Thursday, February 11, 2010

Mr Happy

The esteemed P.C. gave me a sage piece of advice the other day when I was bemoaning my fate. In between draughts on his golden can he said "So what are you going to do quit ? You can quit your job fair enough, but you can't quit being a son, or a husband, or a father. You can't just say "nuh-uh too hard" & bail. So accept you've got some shit on your plate and harden the fck up sunshine."
I hate it when that smug bastard is right.
I countered that positive thinking was sciematiffically proveerised to be bunk  eg cancer survival rates- no statistically significant difference between time diagnosis to death for the happy thoughts brigade VS glum bums across a hundred 'n forty leven different cancers. It also places a burden on the family of those who don't make it, implying that the patient didn't Believe enough or whatever.
He said I was a pratt, was full of crap and should harden the Fk up.
I hate it even more when he gets personal and is right. and from a fourex gold drinker!
So. Positives eh?
Righto.

For the first time in five years since initial boot camp I recieved some training that actually had value to me in doing my job. I've done first aid refreshers, Govvie credit card & moral rectitude sessions (stealing is bad, bribes are bad mmkay!) but this was the first time that an expert turned up and ran through stuff that I will actually need in the performance of my core duties. I'm not going to discuss the hows, why's or effectiveness, just take it as fact we have a new S (for shark) fishery in Qld. This means that instead of every commercial fisher having a go, now only S endorsed fishers will be permitted to fish for the flake market. Fins are still in the too hard box for now & are treated as value adding, despiting being worth up tp 20 X per kilo what the flesh or barrel is worth. So, how does this affect me? well theses S guys have to report in what they have caught and where they are landing it, I'm required at ramdom intervals to inspect their catch to ensure they are reporting correctly. Now I consider myself a pretty smart guy and can count well past 20 without removing my shoes, but I wouldn't know the difference peween a silky or blue shark, a river whaler from a pigs eye shark or whatever. How am I supposed to check for compliance when I don''t know what I'm looking at? Well this super shark guru turned up with a chest freezer on the back of a ute. From it he pulls out a dozen different species of baby shark. Just as a baby human has physiological traits the same as a adult, so the baby sharks have fin placement & profile, nose shape, tooth shape and tail profile identicle to it's mummy, just smaller. So this bloke didn't try to teach us each shark, he just showed us the key features used in identification, but with real sharks as teaching props. Pretty cool. Same went for the new changes in trawl net design, turtle excluders and bycatch reduction devices. Again instead of power point slides delivered by some gormless beige pilock, we got The Man with full sized real examples of the nets. Excellant.

Dad is profoundly unwell. His stroke has seriously degraded his visual processing. As a result he can't drive. Mum's eyes have alwys been weak and the cataract surgery a while back didn't improve that, so now they are down to about 1.5 eyes between them. Not such super happy fun news, but the positive is that the oncology team believe he is strong enough to start a course of radiotherapy. I believe they'd give his appointment to another patient if the 12 Year Old Dr's thought he was on his way out, so take that as a positive. The biggest positive is that this treatment is delivered as outpatient in a hospital local to Mum & Dad's home, so mum can look after him, drive him around and return home to dogs, chooks & Furphy Tank each night. Compared to the Brisney land thing this is a big improvement. They still can't stay in that house long term due to amoung other issues the bushfire risk, but we'll leave that for another day.

This Pollyanna positivity piffle eats ass.
One last try.

The Blue Helmets reported a distinct calming of tensions between the BLA insurrection and the massive crushing power of the state (her parents) over the past few months. It would seem that this was largely as result of the idyllic lifestyle of a teenager on school holidays & when the school load returned (oh the humanity getting up before noon) so did the I'tude, complete with door slamming, driping sarcasm, $140 spike in phone bill in one month, ignoring being asked to do something like feed pets with "I'm just..." [ unsaid; doing something far more important than whatever it is you want me to do], the I'm-so-hardly-done-by muttering and (this sh!ts me the worse) through actions shouting not only are her parents entirely without ideas worth listening too but even feigning polite disinterest is far to bothersome to warant. So I've been taking off the red cross red crescent apolitical 3rd party hat & joining in the iron heeled oppression. Anyway this kind of crap is insufferable and things were boiling up into open insurrection and brutal suppression when she went to yoga with her godmother (leaving the bedroom a tip, her clean laundry not put away & animals hungry.)  She came back 90 minutes later a different kid. Like fire is differnt to water type different. Courteous, willing, able to appear at a dinner table when called, taking her plate to the kitchen after dinner without being hounded, self motivated to do her study, pleasant to be within 10 feet of, the list goes on. This difference was unbelievable. I checked  to make sure GM brought back the right kid. I suspect I'm going to put on a faceade of "it's all stinkin hippy sh!t" as if I endorse it she'll drop out tomorrow. But that qualifies as a win in any language.

The weekend at Evans Head (not Lennox as previously advertised) was great. Really really fkn wet but great. I realy needed it.

Ok, so my charkras need work and my visualisations may not be what they could, but I'm making an effort to focus on the positives and the things I have agency over.

And if you see a little ginger haired Irishman who answers to PC, punch him in the head for me.


P.S. remember the arseclown who begged & pleaded for me not to give him a ticket for his expired flares? Well he wrote to the minister. Apparantly I bruised his petal like feelings. Just another memo to write on company time,

Ciao, shalom and go the Wallabies.

10 comments:

  1. Yeah, it's an unfortunate bit of truth for the soul really. The missus has regular operations for the Cystic Fibrosis and double lung transplant related things. I'm one cranky MTHR FKR when that is going on, I can tell ya, it's the fear that's driving ya, but at some stage you've gotta accept the reality. It's either that or you may as well buy comfy slippers and get a club membership for the looney bin.

    The drugs do look enticing tho...

    Just use your annoyance from "flare bloke" and take it out on the next fella.

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  2. So does this mean the cowboys that fish for shark fins are on your hit list too???

    My sympathies with the offspring. I felt relieved knowing that the teen angst thing isn't just unique to this household.

    Nat

    PS You still make me giggle. Love your posts.

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  3. NBob, continued best wishes for your Dad and Mum, as well as yourself obviously and the family.

    DO NOT get too comfortable with the Bobette's new persona, either it will wear off, or she's getting ready to hit you up for something. (Cynical? Moi? Never!) I'm half, maybe 3 quarters kiding of course :). To add some positivity, The Brat is now out so much, I need to check Facebook to see where he is and what he looks like most of the time, unless of course he needs something, then he's around and a positive joy he is to have around at that. From memory tho' I think you're still a coupla years away from that.

    Work? Just Book'em Danno! You'll get out some of that repressed frustration and feel better about yourself. That's what really matters!

    Sh!te, just told GirlClumsy I don't give advice lol! Probly best if you take it all with a grain (or twenty-leven) of salt.

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  4. Nope, its the yoga.
    I'm the antichrist incarnate when I don't do it regularly.

    My bit of unsolicited advice is go to yoga too. Not with her of course.
    You need to treat this the same way you'd approach a dominatrix or a heroin habit - with total secrecy and denial. Otherwise she WILL decide it's not cool.

    Then again my nieces have watched me doing it and that just kind of got them interested. It only takes one class and once they realize that an hour and a half of focusing on yoga poses and consciously excluding the whirling Debil Debils from their brains...well, something does click over.

    Best wishes for your Dad, Nbob.

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  5. I often envy stupid people. I envy how easy it is for them to believe. Low intelligence allows faith, hope and optimism to so easily take place. Such things do not come easy for those with enough neurons firing to see, grasp or suspect the truth.

    For me, cold cynicism causes me to conclude that, since our time is limited, and we might as well maximize the experience while it lasts, and optimism helps do that. It could always be worse, and for someone somewhere it is worse.

    Illegitimi non carborundum, my friend.

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  6. Thankyou all.

    And profeesor You sir have a way with your words.
    I tend to underestimate Joe Sixpack and his lovely wife Wendy Homemaker-Sixpack. On occasion this led me to be think I'd been patronising, which of course makes me feel awful. Then I get the moment when they look at me bovine-blankly and I think "No, actually I take it back, you are morons and you've been allowed to breed? Dog help our country."

    Note to self Super-hero or snapper-head story.

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  7. Also all the best to your parents NBob.

    As for being a parent, I used to have a poster something like this:- http://www.amazon.com/Novelty-Sign-Teenagers-Leave-Everything/dp/B000K61MJM in every classroom and lab. VERY popular with parents.

    Made it crystal clear to our problem child that this was OUR house, paid for by our brains, sweat and ulcers, as were her clothes, food etc etc. My house, my rules but of course if she could give me a calm, logical, rational reason for her attitudes - well, that would be quite different. Mute. Happy to say that's waaay in the past. They do eventually turn into human beings and when SHE has kids - boy do you get to laugh.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Updates?
    Any chance you can make it to a Burger Breakfast?
    since there's a few north coasters I'm wondering if we should meet midway, maybe for lunch at Redcliffe.
    Which has nothing to do with my obsession for the pizza place there...mmm...garlic foccacia...nope. Nothing at all.

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  9. Nbob-
    All best to your family. And thanks-- you know why.
    Abigail

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thanks all.
    And you are especially welcome Miss Abigail.

    Sorry for the prolonged silence, been very busy.
    We will return to your advertised schedule ASAP.

    ReplyDelete

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I was the proud recipient of the worlds first monkeys ass to human face transplant. Friends of the donor monkey says it took well, I'm not so sure.