other duties as required

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Teacher 1
Parent teacher interviews today. They started at lunch time and concluded at 8pm. Parents were allotted 10 minutes until a bell rang; the usual speed dating process!

I had only one appointment- the very first time slot. It was with the mother of a student that I taught last term, and no longer teach as it was a term unit, so I didn’t have much to discuss. I gave a chapter of my life story, that hurried them on their way.

After that I was on door duty, or meet and greet, as the parents arrived. We were also expected to keep an eye out for irate parents or uncomfortable situations at which we were somehow to magically intervene. I don’t know what a genteel person such was I was expected what to do, and I had not packed the stick, so all I could promise was to bite people on the knee caps. As many of our parents are large Samoans and Maoris, I don’t think I would have got further than a knee cap, stick or no stick!

Home now and tucked in bed – yes, exhausted from being nice. Lordy, the things a person has to do…

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loss and devious ways

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yurt 3

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…

how green is my drive

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Car 1

I have a new car. Same make as my previous car except this is a hybrid; so the same but different.

It has a graphic display that shows when the petrol is being used and when the battery is being used, or when the power is going into the battery. Then it has another area that glows blue if I drive uneconomically but green if I am using the hybrid compnents well. It can be quite a distraction and I am sure that if one is too much of a perfectionist or a little OCD then it might just drive you mad. For now I consider it a novelty and hope that the novelty wears off soon.

One thing that really gets me is that I receive a rating on my driving at the end of my journey. A display of flowers – varying numbers and with a varying number of leaves appears to score my “green” journey. I am already competing with myself to get a perfect “garden”!

I was feeling guilty about my carbon footprint due to my long journey to work every day and I thought a hybrid car would held ease that but now I think I have just added another stress to my life – how green is my journey!

and another one bites the dust

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2012_10_model-simone-d-aillencourt-13a435b90-710621-320-445

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?

and the beat goes on

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Day in the Life of a Little Girl,
It is amazing to me how I can be so busy, and every day is tumbling into the next and yet I when I come to write something here I draw a blank. I guess even goddesses can’t be interesting all the time!

Tomorrow is Mr FD’s mothers funeral. We only expect about a dozen people at the most. She only has two surviving siblings and they are both too frail to travel. Two grandchildren are unable to make the journey home due to distance, and let’s face it, their Grandmother has passed on, it makes no difference to her if they are there or not. They said their goodbyes to her in the last few weeks anyway. Better to do so when alive than dead!

We have been told to we can only have a short service, and Mr FD is to make the eulogy short. Brisbane seems to be a bit of a conveyor belt for funerals. In and out and another one waiting. I have told our children I want to be buried in the town where I grew up and from the church where Mr FD and I were married – I don’t want them to have to rush. The great unwashed will need time to honour me anyway…

MIL is being cremated so another one of those horrible endings where we stand and watch the hearse drive away and are left feeling empty.

I haven’t seen Petit Fille for almost two weeks now and I miss her dreadfully. Poor little thing will be at the funeral as well. She had two great grandmothers for awhile, and now she has only one. She will be a nice distraction and I need a cuddle as my pick me up.

the lodger

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here and there

Since the start of the school year I have been working long hours and at weekends staying in the city to help out with baby Petit Fille and her reflux problems. Today I said to a colleague that I was a bit of tenant in my own home. I didn’t realise how true my words were untill tonight when I was in our bedroom and closed the door.

Mr FD, roused from his television viewing by the sound of the door closing, called out to Son that he thought someone was trying to break into the house and set about searching for the source of the noise!

Surprise – it is called a wife!