Another dating fail

I'm so over dating, or maybe I'm over thinking it.

Didn't get anywhere with G. Wasn't an issue that we'd met before, just didn't come of anything.

Started chatting to S. A stay-at-home dad with a young son. Works part-time. Chatted for a couple of weeks before meeting.

We went on a morning play date. I took my youngest and met S's little boy. It went fine, I thought (in comparison to other meet ups I've had). I spent a couple of hours listening to S tell me about his past, with the occasional interjection from myself. I'm used to this, every guy I've ever met has a tendency to just talk about themselves. Our boys got on fine and enjoyed the playground.

I felt the conversation went well. Nothing negative. I was non-judgmental, considerate, empathetic, interested in his kid, blah blah blah. Didn't hear from him till late that night. He responded to my text about enjoying the day and then said he'd thought I was hot. I told him that I hadn't realised he thought that, he asked why, and I said I wasn't sure, I just laughed it off. Then nothing. Sent a good morning text like we've been doing all week, didn't get a reply for hours and then it was just 'hi'.

So I spent some time thinking about it today, about why I hadn't got the impression that he thought I was anything special. I realised it was because he hadn't shown any interest in me and my life. Sure we'd talked and I'd been able to tell him something about myself, but not because he asked.

I think I can strike this one off and go back to not bothering again.

I just don't get it tho. I am a nice person. I am a good person. I am not perfect. Why is it so damn hard to find someone who can enjoy my company, have a conversation with me, show interest in me as a person?

It just feels too hard.

Oh, and D messaged me out of the blue saying he was thinking about us having sex.

....whatever...

This could be awkward, or fate....

So, in this post back in 2009 I talk about chatting to G. In the next post I have met him and been put off by his forward behaviour.

Well. Without realising that we'd met before, I contacted him on a dating website last week. We've been chatting quite happily via the site for quite a few days now and I had the growing suspicion that we had met before. I've confirmed that by finding out his name, age, and by my previous post. He still has the 2 older boys, but he now also has a 2.5 yr old of whom he has shared care. He told me that he's been single for about 3 yrs, so I'm guessing the pregnancy was a surprise and that he wasn't with the mum for that long before it happened.

Do I tell him that I think we've met before? I daresay it would come out at some point and he may have already realised it. Awkward. Since I fobbed him off before do I continue it now? My impression of him is still that he is a nice guy, has his head screwed on right.

Ok, so I've messaged him to say I think we might have met before. Now to see where that goes...

Thought Provoking

I love conversations with people that get me thinking about things that I may or may not have had an interest in previously.

So tonight I was taking my bro's fiance home (new development, she's rather sweet and quiet, be interesting to see how it goes) and we were discussing her tutoring work. This is not something I had ever seriously considered doing myself for money, but I have done it in the past as a volunteer. We were discussing a client of hers who is 5 yrs old and is not going well with her literacy at school.

So my first thought was - hang on, she's 5, give the kid a break. However, we are now heading into Term 4 here in Oz, and she has not grasped a number of sight words that would be reasonably expected by now.

I asked how she was with her alphabet, since that is the basis for our reading. 'Not confident' was the response.

I asked if she had gone to preschool, and Em did not know. I asked if the parents read to the child, again, Em didn't know.

I'm not setting out to criticise Em's methods. I don't know how she structures her lessons. I'm not sure she has much experience working with small children. Therefore, our conversation became more about sharing ideas for keeping the child interested in learning.

I came away from it feeling quite invigorated about the topic of literacy and tutoring, and realising that it IS something I would be well qualified to tutor in, if that is the way I go.

Literacy begins at home. It begins with your interactions with your baby, your responses to her first sounds, the way you copy her when she moves her mouth (I have boys, it's nice to write about girls for a change :-) ). I used to talk to all my children when they were babies - 'look at the tree!' 'That's a bird' etc etc. Literacy is built upon language. A child benefits from hearing words spoken, from descriptions of things.

I exposed my children to books from around 6 mths. Board books are a wonderful thing! Again, it is your interaction with your child. Point to the picture, say the word. This is how the child learns that words are associated with things. It enables them to create pictures in their head of the thing, then find the word associated with that picture. I see a chair, I know it is a chair, I can associate the word to that thing.

The English language is such a convoluted, complex, mess of synonyms and antonyms and similes and....blergh! It's awful. Awful to explain to a 5 or 6 yr old that yes, that is the word lead (reed), but it's also the word lead (red). Arggghh. It's an amazing and wonderful thing that we are able to wrap our ever developing brains around it and have it make sense.

One of the more important aspects of learning to read is repetition. Repetition can drive us adults slightly barmy, but small children really do get a lot from it. It's how they learn routines for starters, how they learn to dress themselves, feed themselves, and so on. Repetition is another word for PRACTICE!

I've noticed that some children today (one of my own included) don't seem to cope with the need for repetition. They are too easily disappointed when they don't get something right the first time, too quick to give up. I attended singing lessons for a short time as a child, and the main part I remember is that every time I came in to the lesson I had to show that I had practiced my scales. It was boring, I wanted to get on with the good stuff, but my teacher did not let me. She knew how important practice was.

Anyway, back to thinking about literacy and tutoring. I believe it is important to get an idea of the child's background. I would ask questions like...
- Has your child attended preschool? If yes, did they have a school prep program?
With these questions I want to get an idea of whether the child has been struggling for a while. It may be that she needs glasses and it hasn't been picked up. Possibly there is a learning delay.

- Do you have books in your home? Does anyone in the home enjoy recreational reading?
This will tell me whether books are valued and enjoyed in the home. Lack of books in the home can create a barrier to literacy, but there are ways around this, eg encourage the child to borrow from the school library, label things around the home

- Do you read to your child regularly?
My view is that the parent is the first opportunity for a child to experience language. If the child is not being read to regularly, or at all, then there may be ways to encourage the family to participate in the child's learning.

Schools send home readers home with children. The aim is to have the child read the book with the parent. If a child cannot read, then the parent can read the page, then encourage the child to repeat the words.

In the case of Em's child, I would want more info from the parents about the child's exposure to books. I would assess the child to see how basic her grasp of English was. If it is as poor as it seems, I would then start with letter tracing (the sandpaper letters Montessori schools use are great for this). Children are visual/tactile little people. When babies, they 'feel' everything with their hands and mouth. As they grow they hold things in their hands and move them around, they test things to see what will happen. So from that, I believe a tactile introduction would be a good start. Games are also good. Simple ones that go for only a few minutes at a time, that can be repeated. Also, nursery rhymes. You can clap as you sing so that children learn the rhythm of sentences, it's also an introduction to words with more than one syllable. If you have a book with the rhyme, point to the words as you sing them. This is the kind of program I would do with preschool age children, and that seems to be where her level is.

Start with a foundation and build on that.

hmmmm the word 'thing' has been seriously over used in this post :-/  

Lazy single girl

D has contacted asking if I have any free time this weekend. I do, but had planned to use it productively. 

Reasons for not having him over...

-Have to tidy house, particularly messy bedroom

-Have to do maintenance on self, shave etc

-Not get other stuff done so will feel like I've wasted a few hrs

Reasons to have him over...

-Sex

Meh. Don't think I can be bothered.

*Insert relevant title here*

I was going to re read the last post before writing this one, but I can see its been a while since I wrote so I won't bother.

Mum was in and out of hospital for a couple of months after having a lung removed. She has improved now, to the point where she is able to drive again. However, her doctors have reviewed her case and advised her that she would not be able to have radiation or chemo as her quality of life would be very poor and the treatment would not really benefit her. This means she doesn't get to buy any time. The prognosis is she has a year, maybe 2. 

These past few months, where I have assisted in her care, have not been stress free. She is a challenging woman with strong opinions that she is not afraid to verbalise. I have had to bite my tongue many times when she has insulted me or my brothers. She has been tiresome and unpleasant and we tolerated it till recently because of her illness. There comes a point where enough is enough and I had it out with her. I explained to her that we, her children, were concerned about how unhappy she was and how she was taking it out on us. She claimed to have no idea what I was talking about so I gave her some examples. She stated that she was perfectly happy and was not a smiley person so we shouldn't expect that from her. I pointed out she treats non family members very differently. It went round and round in circles as these things sometimes do, but it seems to have got through to her as she was quite pleasant when I saw her this week and we had a nice intelligent conversation about societal values regarding extroverts vs introverts. 

However, my youngest brother is living at home with mum and has not been coping. She has taken much of her anger out on him and, from my point of view, has behaved quite badly towards him. I tried to make her understand that he is living with his dying mother, he is faced with it every time he sees her, so it would be very confronting. Also, as he has a mild disability, he is struggling to get his head around the fact that she may not be there in a year. His answer is to resort to drugs to block out all the bad stuff.she then judges him for using drugs and things deteriorate from there. I think there is/was a co-dependent relationship there, made even stronger by the fact that mum has allowed him to use his mild disability as an excuse for not succeeding in life, and as a way to not teach him the skills he needs to survive on his own. I don't know how he is going to cope when mum goes and it would not surprise me if he ends up living with me at some point. I'm already a little tired thinking about the prospect, but I'm hopefully worrying about nothing.

Now to my life

My nearly adult(!!) son has got a job! Relieved would be putting it mildly. He finishes school in Nov and I am glad he will actually have an income. His employers seem to like him. I am still encouraging him to consider the Army next yr, but he is talking about going to TAFE (technical college) and doing something related to animal care. He's realised his whole mechanic phase was not what he wanted to do with his life right now and I am quite ok with that now that he has employment. 

My now 13yr old is incredibly jealous of his big bro's employment and has been trying very hard to secure some for himself. Unfortunately he is just a bit too young, so he and I are going to team up and sell Avon for a bit.

Little boy is as gorgeous as ever. 

Me, well, could be better. Was diagnosed with high blood pressure earlier this year and am on medication for that. Then had further bloods taken which show I am pre-diabetic. This means that I have to clean up my diet and lose the weight now or I am destined for a sick future. In the month since finding out I have lost two kilos and cleaned up my diet a lot. Still not perfect, but I'm getting there. Managed a 10k run last Sunday, did a poor time, but completed it and ran most of it.

I'm still not working, I have opted instead to go back to school and do an Assistant in Nursing course.  We're three weeks in and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I'm doing it with one of my brothers and we're going well. I'm not sure what area I would like to specialise in, but he is keen for trauma/ED. We will both probably move on to do the Enrolled Nursing course as there are better job prospects. AIN's mostly end up in Aged Care and while I would appreciate the work experience, it's not what I want to do for life. I daydream about going outback and nursing there, or travelling around Australia picking up contract work. I feel like this isn't really an option with kids. Oldest boy will move out next year, but the middle boy and youngest will still be home. I see a bright future for the youngest (potentially. Could just be a biased mother talking tho) and I realise I need to be in a big town for him to achieve. Middle boy will be working next year and is already considering his future options. I just feel like my daydreams are not an option in the foreseeable future. Who knows what may come tho. 

Oh, love life? That's laughable. I've seen D twice since he begged to be back in my life again (months ago). I really don't care about him one way or another and so haven't been particularly bothered by this. Even now, when I have a little more time to think about him/sex/love, I really feel very little at all. I should probably tell him to lose my number, but the likelihood is that he'd contact me another six months down the track and I'd have to listen to it all again. Well, I wouldn't have to, but...well, it's nice hearing that someone misses you, even when you know they don't really mean it.

Besides D, I have had little to no interest in being with someone, romantically or otherwise. It is much less complicated being single and I like just suiting myself. The boys are away this weekend and I'm looking forward to sleeping in, catching up with a friend or two for coffee, maybe see a movie, not having to talk to anyone if I choose. The thought of having to make time for a romantic interest just seems too bothersome.

Oop, dinner needs some attention

Cheers for now

Deep breaths

Like the ones my mum can't take anymore. She came home last Thurs and seemed to be doing well. Yesterday she was not her usual self. I was concerned, my bro was concerned. At 5.30 this morn he calls me to come round, I beat the ambulance there by about 10mins. Mum was struggling to breathe and in pain.

At first the hospital thought pneumonia. X rays and cat scans and ecg's later and all I know is that there is a blood clot in her right ventricle, fluid round her heart, and an infection. She is alive still, but I am lying here awake fearing for her life.

She gave me a list of items to take in, paper and pens and envelopes. I am afraid of what this means, that she is preparing to 'go'.

I don't think I'll ever be ready to say goodbye.

Count my blessings

Mum made it through her cancer surgery. Unfortunately she now has one lung instead of two, but gee, who needs two anyway?

I'm relieved and tired. It was an emotionally and mentally draining day. Fingers crossed she is home in a week.

I didn't get to the gym today and I missed it. A good sign that it won't take me long to get back in the habit.

It's been an unproductive week as far as work and housework goes, but I'm ok with that. Other things have been happening that require my attention.