Two Annoyances, Both Involving My Brother.

ANNOYANCE 1.

Mothering Sunday has come and gone for another year, and yet again, MJ spoiled it by not showing up.

You should have seen her little face; the momentary expression betraying crushing disappointment. She rang, after she returned from church to find a text message saying "happy Mother's Day", only to be told that he 'wasn't feeling well'. His 'stomach was upset' (yet again).
         So, no MJ.
         She had gifts from me; her favourite folk tune carefully written out and played to her on my flute, then later I paid for a takeaway dinner (Chinese) and a strong drink (whisky). We also had a nice afternoon, playing games, walking the dog in her favourite place. We had fun. It was fun.
         But all the while, I was aware of the undercurrent feeling of incompleteness that she was valiantly trying to hide from both me and herself. MJ wasn't there. And deep down, that was what she really wanted. Her son.
         He knew that. All he had to do was show up. Just for a few hours. All he had to do was show up and say "happy Mother's Day" to her face, play a game of scrabble, smile a bit, then leave; duty done.
         But he didn't.
         Why? Well, maybe - MAYBE - he genuinely was ill. He's used the excuse so often, both truthfully and lying through his teeth, that we can no longer tell. Odds are, however, that this alleged bout of stomach flu was actually (yet again) code for 'can't be arsed'.

Even now, days later, that image keeps popping into my mind.
         Of her little face.
         Her crushed, disappointed little face.

ANNOYANCE 2.

MJ needs to decorate his flat. It is a requirement that the council has now for tenants; they provide paint, brushes etc. at their own expense, and you decorate.
         As you may expect, given past reading on the subject of my brother, this has not yet been done.
         The checks happen between April and June. At the previous inspection the year before (yep, he's had THAT LONG to deal with this) the apparent lack of effort was mentioned, and then dropped at MJ's own mention of evidence of mold in the bathroom. Three months later, after a few phonecalls, the mold was treated. Three months after that, with Mother's help, my slovenly Brother set about a deep clean of the apartment which took several days. As soon as that was completed, the decorating was due to begin. And (again, unsurprisingly), the excuses started immediately.
         Cue months later - of course, the flat is a state again by now - and on the first afternoon of the first day of my holiday (you remember me? The sibling that works for a living?), over to his flat we trooped. I'll spare you all the details, but suffice to say, despite efforts of Mother and I, not a lot got done.
         And so it has been for two weeks. Every day, either practically no progress, or no progress at all because he cancels due to being 'ill'. And I am aware that this has got absolutely sod all to do with me, really, but the problem is that it is upsetting Mother, and the upset is increasing daily, and I hate Mother being upset. So I am upset.

So there. Two upsets.
         There are more, but they are all linked to the above, and I don't any ranting time left.


Thanks for reading, anyway.
         Sorry to moan.

B.C.B.F.L.B x

Later On Today, I Have A Hearing Test...

...and I'm nervous as heck.

In other news, I asked a girl that I have been chatting to for a few days online out for a coffee, and have had no reply. It's been two days now (with every other reply coming in under 12 hours). I'm not going to call it a definite flop until the end of the week, but I have to admit; I'm not holding out much hope.
       I may have made a mistake in asking. She did mention on her profile being 'shy', so I possibly should have waited a bit longer.
       The thing is, though, in my defense; I've been finding the majority of the time that trying to have a conversation with girls online is like pulling teeth. I'm aware that not everyone is what can be called 'chatty', and I can live with bad grammar and spelling - I draw the line at 'txt spk, u no wht i mene m8?' - but for goodness sake; when I write a couple of paragraphs, it'd be nice to get a tad more than a single line back in reply!
       Anyway, I had this sudden idea that perhaps it would be easier if I could meet them face to face. You know; get them away from their computer and out into the real world and perhaps that might be easier. After all, people are generally different in person than they are online, aren't they? So, impulsively, I asked this girl to meet. Too soon, perhaps, but there you are. What's done is done.
       We'll have to wait and see.

I'll keep you posted, both on that, and the hearing test.
       Wish me luck (with both)...

UPDATE: 

Well, the appointment got off to a fabulous start, when I was ushered into the wrong one.

It took a few moments for either of us to realise the mistake, due to both of us being overly polite and neither of us wanting to rock the boat.

It went like this:
       The nice lady bade me to take a seat and get myself comfortable, which I did.
       Then she explained that she would be putting drops in, and that they would take a few minutes to work, so I could take a seat in the waiting room and then after the specified time, I would be called back in.
       All well and good, or at least so I thought. I had never had a hearing test before, but it made sense for drops to be put in, I supposed, to oil the ears and reduce friction\remove dirt etc.
       So I sat good as gold and waited.
       She asked me to remove my glasses, which came as a surprise, but – I reasoned to myself – they might be a distraction while the drops were inserted, so…
       Once my glasses were off, she tested the machine on my arm, to make sure the pre-drop puff of air was functioning properly. Then she bade me to look straight ahead into a red light. Again, I assured myself, this made sense; looking into a light would focus the mind and keep the head steady while the drops were put in.
       Then, she said the words “inserting the first puff now” and my right eye got the most powerful blast of air that it has ever encountered, and it was then, finally, that alarm bells started to ring.

“…um…” I put forth timidly; “this may be a stupid question, but why do you need to put drops in my eyes for a hearing test?”

“A hearing test!? Oh God!” Said she.

And then the truth came out.
       I had been under the illusion that I had been called in – early to my delight – to a hearing test.
       She had been under the illusion that she was calling me in – late, to her chagrin – to an eye dilation test.

Apologies bounced back and forth between the pair of us as I was ushered back into the waiting room with one eye expertly ‘puffed’ and the other left well alone. Then, once the misunderstanding had been explained we all – that is the optician, a technician, the two receptionists and myself – fell about laughing; much to the nervous bafflement of Mrs. Meers, who had turned up at that point for her dilation appointment over half an hour late.
       All was well, in any case. No drops had been wasted, Mrs. Meers had her appointment with no discernible mishaps, and I got given a piece of mint chocolate by way of an apology by the head receptionist, who had been temporarily distracted and not noticed when I was called in by the nice lady optician rather than the nice hearing specialist (who was a man, and had not yet arrived).

Anyway, back in the waiting room, I continued reading my book until the specialist turned up – apologising profusely and blaming overrunning appointments in another clinic, as apposed to the traffic, which was the excuse that the tardy Mrs. Meers had used – and I was called in for my hearing test.
  After another giggle over what had happened earlier and a mutual agreement that the mint chocolates the opticians had started to give out with each new pair of glasses were utterly delicious, we got to it.
       He asked a few pertinent questions regarding my life and how I found my hearing, which I answered freely and frankly, and then he explained what the test was going to entail. First, he would take a quick look in each ear – no air puffs or drops required – and then an initial screening would follow, which entailed a series of sounds being played through a pair of headphones. My job was to hold still while he took his peek at my ear canals, and then say “yes” after each sound that I heard (or, those that I imagined I MIGHT have heard).
       It sounded simple, and it was. My ears were peered into, and pronounced to look “nice and clear” (great), and then the headphones were popped on. I was instructed to look at a picture to my right so that he couldn’t unwittingly distract me, and a few seconds later, the screening began.
       It seemed to go very well. I heard almost all of the beeps (or at least I thought I did). Once it was over, I removed the headphones feeling quite optimistic, saying “that was okay, wasn’t it?” and his response was a definite “yep”.
       My hearing, he said, fell within the ‘normal range’. It was, he added truthfully, towards the lower end of the range; a little lower than the average for my age-group – he showed me a little diagram to explain this – but it was within it nonetheless, the slight deficiency (he emphasised the word slight) was easily explained by the inherent hearing difficulties within my family and unless I had some sort of accident, it was unlikely to deteriorate any further for any reason other than the general wear-and-tear caused by old age.
       In short: I have nothing to worry about.

So there we have it. My hearing is fine.
       Yay! =claps hands=
       Good-egg.

…Got to say though, my right eye isn’t particularly happy.
  Since its unexpected blasting, it has been rather itchy, and hasn't stopped watering.

Oh well.
  One can’t have everything, can one?

B.C.B.F.L.B x

On Pain Of There Being No Cake Next Week –

– I have logged on to write a Blog post.

So, hi! =waves=

Well, life is trundling on well enough chez Collison.

            The highlights are listed below.

            Enjoy...

*****

College is progressing, slowly but surely. Excel came as a bit of a shock to the system, after the comparative safeness of working with Word, even though I was expecting it. The first two sessions left me feeling tired and defeated and not all that good. But I plugged on; going over things with the tutors and putting in a bit of extra time in at the library revising parts of the book that I had already worked through so as not to take up the precious few hours I get at the college itself, and at length my efforts bore fruit. By the time I had finished my fifth session, I was back on schedule (or at least, the schedule I have set myself as the ideal); working through at least two skill sets per week, and feeling a lot better.

            I’m terribly impatient, you see. I want everything to happen NOW. I want to pick up the book and be able to whiz through it and understand and remember everything from the word ‘go’, and life doesn’t work that way, always. Sometimes it does, of course, but not always. I have to remind myself that, when I get impatient with myself and despondent that I’m not going fast enough, or that I’m finding a certain bit difficult to remember or understand.

*****

Work is…well, it’s work, and until I find another one things are unlikely to change.

            There have been some improvements, though. The schedules are more settled now, as Supervisor (formally One-Notch-Above-Useless-Bitch-Of-A-Colleague) has found her feet and finished chopping and changing and trying to find the best way round of doing things that involve the least amount of effort for herself.

She has not been the only one making changes, however. I have, too. Little things, or so it may seem to an outsider, but they have made a huge difference to me:

1. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I have altered my routine first thing in the mornings. In the past I have made repeated trips, helping the others with their things – not so much out of a sense of camaraderie, than because I can’t actually get the scrubber dryer machine, which on those days only I can use, out of the cupboard until everything has been cleared out of the cupboard – but now, I get my trolley ready, push it just outside the doors and then hang around until I can reach the sink to fill up the mop bucket that I use on the showroom floor of the Store. Does it save me any time? Nope. But it vastly improves my temper.

2. I’ve started to more or less ‘Work To Rule’; as in, I only do the things I am actually supposed to. That sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But to a huge extent, I don’t, or at least I didn’t. I did what I had to, then added on a host of other things – little things, mostly, but so many of them that it became overwhelming – as well. And now, I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, what I DO do, I still do well. I can’t help it, my conscience won’t let me work in any other way. And if asked to do something – within reason – I will hop to it like a Good Li’l Cleaner, but other than that; if it isn’t on my list, it won’t be done by me. That’s done wonders for my temper as well.

3. I’ve started singing whilst driving the scrubber dryer. I used to do this, and had many a happy hour driving Petal up and down and around and around as I did so. Then one day, somebody made a comment about it. Not an unkind comment, you understand; in fact, it was very complimentary, but the thing was, it made me realize that people could hear me, even over the racket that Petal makes (she is a noisy thing, Petal, bless her). And then I felt self conscious, so I stopped. But the problem was, that left me with time to think. And what I ended up thinking about, generally, was Supervisor (or One-Notch-Above-Useless-Bitch-Of-A-Colleague, as she was up until recently) and One-Notch-Above-Useless-But-Nice-Colleague and all the stuff they got up to and got away with and the fact that they put in practically no effort at all and constantly arrived late – or often not at all – and I’d get angrier and angrier and it got to the point when I was in a foul mood from start to finish and my mood tainted every minute and made every shift a bad one.

So, I started singing again. It came about quite naturally. I would often forget myself and start, before I remembered myself a few seconds later and stopped, and then one day, I was in a stinker of a temper – because they were forty minutes late, and I had spent so long getting everything out of the warehouse (which due to regulations about forklifts, HAS to be completed by 06:30 at the latest) that I started mopping twenty minutes late and because I had started so late the floor hadn’t had time to dry before people walked on it and my work was ruined and the floor looked terrible – and I started and it soothed me as singing always does, and then when I remembered myself, I thought; ‘oh, what the hell? Just let anyone try and say anything bad to me about anything today. Just let ‘em even look at me funny and see how far they get’. And then I carried on. And though my motives for doing it were born of temper fuelled defiance, it did me the power of good, and by the time I finished ‘machining’ – as it is called – I was perfectly calm and happy and had a better shift than I had had in a very long time. And of course, nothing bad happened as a result. Nothing bad was said or done, nobody mentioned my singing; those who noticed it, which not many people did, didn’t care one way or the other.

So, as I drive Petal round, once again, I spend the time singing.

I’ve started singing at other moments too; moments when I don’t have the sound drowning noise of a machine to hide behind. If anything upsets me at all, I make myself smile, count my numerous blessings and then I start singing. And it helps. It truly does. It soothes and placates me; it lifts my soul to the surface and brings cheerful feelings with it. I can’t stay in a bad mood when I sing, even if I wanted to.

4. I’ve finally managed to quell my feelings of worry and dissatisfaction over not being able to make things perfect. It isn’t possible, not where I work; no matter how hard you try, the best you can hope for is things to be passable, and at least half of the time you can’t manage even that. I know this, and always have, but the urge to strive for perfection that I have had inside of me my entire working life has always been so strong that I would try anyway, over and over and over again, and when I didn’t manage it – which of course I never did – I wasn’t always able to see it in the reasonable light that I needed to. Instead of taking it on the chin and thinking ‘oh well, I know I’ve done it, and that’s that’, I felt compelled to try again, straight away, even though at my core I knew it was hopeless; it was a compulsion that I often wasn’t able to control.

The compulsion is still there, of course, but due to the second item above in the employment section on my Road To Happiness; How To Be More Selfish – that’s the current working title – I now do not have the option of doing things over again, because that isn’t part of my job. Now, I do it, grit my teeth if it is ruined either during the process or (more often) just after, turn and walk away. And that, unless the resultant ruin is very terrible and it is actually requested that I do it again, is that.

5. (and this may well sound silliest of all), I am swilling the mop that I use for edging free of chemicals before beginning the second part of my shift. This leaves me with soap free water which, like Petal’s tanks, are able to be emptied outside in the garden centre’s drains, sparing me the need of braving the wrath of the warehouse staff or the inconvenience of pouring a mass of filthy water down the only other drain fit to take chemicals – in a tiny, smelly shower room, with a drain that is half blocked itself and a lightbulb that does not work – every time I need to refresh.

…and that’s it.

5 little steps forward in the journey of my Road To Happiness.

Aren’t I doing well?

(...shut up. I am too...)

*****

The choral concert date is drawing near.
            Soon the Town Hall will ring with the glorious noise that is Elgar’s Kingdom, and all who hear it will marvel (well, hopefully).

*****

The Story is growing. Slowly, oh so slowly, but it is.

            Another character has appeared, but he enhances the plot, rather than derails it, which is a first.

            I am continuing to plug away at it, anyway, little by little, and at the moment I find myself quite satisfied with the results.

*****

Last (but according to Best Friend 0.5(1), definitely not least); after a lull of a few months, I am chatting to people on POF again.

            Not much to report, as yet. The chat has been quite casual – and the one that seemed to be building up to something more ended rather abruptly when the girl in question returned to her girlfriend to give their relationship another shot – but it’s all experience and confidence building and such. We’ll see.

The decision brings up questions, obviously.

            Will a few online conversations lead to dates (whether good ones or bad)? Will the same lead to a Happily Ever After with the woman of my dreams on my arm? Will I end up alone anyway (and will it be a bad thing)? Will I get my heart broken?
            …The answer to all of these is: maybe, maybe not.

There are a lot of maybes in this scenario; a lot of good things that could happen, and a lot of bad, and frankly, I’m not currently filled with either dread of one or hope for the other.
            Right now, I am simply chatting to girls online. The door of Possibilities has been opened a tad wider, that's all. The future can take care of itself. I am focusing on now.

…I’ve mostly avoided thinking about letting this particular aspect of the future in, let alone get around to doing anything about it.
            When asked, I had reasons aplenty as to why. Deep down, I knew they weren’t true, but I kept parroting them anyway because it was easier than admitting any different, either to others or to myself.

Then, during and after rather uncomfortable conversations (the kind that can sometimes happen between friends), I forced myself to think about it. Then after another such a conversation a week or so ago, I forced myself to admit it, out loud. I admitted that my fears of the future were not based on myself, but on someone else. I was frightened about what would happen if I began dating again, not to me, but to my Mother. And as soon as I said it, I realized how wrong it was. That I was doing it again: worrying about the future – the far distant future, no less – to the point of inaction and grinding my own near future – and to an extent, my present, too – to a halt in the process.  

I was doing what I had always done. And it was wrong. It had been wrong then, and it was wrong now. By keeping parts of my life halted, I might have been helping other people (might), but it was at the cost of myself, and I decided some time ago that I wasn’t prepared to pay a price that high; not anymore, not for anyone.

I know that in order to move my life, myself, forward, I have to do the right thing for me, rather than worrying about other people. And I’ve been doing quite well. But there’s always room for improvement, and this is one of them.

            I have to be more selfish, now. I just do. I have to carry on what I started and see The Alice Plan through to the end, or I will be stuck in neutral forever.

I know this. I do. And though it's been hard going, I'm working on it. Bit by bit. Step by step. 

So, I’ve pulled the door open a tad wider.

Will it lead to anything (good, or bad)? Who knows? Who cares?  The point is, however, that it’s open. The possibility is there

As for the rest, well, I said above.

We’ll see.

*****

B.C.B.F.L.B. x