Off To Sydney.

Today I’m going to a course for work about employment for people who have disabilities. So off I go on the train into Sydney. Hey, it’s a day away from the mundane, and really, I’ve done nothing other than mouth off over the years about the way schools are stopping all the programs we used to have that ensured kids knew how to catch a bus or a train, behave in public, speak to people (not knock some poor old lady over with their school bag or burp loudly in public) etc etc etc. Now, it seems all schools are too worried about risk assessments to let these kids with disabilities out at all. And that’s deplorable. Most of our kids won’t ever drive – but they used to know better than mainstream kids how to work out a timetable and catch public transport.  (And we’d have fun going places, too. Often these kids have never even been to a shopping mall or cinema)

So, anyway, this might help in some small way – and yeah, it’s a day out. Lunch is provided – hopefully better than the last course I went to. Those dodgy cold samos.

When I think about it, and I have been a bit lately, I’ve realised that every bit of a drama I’ve had in the work place has been about going in to bat for someone. It’s never been about myself. Of course, the disappointment sets in when I have needed someone to do the same and they don’t. So, I am determined not to do this anymore. Well, not to the degree I had before. The fight I had last year about this time, was really about a teacher not giving us a damned ball at sport time. He maintained that “YOUS have your own budget.”  (We don’t) I was standing there with 5 kids from the support unit, IN sport time, with nowhere to go for their sport and here he was questioning me, and not wanting to give us a lousy stinking soccer ball – because it might not come back. I explained to him that the kids were enrolled in the school and had every right to use the equipment mainstream kids take for granted.

Thats the stuff, alright. Shits me to the core. And I know that I will at any sort of discrimination like this, go off, no doubt – for the kids it’s worth the fight – rotten little shits that they can be. Doesn’t matter. I can say that, and often do to my workmates – but let someone discriminate, and mate – it’s on.

Thats the funny thing I reckon. And the very real and absolutely inclusive way that we work. eg. My workmate, the keeper of keys and I were taking the bus for a service. I said that one of the kids was saying that another kid had called him a nigger and spat on him.  I was doubtful about the word, because the boy never says that stuff – but the spitting, yes, I was sure of. I said that this particular kid who said he’d been called that is extremely rude, a thug, and often pulled the “black card.”

The keeper of keys said. “Yes, you’d love to say, “Really, Johnny, it’s got nothing to do with you being black – you’re a just a c..t!”

We laughed all the way to the garage.

Now that’s inclusion for you.

The New IPhone

I don’t think there’s much that would cause a person to go off their head more than getting a new phone. Yes it’s exciting, apparently. Of course I’m over the moon about paying off a phone for the next 2 years. I know shut up and stop whinging. Yes it’s lovely and I will guard it with my life, after all I work in a high school…a pretty dodgy one. One slip up and it’s gone! Anyway, today I needed help to set it up – well of course I did. And mate, the sighs and the bored tone from the telstra helper in a far flung country was so frigging annoying, but, much like the RTA, I needed them, so I clenched my teeth when she said yeeeass, noooo, mmm mmm, etc.

Then I had to get onto Apple to transfer my contacts…except the only Internet is CEFs old clunker of a computer in the shed. I was told to connect to iTunes. That wasn’t going to happen. It doesn’t have it, and once when I downloaded something I never heard the end of it. So I wasn’t about to download iTunes to a 12 year old computer that belongs to CEF. Now, that Apple fellow was a Texan by his drawl, I think he even called me ma’am. Very well mannered and polite.  But no, no contacts until I take it to work and ask one of the young techno teachers to do it for me.

Geez.

Sweet Dreams

And indeed they were…until the shrill ring from CEF at 7 am woke me, letting me know that his mate will be coming by to pick up something. This mate will expect a chat so I can’t curl up and pretend I’m asleep.

But…at long last, I was having some sweet dreams. First a very good looking man from my past was telling me that I was to move in with him, everyone was welcome – and he started helping me to get everything together. Then there was the first boyfriend and his mother and family, welcoming me also, with open arms and happy smiles – to go live with them. The boyfriend looked just like I remember from when we were young. Tall, athletic, long hair, good looking. (I saw him in Bilo last year – and didn’t recognise him for ages. He’d sort of shrunk…all over – even his head had. Of course I would have looked exactly as I did when I was 20… Yeah..

But they were nice dreams, and no angst about how, or why, or if the Crazy Eyed F…er was somewhere in the background plotting our demise. Just happy, brainless dreams of being wanted somewhere – smiling happy people – a home. A real home.

And then, on my first sleep-in after a very full-on week at work. RING RING!

Anyway, maybe my dreams have turned the corner.

Lil Ole Winemaker, Him.

Drago’s feral cats were howling outside my window at 2 am. Now, I like cats, but the sound tomcats make when they howl at each other would rival most anything from a horror movie. Even when I went out with a torch, hissing and stamping my feet, I pictured one of those f…ers launching off the pool fence and grabbing me by the throat. I’d be reeling backwards into the geraniums, in my nightie, with a big ginger cat attached to my jugular. Ginger cats…like red headed kids…watch out!

And yet up I go most days, with food, because for all the fighting cats do, there’s about three more litters of kittens up there and old Drago comes out about once a week. If I didn’t take food up there, they’d ALL be here, on my doorstep.  It’s cat season, so as the weather warms up, the tomcats go prowling at night. Thankfully my little Buz cat is safely locked up.

I’ve just looked on my iPad and CEF has been looking up wine making equipment on eBay.

He has mentioned it before, along with bee keeping equipment. Making wine – extracting honey.

He has one grape vine that has run wild down near the shed. The flimsy trellis he made for it has long fallen into disrepair, the vine gets clusters of green grapes that lay in the long grass, which the birds and slugs annihilate. He’s never picked a grape. I picked a couple one day and he turned his nose up and continued slugging on a beer. But, now he’s going to go into the winemaking business. He also doesn’t ever drink wine. The only time I’ve seen him was slugging a glass full down once like it was beer, just to get the rush. As for the beekeeping, he was stung by a bee once – I heard about it for 3 weeks.

Hopefully he won’t get round to doing either pursuits, along with the bird feeder project.

3.05 am Thurs.

The Hard Worker.

CEF is just on the phone to his mother. He’s just said, quote, “Yeah, I’ve been doin a fair bit a work round the place.”

I was coming out of the shower.  I balked. I stood open mouthed…for several minutes.

Maybe he thinks HE oiled the verandah floor boards or fixed the hole out the front, shovelling a tonne of mulch, or bought a mower battery and mowed…or washed the doors and windows…b..blah b..blah.

There was no mention at all of what I’d done.

Yeah..

The Bird Feeder

Last week of the hols I mowed the grass, cleaned off the verandah and even spent 80 bucks on deck oil. The verandah looks amazing – it’s Ironbark and it went from a splintery grey to a dark jarrah colour- as it should always be. Of course CEF (crazy eyed f…er)  said not one word about it. He even left dusty boot prints across the front and then watched as I cleaned them off and put the mats down – nope not one word, like, “Gee they came up good…you’ve sure been busy – looks great…etc.etc.. ” Nah.

And he would have meant to put the prints there, because he’s not a careless person.

So, after all my hard work, I’ve looked back at it and thought, yep, looks good. Then on Monday he decided to cut down the branches of one of his beloved trees right in the front lawn, which has died. Of course, the branches are still where they fell. He then said that he had an old metal garbage bin lid which he is going to attach to the top of the tall stump that’s left. This will be a bird feeder for the native birds (cockatoos which will eat the seed, the solar heating, the pool solar heating, the walnut trees and anything else they can get their beaks on… AND it will look really really stupid.

It’s a losing battle, this stuff. I could no more say, “I don’t think that will look good…and remember you really HATE the cockys screeching – and that’s your wild birds that will be fighting over the seed…” Because it would cause a major drama, one I can’t be bothered with.

Wed.

Small Things Alright.

Last night we went to the meat raffles.

I had a hankering for an Angus burger and chips…and also an apple pie.

I said to him, how bout we get Maccas after the raffles. He agreed. So for most of the night I could taste that burger, you know, when you really feel like something like that – and especially if it’s not something you have very often. I’d been doing stuff around the place all day – he had been asleep from 11 am until about 4 pm. How he does that and then still sleeps at night is beyond me.

He won a couple of trays and we walked out when he finished his last schooner at about 7:50. I asked if he wanted to just walk the short distance to Maccas rather than drive (be driven) . “Nah, we’ll go straight home. I’ll have some of these chops.”

“I thought we were having Maccas?”

“Nah, I don’t feel like that…I’ll have this.”

*Yes, I could have demanded we go to Maccas. He could even have sat in the car and waited. I could have got takeaway – which is not how I like to eat it as it’s still a 15 minute trip home.  But would I have been able to enjoy it? Not on your life. There would be no, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise you wanted that.” No. He would know that for me to actually suggest it, then that’s what I really wanted to have – and I certainly didn’t want to cook at 8 o’clock on a Sunday night. (Also that I’d be paying)

He said when we got home. “I’ll cook it later.”

“Well. I’m hungry now.” So I made a tomato sandwich that went nowhere near satisfying my desire for an Angus burger and headed into the lounge room.

Far out, though. It still shocks me. His absolute selfishness. No thought at all that it’s a public holiday, I don’t want to cook…and I don’t want a frying pan full of fat, plate, knife forks etc. on the bench at 9 o’clock at night even if he cooked the chops himself. I just wanted to sit in Maccas and enjoy a burger. He knew that. It still amazes me how he can honestly want to make sure I miss out on absolutely every joy – small or huge – in life.

How can a person really be like that.