How are Things?

Tag: love

  • Monday 21st July 2025

    Good evening all. I’ve become so used to this blog it is beginning to feel weird if I don’t make a daily entry. Today, I woke up so tired I was at one quarter power, and honestly my entire body and soul was begging for rest. Instead, I got up, late, did my exercises, slowly, and got myself into work.

    I hate the fact that my son is now old enough for me to leave by himself. He has a fully charged phone, and he has a person who calls in, but it is two hours after I leave, and my eager imagination creates all manner of disasters to happen the moment I leave.

    The day itself seemed to beg me to stay home. We had torrential rain from about 5am onwards and it didn’t stop until at least 10am. There is always a part of me that worries about those who have to deal with that; animals made starving by climate damage, homeless people with nowhere to go. It is the case that I now know that such well meaning wishes don’t do anything concrete except make me forgive myself.

    Work was brought to us by the words ‘Coffee’ and ‘Perseverance’. I brought the huge number of emails down from 120 to 30, and then turned to the questions for tomorrow. Tomorrow, we hold interviews for folks wishing to join my team. I went with the flow last time and had to deal with a frankly less than pleasant personality. Tomorrow, I aim to get the best person possible for the team.

    The evening was salmon for dinner, lots of laundry done, and listening to the rain. Hope you’re not out in bad weather, wherever you are. Sleep well.

  • Saturday 20th July 2025

    My brother woke me early to find out what happened. It was so early that it woke me up; and seeing as I am up between 5am and 6am during the week it wasn’t very much what I wanted.

    Anyway. Today my son and I took my niece to see a movie. She lives thirty minutes away, and the movie theatre is another thirty minutes, so we had to head out around 12.30pm. Then pick her up, and then over to see the movie at 2pm. The movie tickets cost approximately $39, and snacks beforehand cost roughly the same. We were going to see Jurassic World Rebirth, and I think it was my son’s fourth time seeing it; maybe fifth?

    My niece has had a hard time. A hard life, really. She went through a really bad event as a teenager, and then had an eating disorder that derailed life for several years. She picked herself up, and got her degree. She met someone, and they fell in love. And then just the other day, the person she loved didn’t want to be with her any more. Her heart is broken, but she is keeping going. And we wanted to spend some time with her.

    And she hated the movie. For some reason they played it too loud, and there were points of sadness in it right from the beginning, and to a wounded heart it was all too much. We left after about thirty minutes and dropped her home. I’m only sorry I couldn’t give her a better afternoon, but I am proud of my son for coping so well with it. He really wanted to share this experience with her; but when he couldn’t, he was an absolute gentleman about it.

    Then we got the groceries and he turned into a teenager.

    My son was in the worst kind of teenage mood all afternoon and evening. At the till I asked him to swop one sliced pan for another, and he had nearly a fit at the burden I was placing on him. I honestly was trying not to have a huge argument with him right then and there.

    We got home, we got dinner into us, and then, finally, he got some rest in bed. I managed to not do anything very productive all evening, and it is appallingly late as I type. And now, I’m going to go to bed.

  • Friday 19th July 2025

    Finally, this week is over. I have been so tired and so uninspired this week, and now there is a chance to rest for a moment.

    I made an appointment with my councilor, a woman who by now knows me way too well. Then I had lunch with a fellow colleague where we got a chance to raise our concerns about senior management.

    Problematic person has done a lot of crying but has broken up with terrible person but I’ve gone ahead and notified security about his awful ex; if only because apparently my name was mentioned in the break up conversation. The Problematic person’s emotional wave has gone out from shore, and in fact is now heading back in: they have texted me to say they’re annoyed with the other people being annoyed with them. This is a mess, and I’m going to get myself out of it.

    Dinner was made by my son and it tasted amazing, mainly because he is a great kid. I’m listening to Amy Poehler and going to bed. Night all.

  • Thursday 17th July 2025

    Things that happened today:

    So I made it into work, determined to ignore any and all calls for intervention, assistance or emotional support. Only to receive a WhatsApp message: The horrible abuser had been cast off! Really and truly! The relief was huge, and it was amplified when a third party told me that horrible abuser had been told to stay away from exactly the type of environment we all work in. As in, part of his probation was to stay away. And he’d been here! Several times!

    Honestly, I throw up my hands at this. In no way was ANY of this a good idea; going out with horrible person or my getting involved in the whole nasty thing. Colleague is blind to a dangerous degree to firstly allow this and then to lie about it. He is immature and dangerously so.

    Strange behavior from a colleague, this time from another unit. She claimed there was construction work going on so could she us e an adjunct office. Yes she could but she is disingenuous, and I wonder at all of this.

    And finally, I and Young man spend the evening together with my niece. She has broken up with her partner and I can see their influence decreasing on her heartbreak.

    Enough drama. So to sleep.

  • Monday 14th July 2025

    In which I chose to spend all my time in an airless room.

    Today, I held an event I myself was organising. It was an away day for folks with my job title. It is a very specific, if not very elevated, job title, and the need for Senior Management to push us around is consistent. So, I am therefore helping us to band together. We will be creating several things to support us, and to create cohesiveness among us for the future.

    I feel, with regards to the future, almost an interest in how bad it is going to get. I have very little faith in government, for very clear reasons. But how bad it will get, how low it will go, these are the things that occupy my minds.

    According to my fitbit, I got 4 hours sleep yesterday. I think I better go to bed.

  • Tuesday 8th July 2025

    I woke at 5am for some reason believing it to be Saturday. My brain is craving release. I managed to get up today and get some work done, then took my boy to art camp. Yesterday saw me hunt for him in the car park. He is 13, not a big deal, but today they ensured that no child from his group would be let out without a parent coming to pick him up. Of course I was the last one there, so I managed to cause a lot of delay for all the teenagers minding the place. Lordie.

    Today was the release of the brand new, all shiny, will-solve-everything financial system in my workplace. This thing will, and I quote, see the institution hopefully do away with lots of administrative staff. It was supposed to roll out at 9am. That became 1pm. At 2.30pm there was no sign, and I had to collect my son and make it home to work from there.

    At home in the afternoon, maybe it was the coffee, maybe the consciousness of the extra needs of my son, but I was alerted and somewhat agitated. I got as much done as I could by 5.30, then made dinner.

    By 6.30pm I and my son were online, playing our very first round of Dungeons and Dragons. The DM is a friend from work and there was a third person joining us. My son finds it hard to regulate his excitement, even his voice, so I had to tell him to ease up on the volume a few times. This was enough to see him upset, thinking that I was making him feel left out. Maybe I was. The truth is that I have no friends, no activities and no hobbies other than this, and the chance to do something, anything, just for me, is rare. And he didn’t like it. I hope we get to do it again, it was a good space for my brain to be in.

    And now, the laundry is out of the machine, the clothes are laid out for tomorrow, and I will be at my computer by 6am at the latest to see if I can sort out the financial issues of my unit. Talk to you then.

  • Tears on the Pier

    On Saturday, I and my son saw my niece. It was down in one of the seaside fronts along our city, that on sunny days is filled with the need to do, while at the same time is lazy, hazy, relaxing… I have known my niece all 24 years of her life, and she is a rare and precious thing. She’s young, and in many respects knowing about a lot of things, and at the same time still becoming to know. Getting to walk with anyone while they come to knowledge is a wonderful thing.

    I had concluded fairly recently that she no longer wanted me in her life. She’d made and broken several attempts on my part to meet up, and when we had met her again, she’d finished the meet up fairly quickly. The last time I’d tried to interact with her, I had tried to call round with a gift. I wasn’t even going to call in, merely asked her to drop down and open the door.

    She left me sitting there for half an hour before I’d gotten the hint and left.

    My son, all 13 years of insistent love, was having none of it. I’d told him none of this, and he demanded another meet up last Saturday. I watched over text as they agreed to a time, and a place, and before you knew it away we went. I was pleased they were making time for him, but I expected it to be a less than sweet affair, full of social effort and labour; and I wasn’t terribly interested in the labour coming from me.

    We all met up at 2pm, in some artisan coffee house that couldn’t give him juice, and talked about unimportant things. I myself have a bad habit of fawning in social situations, but really did not want to this time. The coffee I’d been served was as bitter as a barren stepmother, so I gave that up as a bad idea. A good idea was to go walk the pier with ice cream, and so we left the crowded cafe and escaped to the fresh air.

    People walked dogs past us as we talked about nothing in particular; the pier needed to offer boat trips. Chips smell better by the sea. Seagulls are dangerous to all life. All the while we were walking on and on, the length of time of nothing conversation getting longer and longer. A sweet moment in the middle of it was when we turned back, and the healing cool wind reached under shirts and napes of necks to make us exclaim in relief; all a bliss.

    The walk back saw us turn to talk of our shared family. Her mother, my sister, is rarely in either of our company. My niece blames her own sexuality and orientation; I blame my divorce and my sister’s husband. Either way, we feel judged. Each step saw us walk back from the water’s edge, back away from the extremity. The fear of judgement came up as a topic, and before I knew it my recent silence was brought up by her. I explained with clear eyes my efforts at reaching out; and her efforts at pushing back. My niece, however, was crying before I finished; I am it seems her only family, the only one she can trust, the only one who will speak to her.

    She actually cancelled seeing me the day after Christmas with ten minutes notice.

    None of it, apparently, should be read into. She took herself off for five minutes to breathe and compose herself, then joined myself and my son in the book shop. There, among the stacks of paperbacks and coffee table depictions of life, we settled our sad souls as best as we could; to regain the possession of ourselves, and our possession of each other as family, and for me to start to imagine the relationship continuing.

    Before long, it was time to go. She and her girlfriend had made plans to see another friend elsewhere, and my son’s social candle was flickering. I drove both of us home, weary and worn from the effort, and we ate pizza without consciously taking it in.

    I still feel myself untouched by it all. I find myself guarded; if she does all this without even trying, fully engaging with her is not without risks. But still, it is more positive than I led myself to believe on that pier. And now we lead ourselves out from it.

  • 18th June 2025

    Good evening, all. Another day is done, and the sun has set. This day has been hotter than normal, a dry, unblinking heat setting over the city and into the suburbs. My son is approaching the end of his primary school education, and to celebrate the school takes children on what they call a Leaver’s Tour. It means that I had to collect him an hour later than usual, a short vigil in the car while trying not to fall asleep.

    He’s on a high right now, as his last report card from his school was full of praise for the young man he’s become. They worked so well with him. He had struggled at his previous school, which had been a private, fee paying school. They had despised his outgoing ways, and loathed him even more when he received an Autism diagnosis. That is not an exaggeration: the overly fussy principal had shook her bob and said, “Sorry, he’ll have to go,” when I presented the recommendation report. When I had demanded his right to remain, they made the rest of his time there punative in an effort to force him out. When covid had arrived, they were almost gleeful.

    That was a very hard time.

    Getting the diagnosis came after the end of a personal struggle, and one day I will give the full report of it. Then the school he eventually went to came about after a long search online, then contacting them, and then a near magical walkthrough where my son found it amazingly comforting and positive. They were everything the other school wasn’t, a nearly rosy glow of support after years of outright obstacles. He thrived there.

    And now he is moving to a new school, a secondary school near our new home that has an autism support dog, a unit he can retreat to, and a full range of classes that will work with the skills he has, rather than the skills they feel he should have.

    For a short brief moment a few weeks back I listened to his father. That happens when I feel vulnerable or unsure. The subject options outside the core were Art, Graphic Design, and Geography. His father, paranoid due to Trump and a need to hope for chaos, wanted him to take Geography. For some reason I listened to him, the man who at every stage made the worst possible decisions. When my son realised he would not be taking Graphic Design he was horrified, and I realised what I had done. I had listened to his father’s fears, rather than ask myself what was right for my son. I put the question to his current school as well, and they answered immediately in the affirmative; Art and Graphic Design. His skills there are above anyone else they have ever seen. There is no reason to do otherwise.

    I have contacted his new school to make the change, and they rang us on the way home from my collecting him. I’ll confirm the details tomorrow, but hopefully I will never listen to his father again. I am vulnerable, perhaps, lonely and feeling uncertain about myself. My experiences in work and in other areas mean I would like support, and when that happens I fawn, and bend, far too much. I asked myself today, though, what it would be like to be back with his father.

    Then I snatched up the facecloth on the side of the sink and screamed, three times, into it, only stopping when I realised that screaming didn’t help.

    So what have we learned? That making decisions based on fear is always wrong. And that I have a vulnerability right now, in that I would like more assurance about my decisions. It will make no impact on me at all, as when I think about having a relationship I become very, very angry. But the need is there. Even the sturdiest trees sometimes need support.

  • Monday 26th May 2025

    Yesterday I stayed up quite late; later than I should. It meant that when the alarm went at 5am this morning, I was already exhausted. It is such a strange form of defiance, staying up late; the only person I harm is myself.

    I managed to get up, exercise and to update my subreddit, then shower, breakfast and all the important stuff. My son made it into school, I headed into work. My horrible colleague, who I am in fact line manager, was there, and I frankly avoided her. She is a snarling, abrupt type of person, all stick and no softness and I simply cannot deal with her. I made some very strong coffee and got on with the business of the day.

    One of the business items was printing out some documents for my passport application. Then on to the usual rush. At 12noon my own line manager spoke to me in our usual scheduled meeting, and then a rushed lunch. At 2pm I had my own meeting with hideous colleague.

    To my marvel and delight, she gave me her notice. This is fantastic news, she has had formal complaints about her behaviour from several quarters and all of it waived out of hand by my boss. But she is gone, away to a team that maybe or maybe not will be a better fit, but it is not my problem.

    I left at the usual time and took my son to his gym session. He gets on very well with two of the boys there, a development that gives me a stab of anxiety; I am no good at being liked, I fear the same fate for him. Then home, dinner, wash up, making lunches.

    The air is delightful. The prospect is positive. A major hurdle to happiness is gone. Oh, happy happy day!