Party

So sometimes I do things for people and I do them not because I want something back, but because I think the person deserves it and I feel it is unrecognized.  You know that person, why don't you do it for them?

I work in a brutal job.  Long hours, hard work difficult conditions with great people.  Best job I have ever worked because of the people.  First and only job where I have a nickname based in fun rather than derision.  Big Cat or Gato Grande in Spanish.  So I returned that favour I called him Gato Papá also Gato Padre, but you know.  There is also Cool Cat, he is a musician.  The people are great.

I got to know Gato Papá,  which means Daddy Cat, he is not older than me but you know, it fits.  I got to know him by working closely with him for a few weeks.  We might have been a close match out of work, but no in work, I am too clumsy and the idiosyncrasies of me are great and cause difficulty for all people, but for some reason they like me.  I am constantly paranoid that it is about to fall apart, but I am reassured that it is not.  In a landscape company focused primarily in interlock, pool building and hardscaping, I feel a constant drain, but I have more experience with planting, or rather more knowledge of planting if less experience than some; I know why one way to plant is bad and why another is good, I know what you need to add to the soil and why.  So there is a bit of give too besides take.  

The Boss gave me $200 cash the other day, he said it was for taking the lead in a planting job a few weeks ago, but I know the truth, that was the excuse he was using.  The truth was that I got to know Gato Papá and he told me that it was his birthday in a few weeks, a month and a half ago.  He told me that it was completely unimportant.  His last birthday proved his point, he went to dinner with his family and they celebrated Father's Day and he said that his entire family forgot that it was his birthday.  He told me the day before, all his friends dropped by and had forgotten it was his birthday.  He did not tell them, he told me that he did not care.  Sometimes people say things and they mean what they say and sometimes they say them and don't mean them.  For me with Autism I treat everything as fact, I don't see the emotional slant that things are said.  

The boss came around as he often does to job sites and he was leaving.  It was a Thursday.  I had gotten all week a story that there was supposed to be a party, a barbecue on the Friday night after work.  I got this from the Guatemalan who I worked with talking on the phone.  I was not told, so I treated it as unconfirmed irrelevant.  Anyways, the boss asked if there was anything I needed.   Said, no, because I am fiercely independent, but I asked him if there was a barbecue that the Guatemalan was talking about.  He said that I was not to be told about that as i did not need to be told, which I accepted as fact because he said it, but then changed and decided it was a joke.  I stated then that he should not do anything special for Gato Papá.  Which made him curious. They were friends for eight years and worked closely together, but GP never made a deal out of his birthday so, he never did.  I told him about last years birthday and how disappointed he was.  Boss left thoughtful.

Party day.  I gave my boss a receipt for something I had to buy to get the job done, and he gave me the $200.  He said for the job I did a couple weeks before, I told him it was my job and I did not need it because I was doing my job and I get paid for that.  That is who I am.  He insisted.  It was $200.  Secretly I used the money to buy stuff for work— I think I have passed $300, so I better start saving the receipts again, that's who I am you can't give me anything I don't think I deserve.  Anyways, after work, I arrived back last.  I hate parties and I wanted to go home, but work parties are mandatory social hell, so I stayed and I had a gift to give GP that I did not want him to not get, because personally I think he was important to me being in the company.  You know the person that allows you to overcome your own personal image of yourself.  It was weeks ago, I think he has somehow missed it or it was thrown out… this is a risk of my forced social passivity.

The Barbeque was a standard yearly affair, someone said it was Half Christmas… anyways it turned out to be a surprise birthday party for GP.  Everyone sang Happy Birthday.  And the real surprise was that the boss went away and drove a front end loader around and came back with a Birthday Cake and Candles on it with writing and everything.  Afterwards, the boss came over and told me that this was my doing, I told him not to tell him.  

I tell you not because I want accolades, but because it is part of me.  I don't want praise or anything, I just wanted GP to have a great time that he missed the year before.  To know that the people who work with him value him, which he needed to know.  I like that I allowed his friends and coworkers a chance to remind him that it is so.

Then I got paranoid, and began to think that that was the real reason why I got the $200.  Doing that stuff is what I am about, but I also want to not be around for it.  Do you understand?  I want people to be happy and I want to be ignored.

Broken

I don't know if it is maturity visa vie my autism and the imposed delay on mental development, but things have happened mentally recently.  A corner has been passed and I have let some things go in my life.

• Hopes that I will be reunited with India (code name for a real live person).  I decided it was stupid of me our lives a long past.

 • Dating.  I have given up.  It will happen or it won't.  Moving to where there are more people like me live has not helped.  There is nothing about me that they want.  At the same time I generally get positive vibes from every woman I meet by being polite and courteous, in a sense, being me.  I have never tried really to "jump" anyone ever and I never will.  If this is the only way I could get sex, I never will then.  I will be single forever and so I will also be monogamous too.

• I still want to die.  There is nothing to look forward to at all, ever.  But I will not seek my end either.  There is no plan.  There is no one looking out for me, except for my friends, which are not people I work with.  Family, yes but under the same criteria as friends, my sister may be my sister, but she is meaningless if she is not my friend too.  She is my friend, a friend I don't talk to that frequently, but I rarely talk to Tim, but he is always in my heart.

• stuff.  I gave up so much stuff to move where I am to be with the people I am with because in my mind it was forever.  I was wrong.  The stuff is gone, I don't need it. Books I don't need them after I have read them.  

I have essentially become a Monk, the Christian version of it.  Maybe Buddhist.  I don't drink alcohol, I don't do drugs, I don't own a car, I don't eat meat, I don't have sex, I don't have fun anymore.  I feel like every time I turn around I am trying to make the people around me happier and not expecting anything back and I am not receiving it, so success.  This blog is anonymous so if anyone is reading this, you don't know who I am, those few people that do know who I am, know that I won't except their praise or help or whatever, except I will talk with them and listen to them and go our separate ways.

I am losing ground all the time now.  I cry.  There is nothing I can do about it.  I feel lost, so I have now accepted that I will be losing ground and my dreams that have never come true, still will never come true, so I might as well be at peace with it, this is just how the world works for me.  Time for some sleep ing pills, I still have to go to work tomorrow, where I will drive four or five Guatemalans to a job and then I might go and deliver stone to another job, or I will work manual labour for eight to thirteen hours with one half hour break, or drive a lot.

Broken. 

The knaw

I have been getting the knaw to write again, the book in my head is trying to get out.  The setting is enriching from two hours of daily bicycle commuting and hours of daily driving and mindless working, still the fear of dialogue slows me down . . ..

The short burn

Today I burned through nearly twenty hours of projected research time for my course in six hours.  Maybe my research was shoddy or maybe the projected times were off.  I suspect that it is a bit of column A and bit of column B, though it may also be because the subject of this section was science and technology pertaining to education is one that I think a lot about.  The idea that technology can be integrated into education is silly; it always has been.  There is a bit of a lag though.  Misconceptions of technology magnified by suspicions about it because of lack of familiarity.

But in today's world the technology is everywhere.  I am writing this post on my iPad, you are reading it on your phone.  You could be in the middle of nowhere, while I am in a coffee shop.  There is Wikipedia that Everyone likes to knock, because, "anyone" can change it.  But that is a position of ignorance.  Not that anyone can't contribute, but that anyone can put any shit out there and get it to stick.  You can try, but the life of falsehoods lasting is short.  I remember a very resourceful young man who tried to get a young woman to sleep with him by posting that his band was on tour in Montreal on the weekend.  She sent me the post and sure enough it listed his band and the dates he performed, the next day it was gone.  That was about ten years ago.  Wikipedia has a lot of standards and every chunk of information must be verified and sourced, if if can't be substantiated, it gets removed.  Wikipedia has a higher accuracy than any set of encyclopedias and is more up to date and is much larger too.  But still teachers keep telling students, it is not reliable.  There are few sources of information out there that are as reliable as Wikipedia.

The other big research of today was looking for resources on the Internet for teachers to teach science to different learners and English Language Learners.  I had a distinct advantage here, as I had completed courses in Special Education and English as a second Language in 2007 and 2008 respectfully and they are oddly still in my mind so, boom down went my thoughts and boom went my research, and luckily split out went my thoughts.  Basically the misunderstanding of children and learning languages is easy for them is false.  The belief that children pick up languages quickly, more quickly than adults is not true.  Children pick up language to the level that other children speak quickly, but to advance to speaking the technical terms and understanding can take much longer, up to seven years, because they are learning twice as much as native language speakers.  The native speaker learns science, but the ELL is learning the terms and the language at the same time.  Adults who know the technical information are merely learning the language equivalents and there fire take less time.  Sure you see children quickly learning conversational English, but what we use in conversations is a small fraction of the words we use in school.  What is it said about Chinese? The working language uses a thousand words but the language contains ten thousand.  

As I put in my assignment, use pictures in place of words whenever possible to increase uptake.  A picture is worth a thousand words, but it is also worth a thousand words in a thousand languages.  The life cycle of a butterfly is a complex idea, but it can be graphically represented to anyone with a few select pictures and give perfect understanding.  

I also got to use my latest push the use of interactive video.  The ELL can pause the video and look up words on their own without slowing the class down, on their own time and thus gain a more complete understanding of the material.  Different learners, ie those that learn differently, special education students, can benefit from both strategies as well.  There is little difference between the appearance of and English Language learner and a student who learns differently.  

All in all, I burned through the material quickly.  It would have been nice to spend the full time on each subject and explore it more fully, but I only have a limited number of hours to do the research.  One day a week, on holiday left.  I have an extension into the month of July, so six more days to complete the course.  Six days to do six segments, three lesson plans and one research essay.  I was hoping to get the August long weekend added to the mix, that would mean three more days, but that is not likely.  That is the frustrating part, I can do the work, I just don't have the time.  I can do the work with half my mind shut off even.

Working long hours really sucks.

Quick update…

I have not been posting.  There is a reason, two reasons.  First reason, I have started an online course in early April, and it takes all my spare time.  Second I started a new job around the same time that takes most of my time, limiting my spare time to almost none.  So, time limited, spare time devoured equals little posting.

I really like the new job.  I like the people they are what people in the Boonieland think of themselves and what they think of City-Slickers can be more attributed to themselves.  How is that?  My negative view of the world is slowly lifting to be merely cynical again.  

The Course.  I enjoy the course, the increased thinking towards education and my goals in that area.  My enjoyment.  And my troubles.

My ties to Smallville and the nature of rumours.

Books I have read, on the sly, a chapter a night to relax, using sleeping aids to get to sleep.  My day, up at 4:40 out the door before 5am, ride to work 12.9km relax at work eat breakfast work lunch and finish and bike home again, in bed by 20:30 repeat 6 days a week.

Weight loss.  I don't know how much, I have not weighed myself.  12 hours a day physical labour, add 600 km of bike riding a month equals one slimmer self.

Strep Throat, why I am writing, as I have more time, as I have not been working.

Course:  why I am here.  

So I started and I was worried.  Honestly.  I will lay it out six days a week 144 hours.  Minus 70 hours working, minus 12 hours on my bike. Leaves 62 hours. Remove 48 hours for sleep, down to 14.  Remove 6 hours down time in the morning — getting ready and arriving early at work. The rest, 8 hours for showering and eating at night.

Sunday, 24 hours.  8 hours for sleep.  2 hours maintenance of room. Four hours of cram while the power lasts at the local Tim Hortons, because have you tried to work around small kids?  Ten hours remaining.  Power up the laptop, socialize with the people I live with, let them know I still exist.  Hear how they missed me, and how much of I mess they think I am making and how I don't contribute enough, how I need to study my (non existent books for my non existent test) course.  Play with the kids— why I am here.

Three weeks in I took a Saturday off to do more school work.  Prof said maybe I should defer the course.  I agreed, then he reversed his suggestion and told me I should post when I could and everything would be fine.

So I took him at his word.  Worked 6 days a week, logged on one day a week and did as much work as the day allowed and slowly drifted behind the rest of the pack.  

Then suddenly the prof said I have to finish WITH the class.  Then he went to the university and finalized it.  No chance to defer now, too late to do it, missed that opportunity weeks ago. 

Lucky for me, I got very sick and when I was recovering I could post a letter detailing everything.  Just now have to wait for the result of that, because there is no clear way to pest a complaint, of course.  And in any case would require for you to have time to make the complaint in office hours.

I have written the course off in my mind as wasted money.  But the idea that I was dissuaded of the appropriate course of action and assured that it would be fine then reeks of idiocy.  Or perhaps he got more money if he had more students in the course.  Or most likely, he is an ass who had been a teacher all his life and did not think,— teachers hard work is report card time, it lasts a couple weeks, therefore all hard work last only a few weeks and then it is over, landscaping MUST be the same.  That sort of thinking is surprisingly common amongst long term teachers.  

If he gets burned from my 'disruptive behaviour', so be it, but I won't hold my breath.  I don't hold out much hope.

Oh I have a date tomorrow …