Good

My story is good. I'm perfectly entitled to tell my story. If I'm arguing with myself well then that's ok. I need to write it. That is the truth.
My life is filled with good fortune. I have healthy kids who take me for granted but don't overstep. They know what I expect from them - to reach their full potential - if they keep striving they know I am here for them. I don't take my eyes off them. Childrearing being like tending a garden. You have to keep at it. Turn your head and the weeds are growing and the sappling trees without a stake for support bend, maybe even break. The potential for beautiful flowers gets choked away by nutrient sucking creepers.
I have a home and kids to nurture. I am blessed. I tell them I'm going to live to be one hundred and three. That is what I want to do because I would like to be around for them forever. The last thing I want to see is them being hurt by my passing.
I pray and pray all the time to be allowed to do that.
My periods have stopped. They do that when I'm underweight. When I get happy, like if I have a boyfriend and I have someone to dream about, I put weight back on and the periods come back. This time its different because I only have my ex-boyfriend to think about, and those thoughts are linked to the pain of his duplicity. Yet I understand. Only, what if it carries on once he gets back. What if he keeps seeing her while expecting to see me at the same time, when I'm free. That's going to cause me alot of anguish. Perhaps the whole thing will come to its natural conclusion, and I'll be able to move on, eventually.
I'm not eating much. I'm yearning and hiding my tears when we watch any movie that tugs on any of my emotions. Its school holidays so we've been watching movies on tv late into the night. My insides ache with a longing that I can't see what to do about.
My periods have stopped. But at my age, maybe they won't come back this time. Not that I have any other symptoms. Not alot of sex-drive, that could be a sign, or it could be that I've buried the drive for love. I really think it has waned though.
My story :- From age sixteen to age twenty-six I slept with many men. At first it just happened. Then I started saying no. I was a teaser sometimes, easy the next. With some men, I couldn't sleep with them. Something inside warned me that I had no understanding of their expectations of me. Others just knew how to take and then abandon me. Relationships never lasted more than about three months. I never cared for the person. They could never please me no matter what they did. On one occasion when I was taken out to dinner I hardly touched the food. On another I made myself puke in the bathroom after eating. My main aim was to save money and that miserly attitude overrode any considerations of the individual I was relating with at the time. I spent alot of time hitch-hiking, staying in youth hostels, getting hotel work or hospital work in remote places. A person threatened me with a knife but I didn't give in to him then the next night I all but gave in to a guy because I happened to be stuck in a hotel room with him. He let me stay with him after giving me a lift. I couldn't give in totally on account of having my period. He didn't ask for anything else. I never did anything else anyway, unless I was forced. Sometimes boyfriends insisted on other things. Sometimes they were smelly and I'd dry-retch. I drove all my boyfriends away with nastiness. The normal guys who were prepared to like me, I drove away. Not that I knew it at the time. At the time I'd feel the heartbreak and put it down to him being just another bastard. I travelled overseas and survived on my own, scrimping and hitchhiking. My goal was to go to every county. I knew how to save, how to be poor.
I came home to Newcastle for respite. Mum and Dad had split up. Dad stayed in the Dandenong Ranges house. They sold the Williamstown house and Mum bought a house in Newcastle. Stephen moved with her. Later Sebastion, my older brother moved from Melbourne too, to be closer to Mum. He was married with kids.
I moved home, and fought with Stephen for the best available bedroom in the house. I won. He had to sleep on the closed in verandah. The dog always barked. I don't think we kept its water bowl filled. It harassed the postman who reported the dog. I blamed Stephen for not keeping its bowl filled. Stephen didn't wash or change his clothes. Sometimes he soiled his pants and didn't care. His piano thumping grew less. Once he scared some chilren when they discovered him curled up under a bush during a local festival we went to.
He was diagnosed schizophrenic. As outpatient at Watt Street he was supposed to take medication. He was quiet and docile but Mum told me that when I was away once he threw a sugar basin at her that smashed against a wall.
I took him on a drive once, before one of his appointments. We drove along fire tracks in the mountains. The track wouldn't come to an end and eventually I had to turn around and drive back. I dropped him for his appointment half an hour late. He didn't complain or react.
My children are getting up so I can't keep writing. Time to cut up some fresh apple and banana and put out the bowls for cereal. I'll nibble on some leftover chips from last night and have a cup of tea. Maybe I should make some toast. Farewell for now.

Sunny

Sunny today. I've been into town. I'm tired and low on energy; tired of this blocked nose and the coughing. It's surprising how many steps one can walk up and down taking public transport; so many steps in railway stations. I visited two shops. They kindly take my cards on consignment. I swapped a few of the items over for fresh ones but came away without any money. That's because the right contacts weren't there. Yesterday I drove to two outlets and came home with seventy-five dollars. Three hours yesterday by car and three hours today by car, train and bus.

My ex-boyfriend has sent a message of love from Europe by sms, plus the international numbers prefixing his telephone number, saying his phone will collect the charge. I'm not going to ring him.
My Date from a few weeks back has disappeared into history. Nobody else is pursuing me. I have thoughts only for my ex-boyfriend.
What to do though. He'll eventually be back and maybe he'll never give up my girlfriend. Maybe he'll want to see her and see me too. That is not something I'll tolerate. I've told him so. If he dumps her I'm bound to hear about it. Surely she wouldn't give him up without a public fight. I just can't see how he could give her up and expect the details of his duplicity to stay hidden. That is why I think he can't give her up. If he can't give her up then I'll have to give him up.
Two years more in my mothering role. I can't hope to keep him. I understand his impatience. He wants to 'live'. My kids are not his kids. Maybe I shouldn't even bother trying to have a boyfriend or look forward to a future with someone.
All there is is sickness anyway. I'll just have reached a position when I have plenty of time on my hands, when the partner who has settled with me will start getting sick and I'll have to nurse him. When my time eventually comes to be free, I'll be stuck looking after someone and won't be able to travel.
I don't understand the love I feel for him. Nor do I trust it. Maybe its not love at all. He is not good for me. He drinks every day. I only drink when I'm with someone, out of nerves possibly. We talk alot and just sit around enjoying each others company. We go out to pubs and dance. He buys me dinner sometimes. I cook alot at his place. That was months ago now.
Of all the boyfriends I've had since the marriage broke up, he has lasted the longest.

Many boyfriends. But I've always gone into a relationship with the best of intentions. If I can sleep with a guy, I reason, then I'll sleep with him for the rest of my life. If I can't even start something then I let them know I'm not ready for a relationship. My mantra is 'kindness'. I shrivel at the thought of hurting anybody. There were many boyfriends before psychotherapy, there have been alot after my marriage broke up too. Not that I wanted it that way. My situation; three young children and me boasting about how I'm so proud to be able to devote my life to them. No man wants to hear it. Then, the army of married men looking for regular mistresses or regular 'one night stands', knowing just how to take advantage of lonely, deserted mothers. They say soothing words, lies, anything to start something up that doesn't go beyond the next day.
The constant rejection, the pain of being dumped and deceived, that I thought had been left behind in my youth, is a constant companion. I'm getting dumped, deceived, used, for reasons other than being a 'sitting duck'. Atleast I don't do it back. I take it, stick to my ideals. I know what is important; doing my duty to my kids, and being kind. I don't find life easy though, that constant rejection. I get knocked over and I get up and try again, to get rejected after a few months or a night. I never give up hope though, just get a bit sad sometimes.

Boring Story

It all seems so boring now, my story. Thank you for reading whatever I'm writing, whoever reads. Does it really matter that this forum is public? What can anybody do to me? Should I be afraid of anything? I am anonymous aren't I? The worst I see happening is me boring any would-be readers away to a more interesting blog.
I have millipedes curled up on my walls. When they fall to the floor and I accidentally stand on them they crunch. One cat is curled up on the washing in the backroom. The garden is a jungle. Washing needs hanging out. It is a drizzly day in Perth.

OK. back to my story. I bare my all to a computer screen, confident in the hope that nobody knows who I am.
I was with my brother Stephen in the back of a postal collection van and had wet my pants. That spoiled our trip around with our father on his shift.
Dad collected me from a musical at school in that van, and he must have had the job for years because he gave me a lift home from a nursing job many years later in it as well.
He wasn't a member of the communist party in Melbourne, as far as I know. That didn't stop him from maintaining his strong views on subjects like 'the moneyless society' and black holes. Every waking hour was spent arguing his point. He was always right and seemed to pick on us constantly for our views so he could argue us down. The newspapers were treated to a constant supply of letters to the editor. Once he was invited to defend his stance on communism on a radio show. He declined, telling us that he was probably being 'set-up'.
Dad retired at around sixty. He and Mum lived in the Williamstown house. They sold the Box Hill house to pay out the Williamstown house loan. Dad kept the Dandenong Ranges house because it was his War Service home. Which meant that the loan repayments were at a very low interest rate.
For a while his Mum, my Grandma lived with them until Mum couldn't take Grandma waiting for her at the front gate, watching her walk up the street from the train station after work.
Grandma moved on to another relatives home.
Mum and Dad towed a caravan to Western Australia. they visited my half-brother Jason in the north-west town of Dampier, and were gone a couple of months.
Stephen and I smoked a lot of dope while they were away.
Jason had married a Singaporean woman. They lived in a flat. She wanted Jason to help her daughter get citizenship in Australia. Jason insisted that the daughter should just 'disappear' when she come over, and that they don't need him to help her. The marriage broke up eventually and his wife went back to live in Singapore.
Mum and Dad came back to Melbourne and hosted three hitch-hikers they had collected along the way. Stephen and I felt even more neglected when these two men and a woman came into the house and all we wanted was some parenting, even at our late ages of about seventeen and nineteen. Poor Stephen. I was always mad at him. I would work and he wouldn't. I cook a meal and he wouldn't eat it. "What is this anyway?" He'd say, pointing at the food.
I'd fly into a fury and seek out passages of the bible that he should read so to understand the error of his ways.
Our dog was always staring at me and I thought that even the dog wanted to have sex with me. Everyone else did, so why not the dog. Not Stephen of course. The dog probably just wanted a drink of water and some food. Stephen, also had normal urges I'm sure, because a number of years later he was reported and the police came to the house. Apparently he had been exposing himself to female passersby, inside the front screen door. But they could see what he was doing.

While Mum and Dad were away, every day Stephen would pound furiously on the piano for hours on end, tuneless raging notes, slamming the keys. I could hardly bare it. then the hictch-hikers were in the house and then living in the caravan now returned to the side driveway. One of the guys made a move on me which I rebuffed because they were in our home and I didn't like it. Mum had to find them somewhere to live to get them off our property. She paid the bond money and helped them move into their own flat. We didn't see them again after that.

Stephen left school early for an apprenticeship in the painting trade. We were living at the Box Hill house. He would try to wash his overalls in the copper in our rickety, weatherboard laundry shed. He also bleached some new Lee jeans there and ended up burning holes in them. I think that he stopped turning up for work which is why he lost that apprenticship. Nobody helped him or looked after him. He didn't have the capacity for doing his own washing, getting himself up and there on time.
After Mum and Dad came back from Western Australia, Stephen went to Tasmania. He lived for months in Youth hostels and came back with a wide-eyed girlfriend who stayed at our house for a week or so. She maintained that Stephen was just a 'friend'. When she moved on we never saw her again.
I would drag Stephen along to my favourite pubs on my times off even if he didn't want to go. He could hardly withstand my vicious onslaughts and so would give in to me. He was known and accepted by my nursing friends.
My sexual encounters happened and weren't repeated with the same person most of the time. I didn't want to be used so wouldn't let the same person use me again. I also thought that maybe I was using myself, that maybe I could salvage some pride by telling myslef that I was notching up a tally that I could be proud of.
One evening coming home from work I met a decent young man and invited him home to my bedroom. It was late and my parents were in the room across the hall.
We had sex and when it was over I told him to get out. "Get out" I said in my nastiest style.
He pleaded with me "Give me another chance!"
Cold and icelike I repeated "Get out." I followed him to the front door and slammed it on his back.
Soon after that I came into my room during the day and Dad was lounging on my bed, hands behind his head, ankles crossed. I remained standing in the doorway, hand on the door knob.
What to do; nowhere to sit on that side of the bed. I'd have to walk to the other side. I had a double bed. He just wanted to talk to me. I'm sure he left eventually, without anything bad happening.
I have screamed and brow-beaten Stephen to get my way. I have had sex with people and thrown them out. I have found myself thrown out on the street after sex. I've been taken advantage of in cars, forced into having sex then put out. Too many examples to remember. All I know is that I escaped. Ten years of selfish, abusive behaviour returned with abuse enforced on me ended when I fell pregnant and decided to have the baby adopted.

Ex-boyfriend

My ex-boyfriend and I first met about three years ago. We've been on trips together to Melbourne, south-western Australia, Newcastle, NSW. We camped at Philip Island, not far from Melbourne, Victoria for the motorcycle grandprix weekend. He is going there this year with my girlfriend, straight from Italy.

The three years have been stormy and we've been broken up a lot of that time. I see the problem as his desire to conquer me. I haven't been able to give in and he has become impatient and brought in dirty tactics like 'I need counselling' because of my severe problems with 'lack of trust'. He is worst when I catch him out in a lie. He will go all out to discredit and destroy my credibility in my own as well as other peoples eyes.

On our trip to Newcastle, we attended a wedding. We arrived at my Mother's house; her deceased boyfriend's house that she would have to give up to his daughter when she moved into a home, and that has actually happened now; and she wobbled up to him with her eyes intent on giving him a great big open kiss on the mouth. She had to reach up to do it, all wrinkles and floralled, shiney materialled shift and no bra to keep those long boobs up from her waist.

He met my brother, a bearded bushman with a gift for music and other relatives who prefer to make music than talk or be inquisitive about others. We arrived and immediately became an audience for all of them. I had hoped my ex-boyfriend might be able to understand me if he saw where I came from, after all I had told him about my journey through psychotherapy. He really didn't know what to make of the whole experience.

Now that he is with my girlfriend, he has heard the story I told her to explain myself. This is the story about attending a good private school in Melbourne, my father being part owner in a family factory, maintaining and fixing the machinery in it because he was trained as a mechanical engineer. We were rich, in other words. We lived in a big house in the Dandenong Ranges; a house that he gave away rather than leave for his children. That much is true.

I created a poster years back and a girlfriend saw it and said it was very sad. The poster depicted a young girl and a mother. The mother had been hit by a car. She spent years in a hospital bed, we can tell this by the height of the girl at the hospital bed and that she has grown a lot as she leans over her Mothers' coffin with a flower. The words on the poster are - mother died slowly - drop 5 save lives. The poster was for a road safety competition. It wasn't chosen. It didn't win anything. But the idea was planted in my girlfriend's mind that this was my mother I had depicted in the poster.

Now I do believe that my ex-boyfriend knows of this and is waiting for me to explain my history. His last strategy when he wanted to attack me was that because of my upbringing I really need to get some counselling. I had the feeling it was the Melbourne story and the poster story he was referring to. He attacks me because he feels there is nothing wrong with him, it all has to do with me.

The thing is, I believe that he is convinced of the new story he has heard. The mother that he met in Newcastle just can't be my mother. It just doesn't fit. Not only that, but in Newcastle other friends of mine and my brothers were there like they were part of the family too, like Mum was a 'carer' of many. Also, at the wedding, when I was next up to make a speech, my brother objected, as if I wasn't part of the family, therefore not really entitled. Yet one of our friends made a speech. I'm used to not being understood and regarded with suspicion by my family since the psychotherapy.

Now, it all has just fuelled by ex-boyfriends suspicions that something bad happened in my childhood and its too painful to talk about. When we were away on Saturday afternoon until Sunday early afternoon, I tried to tell him something that would make him happy, like I'm confiding in him. So I went over the story that I guessed he already knew. Melbourne, the poster, explaining that someone took that poster wrongly. I didn't elaborate. He walked away, silently, impatiently. He wants to understand me.

I don't want to lose him, stupid as that sounds. I need to tell him what he wants to hear.

Perhaps I can explain that my mother was run over. I was six or seven. We visited her in hospital, a hospice, then she died. This was our ritual, every Sunday, visit Mummy. But where? I don't have a name of the hostel in Melbourne offhand.

In the meantime Daddy gets a housekeeper. The house is big. She takes the downstairs flat. She has two sons. One of them I became close to - Stephen. She is still in close contact with the children of another family she used to look after. She also has an older son who lives with his father. Infact maybe these two sons also live with their father a lot of the time. She becomes my 'Mum'.

I spend most of my time with them when Im not travelling to and from school. Daddy works long hours and he's met someone else. He doesn't bring her to the house. She has children of her own; maybe she's married, even. I grow up, move into the nurses quarters and seldom go home to stay in the downstairs flat because 'Mum' has moved on, and Dad's new family now live upstairs. They get his house. I' m left nothing when he dies much, much later.

Does that sound convincing? I'm not sure.

The thing is, I could stick to my story. Yes. That is my real mother in Newcastle. That is my real family. I broke free and became a different person after psychotherapy.

He will look at me and he won't believe it. He'll think I don't trust him with my most agonising, heart-breaking secrets.

Another thing, if I'm not believed when I say that I grew up with poverty and abuse, but I am believed when I say I'm a poor little rich girl struck down by tragedy, I may as well go with the rich story.

The person I am now and that girl I was, are so different I can hardly understand myself, so how can I expect anyone else to understand?

Lonely, isolated and happy to be that way most of the time....

Still Low

I have been given a fiftieth birthday invitation. I'm thrilled that somebody still thinks of me. Usually no girlfriends get in touch unless they want something like, to store things in my shed, or to 'fish' for information to gauge if I'm still seeing my ex-boyfriend. I like to be alone.
Today I'm angry with my ex-boyfriend. He tramples on people in a quest to satisfy his own needs for pleasure. I just can't quite ditch him. He has kind of promised that when he gets back he will be using his money to support a charity. I once described myself as a charity because if anyone wants to go out with me I can't be expected to pay my own way because I am not working. As it is I keep dipping into my meagre savings just to give us quality of life. I'm saving for a holiday for my kids and myself. I could put hope in my ex-boyfriend, that he means to employ me somehow so that we can see each other during the day and then on the weekends again when my ex-husband gets back, or I could not trust his statements, knowing how he lies, and surmise it is a tactic to keep me from straying while he is away, having sex and a holiday with my 'girlfriend'.
I told him before he left, that if she stays in his life I won't be in it. The problem will be knowing whether she is still in it when he says she isn't. He is just so good at manipulating people, with his malicious tongue, so to keep them from talking to others.
As I said, I like to be alone. What I don't like is being misunderstood and I don't like not being appreciated.
I'm a good mother. It's my full time job and my focus. My children will be successful because of my support. I take care of their needs. I focus on that so they might devote their efforts to school work, then university so that eventually they will earn big money and be able to give themselves whatever they need to be happy. Money helps. Good mothering underpins a childs ability to earn good money. They would hardly focus on their studies if someone didn't lovingly support them through it, because they don't understand why it is important to work so hard and stay single minded. It's only later when regrets or gratefulness come into a child's head, that a good upbringing or otherwise, is recognised.

Today I vacuumed my middle child's car while he is away. I ironed handkerchiefs, pillow cases and tea towels. I don't have any shirts to iron currently. No point when the shirt is hidden under a school jumper and blazer. Middle son only wears t-shirts and I don't bother ironing them. I will empty the vacuum cleaner, maybe mop the kitchen floor. Later I will collect youngest from school. When it's time for his swimming training I'll drop him early so as to get to the airport on time to collect middle son.
He has been away to a juggling convention in Melbourne and has visited eldest son who is studying there.
My children's father and his wife have gone to Europe for two months. Ex-boyfriend has gone to Europe for one month. Our holiday will be to Newcastle in NSW in December to visit my old Mum and attend a family reunion, for one week.

I need to cut up card today and make some cards from my artwork so the supply is ready once the winter season is over and tourists start coming to Perth again. It's hard getting the motivation. I'm weary of trying to be recognised. I go into competitions, make cards, package prints, make fridge magnets, all homemade, but good enough to be stocked by half a dozen shops. I had catalogues made of my main, large works and popular smaller prints. I spend, spend, spend, my efforts are not bringing money in, and centrlink are always badgering me to get a job.
They don't recognise my mothering, or my art. In their eyes, I need to do something they recognise as being legitimate so they don't have to pay me anything.
Good mothering and good art; both not recognised by society as being legitimate pursuits. This is a crying shame for all the neglected children in the world, and all the sensitive, yearning souls of artists clawing and crawling from one day to the next due to pouring their agony out and making it into something; a piece of art. Children and artists are disdainfully ignored in our society.

Low

I feel deeply low right now. I spent a weekend away with my ex-boyfriend 10 days ago. I have strong feelings for him. I want to be with him. He doesn't want to give me up either. He says he loves me.
Now he has gone to Italy with my girlfriend. He will never admitted this, but 'I know'. I mentioned he was going to Italy to another girlfriend, word got around and then I get a call from another girlfriend close to the 'betrayer' girlfriend. This 'other' girlfriend is fishing. She wants to know where I heard that he is going to Italy. I figure she is checking for the Betrayer.
But I can't hurt my ex-boyfriend so instead of making his life difficult, as it may become, although he is such a good liar, he would just tell her that it was wishful thinking on my part, and a malicious desire to destroy them by telling lies, I don't tell the truth. I couldn't. I said that I had heard he was going to Italy from an aquaintance that I bumped into coincidentally at the shops.
The girlfriend refuses to confirm my ex and the Betrayer are going together. Instead she leads me to say that he's not worth my worrying about and that they deserve each other. When I say I had the boys on the weekend she seems re-assured that 'it wasn't me' he disappeared with all weekend because I never leave my boys.
I did that weekend though because at 16 and 19 I can, but don't very often. They understood that I would only be away overnight. One thing they can't understand is why I go with someone like him. They are bemused, but let me run my own life, and knowing they will always come first.
I can't stop thinking about my ex-boyfriend. When we are together we are happy. We like the same leisure activities. We indulge. I have two more years of child rearing esponsibilities before I can give him my undivided attention. He can't wait. He wants to travel. I'm sure he loves me as I love him.

I was suspended from my course. I explained that I would be late for class on Thursday and the head dude says. No. My son can take a taxi to the airport. I repeat that I will be driving him and will therefore be late. He repeats that if I don't turn up by 9.30am I will be suspended. This argument is heated.
I go away and complain to my job provider then send a detailed e-mail describing this dudes mal-practices to a body who can do something about him. Mal-practices such as over-seeing use of the hoist when he is trained as a primary school teacher, not an aged care worker, telling a 'Tamil descent' lady that because she is short she has to lift in a particular way, not holding the handles on the back of the sling which is supporting a fellow student we had hoisted off the floor, the way we had been taught to do by the real instructor who was taking another class that day.

Thursday I take my son to the airport. Due to hold-ups on the freeway then roadworks all around the airport, I drop him with just half an hour to spare. He checks himself in at the automatic machine then queues to deliver his luggage. I join him in the queue after parking the car. We get to the check-in counter, the girl takes his boarding pass, labels his luggage and puts it on the conveyor belt. She is about to give the boarding pass back when on the screen something comes up. She reaches over and gets my son's luggage back.
"Flight's closed. You've missed it." She suggests we go to another counter and book on a later flight. I couldn't believe it. We had 20-25 minutes to go before the plane took off. My son wasn't allowed to board. Another lady was in the same situation as us. No matter who we argued with the situation remained the same.
I brought my son back to the airport later in the day and saw him off on another flight. I came home and composed a letter of complaint and sent it off.
All I've been doing lately is complaining to people. I have been spending a bit of money too getting my art printed and then framed so I can submit my pictures into competitions.

My Date

My date was fabulous yesterday. We met at a cafe not far from my place. He had coffee I had tea. He bought me two cups. He followed me home, we left my car and drove to the beach in his car. We walked down a path and onto the sand. I carried my sandles and bathed my feet just before the water rushed back into the ocean again after gushing up to us. He kept his shoes on and stayed well up on the dry sand. We could still talk but not hold hands. Maybe I looked too old for him to want to hold hands with me. We ate lunch in a pub. He ordered a club sandwich and chips and I ordered a caesar salad without the bacon and anchovies. It came with bacon but I avoided eating it, being a vegetarian. I had three glasses of red wine. He drank soft drink. He didn't ask me to pay for anything which I thought was very noble. We came back at my place for coffee. My head was swimming from the alcohol but I repelled his advances in a pleasant way. We kissed. That's all. Then he had to leave. He was a bit younger than me. Don't know if he'll get in touch again. T'was a pleasant encounter and I'm happy to let it go at that. Today I'm having lunch with a girlfriend then I'll come home and will finish my activity sheet.
I really enjoy lunching and drinking alcohol during the day, then getting physical with a lover. It is a most pleasant way to spend a day. The problem is the hangover later and still having to deal with responsibilities like getting dinner ready when I just want to sleep it off.
I felt like that last night only without all the memories of physical pleasure or the promise of another get together in the future. Oh well. Probably just as well for now.

My Course

I'm having a hard time doing this course. Our first assignment day saw thirty people arrive to use eight computers. Half the class went home again to use their own computers. Then on the next lecture day, there were not enough hard copies printed out of our activity sheets. I missed out and was told by the lecturer to go and ask for one at the desk. The woman at the desk told me they normally charge for extra for lost copies. I apologised but maintained that I hadn't sighted my copy at all.
At that stage I hadn't understood what had happened to my copy as there had been confusion as the copies were handed out. Later in the day when another handout went around, I realised this print run was also one short.
I pointed this out to the desk woman at break time during a brief passing discussion with a number of us. I said that someone wasn't doing their job properly by not copying enough handouts for all the students, and I shouldn't be asked to pay for something that wasn't my fault. I felt affronted She laughed it off.

It would seem that the rules are not hard and fast here. When activity sheets and test papers need to be handed in seems fluid.
What is definitely clear is they both need to be ready for the lecturer when she comes in twice a week. I surmised that I could do alot of the work at home providing I turn up on lecture days and have my work in on time that morning.
Incorrect. Yesterday I was made to stay back or I would be suspended from the course. I must finish my activity sheet by yesterday afternoon if I'm not coming in today to do it.
I had been pulled into the prinicpals office and asked to explain why I hadn't attended activity day last Friday. I told him I had family issues and also wouldn't be in tomorrow (now today). I handed my work in on time so I didn't see the problem.
Not acceptable. If I was allowed, then everyone would be allowed to not come in on activity days. He told me to stay back or be suspended.
The prinicpal is soft-eyed, over six foot with grey hair and a huge, drinkers stomach.
After the lecture I sat in the common room at the table. All the other students had left. Others from different courses streamed past then I was the only one besides the principal and his secretary who were sitting in the lecture room. He came out, walked past me and asked how I was going.
"Getting through it." I said, trying to sound pleasant. I held a side of the stapled sheath towards him in a gesture of co-operation. He said " Which one are you doing?"
"The activity sheet." Obviously, I was thinking.
"Oh no. Don't do that one. You have to do the test paper."
"That wasn't my understanding." I spread out my sheaths of papers as he leaned over the table. Now I didn't know what he wanted. I pointed to the yellow highlighter on a test paper with 'See me' in the margin. The lecturer had asked me to re-write some answers after discussing aspects of the topic with me. No it wasn't that one.
The principal said I must do the test paper. I pointed out that it wasn't due until Thursday and he had told me to do the activity paper as I wouldn't be coming in tomorrow.
No. I was wrong. I must do the test paper. He walked away.
My mind was fluttering everywhere as I thought what to do. I gathered my concentration, put the activity paper aside and started on the test paper. I did need some of the charts for reference from the activity sheets, but I'd already thought of keeping them to take home anyway and just handing in the written sections.
I worked through the test paper, calling on my memory of the lecture and overhead presentation and regretting not having time to study the notes more thoroughly. I completed the paper.
"I've finished." I said at the door of the lecture room, which is small with three tables down the centre and chairs, two corkboards on one wall covered in pamplets and handouts, and vertical blinds opposite closing off a view of the walkway and frosted glass dome over the food hall.
The desk woman stood up and followed me to the front desk. "Where is your activity sheet?" she asked me as I handed over the test paper.
"I started to do it but Mr----" I couldn't remember his name, "Mr Philip told me to do the test paper."
"His name is not Mr Philip. It's James."
James somebody or other, not James as a surname. James came out of the lecture room.
"I was of the understanding," I repeated calmly, "that I needed to hand in my test paper on Thursday morning."
"No. It has to be in today." He said.
"I've already handed one in today. This morning, the one that was supposed to be handed in."
"Make sure you hand in the activity sheet Thursday."
I decided not to argue. I signed out, exchanged goodbyes and got out of there.

Today I am going to have coffee with a man. We have spoken once by phone. He got in touch with me on a dating site. Then I will do some food shopping then come home and complete my work.