Week 2 Post-Queensland (Part One) in Days of My Destiny

The Monday after the ball (with grizzly bear dude lol) we were pretty exhausted. That night I had to read the bible at church as part of the service that welcomed in the new minister (I think the actual term is vicar). The new guy has a wife and 3 kids. The kids are a bit older than ours, but they are roughly around our age, which is nice. On the Tuesday I caught up with my friend Kim at the pool. It's always slightly hectic catching up with her, because she has 3 kids, with the middle and youngest kids being 18 months (or so) and 9 months old respectively. The middle kid loves to run away all the time and so we'll be in the middle of a sentence (her or I, it never matters lol) and she'll just suddenly start running off, chasing after her middle child, lol. I feel sorry for her in a way because everyone can see that she never gets to ACTUALLY enjoy any catch-ups. But I also know that this is temporary, and I also know that even know it may LOOK really stressful from the outside, maybe for her it's just not THAT bad. She's a real positive person. She also runs a business with her husband, who has something like 30 guys working for him, and so she's in charge of all the car registrations, doing payslips, following up on superannuation forms etc etc and who knows what else! She is one busy lady and truly I don't know how she does it, because her husband doesn't seem to be the most helpful of guys either! Apparently she had mastitis once and he was picking on her saying he had MANtitis, OMG!!!! Lol!!!!! But she just laughs about it, though she has said once or twice before that he can be a real bastard, lol. ANYWAY. Sometimes I wonder if her life would be full of stress even without the kids. She seems to attract stress to herself, and she's one of these people that talks and talks and talks and talks at a hundred miles an hour, and will constantly interrupt you to say what she wants to say, as though she's desperate to just get all her words out. She has a cool, friendly, chilled exterior, but these small mannerisms make me wonder. Still, she's someone that is nice to hang out with (when she's not running away to chase her kid, lolololol). I feel sorry for her aswell because some of her other friends are constantly pointing out to her how crazy her life is and how crazy her kids are and how crap her husband is. I just reject the notion that this is what friendships should be. Shouldn't you be ENCOURAGING your friend, not putting shit on her all the time? So I don't trust some of those friends of hers and have no interest in getting to know them any better. Some of mine and Kim's conversations have reflected that her and I both prefer to choose positive people in our lives over negative people any day, and for that reason, I'm glad we are friends.

On the Wednesday I had to call Steve from one of the mines to confirm which days and times the tours will go ahead in April. I'd given him a week to get back to me and had told him I'd call on Wednesday if I hadn't heard anything. I'm glad I did that because it seems that nobody seems follow up on things around here unless you're on their case about it. (Example, last night at the DCF meeting, we were trying to tie up loose ends and it was a hopeless case because other committee members who had been trying to follow up with external sources about something, kept saying, "Well I rang him about 3 weeks ago and he said he'd ring back but that was the last I heard of him," in this disgruntled sort of way. It's like, well....... don't you think you should maybe....... call? Again? LMAO.) So all is confirmed with the mines. I also had to get in touch with another mine, because on their end of things there has been a change in management, so we wanted to confirm that things were still kosher with the new manager. Turns out the new guy had NO IDEA what I was talking about and referred me to some guy in SYDNEY, who then rang me and spoke as if this was the first they'd heard of it! Ay ay ay! At least they were friendly and of course happy to do tours (they've donated 2 grand for this event, and we found out at the meeting just last night that another mine has come on board with sponsorship, 10 grand's worth! Woo!). The craziest part was that the guy in Sydney told me that he'd be in touch with the new manager that I'd just been speaking to, in order to see which days would suit HIM best, seeing as he's the one that takes people through all the time....! I mean, why the middle man? Couldn't the new manager just discuss this with me directly?!? Lol. I just put it down to crazy politics and such.

On the Thursday I had Oztag training. I've since found out that what I'm playing is technically called league tag not oztag. There are different rules for each, for example there are certain moves you can do in oztag that you get penalised for in league tag. It's all new to me, and frankly I'm learning it as we go. The best training session I've had was just the other day, when I was FINALLY starting to understand some of the rules, lololol. And just when I was starting to GET IT and really ENJOY IT - the training ended, hahahahaha. At one point I had the ball and Adele called out my name, and I instinctively stopped running and turned to her to see what she wanted, which obviously was a big boo boo because it meant that the Attack was gaining in on me, and so Adele simply yelled out to me, "RUN!!!!!!!!!!" lol. It's been so fun doing all of this. There's new lingo to learn, new rules to learn, new skills to learn. It's a nice thing for the brain. I have been making a COMPLETE fool of myself out on the field in training, but I'm so thankful that this has come in my life NOW - a time where it really doesn't matter if you make a fool of yourself, lol. I'm enjoying learning all of it. Had this opportunity come to me 15 years ago, I would have been SO TERRIBLY EMBARRASSED and this would have been reflected in my writing. I'd probably be writing how so and so saw me do this and omg I hate doing this or something, hahahaha. Funny. I always HATED football, or sports of any kind, and I'm seeing that mostly it was because I was too embarrassed to be seen making mistakes.

On the Friday morning I had "canteen practice" with Karyn, as I was due to do canteen the following week (which was Friday just gone). I knew it'd be easy but I just wanted to be talked through it all. You're not supposed to be there until 11:30, and I got there 15 minutes early just to be safe. Turns out Karyn had been there since 10:30 WITH HER MUM, so that absolutely everything was already done. They were even sitting there saying how they'd got there far too early. It was a bit annoying because I didn't get to SEE them do things. I'm a real visual learner, so just standing there being talked through the motions without seeing them, to me, was quite boring. It had me wandering why I was even there, as to me, being given instructions verbally is the same as reading them - and there are written instructions in the canteen anyway. Karyn was the first person ever here to befriend me. I will always be grateful to her for that. I think as time as gone on though, she probably has realised that I'm not the kind of person she would hang out with. I can see it too, and it's because she lives in her big fat comfort bubble, whereas I challenge myself and talk to a range of people and do a range of things. Because of this difference, I am unsure that she likes me all that much anymore. I get this strong sense that she is really fake with me. She avoids talking to me if she can (eg in group settings), but she's nice enough to say hi if she passes me by, and I accept this. That day at the canteen though, she was with her mum and her whole demeanour was SO different - just chilled out, like all her guards were down. It was nice to see that side to her and I felt privileged to experience that moment.

On the Saturday was the Relay for Life. Oh my goodness, this whole paragraph will really need an entry of its own if I want to write about it properly, lol.