G'Day,
Here it is Friday morning and I have not posted in here for a week.
I haven't had the best of weeks. On Monday I got an email from my cousin Ruth in Sydney to say that her brother Joe had lost his son to suicide. Lee was between my 2 sons in age so he would have been 25. His Dad Joe is the same age as me and we were great mates as children. We were called the terrible twins. I haven't seen a lot of him through out our adult lives as we married and lived too far apart (his ex- wife didn't like me) but I still remember fondly the antics we got up to as children and teenagers. Lee was his much loved eldest son. I can 't imagine how Joe must be feeling at the moment. It is so so horrible. I know when my own son tried to suicide how horrible it was, and the aftermath, luckily he didn't succeed. I have been rolling it over in my head ever since. Why does this happen to our young people? I don't understand. I know in my late teens and 20's that I wasn't always happy, but I never went to those lengths.
Sadly it is not uncommon, especially in small country towns. There were many occurrences while I lived in Junee. Such a waste. I remember an analogy I told a young bloke who I worked with years ago when he was thinking about suicide that life was like a half finished book. You don't want to put it down until you get to the last page and see what happens next. And I know from my own experience that things can get bad but they always change and improve later, if you just hold on. Ah well! Suicide is so final and you can never turn back the clock no matter how much you might want to.
This week past has also been a bit hard because we went to look at a house on the weekend that was nice and a good price for Canberra. When we got home we did our maths and worked out that on Pete's wage alone we can't afford the repayments so I will have to get a better paying job. I hopped on the puter and looked around and sent an email to a nursing home that was looking for workers. The lady rang me back and arranged an interview for Tuesday morning. On Tuesday I told Brett my present boss, what was happening and he said he had arranged another small school for me to do starting in the new school term and I felt terrible because he was relying on me and I might let him down. He has been nothing but nice to me. But I would prefer to work back in aged care and it would probably be less strenuous for me as well. Best thing I could think of was if the nursing home people could just let me work in the mornings. But I will have to wait and see. Things are so different here work wise. Employers actually need and want you as there are not enough people to go around who are willing to do these sorts of jobs. Not like in the country where unemployment is higher.
My daughter has spent this week here with us in Canberra. It is her end of 1st semester break at university and I had arranged several dentists appointments for her. Both her and my son have colds so have been lying low and snuggling into warm beds for as long as they can. Both are still there this morning. She is such a sweetie and a cuddle bunny. This visit she has even been helping with the housework unbidden. Isn't it amazing what living away from home can do, he he. I like it.
This morning while I was laying in my warm bed I was thinking about when I was a child. We lived in Sydney for about 5 or 6 years on and off. My primary school was about 4 blocks down the hill. There was a shop on the corner and a butcher, hair dresser and T.V. repair shop that never had anyone in it. The shop in the next street down had a great selection of novelty lollies and in those days you could scavenge empty drink bottles and take them to the shop and get 5 cents each for them so that was our pocket money. You could get a good sized bag of lollies with 4 bottles. And we were pretty much in the middle of everything we needed. We were on the border of 2 suburbs that are now quite up market. Waverley and Bronte and just a few minutes walk to Bronte, Tamarama, and Bondi beaches as well as the shopping centres of Bondi Junction and Bondi road. We lived in a block of 4 quite large army owned flats and I used to run around with the girl who lived downstairs. Her name was Lisa, I can't recall her yucky brothers name but I did not like him much. We used to go down to Bronte beach and the park behind it where we had great adventures. There was a creek running through it where we used to play and catch tadpoles. We knew every inch of that park and renamed the trees and rocks, pools and bends in the creek to suit ourselves. Well, the creek was more like a drainage ditch but we loved it anyway. The northern bank of the park was very steep and covered in wild nasturtiums that we used to pick bunches of and take home to our Mums. We also picked the banksia flowers and climbed the trees and crawled through big cement pipes at the top of the waterfall that echoed wonderfully. All forbidded nowdays. We would go down to the beach and climb around the ring of rocks at the southern end of the beach that form a protected swimming hole and collect shells and starfish. Also amongst the rocks were tiny blue ringed octopus that were deadly, but we didn't know it then. We used to poke them with our bare fingers, because when you poked them they would flash their bright blue rings and try to get on you. Someone must have been looking after us.
Parents today would have been horrified at our antics, and today you would never let your kids run and wander about by themselves like we were able to. We must have been ferals by todays standards, but we thought of it as just having fun. Today it is a necessary part of parenting to keep a tight watch over your children. What did you do when you were 10 and 11 years old?
O.K. enough of my ramblings for today.
Bye
Love Linda.