we all know how I find being nice exhausting), but in her instance I just thought I am no longer paid to tolerate you, and I have no need to acknowledge you and so I didn’t! It felt good, it still feels good.

I hope my colleague doesn’t leave, as she is my one true friend, after Minerva the Library assistant, but life is too short and too much time is spent in the workplace to waste it in a situation that makes you unhappy. Often we don’t realise how unhappy we are until we go somewhere where we learn to be happy again. She may have to do that.

The saying “Life’s a shit and then you die” is running through my mind right now. Tomorrow is another day…

and another one bites the dust

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Well, that was the week that was. Saturday was the day mother in law passed on. Sunday the offically opening and naming of our library took place, a year after we actually started using the library!

Being a catholic school “opening” meant the bishop cam along and blessed the building and all those who sailedwork in it. A mass was held outside the building. It was all very pious until the bishop was giving his sermon and a loud male voice rang out “hohohhohhohohohoh”. It was hard to tell if it was a laugh or a cry, but everyone pretended not to notice. A few minutes later another hohohohohohoho rang out.

Next day at the staff meeting all was explained. An elderly man in the community suffers from dementia and every so often he lets go a hohohhhoho. His other party trip is when he goes to communion he pats the priest on the head. Apparantly on our day he took communion from the Bishop and yes, he patted the bishop on the top of his balding head.

Aren’t those the moments to remember, though?

line of fire

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The room in which our television reigns supreme is a long, thin room, but wide enough to accommodate the two brown suede recliner chairs that we use for our viewing pleasure.

Over time, due to our risings and seatings, the chairs gradually progress down the length of the room until we need to squint to view the screen. Even so, lack of clear vision does not motivate us to push our chairs back to their original resting point.

Oh no, that only happens when we discover that we are out of range for remote use, then we push our chair back into its best advantage spot. It does mean that we often to have conduct conversations to a chair occupant some distance behind us because they haven’t hit the outer boundaries as yet, but that is a small price to pay to maintain control of the television remote.

Out the mouth of a baby

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My grand daughter is eight weeks old and she can say the word hello. No it is no illusion due to lack of sleep or whiskey in our tea. Petit Fille says a very recognise able “hello” in reply to other people saying hello.

The word is not as clear as an older child, more like the sound a hearing impaired child would utter , but it is clearly, hello and said as a response to a greeting. Her Daddy first taught her to poke her tongue when he poked his tongue, one of the first responses a baby will make, and then just by saying “hello” in repetition on a few occasions she mimicked him. No, we do not have any illusion that she understands what she is saying, but she is creating a response that must take incredible brain and body interaction.

When Daughter1 emailed me Petit Fille could say hello, I was ,as one would expect, ” that’s nice dear.” We all think our children are brighter, superior to others after all ( ours were due to me being their mother, of course). However, I have witnessed it myself on more than one occasion. D1 has also reported her lying her in crib saying hello over and over.

Someone may be able to say this is a natural sound that 8 week old babies make, but the fact that she can make the effort at this age to make the sound in reply has stunned us.

It has made me wonder about just how much our brains are capable of doing and how we are perhaps doing our children a disservice by not stimulating their brains more. A language rich environment is the best gift to a baby- speak, sing and read to them, please!

 I wonder if she can learn to say “I love grandma best!”?

The reason for my demise

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I am so tired my head may just fall off my neck and wobble into the waste paper bin and risk lying amongst the banana peel from my morning tea banana, just to get some rest.

I open the library each morning anywhere from 7.15 to 7.30am, depending on the traffic. We do not close again until 3.30pm on a “normal day” but there are always after school activities. This week there has been one workshop until 6.30pm, and then another afternoon both a teacher workshop and also a parent information evening which meant I walked out of the school at 7.30. That was a 12 hour day, full strength.  Throw in my ‘flu vaccination, and supervising a number of year levels waiting to have their various vaccinations (The boys got Gardasil. Yeah! As a cervical cancer survivor I champion cervical cancer vaccination for all!), then you have the life of me.

Oh, and the meeting of the staff book club of which I am the worst member – I got the “lemon award” for the worst book choice last year (The Great Gatsby, and don’t get me started) and I am on track to be awarded the prize for reading the least number of chosen books, as well as having lost one selection on a plane… yes I am a librarian, but that just goes to prove the librarians do in fact have a life and can be unpredictable, doesn’t it. Doesn’t it? No stereotypes with this lady.

So tired and this is just the first week of term – nine more to go!

a child’s mind

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Wandering the supermarket aisles I found myself with the words “gee up, gee up. gee up horsey, neigh, neigh, neigh” and “clap hands, clap hands, clad hands ’till Daddy comes home” streaming through my brain and not much else. Grandma brain?

Transitioning from Baby Town to Adult World, and on Monday Back to School is proving a dizzing process. Two weeks of vacation time have flown by and now a new school term is about to begin. First day back we have to remain until 6.30 for workshops so we are being thrown in the deep end from the start.

Petit Fille received her first immunisations on Thursday. A needle in each leg and an oral vaccine as well. It is a case of being cruel to be kind. Baby screamed, utterly shocked and betrayed and her Mummy cried too. Grandma tried to comfort Mummy as Mummy comforted baby but we all felt sad. Petit Fille was clingy for a couple of hours afterwards but appears to have had little issue except for two sore patches on her legs. Mummy and Grandma were emotional wrecks for the rest of the day!

Petit Fille has two Grandmothers who love her very much. Her paternal grandmother is more reserved and cultured in her approach which worried me at time. Daughter1 says I am more “natural” with Petit Fille. It makes me wonder what opinion Petit Fille is forming…

How FD views her image with Petit Fille...

How FD views her image with Petit Fille…

and possibly how Petit Fille really views Grandma FD…