Disappoints hurt
Catch me in my sternum
I expect I will bounce back, I always do
The silence is a widening chasm
That you fail to fill
The sun you know, it still shines
And there are still glorious sunrises and sunsets
I would take a photo
But even this; you do not wish to share
Disappointments make me stronger
Even though I care
To be or not to be?
Ah the gentle art of procrastination. I along with many others can procrastinate on the big and the small. Recently I had cause to discuss procrastination with my eldest, when he asked, for help with his homework, due all too soon. He had procrastinated on it ‘til this last moment!
“What is it you need to work on?” I asked
“Hamlet” he lamented and continued, “What is Hamlet about?”
It was then it dawned on me, here was one of the most brilliant procrastinators of narrative history,
“Hamlet is essentially about a guy who can’t make up his mind”
“Why?”
“Because, you know… the ghost of his father has appeared to him and demanded he vanquish his death because his brother (Hamlet’s uncle; keep up people!) Has killed him and Married Gertrude (Hamlet’s mum) and Hamlet just finds the whole idea challenging”
“Whoa that’s pretty heavy” it dawned on my son, now beginning to see that perhaps Shakespeare is not so boring.
We can all procrastinate on the small: I could clean the house but then it’s so nice laying here in the sunshine eating chocolate, what to do?
Or
I could start packing but my FB feed is so interesting
I could go on a diet but it will have to be maybe like tomorrow because it would be rude not to eat seconds at Mum’s
I could start studying but I can’t refuse this invite
I could do the washing but I have shopping to do!
Then there are the bigger things
I could move to a new place but then there’s too much to think about
I could ask my Dad for a loan
I could change careers but what would I do in between?
Or the really big
Those difficult discussions with beloveds
Just who to vote for when no one seems to speak for me
Government decisions:
Refugees who need a place to live in Australia and arrived by boat, park them on an island in the middle of nowhere, and hopefully as we procrastinate as a nation about what to do, it will be forgotten; the fates of these living breathing people!
Education and funding equity
Environment and sustainability
Procrastination is the space between the idea and the moment we act. Sometimes procrastination can last longer than necessary. Sometimes procrastination is when we shape our ideas, our worries away into thoughtful action.
Left, right, like not. send a million kisses and snack away
Life whizzes by with a million opportunities,
Maybe you were busy snacking and forgot how sweet we were.
A groaning table
a buffet
so much on offer,
“Perhaps I will just snack, and see what happens?”
They say, somehow to them self
There is no commitment necessary in snacking
you’re only taking a little taste, a bite,
snacking won’t harm my waistline too much
I was never going to have a whole meal
You were a divine snack but I’m not looking for a meal
Just a snack…
The past two weeks I have had my nose down writing reports and planning for parent teacher sessions. So Pauline, when I did emerge from all that I discovered that you had said some truly insulting and ill-informed statements!
Your simple thinking gave simple solutions to a complex situation, that you greatly underestimate.
The first thing that you misunderstood was naming something simply as autism; it’s called Autism Spectrum Disorder; there’s a range.
I have taught children who fit into that range, and I am richer as a human being and as a teacher for it! I do not feel it is a strain , I lean into that; I want to help each child achieve success in their day! Having a child who is part of the spectrum in my class has made for greater knowledge for all of us, for greater kindness and understanding.
Pauline, school isn’t just about the 3rs anymore, it’s also about social and emotional learning. We are teaching the whole child to value diversity and helping them to grow into kind and thoughtful adults; who value lots of ways of experiencing the world.
I do not believe that any child in any of my classes has ever been held back by the strain of an autistic child being a classmate. There are many challenges in teaching and they are not just special needs, it is my job to plan for all students.
I have taught many children: there are children that I have taught who have required large print because they are legally blind, there are those who have been non verbal, there are those who are wheel chair bound and there are those that have suffered trauma. It is through sharing daily routines with other children that all students awareness and empathy grows ; they totally benefit from being exposed to other ways of thinking.
Taking these children that you deem different and putting them in a room somewhere else? It sounds like segregation to me. Please don’t insult a teacher’s professional abilities and choices. If you put children with autism in another room you will alienate all children from diversity and that peer learning that is so valuable.
Where are you planning to stop Pauline? Will you put children of a different religion or culture in another room too?
Trust teachers Pauline, (certainly give us more funding that would be welcome; for all kids in public schools), but don’t separate us from diversity!
Best moments
I have never forgotten a child straining to learn Pauline, just because I am spending time with a child with extra needs. I start at 8 and leave at 4 or after each day, planning adjustments for all my little people. I want this so that they can go ahead in leaps and bounds! Just like every other teacher in the world!
Segregation is not the answer, provision and inclusion is!
She is, beautiful, inspiring, nurturing, intelligent, funny, empathetic, sexy, brave, smart, bossy, submissive, learner, teacher, quiet, loud, big, small, tall short, slender, curvaceous,
And she is important.
Last week I was waiting to get in to see the doctor. You see in my heart I am still that good girl, not wanting to bother others about my importance. I thought that surely there’s a reason it’s taking so long, that given time they will get to me, next. Finally at 40 minutes of waiting I asked and the receptionist said oh yes, she’s busy today. I went and waited until it ticked over to one hour and ten minutes, then tearfully requested a new appointment for the following week. I was not crying because I was hormonal or had my period, I was frustrated and felt invisible on that day.
I fear that women have become apologetic feminists. Too often I hear other women when putting forth a plea, qualify themselves by saying “I’m not a feminist but..” Are all women raised to wait, to take up less room, use calm voices? They don’t want to be called, strident, harsh, bitchy, bossy or radical; because if we do flex our under-practiced need for equality and vocal muscles we are in danger of being called these things.
The following Sunday of the same weekend as the doctor debacle I had another moment of invisibility,
” Surely not!” I hear you say dear reader but yes. I looked into the cashier’s eyes when requesting a change in my billing along with a recognition that my name had changed and I saw nothing reflected back, no warmth or validation. What happened to the sisterhood?
What did she see dear reader? Possibly a 47-year-old having an embarrassing melt-down in her shop, that cashier was maybe 23? She needed this female customer gone, needed calm, needed order, needed to look in control, didn’t have life experience to help,
“40 is old dude and why is she so bitter?”
When I married I had lovely ideals about all of us having the same name, had I known how much of me was lost in taking my husband’s surname and then how hard it is to recover and how often I now have to prove who I am, then I would advise don’t let it go!
I asked for my billing name to be changed, I had a current bill that had my former married name on it, but she said she couldn’t change it without proof! I needed some old id with my photo and old name; which I didn’t have with me.
She reverted to,” I cannot legally change this account without that.”
The company was still accepting money out of my account regardless of the name attached! I was steaming by then, leaving with her helpfully raising her voice for the other customers queued behind
“Have a nice day!”
Talking about feminism my son, said, “There are really radical one’s Mum”
So is there a wrong kind of feminist?
The Oxford Dictionary definition says it is:
The advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.
I am not asking to take up more space than a male, I am asking for the same rights.
I am not strident, harsh bitchy, bossy or radical. I am a human, a good girl learning to flex her muscles.
My son pointed at my bookshelf last summer and said,
“Have you read all those books in your bookshelf?” He looked at me in disbelief, challenging me as he peered at me through his fringe,
“Yes, actually yes all of them” I stuttered
” Why do you keep them then, if you’ve read them?” he continued
“Because I might read them again, because I like them” I hastily responded, somehow feeling I had to justify the ongoing presence of my stuff in the living room. He sauntered off to his room.
Why did I feel the need to defend my books, and my connection to them and their right to exist? Why was my stuff so important? I guess the stuff we keep and cannot throw away carries personal meaning. Books contain words, that convey stories, that convey knowledge. It’s important to me. When my son asked me why I kept the books it really resonated inside me and I jumped, why did he say it? Someone I once knew insisted I store all my books in storage, books he said, were kept by people to show off and only made a house messy. I could have a shelf in the bedroom which visitors couldn’t see. Foolishly I agreed but it wrent my heart ,that all those words I loved, were relegated to one shelf and tucked away not to be publicly celebrated.
It makes me think about stuff and our attachments to it. Should I expect others to love my stuff? Should I love their stuff? I think it’s nice if you can, because the stuff you carry and can’t throw away means something to you, it’s a clue to your heart and the things that you value. But to say one’s stuff is more important than another’s, renders the other isolated from the things that show others, and themselves who they are. It also says something about the value of a person to another; if there is no space for their stuff in your life.
Stuff doesn’t have to be in things either there is stuff that we all carry inside us an internal touchstone a dialogue that we use to understand and interact with the world. Like a belief in faith or lifestyle, politics, money, class or manners. For me I still can’t comfortably walk down the street eating, the manners stuff gets in the way. When I was small my mother told me it was bad manners to walk in public eating because others who had to go without would see me and be hungry. I understand that this is my stuff because I’ve seen others eating happily walking down the street; clearly they’re not carrying that stuff. Why does someone pronouncing the f in often offend my ears or someone naming the letter H as hach annoy me so much? It’s my stuff, the internal stuff I bring to all my conversations. Setting a table properly, waiting until everyone is seated before commencing eating these form the interface of my deliberation s in the world, this is the stuff I sometimes let go or sometimes if there are too many together I hold onto.
The thing with stuff is knowing when and what to hang onto it and when to throw it away.
Since of the age of sixteen I have been unable to hear out of my right ear. This first thing people usually say is,
” Pardon, what was that?”
And somehow that is supposed to be funny. Maybe it is? Just too real for me! The loss of hearing in my right ear had a profound affect on my personality it made me pause and look inwards as I adjusted to the loss of hearing and other surprising effects.
One effect was certain sounds, even now are so painful that I feel them through my entire body. I thought I was imagining this but recently my audiologist confirmed that what I was describing was real.
The second effect, seemingly unconsciously ( I now realise) is that from the time nerve loss stole my hearing at 16, I have lip read. Deciphering the hard-edged consonants and guessing the rest. Until I got my bone anchored hearing aid ( go google that!) my body carried the unbelievable tension of focused listening. My energy strained and tied up in knots. This was from decoding language all day. I tried to make sense of the world, what people were saying and where the heck the sound actually came from. Here’s the thing though, deciphering communication is not just for the deaf..
The strain of understanding and listening, not just responding is real. Now with social media and our everyday habit of texting ( because who wants to call and have a conversation? ) things tend to get lost in translation. There are dangers that meaning can be lost, and all you are left with is punctuation or emoji’s to decode meaning.
Goodnight.
or
Goodnight!
or
Good night
or
Goodnight x
Gosh what do they all mean?
If my text bubble is bigger than their’s , am I talking too much? Should my text bubble be equal in size? If I respond last, is it their turn to initiate text next? Let me know people if you know the rule?
Ah the intricacies of text and meaning. Then there is the text mishap, chatting for two whole minutes with a Bestie before realising it’s your other Bestie who has been too polite to say something and when they do they text;
“Yes you called me ( insert other Bestie’s name!) Notice I didn’t even care. It’s all good.”
Feel awful but reassured at the same time by the support of such fantastic friends!
Or the equally as embarrassing like on FB , the like you never meant to send, and too late to rescind. Oh God! Now everyone thinks I’m into some really kinky stuff, Omg!
Too late
Actually my kids have told me off about my texting.
“No full-stops mum!”
“Did you even read what you said? ”
Followed by a screenshot of a terrible jumble of letters or an amazing typo where I am suggesting they ate their friends, damn predictive text!
Perhaps it’s best to avoid losing meaning in text and social media by actually talking now and then, pardon me!
When my youngest child came to me with an issue last week, I felt his pain. Kids had made fun of him and he didn’t like it. Last time a child of mine had an issue like this my ex husband invested in a punching bag and boxing gloves and taught that child to fight. Having grown up in a non-violent mainly female household this made me very uncomfortable, and incidentally didn’t solve things for that child. The problem is, for this child it is intermittent and the school might see it as “saying mean things” rather than bullying which is regarded as ongoing systematic mean things everyday.
To me saying a mean thing is reportable. I thought I should report it. Then I heard another parent talking about some mean things that had been said to their child. I thought that she would be validated and that the friends would support her instead they pointed out that the perpetrator can actually be very nice but they had some quirks! Some quirks! My friend’s child had been in tears. My friend retreated, saying to the group,” I guess it’s good for my child’s resilience.” I then thought better of reporting the situation.
Mean things should not be tolerated or smoothed over, if someone is upset we need to support them. You see meanness resonates badly for me, bullying resonates badly for me. Until I moved to a rural school in early primary school I had never experienced bullying. Once I had been there for a week, It was relentless, it started with me not wearing a uniform, being smart (apparently a girl in particular was meant to say to a compliment if something was good, “You reckon, it’s not really”) and speaking with a posh voice (My Mum is from NZ, so some of my vowel sounds were/are different; I say dance where lots of the kids said “dence”) apparently this was enough to be targeted, my art work on the display would be the only one defaced, I would be kicked and prodded, one memorable day a boy in my class pushed me against the shelter shed wall and as he did it seemed he was looking into me to see what was the most hurtful thing he could say,”Robbo you’re so ugly” he snarled as he held my neck and pushed my head against the boards. I never reported it, dobbers weren’t accepted, but it has stayed with me my whole life.
Mean words stick, it is a deliberate choice and action by the perpetrator to do and say those things, if someone has been affected by this, it should be reported and I don’t care if the child has called it bullying and it is just mean words! Words hurt! I shall be following up my child’s hurt and hope there will be something of closure.
How many times have I read that? I sort of qualify it when things go wrong and say, that’s okay I am enough.
When I am brave I have stepped out into the universe of online dating and had some amusing and some not so amusing encounters. The thing is, one can present oneself as being anyone and anywhere. “Just out to dinner enjoying wine with friends” when in reality they might be tucked up in bed in their P J’s watching Netflix.
I met someone who said they were 180cm, but when I met them they were shorter than me (I am 161cm) , not that it should matter, just don’t say you’re something that you’re not, or say “athletic build” and they are so thin you wonder where the rest of them has gone! I guess I have met people who are just not matched to me, or things are not disclosed in their profile that they later reveal in person.
for example, “My son has Aspergers and so do I, I think I’d like to go now..” Or just after we’ve placed our order for lunch” I am in therapy but I’m improving, I have BPD”
What’s that? I hear you say, dear reader, well that would be Borderline Personality Disorder! Which he explained meant, “I have a deep fear of abandonment and control issues”
Plenty of men tell me their net worth and their financial plan for retirement. They tell me about their 5 year plan and demand to know what mine is! I find discussing money a little awkward at the best of times but especially on a first date.
Then there are those who are wanting to procreate at 51! Who ask invasive questions about your fertility; no really! Ask; would I have more kids! I am 47 with three Caesarean births behind me: no way!
Or there was that time when I thought I could have found the one! He called me his gorgeous girl and even triple texted me!
My friends I fear that I can get a little too invested, the lovely tinkle sound of the dating website notification sprinkling fairy dust and romantic hopes with it. When a suitor says there’s a problem with their phone or “Babe I meant to press send but forgot” let the red flags start waving, warning you! When they find excuses to stay in and not go out in public together be warned!
I didn’t pay attention to those red flags, so when I got a text from his phone from Kylie saying” I’m his fiancée leave us and our life alone ” I was shocked, didn’t know what to think, wrote him a lengthy email, to which he wrote another back. Then we met and he still said we were together. Later in the week he called it all off and said he needed time to decide between us! Red flags people, pay attention!
I am always hopeful, though I dip my toe into the online dating thing every now and then I figure each bad date is bringing me closer to a very good date! But am very much more cautious in protecting myself and my children because you know for them I am enough!
You know I never expected to be here, I mean right here, single mum still working fulltime and dating again in my forties but there you are, it is what it is! I am hoping to connect and share the small and big things with others going through the same stuff
Life the Universe and Everything 