Snarks and Ladders

• Being pregnant
• Being a Newcastle Knights supporter
• Two-timing
• Taking drugs
• Cheating on a test
• Liking peanut butter
• Having a relationship with my neighbour
• Spreading rumours about my students for fun (although it’s tempting)
• Having an eating disorder
• Being a Spice Girls fan
• Enjoying chick flicks (ok… let’s make it REALLY BAD chick flicks!)
• Reading the dictionary
• Making up words
• Shoplifting
• Doing suspicious things with webcams
• Ruining someone’s new carpet (and getting flogged for it too! 18 years ago and the memory STILL rankles!)
• Making babies cry on purpose
• Watching AFL and enjoying it
• Being computer literate
• Owning an excessive amount of books (please define excessive)
• Having a ‘muffintop’
• Being a closet lesbian (note: I suck at keeping secrets about myself.  If I was, you’d all know)

What sorts of things have people accused you of?

I got to work before the meeting.  None of the usual nonsense coming in, where I have to:

• open the door REALLY quietly to skulk inside, because it’s squeaky and if you open it too slow or too fast everyone hears you and then the gig is up
• sneak across the room, making sure you do not tread on the creaky spots, trip on an errant piece of furniture or kid’s paper
• walk past my desk WITHOUT causing an avalanche (which is really really hard, because there is shit piled up on my desk higher than me!)
• stand in the back of the room… but not the absolute back of the room, because then you look conspicuously late.  And people notice.  And they give you the fish eye.  I HATE the fish eye. (by the by, a good trick for getting yourself further towards the front of the room?  Pretend you need a tissue.  No one likes to get in the way of a snotty nose, nor do they enjoy staring at it)

I got to hear the WHOLE thing!  And sure, nothing of importance was said.  And I nearly fell asleep. But, the point is, I made it to work before the bell went.  I think that’s pretty impressive.

I also put pictures of death and destruction on my classroom walls.  That was kinda neat too.

• *twitch* it's simultaneously nice and horrible having the family out. Enjoy the company, but want space – can't have both! #
• Kinda annoyed. fell asleep with the TV on the other night, it now has a nasty case of burn in. God damn it #
• Why is all my spam about Myley Cyrus nude? Seriously – nude man pix. kkthx #
• Do not attempt to read blog posts without glasses. You just end up skipping really long posts because OMG EYEBALLS BURNING #
• Fucking day from HELL. And I can't even go have a beer to relax, because I have to go back to work then get ready for mum to come out! #
• Broke another nail off. I am such a high maintenance moron! #
• Too afraid to fall asleep after last night's horrid chain nightmares #
• Proud of myself for eating baby spinach despite my aversion to all food things green. #
• http://bit.ly/23jpkF *dreams* one day, that dress is going to be mine. One way or another #
• Thanks magic 8 ball, for confirming that, yes, it IS just me who gets that. Damn twitter bots #
• Am I the only person who finds it an uncomfortable feeling when the 'basically was engaged to' ex gets a girl? #
• My cat keeps eating the dog treats… she shredded the packet to get to them! #
• Also: must remember to buy any Puma footwear a size up from usual, since they appear to be made for midgets #
• Time to pull on my footy boots. Fun times indeed… NOT! #
• It's Frosty Fruit time, bitches! That'll serve the weather right for it's stupid 38 degree-ness! #
• @softthistle awesome! Have fun messing around with it (expecting lots of cute pics of the boys and stuff) in reply to softthistle #
• That bad day at work was the LAST thing I needed the day before my Year 12s do their HSC exam. The very LAST thing #
• actually doing work and the such today. Wonder why I feel so motivated #
• Off to work!!! <3 May the kids be gentle today! #
• Not especially looking forward to the parental unit coming out for the weekend. Not at ALL #
• I fail… already broke and spoke to him. Twitter totally doesn't count, kk? (This is worse than giving up smoking!) #
• Just seen on FB from one of my Yr12 students: "Need additional texts for Romulus, help!". Note: Exam is in TWO days. #
• Fuck…. lost my work keys. Oh shit oh shit oh shit #
• Off to work. Curse it all! #

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I’m getting tired of being at this point.  I’ve only been back at work for a week, and I feel like my whole world is collapsing.  Or at least my brain.

• My Year 11 students are really fucking pissing me off.  They are lazy, unmotivated, don’t do any work, and then decide to blame me for their poor results.  When I try to teach them, they talk over the top of me; they make personal insults when I get aggravated and tell them to do their work.  When I get angry at their poor attitude, they say it’s because I suck at my job, and they want to do everything humanly possible to get me fired.
• My Year 12 students have their second English paper tomorrow.  ‘Nuff said.
• I have no money.  I shouldn’t be going on a holiday at the end of the year, but if I don’t get away – I’m going to kill someone.
• Even though it SHOULDN’T matter, I just found out one of my ex’s has a new girlfriend.  This is an ex who I was with for 2 and a half years, who I was basically engaged to.  it kinda stings for some reason.
• One of the teachers at work is driving me insane.  The 40 year experienced former head teacher (who only teaches ONE child at the moment!  I teach 120!) should NOT be asking me to do her programming and shit like that.  I came here and had to try and write everything from scratch myself straight out of uni, you can fucking make do.  I don’t care if you are the principal’s wife!
• And, on that note, when I raise a legitimate question in staff meeting – you don’t have the right to answer it in your usual sarcastic ‘you are so stupid’ tone.  Shut the fuck up bitch.
• My mouth is full of ulcers from stress, so I can barely eat.
• I keep having nightmares since I am stressed, so I can barely sleep.
• My mother is coming out for the weekend.  Fucking help me God.
• My house is a pigsty, because I don’t have time to keep up with the housework at the moment.
• Reports are due for ALL my classes, and I have to write exams and grade papers and organise this school excursion that is happening in a month
• AND I come home from work and have to listen to other people bitch and moan about stuff.  I don’t mind listening, but I am stuck in a whole heap of one sided conversations involving them venting and me listening.

So, you guys get to hear all the venting.  Oh goodie, right?

When I ask you to complete a simple homework task, and you can’t do it, don’t call me lazy.

When I give you back your assessments and exams and you all did shit, don’t complain about my teaching, then proceed to not let me teach for the duration of the lesson because you can’t shut your mouths.

When I say ‘You all lost marks on the creative question because you wrote an essay"’, don’t argue with me about the words ‘imaginative piece of writing’ not being clear enough. 

… Although, on second thought, with you guys essays are often imaginative since you have to make it up and pretend you know what you are talking about.

When I say ‘I want you to use these exams as a tool to see where you need to improve, and I want you to work on that over the next year,’ don’t say ‘Do you get the blame for this?  Can we get you fired if we do badly?’

When I have to use my own books and films as examples because none of you can bring one in for me to use, don’t ignore me on the premise that ‘That movie is gay.  I like action movies.’

Don’t sit there glaring at me like I ruined your life just because you don’t like me or the subject.  You only get out what you put in, bucko.

And honestly… why are you even sitting for an HSC when you can’t be bothered bringing a pen or a book, wearing school uniform, listening to instructions, or completing assessment tasks?

Signed,

One very tired, frustrated, angry teacher who is tired of working her ass off for ingrates.

P.S. – You know how long it took me to mark your senseless drivel, students?   Your exam papers that you put no effort into and just wrote shit on?  6 hours.  Of my life.  Down the drain.

• Do I want a Shared Room in a backpacker's to meet people, or a private room just in case I meet people? lol #
• Made a decision. Just not going to talk to him at all anymore. Let's see if I can stick to it! #
• Mother of a god damn toothache! *moans in pain* #
• I really feel like I should be in a soppy love movie right about now.. still. I make myself sick #
• Hmmm…. do I want to make a hot chocolate? I'm thinking a definite yes. Hot chocolate and day dreams FTW! #
• OH, I now have the perfect excuse to stay up – must study for the trivia comp on Friday! Bahahahaha #
• I _should_ go to bed in preparation for getting back into 'work hours' on Monday… but damned if I want to #
• Going to a BBQ tonight. There goes all my wine! #
• Seeing how long I can continue a 1 syllable convo with the ex before he gives up #
• Time to shower!… I swear, the most hideous person ever could use Yummy Yummy Yummy body wash and I'd want to do him. #
• Things I miss: that feeling you get when a man has his hands on your waist *wistful sigh*. I'm such a bloody sop #
• Been revoltingly lazy these holidays. So hard to be motivated to do crappy work when the sun is shining! #
• Think I might go to bed early tonight… just because I can #
• And the fridge is at it again! *threatens fridge with bunny boiler doom!* Bloody can't sleep between the fridge and thinking… #
• beginning to think this 'photo of the day' thing on FB was a BAD idea. Seriously, must you choose the 'look, drunk at your 21st!' pics? #
• Heh… my tolerance level and willingness to pander to people and their silly frustrations is at an all time low. #
• *yawns* Maybe I should eat more sugar to get me out of this slump! #
• I need a husband. One who can cook. I'll even do the cleaning, if he does the cooking #
• Damn it, just had two bras and a pair of undies turn blue in the wash. #
• Why the HELL am I being followed by a camgirl? #
• Big Decision Time: Which picture should I choose for my FB profile? #
• Finally able to clean out my spam filter. Sorry to the people whose comments were stuck in there! #
• Oh, when is it early enough to crack open wine? *looks at clock* Dang it, only 9am? #
• And banking done… I think I deserve to get paid more *hmmmphs* #
• Oh lordy… I hate how messy coming home makes my house! #
• It's really damn stupid to rub your eye after chopping onions. #
• High School Lessons Best Forgotten: 'A party's not a party without a nudie run'. Avert your eyes, people! #
• *Sigh* who the heck says no to a holiday fling? The person I want to fling, of course! #
• Siiiiiiiiigh… why do I make my stupid life so god damn complicated?!? #
• yay home! Only took, oh… 8 hours of discomfort and sleepiness! #

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It’s weird… I swear people who only know me over the internet think I have no flaws.  Don’t ask me why – they are blindingly obvious even over the net!

• I swear too much
• I drink to excess at least once a fortnight
• I procrastinate like you wouldn’t believe
• I have crooked teeth.  Not super bad, but they aren’t straight (and at the moment, giving me a mofo of a headache)
• I like to watch soppy movies occasionally.
• I once owned a Vengaboys album.
• I manage to repeatedly get my heart broken by men with the SAME name!  You think after 3 times, I’d learn to avoid them.  Too bad it’s one of the most common names ever
• I eat very few vegetables
• I don’t eat green food.  Unless it’s green candy.
• While I enjoy going out and socialising, it’s impossible to drag me out of the house.  Once I am out, I’m fine.  Before hand though?  I just want to curl up in my house and sleep.
• I have trouble taking no for an answer.
• I never manage to say things how I mean them to come out
• I like my vegemite slathered on thick!

Warning: yeah, this is a gaming post.  yeah, you may not care – but who says you have to care about any of the stuff that I write anyway?  Just click ‘mark as read’ and move along

Also – HOLY WALL OF TEXT BATMAN!

I moderate a forum for WoW bloggers, amongst the other random things that I spend my time doing.  It’s usually a pretty straightforward, easy job. I approve new users, occasionally steer conversations back to an appropriate level, but as a rule the people who join are nice people who just want to help one another out.

The moderator list appears to be quite extensive.  We have something like, oh, 8 moderators, 4 administrators… unfortunately, the only moderator who is really at all active is me.  While this isn’t usually an issue… it does present some concerns occasionally.

The other day, someone registered for the forum that I had doubts about.  They weren’t a blog, for starters.  And their site definitely wasn’t about building a community.  In fact, it was more about naming and shaming than anything else.  Sure, that has its purpose (and I may have actually used it once, regarding a certain lazy moron), but it isn’t really what our little forum is all about.  So, I was of two minds as to whether I should approve them or not.

Unfortunately… we don’t have any other active mods that I can hash this shit out with!

Well, they are now approved.  I don’t like to say I was ‘forced’, because I most certainly was not, but you know how it is when someone says ‘I was just wondering… why was this not done?’ etc etc.  So, well, I felt bad (because I have been feeling bad about the whole thing for a couple days now), and I added them.  However, I didn’t like the implication when it was said that OTHER people had not been approved.  Because they had.  Occasionally, it takes a while.  If I am not around for a week, because there are no other mods, nothing gets done.  Some days, well, I just don’t feel up to the rigours of my internet chores.  So fucking sue me.

And if the implication wasn’t that I was lazy, then it was that I had been discriminating against people, and only approving who I felt like.  So not true.  If I approved the guy who can’t use god damn punctuation, then I’ll approve most everyone.  Unless, of course, you are a troll or something.

Or maybe there was just no implication at all.  Maybe I read too much into it all because the whole forum thing is starting to piss me off.

– I don’t mind moderating.  Really.  But I would love to NOT BE THE ONLY ONE.

– If I AM the only person actually, you know, working on the damn thing… y’think I’d be bumped up to being an admin at some point.  Of our current 4 admins, only ONE of them is a WoW blogger.  One who doesn’t have a great deal of time to look after things anyway.  There is a lot of shit that needs tidying up… and I can’t do all of that as a moderator.

– A lot of the old heads in the community no longer use the place.  I guess that’s because, well… the community is changing.  We don’t NEED it so much anymore, because we pretty well know what we are doing, and things like twitter and chatrooms have replaced much of the forum’s purpose.  It makes me sad though when I see all these new people registering, and they will rarely get feedback or comments off the old heads.  You know what sort of things made my fricking god damn day when I started blogging?  Comments from the old heads, from the big bloggers who I respected.  That, I would guess, is one of the things that actually kept me blogging.  Aren’t you all glad that happened?

– And, because I am human… even though I KNOW it doesn’t matter, and I don’t explicitly want it… there is absolutely no recognition for doing this.  None whatsoever.  Which, y’know, is fine… just occasionally irksome when you see people tooting their horns about other shit and getting pats on the back.  But, hey, I’m a selfish bitch who wants her own fair share of back pats, and I’m not going to deny it.

I feel like that particular community is breaking down.  Part of it is that it has gotten bigger than what we can all stay in touch with.  Part of it is the community becoming more diverse.  I guess another big part is the attrition that community is currently seeing.   I’d like to see the community booming again like it used to… but I can’t do it on my own.  I think it really has to grow again, from the bottom up, with the new people.  And some days, I really just feel like packing it in.  The current state of the forum, for example… makes me want to cry!

/end wall of text.

The other day, I was talking to a friend of mine.  She is currently in a bit of an upheaval (quitting her job, not sure if she has chosen the right career path, looking at buying property with her hubby), and was unsure whether she had done the right thing.  All I had to say to her was ‘If you don’t want to do that, then don’t.  It will all be fine”

She looked at me and said “That is all I wanted to hear.  Why doesn’t hubby get that?  When I stress out and talk to him about it, he says things like ‘Well, maybe you shouldn’t have quit your job…’ or ‘Are you sure it’s the right thing to do then?’  I just want him to tell me it will all be OK’”.  He probably didn’t understand because, to the logical person, ‘What do you think’ is generally an invitation for advice.  Well… guess what, it isn’t!

Often when women are ‘asking’ for advice… they aren’t really asking for it.  Hell, that probably goes for men too.  If we are stressing out about a choice we made, and are saying ‘are you sure we did the right thing here?’… well, we are probably looking for validation more than anything else.  We already made our choice, now we need someone to calm down the nerves and help us live with our decision.

This holds true for so many things.  I ‘ask’ for advice all the time.  Deep down inside, I know what I actually want to do.  I also know what is the right thing to do (and sometimes, this conflicts with what I want to do).  Often, I know what decision I want to make at the end of the day.  I can work all this stuff out for myself… even if I don’t really want to.  So, no matter what you say, I will probably stick with the course of action I already had planned.  I’m just looking for you to validate my decision, to make me feel better about the choice I had made, or to sympathise with me for having to make a decision that I don’t much like.

Occasionally, I will ask for advice where I honestly have no idea what I should do.  This is such a huge danger zone for other people… because I haven’t made up my mind, am likely to change my mind at least 50 times, and will snap over it at the drop of a hat.  Especially if this is something of a personal nature.  Besides, deep down inside, I probably know what to do.  The larger or more important the decision, the more likely it is that I already know what I am going to end up doing.

If you are the advice giver, you need to be careful.  Don’t validate really really stupid decisions.  If it’s something you find wrong, then say so!  At the end of the day, you aren’t responsible for what someone else does.  However, you are responsible for what you say and do, so if it’s something you really couldn’t live with… say what you bloody well think.

Example A:  Judy and Lisa are out clubbing.  They have both had a bit to drink, and Judy gets offered an ecstasy tablet by some random guy.  Judy says to Lisa “What do you think?  Looks like fun, never tried it before, I think I will.”  Now, Lisa of course shouldn’t say in this instance “Oh sure, why not, do whatever you like, it will work out fine”.  She should say “That’s a really really stupid idea, you don’t know what could be in that, yada yada yada”

Well, that’s an extreme example.  But, you know when a friend is asking for advice and they look like they are going to make the wrong decision?  TELL THEM SO.  Just make sure that you are supportive of whatever it is they decide to do.  Unless it’s murder or something.  That would be kinda bad.  And don’t get too upset if they don’t take your advice, because, well… they might not actually be looking for it.  They might just be wanting someone to tell them that it’s all OK.

So… today was interesting.  And, not interesting in a good way.

Turns out, the other guy didn’t actually know that I am in a relationship.  Honestly, I don’t know how… I certainly have never tried to hide it (although I guess I do give conflicting messages, generally based upon the very strong feeling that this relationship is going to go kaput at any given moment), but, there you go. 

He then proceeded to confuse the hell out of me, making a statement that suggested he would have, I don’t know, made a move or something had I been single.  Seriously… make up your god damn mind already. 

Of course, this led to me being rather upset because, to be totally honest, I would not even be with my boyfriend if I had known before that the other guy was interested.  But, since the other guy gave off such confusing “I like you I don’t like you I like you I don’t like you’ signals, I gave up and looked elsewhere.  A girl can not pine forever over one person, right?  For him to suggest (at a point where I was already somewhat vulnerable anyway) that he was interested and had some sort of intentions at just that point in time was… awful.  It felt absolutely awful.

Of course, I reacted somewhat stupidly, as I do.  I can’t even remember what I said, something along the lines of ‘Did you actually mean that?  Can you please stop fucking with my bloody mind?’ no doubt.  Vague discussion followed, and I think this is what came out of it:

• I told him (in awesome high-school speak… oh dear lord) that “I like him.  I REALLY like him”.  Yes, I even used the caps.  Good grief.  Well, at least now he might actually understand!
• I –think- (but can not be certain) that he is somewhat, mildly interested in me
• As he is sane (unlike myself) he does not want a long distance relationship.

So, that’s kinda resolved.  The silly, somewhat whorish (apparently) side of me said ‘Well, how about a holiday fling? ’… to which there was a fairly resounding no. 

Dang.

I almost ended things with the boyfriend today.  It’s been coming for a long while, and I still honestly believe that it will not work out while I am the one who has to do all the changing.  However, I do still care for him (I don’t think that I am necessarily in love with him anymore, but oh well), and he seems to genuinely care for me, so… yeah.  I feel REALLY bad for staying with him in some ways… and a part of me hopes that I can learn to love him again.  But, that isn’t going to happen until I can get the other guy out of my mind… and he has been pretty persistently in there for a while now. 

I just suck at dumping people.  I felt so bad, and I cried absolute BUCKETS.  Again… why did all this shit not end when I finished high school?