12 posts tagged “life”

Flamingo pair

The Flamingo Dancer phone rang at 1.30 this morning. Of course the first word out of my mouth was"oh shit" being the optimistic little lass that I am not. My mind flew to Mr FD's father who at 90 is at the top of the "God's waiting room" list. Not this time. It was the security firm informing Mr FD that an alarm had gone off in the warehouse. It was just one alarm so it was decided that if another alarm went off they would call back. Yep they did. So Mr FD drove over to the complex at 2 am to check things out. I hate him going over there solo, but solo he did. I worried about him and almost jumped out of my skin when the phone rang a 3 rd time - the security firm telling me multiple alarms were going off now. GREAT.

By this time the brave Mr FD was fighting a huge RAT. A large rat was having the time of its life in a warehouse full of seed and as it merrily tripped from bag to bag it was setting off alarms all over the place. Mr FD grabbed a shovel and started chasing the rat about the warehouse and managed to hit it but then the rat took revenge and raced back at  MR FD. Mr FD was man enough to admit that he may have uttered a girlie scream. To cut a long crime scene short, Mr FD won the battle and arrived home triumphant about 3am.

I was really thrilled when my alarm went off at 5.30. Twice while driving to work I had to really fight not to blink off to sleep. I had a coffee right up as my day unravelled.

MegaBoss likes to play with the boys and prove that she has more balls than they do. Hence she burns a lot of bridges behind her. Today one of the bridges happened to be the very one that I need to cross and is perhaps the most critical element required by the organisation to function. Not functioning and the usual bridge fixer is now alienated and so I am forced to call in a lesser bridge fixer who makes lots of noise and twirls in really lovely circles but never actually accomplishes anything. I sent Boss and MegaBoss a memo that said I need this fixed and if it isn't I will just go and lie in traffic for awhile. A flurry of emails went to inferior bridge fixer and fingers crossed also to superior bridge fixer who will be called in tomorrow. The whole thing happened because someone, MegaBoss, has an ego the size of a small planet, and because my department is low maintenance and just gets the job done, they forget we actually have procedures and need tools and made some very stupid decisions that erased the very tools critical to the business.

Remember the Peter Principle - the theory that everyone rises to the level of their incompetence? Alive and well at the "Basement of Our Discontent" [workplace].

I came home and fell asleep about 4 minutes into the 6pm television news. In old lady territory tonight. Tired and emotional.

Sigh...and tomorrow is another day.

Is it possible to have everything?

I have been thinking about this all evening. To have everything in life is what we all strive for isn't it? But is it at all possible? Would we even know what "everything" was and when we had achieved it, if we did? Is there a moment in life when you can sit back and say "Yeah, I have everything".

I don't think it is part of human nature to let us rest at some point and say yes this is it, I want for no more. We always want more. If only we had  a good job, if only we had a partner, if only we had the big house, if only we had children, if only, if only..we keep adding to our list.

And everytime we choose another thing to make our life perfect another thing gets lost along the way. More money - work harder, less time for family and friends; have children less time for career, less time for self; bigger house, bigger debt; and no matter what we have someone is always going to have more. We never notice those that have less.

What is everything? Is it material things? Spiritual things? Animal, mineral or hoax? What are we buying into? Is more actually more, or is more, actually less?

I don't have an answer, but I have noticed that the various times during my life when I have realised that I have had it all, is usually just after I have lost something important ... my health, my Dad ... the things that no amount of money or success can ever replace and were mine, for free,  all along.

You really don't know what you've got until it's gone.....

Yesterday the sky was a clear bright blue. Today it has little puffy white clouds, just like the clouds the people paint on the ceilings of their nurseries. At least in design shows.

The alarm went off at its usual time this morning and I asked Mr FD if I could trade today for a Saturday but he said the universe doesn’t work like that. I think it is a serious design fault myself. On the up side I got to wear a new blouse that I bought yesterday just because I wanted to….a want not a need, but we will live with that.

Arrived in to our offices and found the She Who Is Going to Kill Me with Kindness had apparently garnered permission from MegaBoss and gone out and purchased office plants for our offices. I earned a maiden hair fern in a brown ceramic pot. A desk sitter. Not that there is room on my desk for it, but it is lovely. Every desk now has a plant, even the unoccupied ones. There is also a plant for our communal work table and a larger one on the floor next to the work table. Plant parenthood is a serious thing and should not be adopted lightly, especially for some people. I don’t mind as I already have 4 plants, one rescued from Boss who was slowly killing his. He got a new plant – a couple of cactus in a pot. How SheWho found a clear space on his desk I have no idea, been even a cactus will find it tough in that environment. SheWho is not in today as she is having the day off for good behaviour. The plants were brought in under the cover of the weekend. I felt compelled to send SheWho an email to her home address saying how wonderful etc as that seemed the polite thing to do, but it is feeding her dirty habit isn’t it? It is far superior to having a bitch from hell so we will be grateful for small mercies.

At lunch time I walked down to the lake and sat on one of the benches half in the sun and half in the shade for five minutes or so. I could smell the sweet/sour smell of the lake, all fish and vegetation and water mixed together. Almost like the smell of the sea but not quite.  The large tree providing my dappled shade had been carved with Tina will love you forever.  I wonder if he did, or can? Does he still pass by the tree and see his words carved there and have the words bring a smile to his lips? Perhaps it is unhappy reminder now and he avoids walking that way. I would like to believe that, hand in hand, they have travelled many far flung places together. I think I will believe that today.

Two young men came up and sat on the bench right angles to mine and started chatting.   We were all comfortable there, I listening to the gush of the water out of the lake’s fountain and the bird song from the trees around us,  but I suddenly  felt like moving on and so rose and walked towards the bridge. My poor cousin of  Monet’s bridge, which is really not so poor, because it is mine.

There were a number of birds, all varieties nesting and feeding in the quieter weedy area of the lake and so I stood on the bridge and watched them for awhile. They enjoyed having an audience and their inner drama queens came to the fore. One duck kept diving down into the murky water searching for food and each time he bobber up he came a little closer to me. I had the impression he thought I might actually be a supplier of his superior choice of food, but I don’t really believe in feeding birds so he was out of luck. He just had to get lunch the old fashioned way – working for it!

I looked over and my two friends on the bench had claimed my bench and dappled sunlight, and been joined by about 4 others. I was glad I had moved and not cramped their style. Or mine! I wonder if they do that often? Is that their meeting spot? Somewhere to meet up and be young together.

I walked to the other side of the swampy nesting area and back up to the grassed area towards my office. I could have stayed there all afternoon. The sun was just that perfect temperature that given a soft place to lie I could have slept like rip Van Winkle for 20 years. The sky is bright and clear and it just seems perfection outside. Winter really is the nicest time of year here. Glorious.

Camera next time.

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I am Diva Domestic Goddess today. Last night I not only made a batch of savoury muffins for work lunches this week, but also made two entirely different meals for dinner tonight and tomorrow night. How good am I! I was nearly incoherent with exhaustion at the end of the session, but today I am basking in my own glory. Daughter 1 has gone to visit her Grandmother for the next couple of days, so cooking duties were falling back to me, and I am just about to enter into BESERK period so am trying to lighten my load. I just have to pop in the oven to reheat and dinner is served.

This is a good thing in more ways than one. When I flicked the kitchen light on this morning, even I in my morning fog could see that only one of the four spotlights in the kitchen was actually working. Three had blown over the weekend…. If Mr FD can’t be cajoled into do his superhero thing and replacing them  I may need a miner’s helmet with lamp to make the next evening meal. It can take weeks or months to get him to replace bulbs…I can’t due to back issues. I will just have to threaten starvation to get Mr FD or a Junior FD to fix. It is the little things in life that come to irritate so much.

Boss is away. Arranged the day off as he was going to watch the Germany vs Spain final. He was born in the Basque country however has spent most of his life in Australia but of course it is more romantic to think that you came from anywhere rather than  Australia so he embraces that 50 % of his identity (his dad is actually Irish, his mum Basque) I always make a point of calling it soccer as we did in the olden days, but of course now it is football.  To me is Rugby Union or League or even AFL. I think he said something about running naked in the streets if Spain won, so we are keeping an eye out for a run by. SheWho is married to a German and they were both having the day off and were taping the game to watch at a more civilized time…except that my assistant also emailed her to thank for her plant and may have mentioned the games outcome….viva revenge.

My mother has been approached re the wheelchair and amazingly was very docile and said yes. I approached it from the view that great-grandson was about to start school and the chair would be very nice if she wanted to go along to sports days etc with my sister, who is his grandma. She has even said she will pay for it! Mother thought it would be “good to have in the family” like we are all suddenly going to break legs and need a wheel chair. She also thought that she could “share” it with one of her sisters. Not sure how they would achieve this as sister lives in another town and is actually slightly younger…maybe she thought that she would ride awhile and sister would push and then after 100 meters they would change positions. Or one month one would have it and the other would be house bound and then the next month the other would have it….Anyway she agreed, so all is well. Except I suspect that my sister will be miffed because every time she tries to get Mother to accept a change they end up in a fight. I can usually get Mother to fall into line, eventually. Not always, there has been a few giant clangers along the way, I admit. So I will have to play down my superior Mother negotiation skills, or sister might suggest Mother live with us at some stage and that would last all of 24 hours before I euthanized mother, or myself, or both.

One of those days, one of those lives...

Not a great day in the Flamingo Dancer household. I am back in the dork neck collar due to a flare up with the back injury. I am so tired of it - the most positive I can be today is to feel blessed that I am still breathing...

Mr FD is experiencing another one of his intermittent crazy man episodes where he wants to tell the bosses to stick it and walk out the door and I have to talk him off the roof. It is like his brain chemistry goes awry and he becomes his own worst ememy and jumps at shadows. He has very low self-esteem but at the same time thinks he often has all the answers and has to save the company and then wonders why no one says thank you and raises him shoulder high for a victory lap. His whole identity is caught up in his job - like so many Australian men of his generation. I have to remind him that he is 58 and only wants to work another 5 years and took this job to enable us to live our dreams after that time... He is very impulsive, prone to angry outburts that he instantly regrets and becomes a high maintenance employee which tires and alienates people...but he is so loyal, so hard working, so honest, so earnest...a contradiction in  terms.

Today he is exhausting me and I feel like inserting a curtain rod through one of his ears and out the other ear and just hanging him somewhere until he either calms down or I feel able to cope with him.

Beware of the high maintenance husband.

I was woken by rotund, bearded, Mr Flamingo Dancer.

He said: My renewal contract has arrived

Me: What? [thinking: he doesn't have any contracts]

He: My contract renewing my role as Santa Claus.

Me: Santa Claus ? [he is awake isn't he? Am I awake?]

He: Yes. I am thinking of not renewing this year. I hate it when the little blighters kick me in the knees

Me: [awake now] And they pee on you too.

He: Oh no. Not me. I am not a shopping center Santa. I am THE MAN, THE Santa Claus. [He rolls over and goes back to sleep]

Me - I lie awake wondering yet again about the man I married....and so starts Saturday June 21st 2008.

He may have also ruined his career. Apparently while sharing a room with CEO he rose from his bed naked. Hairy rotund Mr FD stood in all his naked glory in front of his boss. He goes to bed with clothes on, but sheds them as the night goes on...it can be very scarey for children and small animals.

He: "Sorry CEO. I tend to shed my clothes through the night."

CEO: "My wife does that too."

He: "Wish my wife did that!"

CEO: "I told my wife that it was at the wrong end of our life though." 

Had the sister birthday celebration.

Sister celebrates 58 years

Fairy Queen

Fairy Queen 2

We ate food, drank numerous cups of tea, ate more food, swapped gossip, drank more tea and looked at old photographs. It was a gentle, happy afternoon.

Brother-in-law took us out to show us his huge grapefruit:

BIL's pair of grapefruit!

That is BIL's hand so you can see how big the grapefruit have grown. It will be interesting to see if the fruit is actually any good, or if it is just all pith. (Yes there was a couple of "Are you taking the pith out of me", jokes). The tree was already in their garden when they moved into the house a few months ago, so we don't know the variety - maybe it is alien food! It is just growing in the lawn, competing with the grass, which I thought citrus hated, but there you go...

On the way home we stopped for fuel. Daughter 1 and I ran into the restaurant to buy take away as Mr FD filled the car. Daughter carried the drinks in their cardboard holder and I carried the food. I was a couple of steps ahead of Daughter when I heard "Mum, Mum!". I turned and Daughter was having a Marilyn Monroe moment with her skirt rising above her head . Her hands were full so she was at the wind's mercy. I ran back and pulled her skirt down. We walked all the way back to the car with me holding her skirt down with one hand. We looked like a lop sided bridal procession. As we hopped back into the car Mr FD greeted her with "hello Marilyn"....no hope that no one noticed then. Hysterics the rest of the way home. She may need therapy.

Daughter's Marilyn moment

The End.

mother's ahha! moment

I had one of those life moments this morning when the passing of time and generations catches you by surprise and hits you so hard in the face that it takes your breath away.

Daughter came over for a short visit this morning. I was telling her about my poster saga, about how the National Gallery had contacted me and I was getting my poster after all the trial and rudeness. She listened to me very intently and then said "What a funny little story".

At that moment I realised that we no longer lived in the same world. Somewhere, sometime, somehow, her world had separated from mine and we were now in different orbits. I suddenly felt empathy for my own Mother who must have had such a moment with me at some stage. That realisation that your child has grown, and left you behind, building their own world. A world that you may or may not understand in an everchanging world.

Daughter was not being cruel or sarcastic. She lives in the world of corporate buisness and multimillion deals where $10 million can be spent on just a study with no expectation of return. I have some understanding of it, but I am aware that as time goes on she will tell me less and I will understand little. It is sad, but it is also the way of life. The circle of life. I have had my zenith and she is building to hers and that is how it should be.

It is still sad though. The child is gone and there is an adult in her place, and she has corners that I no longer access. I know her heart will always be mine, but I still feel a sense of loss.

I think I will go and phone my Mum.

I actually went to University for the first time at the age of 36. After a number of years at home raising our children we were finding it more difficult to make ends meet, and so I tried to re-enter the work force.  Doors shut in my face. It was made too obvious that they considered that my brain could only have solidified and my skills all but vanished.  So I applied to University and was accepted.

The first literature assignment I handed in came back with a mark of 12 out of 20. I stood in my lecturer’s office and cried because I thought I was never going to make it. Obviously I was stupid and was never going make it to ever graduate. Right in that moment it was all or nothing to me. This one setback, a low mark,  was enough to jump start my defeatist mind set and have me on the verge of running all the way back to my home sweet home.

However, I was able to muster the right or more positive responses to allow me to continue and even to flourish at University. I managed a credit for that unit in the first semester, and a High Distinction for following.

A friend had a similar experience when she embarked on journalism studies. One of the lecturers was an abrasive man who worked the students hard. Each week he made them do a general knowledge test and would be dismissive of anyone who would fail. His real method was to make the students aware that journalism was in fact a nasty business and you had to be tough to make it. If not there was the door. She ran for that door as fast as she could and for the past 15 years has blamed the lecturer for her “career loss”. She did go back to university but chose a course that had little hope of actually leading to a real career in Australia. She has worked in food service or retail every since.

So why did she default to helplessness so readily? She appeared not to be able to see that everything was not all or nothing. There is more than one way open to us. I assessed my options and decided that I had to work  smarter, she looked around and decided there were no options for her except to run away. Passivity, fear and depression have ruled her life ever since.

My friend decided that she wouldn’t just give up on this specific battle but with the tape on repeat in her head continually, she embraced the decision to capitulate on every issue. This feeling of helplessness that she took as her mantel  has allowed her to shun real responsibility for choices and the frustrations she experiences continuously.  My friend blames fate, circumstances and particularly other people for what befalls her. Somehow she never mobilized her own energy to overcome roadblocks to her goals.

How has she done this? She makes long lists of the negatives or disadvantages. Catastrophe  thinking.  I never hear her speak of positives. No little train that thinks it can. All defeats are so serious that she rehashes them continuously. Years after the fact, she is still generalizing it to her entire existence.

Why can I see these tendencies in her and she can’t see them herself? She willingly gives into them but never stops to think why is it so? Her frustrations bring her down and she sees all defeats as permanent and long term. She lives an immobilized life always waiting for the next hit which of course does come because she sets herself up in the crosshairs every time.  She surrenders before the first shot, when she perhaps should be singing I think I can, I think I can as she goes over the top of the trenches.

I finally reached my tipping point. I sprayed musk scented deodorant on my hair instead of hair spray, this morning.  Why do we always do things like that, not on a Saturday when time is our own and we might even let a merry chuckle escape over our absent mindedness, but on a day when we are already running late for a meeting and feeling like something the cat regurgitated yesterday? Unless I drove my toothbrush into Mr. Flamingo’s chest I had no avenue to vent. Fix the hair, reschedule meltdown, get onto the freeway.

Feeling a bit Bite me! today. And yesterday. I tried to get it out of my system venting on Kylie Minogue,  but it was only a 10 minute fix. I am not normally a sharp tongued woman, except, as I have said previously, to Mr Flamingo, but yesterday I viewed myself as being on a snapping roll. Some of you might remember my sad incident of the bike on the stairs where I came off  the worst with a set of handlebars due to being blind on the right side. Yesterday I viewed a young man that I did not recognize and he was rolling his bike towards the collision spot so I launched into action and attacked. I asked him politely but a little more aggressively than my usual manner (which is not to speak at all)  to not chain his bike to the stair rail. He mumbled something that I couldn’t hear so I repeated myself (?) And then I realised that he saying “I work in the newsagent next door and I am just taking my bike in through the back” He had no intention of chaining his bike to the rails. Now I have to face him everyday when I go in to collect my copy of the Australian newspaper. He must be a new casual employee and I have constructed myself as an old bag in his mind’s eye. Good one Flamingo Dancer, way to go girl. Maybe he has to die…

Then I went to Subway to pick up some takeaway for dinner. Forgive me all you domestic goddesses, but sometimes I don’t cook at night. Anyway, they have this offer : buy 3 rolls get a fourth one free. Have had for ages. Works perfectly for me as we have 4 at home at the moment. So I walk in and ask for 4 rolls as usual, they make the rolls while I daydream and they tell me the amount and I hand over my card and payment is made. Then I see through my fog and think, that was more expensive that I expected??? Hmmm, wait on,  he charged me for 4. So I say, wasn’t  I suppose to get one free? HE REPLIES : ONLY IF YOU ASK DIRECTLY FOR IT? I say, but there is a sign on the front door with the offer - does it say that on the sign? I walk over to the sign and read – no fine print, just an out and out offer buy 3 get the 4^th free. The SUBWAY has recently changed hands and so is under new management. (Through my fog I had also randomly noticed that they are cutting the cheese slices into smaller halves now so we are getting less).  So I go back and argue my point. Now I am talking to like a 16 year old and there appears to be no one else there, so I realize that the policy is not his fault. He confesses that there is no way to make a refund on their computer !!!!! Probably also means he has to give 4 litres of blood and his first born if he does a refund too.

I realize that I am not going to win here, and I do have the option of another SUBWAY on my route home. I have to make my point so I say TWICE  Well you had better put that information up on your sign because there are legal ramifications to what you are doing. I know my consumer law, my daughter is a lawyer, remember! Legalese by association! Then I trounce out of the store.

That was last night and I am still feeling bad. Bad, because I took it out on some poor kid, not the manager. Bad, because I don’t usual act like that. Bad, because I was taken down. Bad, because I now have to go to a slightly less convenient SUBWAY store. Ah bite me.

Twitters. I don’t quite understand this Twitters thing. How it works. I am going to have to lasso an offspring and ask them to please explain. It looks interesting, but sometimes one does feel like one is being scheduled into someone else’s daily planner, in between flossing their teeth and picking up the dog poo on the stoop.  The extent of my technological knowledge is my cure all  - ctrl alt delete and start again. I have a way to go.

Getting a wee bit excited as this coming weekend Mr Flamingo and I are flying to Canberra for the Turner to Monet exhibition at the National Gallery. I have never been to Canberra. Mr Flamingo was there a few years back where he witnessed Dame Edna/Barry Humphries have a melt down in the dining room because his breakfast was not served at the right temperature. Apparently Mr Humphries is a little more caustic than even Dame Edna and let throw with a hissy fit that any cross dresser would have been proud of. We expect no such excitement this time, though I can get quite cross if they give me one of those stupid little honey sachets that you can never open unless you break all your fingernails and finally stab it with your knife in which case some of the honey oozes out of the sachet and onto your jeans that you were planning to wear for at least the next two days on your trip.

I was going to telephone ahead and warr Prime Minister Kev and his good lady Therese that we would be dropping by, but then I thought what the hey, let’s catch Therese in her red chenille dressing gown and fluffy green dinosaur slippers, and Kev in his boxers – bet they are a superman silk print . That would be more Australian, don’t you think? Arrive at meal time, unannounced, walk in through the back door.

Prickly reception. This was a subject I was going to blog about and so left myself a cryptic message. Prickly reception.  So cryptic that now I can’t remember what it signified. Anyone want to take a stab at it? It wasn’t about falling into a cactus, I know that.

Once, in my second career, I worked in a University Library. One day I was walking through the stacks when I heard some giggling and laughing, and other strange noises. I retraced my steps and lo, a pair of students, male and female, were in a rather compromising position on the floor. To put it bluntly they were having intercourse, riding the range.  What makes people do that? Do they ever think that their big thrill is another person’s OH MY GOD!  I wonder if they ever sensed that I ran back and told every staff member I could find and all eyes were on them as they walked out later.

Even the library’s study room doors have to have glass windows cut into them so students can be watched. Oh those pulsating hormones – where do they go?

Young birds babble much like human infants do and have their own special brain circuits to do it, researchers report.

Their findings suggest that learning to sing - and also to speak - is a process independent of adult singing or speech.

Michael Fee from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US says research also suggests that other aspects of infant learning are equally independent in the brain.

"Young birds learn their songs in a series of stages," he said.

"They start out just as humans do, by babbling.

"The brain really learns how to use its body by making spontaneous movements and seeing what happens."  http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/04/2234666.htm

As we all know they perfected their babbling outside our bedroom window last week. Once again, can I just state I just need to know nature is out there doing its thing, I don’t have to be out in the middle of it!

Our workplace participates in a Green Initiative, which means we switch off lights, switch off computers at night, print on both side of the paper etc. The parent group came around today on a fact finding/spying mission and randomly selected some of us to ask questions. They also peered into my recycling box and poked around in my waste bin. It was like showing my dirty undies in public. I feel strangely violated in some way. Is that wrong? Am I suffering from some paranoia, persecution complex? They peered, said thanks and left…did I pass their test? Was my rubbish up to standard? Where is my star sticker to take home for Mum? Are they going to write me up on some Green billboard of shame (using both sides of the board of course) to punish me for my sins? I said I recycled everything I could, but I did have a yoghurt encrusted cardboard container in my waste bin. I should have rinsed it and recycled it shouldn’t  have I? FORGIVE ME! I’LL DO BETTER NEXT TIME, I PROMISE! Sigh, another imperfection.

Boss away again today. It is the office joke. Most Monday’s he pretends he has to have a Carer’s Day – he only has two children and a separated wife. We are only allowed 5 carers days a year. 5 into 52 weeks does not go, even according to my math. They must have non existent immune symptoms if it is the truth!  Any long weekend he has to have another day of as well – usually sick then. I think I need to have his type of weekend if he needs another day just to recover. Now when the message comes through that he is sick, no one says a word they just laugh out loud and do that snorting noise that people do when they know you are lying, and want other people to know that they know. He keeps telling me how much work he has to do – if he came for a full week he would actually have some down time in his workday. He could have a little snooze under the desk we wouldn’t hold that against him at all. Heavens most of us have been asleep at our desks for years!  He needs to get more original with his excuses – there was this dog and it was chasing this hippo down the street and they started to get into a fight  in my driveway and I couldn’t open my garage door to drive the car out and then the walrus….you know, let us dangle in potential belief for a second or two before we snort our  wry amusement.

It’s a life, someone has to live it.