Entry 49: *...

Thursday, 2nd October 2023

9:29

*...

*...

Entry 48: The Bug Explosion

Monday, 30th October 2023

9:53

Happens Every Spring

This year, I planned to be ready for them - specifically that ONE fly that always seems to piss me off - with Citronella oil smeared on my neck.

Moment after I go look in the cabinet I see they have oils like Vetiver, Myrrh, Carrot Seed, Jasmine, Mandarin, Rose, Bergamot and Sweet Orange: forty minutes later I'm at the checkout with five little 10mL bottles when the checkout chick tells me "..comes to $170. Card?"

"Sorry, did you just say one-hundred and seventy?"

"Yes. Essential oils expensive. Tap or swipe?"

"You're shittin' me.. tap.."

The Myrrh alone - $55 for a 10mL ampule - I didn't even realize was that much until I'd already syringes half the bottle in some 95% alcohol along with a bunch of Neroli, whatever though.

What started as a simple bug repellent quickly switched to the $500 start of a collection of tiny bottles of expensive concentrated scents I am now mixing just to try and create a cologne every other cunt cannot buy in a department store.

Really, this is the primary palette perfumers use and so many of these scents are listed in $200+ Armani colognes.

But yes, I could much more easily have gone to Penrith and just paid $500 for an artisan scent I love but now, I have enough pure extracts to make a litre of different scents - shit, I can mix a different combo each day if I want and yeah, just like mixing vape flavour concentrates, it is, but I end up with scents instead of nicotine juice.

Incomparably more expensive, but so are colognes worth buying but it's more about expression and customization than some kind of quest for the perfect smell.

I do not want to smell like anyone else: when I've been in a room, people should know by the scent it's me who's just been in there, or what is the point of applying the shit at all right?

Right.

I know I'm right.

Same way I knew I was right in my refusal to help that part-time morning chick clean the pine needles all over the outside of all the school blocks: literally there's pine trees all over the yards and this bitch tried to have me sweep them up while she leaf-blew them into piles.

"No. Stop: leaves aren't rubbish - you're mentally ill for even trying to control them - they blanket the whole site. Stop - we'll good some other way to get rid of 'em.."

Like "cleaning" the sand particles from all the fucking cracks in the concrete, that shit is.

And of course she got shitty and started telling me it's what we're paid to do, by which time Amanda had arrived at the school, so I've bounced off her "Amanda! Talk sense in to this lunatic can you? She won't listen to me: everyone's perfectly happy with the cleaning! Why's she wanna do more?" telling her to explain to the crazy she-cleaner that trying to keep on top of fucking pine needles is insanity, "We get the GAs to do it."

Entry 47: TAFE

Wednesday, 25th October 2023

8:41

It's already a done deal..

I'm already gone.

Love you Chloe, and Jade, and even Kate; but being held captive in a classroom where not only is the teacher just so boring, the content itself sucks dick and to be a cocksucker just to keep bad teachers on their salary is fucking dumb.

Нет хочу!

Last week I went into Big-W, bought the most expensive cordless vacuum they had and took it in the school, to make my own work even easier.

Now I've just ordered a battery upgrade - from 2,000mAh to 5,000mAh - which will extend the lifespan from the ~half an hour I currently get outta it to 1.5hrs - that's at full power or turbo mode or whatever you wanna call it and why buy a stick vacuum for work when I've already got a commercial vacuum powerful enough to easily suck your dick clean off?

Stairs, small patches of crap and classrooms already almost clean: the time it takes just too unroll the cord on the other one, plug it in, vacuum a tiny bit then unplug and roll back up -- cordless vacuum absolutely is faster and easier when I'm not doing a whole room.

Also, I ordered a box full of my favourite squeegee and replacement rubber, microfiber glide strips etcetera so I can now clean the ocean of windows at the school without all the bullshit wrist strain of shitty standard squeegees - like the ones the company sends out.

They're genius - worth every penny of not purely for the avoidance if RSI in your wrists.

The only difference between any other squeegee and theirs is the free-pivoting connector between the channel and handle, yet that pivot replaces all the twisting you normally do with your own joints - when using a standard squeegee.

100% Australian-made example of innovation.

Don't let the super light plastic deter you either: I have a $100 Italian Ettore squeegee that LOOKS slick as shit through a goose and world's better than most standard window cleaning tools bit the WEIGHT of the fucking thing makes any kind of pole work extremely awkward - the Wagtail weight almost nothing so even at the end of an eight foot pole, they're so much easier to control.

*...

Entry 46: Finding time

Friday, 20th October 2023

9:41

It's not easy now..

Though I get from 9am through 3pm to myself between shifts, finding time to update is an "on the train" or waiting for the train - kinda deal.

Not only because I've got to organise maintenance and upkeep of my own shit outside of work but because - after going into town in the morning for shopping then finally back home at ~11:30AM - I'm now right into Zelda: Breathe of the Wild or Super Mario: Odessey for the day, the second of which I haven't started getting into yet.

Yes, walking around Big-W last Saturday in search of something to use as a whiteboard, I wound-up exiting with no whiteboard, but a Nintendo Switch game console plus Zelda - returning Tuesday to grab Super Mario - and while I have not started getting into that game yet, I knew eventually there'd be a point I get stuck in Zelda on some puzzle or whatever and need a different game, so googled Odessey to discover 5-star reviews stating it's the best Mario ever produced.

Totally spontaneous, kinda.

I very briefly considered the other consoles I could have bought for the same money but knew I only wanted the Nintendo because of Zelda: having played every version of Zelda since the SNES release of the game in the 90s, I checked the shelves, found both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, googled the two and - seeing game critics review it not only as the best Zelda game so far, but as possibly the greatest video game ever made - instantly grabbed the game case plus console then bought em and left.

And like the one meter long, plastic Jurassic Park Gigantosaurus I'd bought there the day before, couldn't see any good reason not to buy a console: I thought about the massive Zelda games that came before it and the hundreds of hours lost in Hyrule, then thought about how long it's been since I played any game at all - even in my phone - then decided to make fun the focus this payday.

It isn't like I'm desperate for anymore new clothes now my whole outfit's been refreshed and considered sitting on the money, but reminded myself this will be the final full-time payday as a casual - this coming payroll I've been permanent the full two weeks so I'll have less money for random $500+ purchases and figured why the fuck not?

I can't see myself rushing to buy a new game for a while now either - with new versions of two games so good they've become legendary within the gaming industry I've a humongous adventure plus a humongous action game to switch between and there's not many other games can hold a candle to these two, in terms of quality and the REAL bonus to the Switch hardware, is the beautiful screen build into the fucker - fact I can just grab it from it's dock, slide the controllers down the sides and take it anywhere I like with me - including work, which I haven't done yet but I'm sure I'll get to that: at least during that next holiday clean I'll have something to distract me from the 8hr stretches with fuck all to do.

For now it's plugged into the dock and TV though, because bigger screens always = preferred for gaming, when available.

The controllers too, somehow last day after day after day and I've only slotted them in to charge once - last Saturday when I unboxed the little fuckers - no idea how they last so long, but then I also dunno how my earbuds can be the size of skittles but still go on all day 🤔

Tech magic 😝

As for the school: I am free to draw on any of the many whiteboards scattered throughout all the classrooms and staff offices and - having written on the staff front office whiteboard "Cleaner NEEDS piano key! 😭", I now have that very key and access to the upright Yamaha that's basically new it gets used so rarely along with the legitimate "Hall" reverb it gets from being played, in a hall.

I've chosen my favourite teacher of course so all folded animals are simply being redirected to her desk, but I also draw more in her whiteboard than anyone else's and - just the other day - took the time to gather all the fluffy toys she has in her classroom and hang them upside-down from their toes across the room - not only was she delighted by this, she's not attempted to pull them back down or back to their original places around the room.

The large eye drawing that was stuck to the whiteboard behind me at our TAFE classroom, has been donated to the primary school and is currently stuck on the wall in the main office, where it generates a steady supply of compliments from staff and teachers - as they see it there and ask who drew it.

I've fully adapted to the 4am alarm and split shifts now of course and never have an issue falling asleep since I'm stoned two minutes after walking in the door at night, but further - even when I only get 4hrs sleep, I've adapted to that well enough to not be exhausted by the start of the afternoon shift - it's all just about efficient use of energy and I've cut all caffeine after 3:00PM each day now, so that's no longer causing any issues with me staying awake too late - without fail now, I stick on a podcast or audiobook when I go to bed and have fallen asleep before I've even started listening to it.

See right now on a train back to Katoomba,

Entry 45: Aneleise

Tuesday, 17th October 2023

9:28

And teacher preferences

Mostly Aneleise though.

Rather, wait I'm at Katoomba Station and there's this couple sitting opposite me in the waiting room: both sitting there deathly silent, she looks like a trafficked sex slave and he looks like the stereotypical customer - complete with oversized tropical patterned shirt, red baseball cap, teenagers sneakers and nylon tracksuit pants.

She's no twenty year old - all her hair having more grey now than black - but she's still younger than this old pervert yet he's all whispering shit trying to be attentive which, even from here looks just so awkward at best as she turns every few seconds like she's just sick of his tryhard shit.

So awful to watch, I got up and left the waiting room early and seriously thought to tell him he looks like an old sex tourist and she looks fucking miserable, but didn't because what do I care if some Chinese 'hoe wants to suck wrinkled dicks for the cheap motel rooms and, well, whatever else she's corrupting herself in pursuit of.

What was I going to say about Aneleise?

Yeah not much really, except that her response to a query of mine was the cutest of all my teachers.

Every night you see, I switch off all the lights and they stay that way until I get there mornings - the other cleaner does her little strip of six classrooms down the anus-end of the school so she doesn't bother turning lights on in the main blocks.

For a while now I've turned classroom lights on some days, off other days until finally the other morning I figured I may as well ask each teacher "You want your classroom lit when you get here or left dark so you can turn it on yourself?", which seems like an irrelevant option, but maybe there's some psychological benefit some teachers get from turning on their own rooms right?

Apparently not so: almost all teachers telling me they couldn't care less either way.

But Aneleise had a preference for lights ON and elaborated for me - explaining why she'd prefer them on.

Dark = Scary.

She did not word it so directly, instead telling me how she gets here early when it's still dark and she likes them being on because it's 'a bit spooky when everything is dark.'

= Super cute.

Entry 44: So happy they're back

Monday, 9th October 2023

09:24

Being there in the holidays sucks

You'd think I'd be happy: 8 hours per day in a site without any obligation to clean much of anything, but no no nooo.

Instead and with no need to do any standard daily cleaning, it just felt pointless being there: classroom carpets a bit messy that's fine; nobodies coming in until next week, you got four days to get it ready.

Same for the desks, bins, bathrooms and yards - no REASON to do any of that shit during the holidays, until finally you realize you have so much time to not do shit all you can focus on is how fucken empty the place is.

Like cabin fever, but at work and in the middle of town: you can SEE and HEAR people outside the school, but

Entry 43: More Merino

Sunday, 8th October 2023

13:24

Because why not..

Saves me having to wash any more clothes for now and the macpac legs I bought two months ago already have tears so I'm trying another brand.

Of course I have to have the legs now - regardless the season - because the only workpants I like are thick cotton and not comfortable against my skin.

I swear Ice-cream is the most GOAT culinary innovation in human history.

Entry 42: Dark side of the Moon

Saturday, 7th October 2023

08:27

Where I've been the whole holidays..

I realized yesterday, after finding Anneleise at the school when I arrived - and after telling her this school is so depressing to be in during the holidays - without all the people adding their minute energies to the place, the school just feels like a dead-arse building.

All week, I've been at KPS for eight hours per day completely alone and I got none of the 'vacation cleaning' done I was meant to: just a handful of windows around the front office block - the principals and other admin staff offices specifically - and cobwebs around the same building.

That's it - for a 32 hour week.

Then I realized after Anneleise had gone and I was getting ready to lock up: not only have I not had a day off over the holidays, I've worked overtime but worse - every site I've cleaned has been empty while I've been there.

Easy as these sites are - TAFE paying almost $200/morning to have me go in and change one bin each morning because there's only one person using Katoombas campus during the holidays - being in a variety of empty sites gets depressing after a while and this culminated in this weeks holiday cleaning of my school.

Anneleise, for the record, was the first person I'd spoken to yesterday at all - and that wasn't until after lunch anyway.

Curiously: after doing nothing all week, as soon as I KNEW she was downstairs fucking around in her classroom getting organized for next week, I snapped out of it, got up and did all the regular cleaning so the place is ready for Monday and I didn't even feel a need to be talking to her or have her in earshot - just knowing there was another person somewhere in the school busy doing shit, was enough to stop me skulking about the hallways despondant and resume doing things.

*...

Should I go into town today and buy shit?

I feel the compulsion to, beause I'm so accustomed to stopping for groceries every day on the way home, but I won't: I'll stay here, get stoned while I wash my clothes and decide on a shopping list for tomorrow - just things for school like disinfectant to wipe desks with because the shit the company provides does not kill a single germ and I've got used to using the 99.9% antibacterial sprays these sites ordered two years ago for COVID, but are finally running out of and, really, looking at the bottle of Pine-o-clean 3x Gel I have it states for general cleaning to add 25mL/1000mL water; so using higher quality chemicals is hardly an expense worth considering if you think about it - $5 for ten litres of spray that also smells much nicer.

And yes, I got my ounce plus a second ounce on the way: hydro like most these days, but very potent - there's no need to pack more than one cone or pipe to get thoroughly baked, which is excellent - even given a very loose projection of how long two ounces will last me, I won't need no fucking doctor playing gatekeeper to pills that get me to sleep, again - for a long time at least.

One shot of Cointreau then a cone and I'm asleep before I get a chance to think about going to sleep.

But, currently, I'm making a concerted point of being stoned as often as possible to fast-forward my brains' adaptation to the sudden presence of high levels of THC again.

The first time I have a cone after not for a while: my ego is instantly shattered with the first pipe - suddenly I see all the behaviours that are pretentious and feel bad about some of the wanker shit I generally say or do and affectations I've adopted that are dumb - honestly it's more self-reflection that anyone wants to be doing and you have no choice, because the weed has forcefully squeeze the bullshit from your brain and all you can do is take a deep breath and feel bad.

Within a few days, those fractured little shards of ego reconfigure themselves but slide together mostly how they were before, just more aware of doing douchbag shit than you otherwise would be though with a much broader "whole forest" perspective, since being upset about one or two individual trees not being how you want is so trivial, you don't want to waste mental energy on minor worries.

After a week or two, that's all a memory and you're a wanker again, but a more mellow wanker less high-strung and calmer.

This happens to me every time I have that first cone when I haven't had it for months or longer.

Deeply believe though too, I do, in the theraputic benefits of cannabis and always have: though smoking anything is bad for your health, of course, the lighter attitude and thought-processes you find yourself having - around the clock, not just when you're stoned - lead to so much less stressing about dumb shit and it's proven to lower blood-pressure the same way having pets does - these and other more ambiguous benefits have a net result of improving peoples general health purely by ingesting the drug regularly enough to keep in in your system, where it stays for three months or more anyway, so you don't even need to smoke it every day and all in a plant flower that's physically 100% non-addictive.

Mentally, you get used to it and don't want to stop usually, but there's no addictive anything in THC or CBD, so anyone you see acting like they're withdrawing when they run out of weed - tell them they are being wankers: it's not addictive, stop pretending you fucking idiot.

Also since I'm forward-dated to snap into permanent starting next week, I want to clear-out my favourite room of all the shit the last cleaner had accumulated in his seventeen years at the school: his dumb fucking books, his stupid little bits of taps and miscelaneous pieces of broken shit and screws and his collection of cleaning equipment - none of which I will be using - I want fuckin' gone from my cleaners room.

All except the leather swivel-chair: you know how I like swivel chairs and two of the cleaners rooms have these very comfortable black chairs in them, which is curious - nowhere else in the school have I seen these chairs, though who the fuck really compares chairs right? They could just be school chairs he's snuck away in our rooms, but whatever the chair is the only trace of the last cleaner I want in any of my rooms.

I even got to tell someone it's my school - two days ago, when some dirty santa looking rando knocks on the front office main door of the front office.

He'd obviously seen me a minute ago having a smoke out front, when he's come to the entrance after I'd gone back inside and when I open the door to see what this fucker wants I see an 80-year-old grizzled fucking homeless-looking weirdo.

ALL nervous movements..

Scratching at himself..

Slowly shifting from foot to foot..

I'd just walked back in and gone around the corner to write the fabricated start/end times for my shift, when I hear knocking on the door.

I drop the attendance book and pen, walk over and open the door then ask him what he wants.

Fucker starts by telling me he'd noticed someone "hanging around" outside the school and thought he would stop and tell the person he just saw hanging around.

I tell him "Yeah, me: I'm the cleaner - it's my school."

He then tells me I do a great job before lowering his tone to a near whisper to tell me he has a scooter, which I misinterpret as electric, which reminded me I should get an electric bike and I think this out loud, before he says "Oh no, not electric.. the old ones you have to push to ride: the kiddies could 'get around' on it."

"Right."

"I'm not a pervert."

"Sure?"

He shakes his head like Forest Gump then mumbles stuff too quiet for me to hear, before I cut him off with an "I got shit to do." then *SLAM* goes the door while he's still stammering goodbye and before he'd turned away from the door I was already walking back into the office to finish my sign-in.

Weirdo #1 - denied.

I should make a script to keep track of them and print the current number of weirdos deflected.

Weirdo #2 will be one of the GAs at the school, Ian who also looks like a grimy geriatric Santa Claus and told me weeks ago in general conversation that he refills the soap dispensers in the toilets for the cleaners, which I thought not much of at the time except maybe **Cool, someone else doing my work for me - fine, whatever**

Then, maybe a week before the holidays started I'm trying to find out one of the admin women's names, because I can't find it anywhere and everyone knows my name so I'm trying to learn all theirs.

We start going through admin staff when we're talking about the chick at the front desk, who I already know and old Ian pops out "You mean the dumpy bitch with the short hair?" and I say, "The skater-looking chick is Amanda." but that was only the first - repeatedly he'd refer to the office staff as dumpy or fat or bitches or a combination of the three.

This was telling of course and while Melanie asked whether I "called him out" for speaking like that, which of course I wouldn't because I'm not in the woke army and people have the right to say what they think, even if that mode of speaking wojld most assuredly see them fired if those highly-bonded office staff discovered he held those attitudes.

The conversation also, was between two men which I hold no particular liking for, but you can infer that Ian was talking the way he thinks a man is meant to talk to another man? Doodbro shit-talking, really.

Ian, evidently, isn't a very sharp judge of personalities - thinking *I* would think him calling the office chicks dumpy bitches was just the coolest shit ever, or whatever.

But hearing all this hateful shit from him made me think back to his changing the soap in the toilets 'for us'.

The soap gives him an excuse to be going into toilets, is exactly how that's seeming to me now: the difference being when cleaners are in the bathrooms it's outside school hours and as soon as people start arriving none of us - male or female or teacher for that matter - go in the bathrooms once people are there.

This GA though, is there during school hours and should not be fucking around with soap in toilets in the middle of the day.

I'll start refilling the soaps myself, tell Ian he does not need to anymore.

*...

Entry 41: Hoarding Gourmet Food

Sunday, 1st October 2023

12:24

It's getting kinda silly..

Having spent over a year swearing I'll never clean again and not only the consequent starvation of never having any money, but the omg-garbage food I'd eat when I did have it, now I've got more money than I know what to do with I've started hoarding food.

Not just food though, gourmet food: from the exclusive french liqueuers to the little tubs of Haagen Dazs ice-creams (which started as Connoisseur but I've since upgraded again), to the 4 x 800g trays of Chicken Kiev balls I had to put in snap-lok bags and roll up just to squeeze them in the freezer, today I've come back with 2 x 800g bags of Southern-crumbed whiting bites I knew I wouldn't have room to freeze, but got them anyway and - in a moment - will go bag-up and stuff in the way-too-small little ice-box section of the fridge.

The actual refrigerated part of the fridge, I do not use at all: only storing nicotine and other shit because I know any food I put in there won't be frozen in time, it'll just decompose more slowly than at room temperature and you know, the ONLY time I've ever eaten large amounts of food has been when I'm in a relationship and some woman is feeding me up like a cow - outside of those periods, I barely eat at all - contented with a single plate of food at night and maybe some minor snacking during the day if I'm feeling tired and need to consume calories.

Only a plate of food that is, but nice food: since the pay-checks have started rolling in, I no longer eat anything but high quality food: I'll only buy $9/loaf organic wholemeal breads with chia or other seeds or if I want soft-white-fluffy bread, the absolute lowest I'll go is Brioche.

It's not only the food though: the 10 x packets of Matcha I bought the other day will last me far longer than the expiration dates on any of them, the organic soaps I've bought are more than I need to keep myself clean and once I saw the pure noble Kava powder finally restocked and 1/2 price, I bought the entire shelf in one hit - just to ensure I've got enough to not run out, even though I don't use/drink that much of it.

Anyone who does not know, Kava is a ground root powder that tastes like fucking dog-shit mixed with pepper, but acts on your brain like a kind of weird mix of valium and alcohol, and while the supermarket shit does work, you need quite a lot of it to really feel the effects - a full 50g bag in one session isn't excessive if you want to actually register it's sedative effects because it's a natural plant product.

I don't gag down a whole bag at a time - though I have done for 'testing purposes' in the past - just a few teaspoons in a glass or two in the afternoons before work - to start slowing me down ahead of night so I'm ready for bedtime when it comes.

Upgrades to Biological Functionality

I've changed so many things about my diet and routine lately: not only have I adapted to the 2 x 4hr shifts at the start and end of the day, I've woven all these little tweaks and improvements to health, nutrition and rest in and around it and combined with the highly increased physical output and much higher quality foods I'm eating, I feel fucking great.

Other things I've changed about my daily routine over the last few weeks since having the money on-hand to do so, is replace 100mg caffeine tablets with Matcha Green Tea which, at a whopping 2.3% caffeine, gives me maybe more caffeine but in a natural creamy/milky latte which is a refreshing change from the taste of coffee and delivers the drug itself just fine.

The reason Matcha is so high in caffeine isn't because it's some special strain of the tea plant, but because it's the entire tea leaf ground down into a super-fine dusty powder, so where normal tea is soaked in water then tossed in the bin along with most of the caffeine it still contains with Matcha tea, you're eating ALL the tea leaves in your drink.

I mix mine as a latte: either iced or warm, in milk with sugar - tastes fucking great.

Of course I still load up on caffeine in the morning but rather than continuing in the afternoon like I was doing when I first started doing both 4hr shifts each day, I now slam a few glasses of Kava before leaving for work, then drink ONLY juice or milk while at work so by the time I finally get back home at 7:30PM, I'm already pretty relaxed and then a shot glass of the 40% french liqueur (always sipped, because it tastes WAY too good to skull) is enough to get me asleep surprisingly fast - without any hangover in the morning.

And sure it's much easier now but I still don't love getting out of bed at four in the morning but you know, even if I worked in an office starting at nine o'clock, I still wouldn't love getting out of bed at 7:00AM because it's an inconvenience to have to go to work at all, no matter what job you do - that's why they gotta pay us to do it - but like literally every morning, it's only a hassle until you're up and moving - once you're there and the caffeine's kicked-in everything is cool again.

Crucially, I've realized I have gotta have a physically active job to be happy in that job.

Being at some desk in a claustrophobic little hive of offices; sitting still all day staring at a screen and having to engage socially with people who all also sit at desks all day stuffing chocolates and snack foods in them because walking to the fridge and back is their idea of 'stretching' their legs or getting their 'blood pumping': people so unhealthy, walking up a flight of stairs leaves them panting to catch their breath - that shit, even for one full day, would make me SO miserable I'd be bored out my fucking brain no matter HOW intellectually engaging the work might be.

Additionally: even if you're fine sitting on your arse all day yawning your life away, you don't get your own desk in any of the community/social services workplaces I have seen in the last decade: 'hot desking' means you can't own even that little square of desk you work at - or fill it with shit you like - because if you're working for NSW Health or it's lesser government affiliates, you have to literally book a desk before working at a site though, maybe managers get a permanent space of their own; to sit, eat stack foods. get fat and stressed about paperwork *shrug*

I like being upright and moving around - it's that simple: the only time I'm happy to sit down and settle each day is at the end of it - after everything I need to do is done, when I'm cleared to relax and there's this misinformed believe prevalent within contemporary society, that having a job where you get paid to sit and use a computer is better than a physically strenuous position - because it's easier, softer and more comfortable.

But just like society uses group-think to devise attitudes and opinions often completely wrong, they're wrong in this instance too.

All throughout our evolution, humans have gone about their work physically: even 200 years ago people lived in stone cottages using firelight and no electricity, plumbing, running water or any other of the slew of conveniences we now have - all birthed from a desire to be more, and more and MORE confortable - comfort has become such a priority now, people are prisoners to it and will willingly 'comfort' their way into heart attacks, physical and mental dis-ease.

Group think is dumb, and society is the development of mammoth artifices decided on by that group think: everyone complains about being cold in winter - natural gas pipelines are created; the majority complain they're sick of stepping in horse shit - motor vehicles are invented; people complain about having to strain themselves physically to do everything - enter industrialisation and machines start doing all that work.

All this, in only a few hundred years until now, sitting at a desk eating all day while doing nothing to work off the energy we are consuming is considered 'living well' and fuck, group-think has even made being fat a 'body type' - not unhealthy, sick and unattractive no no, we condone the acceptance of fat people as normalized because people are dumb as bricks and a majority of dumb fuckers get together to group-think their tiny little brains into shifting social discourse to whatever sounds good at the time.

Fat and unhealthy is unattractive, not because of discrimination, but because we are biologically evolved to seek the healhiest mates we can and even when we're not looking for someone we might want to fuck, which is 90% of ALL human motivation anyway, we still favour those who are physically fit and healthy, because healthy people are more likely to survive life for longer, while those who are sick, fat and unhealthy get chonically ill then die sooner than the healthier among is.

None of this is even conscious: we react to this subconsciously the way we have since we were small rodents squeaking our way around dark fucking holes in the ground.

NATURE is ruled by survival of the fittest and we are nature like every other animal, so that's what we seek-out in every living thing around us.

Oh and fuck group-think: literally it's just the dumbest of our species being louder than those of us too intelligent to engage stupidity, means dumbcunt ideas get accepted as good ones by other dumbcunts - every day - then become socially normalized idiocies until that never should have been taken seriously at all to begin with.

Fuck the group-thinking morons.

Use your own brain - that's what it's there for.

Standard logic and common sense will always cut through socially adopted bullshit and those two functions of your intelligence are all you need to easily discern good ideas from bad ones: if it furthers our species ability to thrive and increases the health, strength and quality of life for all those who contribute to maintaining the world we all live in, it's GOOD; if it divides, fractures or makes our species weaker, less healthy and diminishes the quality of life for contributing members of society, it's BAD.

Those who do not contribute, do not get a say: no vote, no anything: if all a person can do is live off society like a leech they're no use to anyone and that goes equally for mentally-ill defectives, junkie shitstains and filthy-rich cock-snots who give nothing back - fuck anyone who only ever drains.

Simple.

This crazy old Duck

Tell ya who isn't repulsive: the lunatic old woman with the vermillion-red hair like a wranga duckling - even days after meeting her, she's left quite an impression as I'm sure she does everyone she talks to.

Like walking godamn Sunshine, this old woman is - I've never seen so much positive energy from someone her age and everyone she talks to instantly can't stop themselves smirking as she's yapping at 'em, because she's very amusing.

Again today I will probably get distracted by other things and not get around to returning to finish the day's entry, but I'll circle back to it.

But for right now, I've always been fucked if I can get the sweat stains out of my merino shirts around the armpits and, actually, I have a feeling it's probably because they're NOT sweat stains at all - but deodorant that's become warm then stuck to the fabric.

I've tried soaking, tried rubbing stain removal sprays into the wool then leaving it to sit a while and the darker areas are still there so I've grabbed a bar of Sards Wonder Soap - shit I've heard of forever but never tried - and will go in a moment to rub some of this into my older shirts to see whether it works..

Maybe I rub it into a lather on only half the top, then wash it and see if it works well enough to warrant applying to the others - mostly my lighter/coloured merino of course, because my black ones usually go over these and get replaced more often, since MacPac always have black and I LOVE dark colours - only ever wearing the lighter ones underneath to provide a little contrasting trim.

See how it goes.

And the book I've just started listening to on Audible: Jurassic Park - many years after the movie, because the reviews are great and people say the book is quite different to the film, though also I know the basic story progression so if I lose focus I don't need worry about not knowing wtf is going on.

I now have 88 books in my library.

Surprising how they accumulate, but also cool: any terrible books I return as soon as I know I dislike the narrator or story, so that's eighty-eight audio books I either like, or love and though you'll hear people saying how they still prefer physical books they can hold and own which I understand, I can't understand how anyone would still want to be forced to physically sit to read one, nor can I ever imagine subjecting my eyes to the strain of reading hundreds or thousands of pages of black text on white paper - when you can simply have that book read to you by a professional narrator..

Just the fact that listening means both me AND my eyeballs are free to do whatever we want places audiobooks way above physical ones.

*...

Entry 40: Compiler by Redhat

Saturday, 30th September 2023

12:48

What I'm currently listening to..

Also, what's kinda inspiring me to return to programming: not only to continue with my obviously unfinished site but because I love coding whenever I'm focused on it - building a machine with words and seeing a new component drop in place and run smoothly with everything else is fucking awesome.

But that's not even what I wanted to update today: I wanted to write about this crazy but also lovely and funny old woman at Blue Mountains Radio who came out the studio the other day and demanded I come back in with her so she could thank me for 'what I do', multiple times, profusely.

It's like people love me twice as much at every site I clean: for my job and how professional I am about it and for my personality or because they've seen me around town for years now, so I'm as local as the Cockatoos and - being the Katoomba equivilant of a Pokemon Collectible - I think people generally like finding me in their workplace because it gives them an opportunity to finally meet the dood they've seen for so long in town, but never had a reason to approach or talk to.

They probably are pleasantly surprised to discover how social I am once they start talking to me too, because I rarely even acknowledge people I don't know when I'm in town, unless there's some specific purpose to my talking to them.

Of course I never get tired of being praised by people because who doesn't love being told they're awesome and to be praised for such an easy job, well - who would get sick of that.

I do take the praise as a superficial expression of kindness and no more but I've got good at accepting it graciously and without being awkward or whatever.

Before I settle into this though, I have a lot to do: from cleaning to fixing my kitchen tap to mixing to texting people to washing my clothes, dinner tonight is crumbed Chicken Kiev bites with honey-mustard sauce on brioche rolls - which already sounds awesome.

Like every weekend, I'm more tired than I am during the week but that's cool: I'll load-up on protein-rich food like usual and relax in preparation for next week, which will be here in two blinks of a fucking eye though I've just been told it's a public holiday on Monday - excellent!

Entry 39: Katoomba TAFE

Wednesday, 27th September 2023

12:20

So many memories..

I first started cleaning this site in 2015 when I went permanent the first time and the TAFE was 4hrs/day for two cleaners: cranky old Ray and myself got pretty shitty with each other from time to time, but we always wound-up smoothing out and getting back on with it - usually it was the vacation clean week we got stressed because that's the only week each term we both had to do actual work.

Then I returned two years ago to cover for Ray while he was having a week off and almost hit Kevin for whining at me like a bitch about me not helping him because the cunt was such a feeb he couldn't even do his own half of the work in four hours and - I must add here - the work, is NOT HARD: like all the sites I've cleaned with Ventia - which is nearly all government facilities in the Blue Mountains - we get 4 hours every morning to do maybe 1 hours work.

So fucking easy.

But rocking up to cover Ray this time, there's (thankfully) no faggy fuckin' Kevin: the company finally cut the second cleaner so now it's only Ray there 4hrs/day, which is honestly all you need for a campus this small.

Monday morning, I walked all throughout the buildings - unlocking all the blocks and checking everything out - mostly just to see what's changed since I was there last, and mostly finding nothing really has: they've got new paint on the walls and new carpet so the whole place looks and smells much cleaner and newer now, but otherwise - same as ever.

Two hours after I get there, some worker at Blue Mountains Radio got there and welcomed me back, then the GA Steve arrived at 8:30 and welcomed me back, then I talked to him about what's going on and how I've 'married' my school to stop someone else being given the fucker right out from under me - then this morning some other fucker from the radio station arrived and said "You're back with us mate!", which I'm not - which I told him - just filling in for the old fart while he's having his allocated week off and told him Ray'll be back next week for the vacation clean, while I'll be back in my school to vacation clean that before school goes back.

Same shit happened at the little medical centre I'm doing in the afternoons this week: the receptionist told me how unhappy she is with Kara (the supervisor) filling-in for the regular cleaner, then went on to explain she did not put the bins out last week so they had to get a special pickup and the cleaning has really gone downhill while she's been doing it.

If only she knew just how little I actually do when I'm at a site casually covering for other cleaners: 90% brain, 10% actual work - I literally do only what I need to make the place look cleaned each day.

"I see I see", I told her, "I'll fix it don't worry and I'll tell Kara she's done an awful job."

Receptionist seemed pretty happy with that.

There will be plenty of actual work once I start back permanent at my school of course: not only because there's just so many more people using the site every day but because it's now my school so I can/will start being more invested in it.

But even then after years of cleaning schools and TAFEs and government offices, you learn what staff in each type of site care about being done when they get there each morning: they want their classrooms to LOOK like they're clean which still amounts to a lot less actual work than you would assume.

Also I've just ordered a new pair of Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro: there's nothing wrong with the ones I have, but I've had them now for over two years - which itself is testament to the arse-kicking quality of the technology: still they hold their charge all day long, though maybe closer to 8hrs than the 12hrs+ they used to last.

But like the new clothes, the stocking up on vape supplies and the two years of new disposable contact lenses, buying a fresh pair now will mean I'll have the old ones as a backup pair of anything happens to the new ones bit, also, starting the 9th October I'll move to Permanent full-time so won't be swimming in casual-rate cash which means now's the best time to spend all this money upgrading and updating and refreshing my, everything.

Also, Chloe's no longer my little Virgo mascot: that one act of selfishness from her - while not flipping me to hating her - did shift my viewpoint toward her.

Here I am with a little bag containing ~$180 worth of quality gifts I'd bought/ordered specifically for her and purely because I liked the little bitch and she has a tantrum, tells me to fuck off and goes full fucking moo-job when I tell her I'll need to be dropped back off in Katoomba after the role-play to stop me being late for work - I role-play I was willing to go to Wentworth Falls and back that afternoon just so she could get it done and at a time of day when TAFE would have been over so the fool would have been driving that way to go back home anyway.

Cow.

Blablaing at me in text about being sick of my shit and making out like I've spent the last year getting her to do things for me when quite literally the only thing I'd asked her in over nine months of knowing her, was for a photo of her eye so I could draw it - for her.

Outside of that request, all she's got from me is a steady stream of free adoration for existing.

So selfish holy shit..

It's done now anyway and I'm too busy to be sitting around being pissy about it, though the gift bag is gone - you can just forget about that.

Amazing how quickly someone can lower your opinion of them when you've chosen to filter-out any ugly bits and only seen the best in them.

Yes, she - along with every other woman I'm nice to - is a proxy for the ex who is the only woman I've wanted since knowing her.

Oh well.

Everything ends sooner or later.

Both Jade and I will be out of this diploma pretty soon anyway if something noteworthy hasn't changed by the time we resume classes: for myself, though I'm not committed to quitting quite yet, continuing won't be because I want a job in social services but purely for the piece of paper I'll get and for Jade, dunno - she has a love/hate relationship with hospitality and will probably be drawn back to her current job and - like me - fail to see the point in all the study for a few dollars/hour more pay in a social services position that's ten times more stressful than what she's already being paid well to do.

Maybe if we were studying Graphic Design or Economics or anything where making a shitload more money is a posibility, but social workers aren't renowned for being wealthy - at any level.

Like I said whatever 'flavour' of community services you choose, you are spending vast amounts of time sitting in a chair at a desk: that's strike one - I LIKE being on my feet moving around which is why sitting in a classroom all day fucken pisses me off so much.

Then you look at the clients: whether you're being told you're a cunt all day my mentally ill shitstains who are so drugfucked they're no more than a drain on society or wiping-up shit, changing adult diapers and mopping vomit off the floor to clean-up after some disabled client with cerebral palsy, you are doing all this nasty-arse shit for only $5/hour more than *I* already get for cleaning schools.

But I don't have to TOUCH vomit, shit or bodily fluids, everyone tells me they appreciate what I do and thank be daily for being there and I never break a sweat cleaning.

Why would I continue to complete a diploma that qualifies me to work harder for the same hourly wage, but with all that piss, shit and sickness added to my days?

Then there's the environment: schools are great - everyone has so much energy, everyone is positive and healthy and obsessed with dinosaurs, drawing and learning - social services by contrast, is despressed arseholes telling you how fucked everything is OR disabled arseholes who MAKE you depressed every day just because of how fucking rubbish THEIR lives are.

Cleaning schools is healthier, cleaner, more energetic, same fucking pay and work that's much more secure.

Community services are constantly at risk of government funding cuts which means your job as a worker is constantly at risk too.

"Funding cuts! We can't afford a cleaner!", says NO school in the history of ever: KPS has been a public primary school for over fifty years and shows no chance of closing down and the cleaner in any school is 100% necessary - I will be there to witness maintenance staff, teachers, admin and casual school staff come and go on a cycle because of funding being reduced.

It's just a no-brainer.

Of course not ALL cleaning is equal: cleaning at the Carrington was the lowest form of the work I've done - second only to cleaning public toilets - but schools are a different situation entirely: the energy of a school full of kids and the adults who gain energy just being around the kids, along with the super-social nature of the place makes it the most fun you will have cleaning anything.

Far as pay goes - even teachers don't get much more than I do.

I should edit all this right down, since I've kinda just 'stream of conciousness' wrote it so it's pretty sloppily, written, but you know I'll never get around to it.

The point to all the above, is while I had no job last semester and categorically stated I did not want to be a cleaner, I realized since resuming work again I actually love it: not all cleaning like I said - I'd never work in a hotel again, never work in a nursing home, never have nor will clean public toilets and I never want a Council cleaninig position and I never want to clean a high-school uh, anywhere - but primary schools, even as a cleaner they're just nice places to work.

And this school specifically is like the Jewel of Katoomba as far as sites here go.

I get to work 10 minutes late in the afternoon: the Principal herself tells me she'd rather I took my time getting here than to see me being stressed out about being late.

I just straight-out ignore the leaves all over the place and tell the principal that having lived in Katoomba eight years or so now, it's a pretty nature-loving, hippie kinda place so though other cleaners might get out the leaf-blower and stress-out over leaves all over the yard, I figure most of us kinda like them - long as they aren't inside the buidlings - and she not only is fine with this, she agrees - she likes them too.

I tell the teachers I don't pick up pencils or any other shit the kids leave around their desks on the floor: the teachers agree, that's fine the kids should pick them up anyway.

I mostly leave the finger marks on the windows - only making a minor effort to wipe them off maybe once per week before I leave in the morning: everyone tells me that since the kids will be blowing raspberries on the glass as soon as it's clean anyway, don't worry about it.

The kids themselves - compared to some other schools - are clean, or at least do their best to be: when kids are naughty in class, teachers will send them outside to do my job for me - pick up rubbish and clean the yard.

Last day before the holidays: just as I'm walking into the office one the kids is coming out and stands there holding the door open for me - which I thanked him for.

And you know, though the two sites I'm doing this week are right here in town and easy as fuck since, well, one is almost totally empty all day while the other's just tiny, I already miss KPS and now find sites where there's only me and a few other people, deprtessing to clean.

I like the both the people and energy of the primary school enough to miss it already - even with only a week away from it.

Cointreau, by the way, is better than Grand Marnier for Orange liqueurs.

Maybe not "better", but Cointreau is fresher, cleaner, more crisp and orangey but I bought both today so I could try the latter, which has a more oak-barrel infused flavour and though it's got Cognac in it, I prefer the very fresh, pure orange lightness of the Cointreau but they're both 40% alc/vol and taste too good to slam in a shot glass like shitty whiskeys and other spirits - both need to be sipped and swished around your mouth because they taste SO good you WANT to taste them as long as possible.

Maybe Grand Marnier is just better as a winter drink - it certainly tastes warm and woody enough to best be drunk in front of a fireplace.

Entry 38: Нет

Sunday, 24th September 2023

11:11

Spring-clean today..

Not that I'm caring about a spotless place, I just want to be organized.

Since I started work again I've done almost no cleaning here - only kept myself and clothes clean since I'm surrounded by people all day - until even the online orders I've picked-up have just been dumped on the coffee table and left there to accumulate, so I don't even have a foot of free space anymore on tables and shelves around me.

I gotta get organized: primarily so I can get my days moving easier without shoving shit around trying to find crap.

Maybe do no "Nope" list later when I've washed clothes, cleaned the kitchen, showered and eaten though, iunno it's Sunday - the weekend - and for months prior to giving Chloe the diary I'd not bothered to update on weekends because what the fuck, there's more important things to be doing on days off than write-out random thoughts to a page live as I unpack them myself.

Also - while I'm waiting for my merino to soak - I want to clean the blue and grey Scarpas that are now old, but still $450 shoes I've never bothered to even wipe: starting at 5:00AM at Katoomba TAFE in the morning there's no buses or whatever, so I'll have to walk, so I'm not wearing the new ones - why wear them uneccessarily just walking up the main street and I don't have my old shoes at the two sites I'm cleaning the next five days, so that acidic blue chemical we use to mop tile floors will fuck the new ones once I get to work anyhow.

But I should still clean the old ones anyway and kinda have to: I would feel all wrong wearing grubby boots with brand new workpants and merino and sure Katoomba TAFE will be empty because holidays, but I don't give fuck-one about staff there anyway - I don't want to feel uncoordinated.

Apparently, all you need to clean suede leather is a dry brush and rubbing alcohol - both of which I have.

Caviar dip with white sourdough rolls for lunch, caramelized roast Turkey wings for dinner (and turkey gravy because I just saw I have flour and refuse to waste the amazing pan juices), Belgian Chocolate with Madagascan Vanilla-bean ice-creams for dessert and imported vintage cheese with Cointreau before bed - deciding what to eat is easy when everything in your kitchen is stuff you want to eat and I've got a few thoughts about that too

I feel so good I'm hard without even a sexual thought involved.

And holy shit that Turkey: like Chicken, but, dinosaur-sized - two wings about the same size as two chicken thighs, with double the flavour and the head chef of the Hilton in Sydney taught me all about sauces and gravies years ago, so as much as I hate to trumpet my own abilities, I've had those perfected since I was twenty.

So good.

Entry 37: да

Saturday, 23rd September 2023

12:44

I lot of things..

Now I've finally upgraded myself from scraping by in survival mode to having most the shit I want, I want more.

MORE..

Short-term, or shortish term, I want these - they'll help me get organized:

- A whiteboard: no stupid Big-W home shit, but a school classroom sized motherfuck I can screw to the wall and use to write whatever thoughts, todo lists or other shit I feel like writing.

- A new laptop: a refurbished business one, since they're flogged-off second hand dirt-cheap regularly online and most business devices are top-shelf hardware.

- A year on the site: stop me worrying about it at all again until 2024.

- To move to a nice, huge share house with a backyard garden vegetables can be grown.

- Everyone at my new school to love me, oh wait - they already do.

Matter of fact texting Jade the other day about how over the diploma we are now, this was one the primary points I made: since every woman over 30 is bogged-down with kids from the failed, full of shit "one true forever love" she lied to herself about ever starting a family with in the first place, finding a woman without all that awful broken-family slops in her life is like finding a chicken that can play piano.

So everyone else has to love me a small amount each or I'm gone and I'm getting a LOT more love from everyone at the school than TAFE has provided since the Cert3 ended.

Add to this, the fact that at least half this diploma class are spoilt 17 year old tosswads who are ONLY there because they're too fat, lazy or both to get a job so their parents forced them to enrol, well, makes the class no inspiration.

And the current certificate 3 next door? All high-school rejects who'll do nothing at all and will still be living at home sponging off their parents when they're 40.

In both classes and across the whole ~17 year old demographic, the only single 'thing' they have as individuals is their horseshit belief that they're SO messed-up and SO misunderstood, which is nothing but at excuse to sit on their arse and do nothing and created simply by them telling themselves they're messed up until they believe it - fucking cocksnots.

Of our original group by contrast, Chloe at least works part time, Kate at least works part time, Jade works her ass off, I'm working my arse off again and of the very few new additions to our corner I actually like at all, that foxy slut who's never there works in disability services already, Leah and Leanne work.

What's the foxy bitches name - Maddie, yeah: love to pin her to a wall - lick the back of her neck like a cat while I fuck her..

Anyway one the site's I'll be cleaning next week is the Medical Center right behind the school and just being in there the other night for an hour or so, man..

Last day before the holidays right, so I get to the school and wish everyone a good holiday until the school is empty then fuck around a while before going out front to meet another supervisor who was stopping by to give me the keys to Katoomba TAFE and to whom I wound up standing there at the gate talking to for almost an hour.

She tells me that none of the cleaners at the High School are bothering with the vacuuming or desks or anything today because the GAs will only come in and get shit all over the carpets anyway, so don't worry about doing my usual afternoon clean.

This made logical sense to me, so I continued talking to her and did nothing but change a few bins, got the keys off her and then locked-up, armed the school and walked around the corner to the Medical Centre to meet Kara - my actual supervisor - who was cleaning it when I got there.

I basically just went there to grab the keys and alarm code so I can clean it next week but got there at around six o'clock to sign the iPad and marry my school like I said, but also to help Kara finish so she could get out of there since she lives in Penrith.

This a long winded set-up for my point but whatever.

The Medical Center

All I had to do was vacuum this tiny, house-sized site and fark me: coming from having a whole school to myself, to this little shitcunt box around the corner I literally felt claustrophobic just being inside the place an hour or so.

Roof so low I could reach up and touch the ceiling.

Walls so close I couldn't stretch my arms out walking down the hallway.

Tiny fucking offices with 5-6 desks in each one, oh my GOD - THIS is a Community Services NSW Government workplace and I can hardly fucking move when it's just MYSELF in the building!!

How could I sit at a cheesy chipboard desk in a cluster-fuck of offices so small they're like a rabbit warren, getting fatter by the day with twenty other social workers who're already fat and have to listen to drug-fucked idiots blubbering about their failed fucking lives ALL DAY, EVERY DAY.

For what, $5/hour more than I get for cleaning?

You KIDDING me?

NOPE.

No fucking way.

Half the cunts in our diploma class aren't even physically capable of doing the work I do NOW and they're only half my age: can you imagine how weak and feeble they'll be in another few years if they actually get a job in Social Services? Sitting at their desks all day stuffing brownies down their throats telling themselves bullshit about taking it easy and 'self care' garbage?

Underlines the kind of shit I would have said to Cathy six months ago: society is already PACKED with fucking snowflakes - we need to push people to be stronger and get fit - physically AND mentally - not continue breeding ever weaker, softer, more fragile people like that's anything to aspire to.

Even from the most basic biological perspective: fit and strong are attractive in both sexes - weak and blubbering and unsure of yourself, never is.

It's real fucking simple.

Yes Chloe, I KNOW you could; and Jade, and a couple others.

But seeing how cramped and small that Medical Centre is, you would - anyone would - be better off cleaning and staying fit as fuck, than joining the army of weakness our society is now spewing forth.

You know how we all HATE having to sit in class for 4 hours straight right?

That is ALL you do as a worker in a place like that: sit at a fucking desk, walk out front to get another nutcase, take them in another room and sit at another desk a while, rinse and repeat, day after day.

I would go fucking nuts in a job with so much sitting at a desk!

And this is what we're 'training' for? Sitting at a desk acting dignified all day?

Nope.

I wasn't planning to rant about the diseased state society has festered into tonight either - just write a simple list of what I DO and DON'T want - but there you fuckin' go.

Harden the fuck up: we didn't get where we are sitting in a circle talking about our "feelings" three times a week and crying about it - we got here being the strongest motherfucking species on the planet.

What the fuck.

Fit and strong has always been sexy, yet society continues to produce weak, skittering idiots obsessed with their own dumb make-believe problems then wonders why the birthrate's plumetted!

Ice-cream will cool me back down in time for bed of course and I can eat anything now: five kilos have melted off me just in the last few weeks of doing this school and eight hours of cardio a day means even deep-fried butter won't stick anymore.

Everyone should clean schools: like 40 hours a week in a gym you get paid for - I haven't felt this healthy since I cleaned Blackheath Primary full-time like, three years ago.

I'll write about this next time maybe, since I've been meaning to: I know there's plenty of cleaners - probably the majority - who fit the hollywood cliche of the bored school janitor dressed in grubby blue overalls, but I am not one of them.

From balancing sweepers on the tip of my fingers to spinning handles between them, I play with my equipment and lean into the physicality of the job when I'm doing the actual work, so it's more like a circus act than just straight cleaning - eyeballs watching while I work, because I'm an attention whore, as you know.

Entry 36: I've signed the ipad

Friday, 22nd September 2023

20:33

Married Katoomba Public.

The school is mine now - contractually - though it means I'll get less in the bank thanks to the fuckers with-holding pay for annual, sick and long-service leaves (I know I get it back but it's still my money they're holding which I do not love) and - compared to the work equivalent of casually dating - now I'm responsible for all aspects of cleaning for the school, I gotta answer to anyone's bitching about anything not done right.

The good news, financially - excluding the ongoing full-time wage thing - is she's both foward dated my shift from casual to permanent for the 9th of next month when school goes back and loaded me up with another two additional sites for next week, so I'm still doing full-time hours on a casual rate right up until the 9th.

This means an additional ~$5,000 heading for my bank in the lead up to the holidays ending and my switching to the full-time permanent pay, which is yeah less but I can safely have days off and leave without some cunt stealing my school while I'm gone - it's contractually mine now.

Most of this last chunk of casual pay will go in my savings account because, really, I've already bought everything I need or want for now: I'll get another vape order happening but that's only $150, then I'll be done spending money for a while.

Oh, and an ounce of weed.

That's ~$600 but that's still nothing, especially considering the two months of solid sleep I'll get every night without needing melatonin or other nasty pharmaceutical shit - an investment, that is.

I am not only happy with this forward trajectory, I'm calm and content as a cow 

Oh, plus a year upfront on this site - which is about to be suspended because I spent so much on new clothes, shoes, contact lenses, vape hardware/flavours/nicotine and much better quality food and drink this fortnight - that's maybe $300.

I'll email them tomorrow for an extension till next week, then not have to worry about it until 2024.

Orange French liqueur and baked Turkey wings for dinner tonight.

Not because Turkey is fancy, but on special so I got two kilograms of Turkey wings for the same price as a tiny tray of Duck and Turkey is still much tastier than chicken

Taking a while to cook though..

Entry 35: Should I

Sunday, 17th September 2023

10:00

Buy a new pair of Scarpas..

Italian made hiking boots - they're SO fucking good; so comfortable, so well made they just don't even stretch to fit your feet so you have to get the right size, but when you do you get the kind of footwear GOD would wear 

So we're clear, I'm not talking about their cheaper models of shitty Romanian-made rubbish - those cunts wear like butter, but they're comfortable for a few months..

Of course I should: I've upgraded everything else I'm wearing.

Done, plus a few two packs of new socks because, yeah be fucked if I'm wearing anything BUT new socks with new $500 Italian shoes.

Just like Hugo Boss designed the famously amazing looking Nazi uniforms that made them a top shelf clothing brand, Scarpa provided footwear for the Italian army in WW2 and probably still do knowing how important quality and comfort are for soldiers on their feet all day and night.

Italian shoes are as world renowned as the Italian leather that makes them.

Entry 34: Cranky Bitch Meow 😾

Friday, 15th September 2023

14:22

I understand..

28°C on Monday: best just someone lock you inside a cool-room for the day and it's only getting hotter -- we've only just started Spring 🔥😱🔥

Though, I'm wearing two merino tops and I'm not hot 🤔

Warm, sure, but not hot - not sweaty or even sticky.

Orange and Vanilla: I will mix this on the weekend - maybe a drop or two of Elderflower just to lighten it up a bit, bunch of sweetener so it's liqueur-like

"There's a Mouse"...

Vicki and Aneleise just come upstairs while I'm stuffing a pasta snack-bowl in me to ask whether I know what to do about a mouse they've discovered in their classrooms - apparently the offending animal has chewed-up a bag of flour plus a packet of popcorn 🤔

*...

Unexplainable Sounds..

Know what fuck the mice: I hear noises here at night; doors clicking shut, just then a rattling like someone was locked out and wanted in at the other end of the block when there's barely even a breeze outside, floorboards creaking on the floor above me - shit like that and I know I'm the only one here because I said goodnight to the last two teachers two hours ago then walked all around the school, personally locked all the blocks, doors and gates myself.

No, there's no activities or groups using any part of the school..

Not even that scabby second hall the school hires-out and we don't even bother cleaning - I know which nights various groups use various parts of the school and these noises are never related to those people, sections of the school or even nights even the school is used.

None of these sounds are persistent or repeat themselves and they're not loud or urgent or even alarming, but they're there.

There's also possums in the roof - I heard those padding around right above me in the ceiling, so I know what animals sound like and animals can't close doors so those sounds aren't possums.

Entry 33: Fuck these arseholes

Tuesday, 12th September 2023

10:52

They forcing me to go Permanent full-time..

Yeah I am sure there are people everywhere who'd love a permanent full-time job instead of being casual, but I'm not one of them.

I've contacted someone in head office who's basically told me the company will always give sites away to whatever cocksuck agrees to be a permanent employee, even if that means an endless stream of idiots who cannot do the work and quit a week later - or one 4-hour shift later in the last cleaners case - which is so obviously stupid when most companies want casual workers because they're easier to get rid of if they're shit.

Thing is though, I'm not shit.

I'm so not shit, I'm willing to hang everything on the quality of work I produce without being concerned they'll want to get rid of me: I know how to handle all aspects of a site - the cleaning itself is the easy part: the social aspect and staying on the right side of staff, teachers, kids, the GAs is more important than being a good cleaner.

Schools are social places yeah and being likable is much more important than the service you're there to provide: if everyone likes you, an inch of dust on half the surfaces and filthy windows will be overlooked -- if they dislike you, no amount of perfection in your work will matter - they'll always be looking for shit that's not done.

It's weird though, how you get attached to a school..

Caretakers might think they get attached to the sites they work at, but they don't have half the familiarity a cleaner does with the place: the caretaker screws shit in the walls and repairs leaky taps right, but cleaners are all over the school every day - just two weeks in I know exactly which doors are dodgy, which rooms are used how often, what people throw in their dustbins, who are the messier or cleaner staff, classrooms and kids and what's inside every room in the school.

The cleaner is the first there to disarm and open everything up for everyone else each day and the one who locks everything back up again then arms the school before leaving.

You get attached to the literal, physical property I mean, and the spaces in it: the fact you're the only person there and have the place to yourself for hours every day gives you the opportunity to explore every corner of the place and the cleaning itself is almost irrelevant, in a sense - like being a part of a tiny village of a few hundred people, it is.

Iunno.

On top of that, you get attached to the people: the more you get to know the teachers and staff and kids, the more you feel a sense of duty to them - I mean I can get away with only wiping desks every few days when they start getting grubby but do it every day because I know it's nicer to start the morning with a nice clean desk, as an example.

Last few days one of the teachers who was most reserved towards me - when I started a month ago - has started to get chatty with me, so last night I cleaned and tidied her little activities room for her - not only vacuuming like I would all the other teachers, I moved all the shit out the middle the floor, put fluffy toys back in the corner in their pile and yeah - spent a few extra minutes I would not have bothered spending, had she not warmed to me.

The teachers themselves get territorial about their own classrooms, I get territorial over the entire school as well as the teachers and their little classrooms.

That's not really succinct, but it's hard to describe.

Also hard to describe, is how the moment I sign as a permanent enmployee I will be looking for a better job - the ironic opposite to the result Ventia expect to get by 'locking' someone into a specific employment contract thinking that'll ensure they have a long-term worker.

They will not.

But, I got Chloe's Iris..

I won't post it here since she's not permitted me to but it looks just like an Opal flattened into a disk - gorgeous: complete with a little brown fleck you'd not even notice at a glance.

Just gotta get the rest of her eye.

It'll be worth it though: same size as the Estonian chicks eye stuck to the wall behind us in our classroom, but I'll use colour for the iris and greyscale for the rest the eye framing it

Also it brighter news - which is anything but me endlessly ranting about my work arrangement: I have not had a single smoke - nor thought about buying actual tobacco - since being neck-deep in vape supplies again, which is sure boring for news but good nonetheless.

Entry 32: No reply

Monday, 11th September 2023

10:20

From my supervisor anyway..

Pisses me off - I like this school: the feel of the place, the staff, the fact it's so old you can get away with skipping shit and the proximity - being on my side of Katoomba of course means there's zero travel required.

No wait, I'm on a train

Entry 31: Nope

Sunday, 10th September 2023

15:20

Not writing this weekend..

It's weird how my best, most profound thoughts never make it here.

Like vapor wisps they swirl around, merge and part several times a second giving me visual flashcards of a thought much larger than the sum of it's parts.

I cannot see what's in front of me when I'm having these thoughts, because they're like hallucinations: might just be a shape or faces or a visual memory merging and dancing together in my vision that literally block-out whatever is in front of me a few seconds.

Just as I'm getting a proper look at what's past these thoughts it's over: mind snapping back like a rubber-band to whatever wall or random object my eyes have been pointed at.

Today, I remembered I had 2 credits on Audible and am listening to The Tatooist of Auchwitz and Schindlers' List both deeply sad books, but clearly illustrating what is wrong with me - in a round-about way.

Entry 30: Right..

Friday, 8th September 2023

12:48

Two hours to myself..

I've got to tell Sonja her teaching sucks next week - nobody else will do anything but tolerate it and be polite: how's she ever going to re-format her lessons if we all let her just go right on thinking she's fucking awesome?

We got a year of this woman: a fucking year!

Also, thinking about her walking over our corner to compliment the origami animals I've lined-up along the front of Chloes desk: fuck her patronizing bullshit 'Oh aren't you talented! These rabbits are adorable!'.

Folding paper requires no talent at all - even drawing isn't about talent: it's the expression of intelligence through the imposition of creative will - drawing, music, painting, dancing are all about expression, not talent - the more you do it, the better you get and maybe some people have a natural aptitude for visual arts or dance or music, but anyone can do it if they want to.

Fuck, I was meant to learn a new animal per week!

Epic fail there, but you know what, if I learnt a new one every week we'd fast run out of animals in a few weeks.

And two minutes ago I had two hours: how does time work again sorry?

The School

People keep addressing me by my name: I've never heard "Jason" so many times in 4hrs in my life; Jason your paper towels are in bla bla next to the bla bla!, Seeya Jason! have a good weekend!, Hi Jason!..

It's very weird.

I know teachers and school staff are trained to use names and remember them, but I have no fucking clue ANY of their names so they are making me feel like I should know SOME names after what - how long have I need here? A month?

Wait! I know the hot blonde 4th grade teacher is Anneleise, but - everyone remembers her name pretty quick, I'm sure.

And the principals name is Amanda, I think..

That's it - after a month 🤔

I gotta go do something or I'll have to do it Monday morning..

Hard, when you've an entire school to yourself and don't have to look busy since everyone's gone

Entry 29: Uggh

Thursday, 7th September 2023

09:51

Already I regret coming in today..

You know what the problem with Sonjas' class is: Sonja.

I wouldn't need sleeping tablets if just get a recording of her voice to fucking sedate me every night.

Clearly, she's delighted to be talking about herself every week to a captive audience, but the captive audience - everyone in the room - look like they too regret coming all this way to listen to this bitch waffle on about herself and on the rare occasion she's not talking about herself, she's giving her opinion about shit with no apparent desire to hear what anyone else thinks about it.

Meanwhile, we can ALL hear the fun going on next-door in our old classroom..

I came in today because I got a few hours sleep so thought why the fuck not - but her 'teaching style' is like a very low quality, 4-hour long TED talk about, oh right, herself.

Someone needs to let her know.

On the upside, work placements won't be as, dull: no sitting in a chair all day listening to theory - Sonja doing all the taking then telling the class we had a 'good brainstorming session' - and meaning it

The school..

They love me - to summarise, which I have to because I'm bored to sleep by this class and about to follow the lead of Chloe - who rocks up today looking fresh as a spring flower - not that she needs to try.

Look around you Chloe: you could wear a potato sack - you'd still make every other woman look like shit.

It's an objective fact.

Really, I knew the Diploma would be more serious, but as it stands Wednesday is probably the only day we get that's like a normal class: Tuesdays we don't even need to attend anymore and Thursdays with Sonja are SO BAD, Leslie actually asked when she arrived "What's this vibe in the room?" pointing out the weird flatness of the room.

Add why is this Killer Kustard making me cough - it's my second favourite liquid, it's never made me cough before

Entry 28: 🤐

Monday, 4th September 2023

19:21

😜

But no, yes; I'll start tomorrow questioning her on why she'd lie about people doing 'her' work for her, when it was never her work anyone was ever doing - she just tells everyone that's what's happening.

It's arguably even creepier than if she were just a lazy bitch, but then, she's a lazy bitch too.

It's not one or the other - it's both.

I will find out what her malfunction is.

Entry 27: Cutest Shit, ever II

Sunday, 3rd September 2023

15:51

Can't let this go unmentioned..

The rubber-band necklace I'd found at the school; on the ground, out back in the main yard and swept it up with the rest of the wrappers and bits of paper at first, then picked it out, but rather than drop it off at the Lost Property cupboard, decided to keep it.

I've also decided to keep all the graphite pencils I pick up off the ground while vacuuming, because if I'm going to bend down and grab them they become rubbish I'm saving from the bin - also these are school-supplied pencils there's never any end to: some days it looks like it's rained fucking pencils and I only bother picking them up when they build to a certain level - most days I'll just push them around with the vacuum head and leave them there or shove 'em under nearby cupboards.

Right after I've sat down and started unpacking whatever shit I'd brought for the day I remembered the necklace - obscure walermelon pendant, also rubber, hanging from the middle and put it on Chloes desk.

The class starts and everyone is told we're doing an "excercise" whereby our Thursday Teacher - Sonja - begins by telling everyone to close their eyes and clear their mind: from here, she led us through fifteen minutes of the cheesiest Therapy cliche you could imagine - be aware of your shoulders, arms, hands, fingers; "Say hello" to your lungs, then your heart and before she even started I'd requested we call it a Game at least - since "Excercise" sounds, yeah not fun much.

She chuckled in that robotically reheased way - like she does to all humour from all the class - then told me "No" with a robotically reheased smile - head tilted to a robically reheased angle of ten-degrees off center, designed to affect, something, though I'm not quite sure what.

I made an origami bunny with the fifteen minutes, from a new kind of paper that's all brown I found in the paper-recycling box at the primary school - almost everyone else was happy enough to go along with it until Jade and Kate got there and I don't remember whether they joined in or fucked with their laptops and phones, but the 'Excercise" ended shortly after that.

Shortly after that, I look around at Chloe and see she's completely dismantled this necklace - hundreds of individual little coloured rubber-bands are ALL over her desk in a pile!

K..

So many individual rubber-bands once it's all pulled apart like that, I vaguely wondered why she'd broken the necklace, but also don't mind - I didn't make it to start with, so whatever, she can do that.

Then, about an hour later, she's finished a bracelet much smaller than the necklace but also much more tightly knitted together - she tells me it wasn't made correctly, too loose or whatever, then hands the new improved version back to me..

Less than two hours with only her hands she made that and an hour or so beforehand, seeing the pile of rubber-bands, I'd figured maybe she's feeling destructive this morning to pull it all apart.

My vague initial assumption was, incorrect

And in case two days of cute isn't warm and fuzzy enough for you - here's the puppy I stopped to pat the other day happily chewing on my hand.

Tiny dog, it was a she which I told the old couple with the dog was better: having had male dogs, females are just easier and a litter of puppies makes them protective of everyone in the house - opposed to male dogs always pissing on everything and growling at people purely to be an arsehole.

I've decided that i need googley eyes to stick on my animals: how much better would they all look with stick-on googley eyes - instantly, once they have eyes they'd have the beginnings of a personality.

Oh also, that soap dispenser bullshit in one the girls toilets - it wasn't the students being cheeky: I cleaned that room the night before, wiped-up the pink soap on the floor and mopped it; the next morning, before anyone had used the bathroom, there was a puddle of pink soap the size of a coffee-mug - on the floor, right underneath the dispenser

Nothing to do with human malice: the dispenser just leaks.

And that trollop comes back to work tomorrow morning after having most of last week off, now I remember.

On the one hand, great she's doing a couple of classrooms so I don't have to do them, but - on the other - the bitch annoys me with her long breakfasts and the way she fuckin' hovers around when she stops to talk to me: it's not enough to just say it as she's walking past or whatever, she'll stop and say something random, then pause, then say something else unrelated, then turn to go before turning back to say some other random shit again.

I would not accept the site full-time just because dealing with her every morning would piss me off too much.

Already I'm fantasising about smacking her in the head with a wet mop.

I would prefer to just clean all her bullshit myself and be rid of her than start every weekday listening to her, but no, I haven't told my supervisor I want out the morning shift yet: I need to at least give it a fortnight to see if I get into the routine a bit but also: they'll be looking for another cleaner to replace me regardless, because I've been clear about staying Casual - they'll just be waiting for a newly recruited worker who'll agree to do it AND go Permanent, which I won't do.

It's +Casual Loading or nothing, they get from me.

Fuck 'em.

I'll be applying for jobs in our sector by this time next week and I now have two community services I legitimately want to do work placement with: just gotta grind a few hours to catch-up on that online DV shit and no, I haven't finished my new resume yet but for good reason - I've decided to do it in Corel Vector as an Illustrator drawing, so I can have shaded shapes and layers etcetera.

Also that I need an Expression of Interest letter in a matching visual theme: because I'm applying for more than a manual-labour job with these, that extra level of visual creativity should be well received by any intelligent employer reading it which I assume there'll be more of in any social services organization, than a cleaning company.

*...

Entry 26: Cutest Shit, ever

Saturday, 2nd September 2023

11:57 AM

Oops..

This was just under a bench on a shelf alone for a day or two, when I thought I should check to make sure there's not fruit or meat or other food festering in that little snap-lock container.

But when I leaned down and picked it up, I see these inside..

A tiny box-full of even tinier Dinosaurs

I was so in love with dinosaurs when I was around that age, I wanted to be one when I grew up and I'm sure people thought that was cute and all, but I was serious - I legit wanted to be a T-Rex! Lie #1: You can be anything you want to be - you cannot be anything you want

Naturally, I had plenty of plastic dinosaur toys from leggo-sized ones to the 1-foot (30cm) ones reflecting my obsession and even had a dinosaur tail one of my grandmothers sewed together for me with an elastic strip that held it to the waist of a 6-8 year old me: I would role-play my Dinosaur I remember and while the details are fuzzy, I remember stalking around pretending pretty hard myself being a T-Rex; stalking around the loungroom and bedroom as that Dinosaur.

Wait, I gotta find my last resume so I can copy-paste what I'm keeping into a new word document but also, I grabbed a seperate 1-litre vanilla-bean ice-cream for two different brands and I gotta go start on them -- Connoisseur, by the way, is the GOAT Vanilla Ice-cream.

GOATest you will find in Woolworths or Coles, certainly.

It's veering off topic now, but I've discovered that the primary difference between cheap shit and premium ice-creams, is the density of the stuff: cheap ice creams are whipped to the point most what's in the container is air - premium ice-creams are thicker, denser and taste better because of it, plus the better quality ingredients but mostly the density.

Don't look at me like that: quality is everything, for (almost) everything.

But this kid, whoever they are, loves their Dinosaurs enough to keep them safe in a snap-lock food container.

I want to update my site, you know but it's so involved I usually create new functions and features in bursts every now and then and now, I have too many other things to do to do it.

And here, some flowers for you, since I haven't stopped to take a nature-pic for a while..

Almond Flowers, I think they are

Entry 25: Resume Update

Friday, 1st September 2023

8:29 PM

This weekend.

You too: you have a Cert3 in Social Services - you should update it and start looking for a better job.

All our corner of the room: Jade, Leanne, You, Me and Kate - Tony works in housekeeping at the Carrington still I think and which I know for a fact sucks more than cleaning schools and cleaning schools, I am positive sucks too compared to a community-based job.

I am updating mine on the weekend to at least have it ready to apply for work relating to it.

One of the old doods from the Loins club was at the school disco tonight: they were cooking, sausages and bread like they do outside Woolies I assume and I told him our class asked the Lions club for a sausage sizzle or whatever at our event, but they had to have a whole committee meeting about it and ended up saying no at the last minute..

I was out there by the canteen waiting to tell the chick organizing the school disco I've locked-up the rest of the school and will arm everything for her - so she can just alarm the hall whenever they leave - but this dood starts talking to me first, so I start replying and the chick, who'd just finished talking to someone else and turned to me - walked away to go do something else but right after I went back in the original block to finish cleaning, I realized **That cunt would get me my work placement with the Lions Club, EASY!** and what better community service to be doing a placement with right?

The Lions and Rotary clubs literally exist to help with community events!

But then I got busy working, podcast playing and the sound from the disco was so loud it was kinda hard to talk to anyone anyway, so I just finished my shift, armed the buildings and left.

I know this dood too, just from around town or other work or whatever and he's told me to call him direct anytime, which I negated by adding the event was months ago now.

I have SO many new flavours coming!

20 I ordered this afternoon: mostly fruits, cooling agents, my favourite sweetener and some random ones but mostly fruit flavours - I've had enough dispsosables now to get to like the iced fruit flavours you see and since I've mostly got dessert-oriented flavours already I resisted the urge to order more, with only one Inawera Creme Brulee and Capellas' Glazed Donut the only two dessert flavours of the, score.

Also a bottle of PG, because I can by Vegetable Glycerine at any supermarket or chemist: you can't buy PG locally at all because it's only really used as a base liquid to add flavours and nicotine to unless you're a massive body-care company making skin cream and cosmetics, though it's probably in a lot of foods and other consumables too.

Tell me Chloe..

Entry 24: Yes no

Thursday, 31st August 2023

8:29 PM

I gotta stop this morning shift.

I will do the two shifts tomorrow since it's Fridaythen tell her in the afternoon I want this woman in the morning to do ALL her half of the school so I don't have to do both shifts.

Stupid Supervisor will either come and do it again herself or want me to do it another week while she finds someone willing to do both shifts - if it's the latter, I'll sure know for certain by next Friday whether I'll adapt to it.

Entry 23: Winter is coming

Sunday, 28th August 2023

3:25 PM

Not for us, but them

Listening to the last couple episodes from Explaining Ukraine got me thinking, it's been a while since I've heard how our Irina and her family are going - I should go hassle her and find out.

Last time I talked to her she said she did not like to whine and complain about the war, which is silly if she's concerned with boring or depressing others but it's also she's living in Odessa smack-bang in the middle of the conflict and probably comes online to escape and distract herself - not to talk even more about missiles flying over her apartment block to some curious arsehole on the other side of the world.

But then, you know: diploma and work began and I've been too distracted myself to follow-up with her.

Also I wonder how the Russian Lovebunny's going: it's been over a year since we stopped communications when she told me she was off to go sell her pussy on OnlyFans - I told her only 1% of the pussy on that site make any money worth bothering with, the rest are creating pics and videos of themselves that'll be online forever and all for a few dollars - imagine if prostitudes sucked dick for $4/gobbie; that's what 99% of OnlyFans bitches are doing.

But, I still wonder how she is.

Напишите мне — на любой платформе, которая вам нравится — и расскажите мне, как живет наша маленькая русская секс-игрушка?

Нет, я не буду передавать это здесь или писать об этом: просто дайте мне знать хотя бы.

Smoking hot little Syka she is - even at 32.

I gotta go start dinner and get ready for the morning.

Meantime..

Putin vs The world

Go listen to the last few episodes of this and educate yourself or - for a more light-hearted/Australian point of view on that part of the world - listen to Seasons 3 and 7 of If You're Listening by one of the ABC journalists: the MORE you learn about literally anything, the more interesting that thing becomes - making you want to learn more.

I'm listening to S7 now - good show: nice short episodes.

It's a vicious circle

Entry 22: Love it

Friday, 25th August 2023

11:39 PM

Fuckin, love it..

Though the custard and ice-cream will take a couple more weeks to infuse and get strong enough to be rich in flavour (like all dessert/creamy flavours), the lung-hit of the nicotine salts is still there (10% stronger than iget bar vapes I've mixed it in fact) and I love the fact that with this $200 order I've got enough nicotine here for, like I said, about a hundred disposables - they last about a week each with moderate use, or maybe 3-4 days if you're hitting it regularly all day.

And given these disposables don't have a USB charging port, you'll usually find the battery flat before you've used all 7mL of liquid, then you toss the whole thing in the bin - battery and all - which is very wasteful, though I'm more talking about the waste of vape liquid - the environment, suresure, bla bla.

It's the vaping equivalent of buying a pound of weed - knowing you don't need to go sniffing more out for a long time.

Of the two devices, of course I like the little pod better since I'm used to draw-to-activate vaporizers now: the other, more expensive device is the better quality newest version of the long respected Innokin Endura with a much bigger 1800mA battery, 510 connector to take any tank I wanna screw-in and a larger tank, having to press a button to vape seems redundant to me after using the draw activated devices.

But, with its tiny 800mA battery and even tinier 2mL pod cartridges the $25 pod is so cute and easy, plus the battery is somehow still half full after using it all night and this morning, it's not as durable as the $50+ Endura Apex, so I'm glad I got the two - if the little pen-sized pod shits itself I still have a new device that's reliable.

Entry 21: Awaiting Collection

Thursday, 24th August 2023

12:36 PM

The School..

There's an aspect to cleaning I haven't mentioned that's the same regardless what you're cleaning: there's something, nice about having an entire commercial property completely to yourself.

Since most commercial cleaning just before or just after people have come and gone for the day there's always an hour or so of crossover as the remaining staff go home and - at this school - they go home fast: I mean like, twenty-minutes max for all the kids to be gone and maybe an hour for all the teachers and office staff to clear-out.

Around 4:00PM I do a round to make sure all the doors are locked, plus padlock the gates and once that last person's left, I have the entire school to myself - same when I cleaned the Cultural Center here in Katoomba and other 'commercial' places, but all schools are much bigger than shops and supermarkets etcetera.

There's just something nice about a space that large, with only yourself in it - like right in the middle of a town you've got a massive complex with yards and a football oval and the only noise you hear comes from outside the school's fence-line.

Even creepyarse old catholic boarding schools are cool when the whole place is yours for three hours straight.

So I'm starting to like this school.

I have been nicotine-sick on and off all afternoon gawd.. the custard is not there yet - I figured it'd be too soon and it is// maybe a Mixed Berry Cola..

Mixed Berry Sherbert.

The Chunky Russian Woman by the way, told me why her kids are at Wentworth Falls instead of the much more convenient local Katoomba one - and in heavily-accented English she told me when she walked into Katoomba Public for an Open Day the place felt ominous and gave her a bad feeling and she didn't want her kids soaking-up the tortured-souls vibe KPS has seeping from it's walls.

The parcel..

All this prescription required bullshit means customs can take anything not prescripted, which I have in my order, with over 100 disposables worth of the same nicotine used in them, after all.

I just inhaled my coffee as I was taking a mouthful: I hate that - coffee stinging the hole inside of my nose..

I did this the other day in class: took a mouthful of coffee then *coughed* right as I was about to swallow it - instantly my computer is sprayed with coffee I gotta get off so it doesn't dry sticky 'cause sugar, sprayed Tony's excercise book and desk with coffee.

You know..

Omg I want to link a song but it's in Russian and my laptop keyboard is certainly not Русский

The chorus has been stuck in my head for days - why shouldn't you

How the fuck do I type it to search?

Вы объявили войну, отвергнув кость.

Not really, I don't care.

Wait, what's kak..

Whatever my nicotine's here with both new devices and I've finally got a chance to sit down.

The little pod device is very cute: about half a pencil in length and as thick as a Sharpy - shaped like a cigar and now I think about it, it's thin enough probably to keep in the pen pocket-hole-what-the-fuck, you know what I mean.

It is!

Fits in my pants perfectly - there goes ever carrying a pen on me again.

The Russian Couple..

This afternoon some old couple come over and sit at the bus stop and start talking to each other.

Within a few seconds, I'd recognised several words they were saying, though not the meaning when I turned and interupted "Daaa.. ahh.. ya, lee-yoo-bov rooska!", which saw them both instantly nodding with a smile on their face and become visibly happy: he's Russian, she's from Belarus and they were about 80 but very nice as they've told me how Russians are good people, not like the news paints them out to be and I got a chance to try to remember some more words I learnt like, over a year ago - I remembered "Jensheenah" (Woman), "Lyoobov" (love), "Kraseevya" (beautiful) before finally admitting I learnt only the lovey shit - I could not even ask for a toilet if I needed one, in a Russian-speaking country.

He's asked me when he was telling me where his wife's from, whether I know about Belarussia, to which I could easily and confidently say is more like Russia now, than Russia itself, because Belarus held on to the soviet-era traditions and stil does to this day, while his big brother has grown fat off capitalism.

I know, I mean I actually know legit shit about these little smudges on the map - without ever going there - and I learnt it just talking to Women in these countries.

The power of the pussy can never be underestimated.

Entry 20: Domestic Violence

Wednesday, 23rd August 2023

9:14 AM

Every Wednesday we have this..

The topic is interesting, though mm: being raised by women and not having without any wife-bashers around to set a bad example, I literallty cannot relate to these men or their bullshit.

You oughta see all these dumpy-arse fucking men crying because they've lost their kids, wife, family etcetera - like they thought beating their woman. terrifying their kids and and being abusive sacks of shit would ever end well and really, I'm curious what the average intelligence of these fools - surely a more intelligent, human, wouldn't need to resort to physically intimidating a woman right?

Sure mind-fucking someone's not great either, but yeah..

Most people came into class today: Chloe's spinning on her chair next to me, Leanne's on the other side telling me I 'type very loudly' and Jade sadly - last to arrive late - has to sit down the front and cramp her neck staring at the huge screen all morning.

I, like to think it's because I've bitched at the class to attend, physically in-person, but it's more likely they're here because they know we have a good teacher this afternoon and - because we have so many fuckin' garbage teachers in this diploma - they do not want to miss-out on a day of decent teaching.

The school

Three people have now told me they get a creepy-orphanage vibe from Katooomba Public and its history - I guessed right on day one: turns out it was a Catholic boarding school which sounds, even creepier.

Laptop out, because I don't have to bring it tomorrow and it weighs, more than I like.

I'm unsure why anyone's attending while our teacher is in fuckin' Bali on vacation - right in the middle of a course mind you - but based on the number of hands that went up, looks like the majority BUT we made sure Bernadette knows we want her to save us from awful teachers.

Think I literally said that.

I just emailed Rahma.

This afternoon she was whispering to me about how she'd listened to what I'd told her and done what I asked.

Only just then, now, I realized she's right! She had!

With Jim teaching us, we had a speaker in at 11AM who I didn't listen to since I was trying to get that failure of a Bee to look less scribbly which wasn't the chicks fault - she sounded good, looked good and broke-up the boredom of an entire morning of one thing - after that we had Bernadette for the afternoon though I had to go early and just before I did was when she's whispered how she'd changed the lesson plan like I asked, but the whole class and teacher were talking too so I didn't get it all but nodded when I'd got the basics and JUST NOW, I realize she was right!

So I emailed telling her it was excellent, much better than previous Wednesdays and though Chloe was giving me filthy looks for not being able to stay home and video in, but even YOU Chloe, cannot deny we had a better class than it would've been had most of us been at home.

You know I'm right.

Entry 19: Okay Okay

Tuesday, 22nd August 2023

8:15 PM

The guided Tour

If this woman is the princpals girlfriend - working in administration I think - I got nothing but kindness from her as she took me all over the school trying to sniff-out any cleaners rooms I didn't know about, because I needed to find the red mop/bucket: I explained how I've got away with not mopping the toilets the last two nights, but have to find this mop so I can start doing it daily.

We found several blue mops - even checking inside the canteen - but no red one until we finally found a hidden cupboard my fkn supervisor wouldn't reply back to tell me where it was.

I also mentioned while we were walking across the first grass-covered yard how the place feels like a Catholic School - then she's agreed and we've both simultaneously said the way the school is build, the arches, the LOOMING feel to the main block - all the rest of the school was simply added onto and because someone insisted on hallways connecting everything, it's just been added to like a malformed Squid.

But the main building we're talking about here, and she quicklu comfirmed the school was a Catholic School - eventually all the rapey priests were replaced by the government and regulations, which obviously is a good thing.

Fuck, it's 8:00 PM already..

Anyway there you have it: the school was created as a Catholic school or orphanage or some shit before the government took it over and the way she's taken the time to go show me all the cleaners rooms in my quest for the red mop was, cute even.

I made a point of telling her - when she asked about whether I'm the drop-in cleaner they send to fill-in until someone else comes - that yes, because I'm doing a diploma in social services full-time too, so doing any site full-time would mean I'd have to stop going to TAFE, plus I'll lose my casual loading - which stacks to $33/hr casual but drops to $25/hr or so permanent because they take out annual-leave and yeah.

Also I played dumb in circumstances leading to the cleaner-swap, saying only "All I know I'm happilu cleaning Wentworth Falls primary, then I'm told to come here instead" which is the truth, almost.

*...

Entry 18: Waiting Waiting

Monday, 21st August 2023

9:21 AM

Waiting..

For smoke detector dickheads to come press a button to test it then go again.

I cannot go anywhere until this has happened and I fucken hate having to wait for people like this - give em till 10:00 AM then I'm leaving.

10:45 AM

Of course the smoke detector dickheads were knocking on my door and ringing the moment I got in town.

Why do electricians always think everybody will bend their schedules to make allowances for their lack of punctuality?

Who responded first

You did Chloe, naturally.

I'll bring you the rubber chicken as a prize or, wait, who knows where that fucking thing's been.

Something useful instead.

This fucking School...

With doors at the front and back of every room and teachers who just walk out the back door without locking it, the school takes about 20 minutes just walking around checking all these godamn doors, and half the doors are left unlocked so I can't just assume they'll be locked because, unlike the Wentworth Falls staff who lock their classrooms each time they leave it, nobody at KPS gives fucks about locking anything - ; moreover, it's so much uglier than Wentworth Falls Primary - just based 100% on the feel and vibe of the building and the happiness level of the staff at a glance.

Wentworth Falls is a happier, more colourful more fun school.

Katoomba Public by contrast, is a looming eyesore, with teachers who look stressed - about something - and probably around half the students Wentworth Falls has, so it seems much quieter because there's less kids making noise.

It feels like the kind of place that used to be an orphanage where children got mistreated, then turned into a school but still it looks like a Catholic school - the way its built and the layout.

Maybe this is why that chunky russian woman on the bus sends her kids to Wentworth Falls Primary - even though they live in Katoomba.

Anyway whatever is stressing them, I will find out.

So I'm the only one in the place who isn't stressed.

I started to find out today as I was walking through one the classrooms when two teachers - one who wasn't there Friday stopped me to say she hadn't met me yet so hello and welcome - bla bla bla.

These two are talking to each other about whatever when I was passing through so I told them to ignore me and not to let me interupt.

But they were already staring at me, so I ask "I'm trying to find out what happened to the last cleaner you know, but so far I've just been shushed about it..."

The blonde looks at the brunette, they both look quickly at me, then back at each other before the blonde says that neither of them know - but they're glad to have me.

Mmm...

For a moment I feel like I've stepped into a cult and right at the front of my brain is how the office chicks at Wentworth Falls were much foxier - this chick just stares at me kinda creepy and keeps, actually I should go ask her for some random things - that'll make her feel needed, which MUST be why she'd be in the job she's doing.

Every time I've seen her she's been running around after other people, so she must like it, I guess?

Yeah right, I thank the two teachers and leave them there to carry on their convo pre-me.

Then clean school, lock-up fifty million fucking doors when - right after arming the alarms and padlocking the gates to leave - I see TWO of the lights are still on in, what looks like the Kindergarten classrooms.

They're still on right now I guess because unpadlocking the gate, then the office, then the four seperate alarm panels just to turn off a light was, yeah not doing all that.

I will say I'm not seeing anything rapid or man-hating about the Principal or staff.

I'm listening to the story of this chick - Dianne Whipple - who was killed by a pair of aggressive dogs - Mastiffs as it happens but there's heaps of other breeds that large.

I want to link it but Chrome is frozen for some reason.

And hot milk for dinner, because I wasn't really hungry when I ate that Southern Fried Chicken burger this afternoon and it's stopped me really wanting, food.

Entry 17: Strange

Sunday, 20th August 2023

13:11 PM

Not euphemistically speaking, or yeah no, maybe..

Strange she'd mention it mid chit-chat, but only as a passing detail on her way to making some other point I caxn't remember.

I do remember hearing her say Chloe and I interupted to ask "Our Chloe?" and her saying yes.

Maybe she mixed names up, though yours isn't that common and since you're sitting next to me I don't see how she couldnt know who you are.

Thinking how I can do a fizzy berry or cola - though most of my flavours are deserts and cream/milk/custard, I've still got two kinds of banana and both Glazed Strawberries and Ripe Strawberry and Blueberry plus the fizzy sherbert which I haven't actually tried yet but it had excellent reviews and a bunch of 5-star ratings - when I remember that musical-chairs game we played in class - my asking "Anyone addicted to Nicotine" which saw 80% of the class get up to change seats.

Then I took a step back feorm that and thought, how much of a loss to tobacco companies vaping would cause: a whole generation of people who tried a vaporiser first and did not like tobacco when they'd tried it - just anechdotally I cannot think of anyone in the 17-27 year age range who have started vaping and then gone on to smoke: it probably happens, but not often enough to have any < 30s who smoke - even though most of them vape.

All those teenagers who would have tried smoking had a better option available - all disinterested in tobacco - would have to be a problem for "big tobacco", I imagine.

Entry 16: So stoned

Saturday, 19th August 2023

3:01 PM

A little bird told me..

That our Chloe went to get a coffee with our Leanne the other day, who makes an excellent character though I haven't, incorporated her in here so far.

Wait, we need a photo..

That's from yesterday but will have to do and nope, no idea why there's a rubber chicken with a pole up it's arse, in the cleaners cupboard.

I told that little bird "Good! That's good!", which it is because I know you don't really want to sit in your car alone for every break: You just need quality people to bother socialising because you're picky, which is an excellent way of filtering the dickheads and skanky yes-girls out of your orbit - who needs poor quality people, after all.

That's a bit weird.

She spoke as though it was just a given, in passing conversation.

We've got at least a few reasonable quality people in our group this time and - further - I would think they out-number the poor quality people.

No wait, maybe a 50/50 mix.

Jade is high quality but Kate has stolen Jade from all of us now: since kate gets driven around by her, she won't leave Jade's side - always now, it's Jade and Kate, the latter of whom is the youngest in the group at 17, but unfortunately acts like a 17 year old and is very immature, which doesn't fit with the maturity level of, well the quality people of course.

The problem is, Jade is too kind and loyal, so Kate is opportunistically attached to Jade: there are plants that do this - the ones that grown from the host plant parasitically.

I should text her and ask her how that's going, or something.

I've got her laptop charging cord in my bag she needs to collect for Wednesday, though it's a standard HP laptop so the cord's the same as any other HP laptop - she might be able to find another one she can loan, save her driving here to get it.

I gotta do washing

Oh and I got the merino for Liz to knit be fingerless gloves.

Honestly I don't give a fuck about a pair of gloves but she asked if I wanted gloves or a beanie she'd knit for me, I asked whether I can have super-fine Merino gloves: she said no, I said "What if I go buy the merino myself and use that?" and the 'deal' was sealed.

Liz, also make an excellent character, is 65 or something and homeless - living in a large van with what looks like an extended roof.

Lives in the van with her budgie, "Daisy".

So while I could care less whether I even own a pair of gloves, I said I'd get some wool and now I'll feel bad if I don't give her the wool so she can do something that makes her feel useful or whatever.

But, if I'm going to have some hand-knitted gloves I may as well have the best, so I got this three-hundred meter ball..

I wasn't sure 1 ball would be enough to make two gloves, but the chick in the, um, wool shop told me she could knit a whole jumper out of 1 ball.

"Are you offering to knit me a jumper?"

'No.'

"Okay no, of course.."

I also complained while waiting in line about the amount of estrogen in the shop being a bit much.

Every woman present, laughed.

Now I'm thinking I should've got a second ball anyway and given her it as payment?

I will - I'll grab another ball next time I'm in town.

Ten minutes previous to this, Wool Chick had shown me the superfine merino balls and got some black ones out for me, but I'd changed my mind since waiting to pay and grabbed a ball of 2-ply - the thinnest they had.

Wool Chick had recommended the standard ply, but as I told Wool Chick "I don't have to knit it, so I don't care if it takes longer - the finer thread will result in a finer textured pair of gloves, right?"

She tells me yes, so that's what we got

No Possum Wool in-stock, unfortunately.

Now, a Deep Purple, Crow..

Love this Crow design's efficiency with geometry: how all the shapes are formed with just enough shapes to see what it is but few enough shapes to make it easy to create.

Entry 15: Katoomba Primary now

Friday, 18th August 2023

12:12 PM

To tame a rabid man-hating lesbian..

If she is able to be tamed, of course I'll have her eating out the palm of my hand.

According to my replacement at Wentworth Falls Primary, he's been cleaning Katoomba Public seventeen years until - recently - the Principal and her lesbian girlfriend took exception to him or something he'd said or done and demanded his removal from the school.

Enter me.

I love lesbians, as long as they're hot and if they're not, well, yeah you already know my philosophy on this - with so many beautiful women clucking about the world like free-range chickens, why would I choose to engage the ugly ones?

That's like taking the time to learn the names of every individual human you encounter every day: pointless.

If you don't appear in my daily routine often enough for me to learn it by repetition, there's no point learning your name.

If you are in my daily orbit but a social wallflower always trying to do a fade from those around you, there's no point learning your name - at all.

And nope: sexual preference, availability and age are irrelevant to me: I will still take the prettiest face in the room over the uggoes regardless whether I get to fuck them or not, because they're more pleasing to the eye.

Shoot me: I'm an artist - there's never too much beauty for my liking

Anyway he was telling me last night he'll never go back to his school again - now he's been stabbed in the back there - which proves I'm not the only one with a site blacklist: I started telling him "Same way I won't even cover for a shift at Blackheath after the teachers there stabbed me in the back after jokingly stating I will toilet-brush their desks if people around here don't stop bitching about my vacuuming?"..

Already nodding before I'd finished the sentence, he was.

Turns out, he made a homophobic remark to this lesbian principal - who I've now met and she's not the lipstick-hot-lesbian or should I say, does not present that way.

It's weird - digressing from the Principal to homosexuality in general a moment - but I've always found it very confusing, that gay men swish around adopting that fake-high voice of the stereotypical "Oh darrrling!" gay man and while they can act however they like, aren't gay men attracted to men?

So wouldn't they find masculinity attractive?

So why try to 'cultivate' the affectations of a woman?

Why do lesbians dress, act and speak like men if they are attracted to femininity?

The question really, is why adopt these physical and behavioural traits at all and pretend to be the opposite sex to the one you're attracted to?

Anyway, that's why this other cleaner is at Wentworth Falls Primary: he's full-time permanent so the comany have to either cancel his employment as a permanent worker, or give him the 8hrs/day they're legally required to.

So, this all gives the drama a bit more depth or perspective: maybe this dood hates lesbians, maybe he was just cracking jokes and one slipped into anti-gay territory accidentally - whatever the reason, he not only got told to leave the site he's cleaned 8hrs/day for 17 years on the spot two days ago, but he says he'll never go back and Kara (the supervisor) says he's not going to be coming back to Katoomba Primary, but would not explain well, anything to me - instead giving me the default speech about confidentiality and how she cannot discuss other employees with me.

My response to that, was to tell her she already is and "You know you want to tell me.", but she didn't tell me - I pieced it together myself based on what he told me, what Kara wouldn't tell me and the way they instantly ejected him from the site the way they did.

So I don't know whether he's actually a homophobe, or just said something without thinking that worked like dropping the 'N' bomb while talking to a black person.

I wanted to know that: whatever was said/done does not matter really - the intent does: if he hates gay people and that's why he got told to get out, he deserves it - but if he's not a homophobe, just said something dumb then I'm not forced to think less of him.

See, you SEE how that ONE tiny bit of information is so important?

More important than my opinion of some cleaner, are drawings.

Draw me an animal again Chloe!

Go on.

I WANT!

GIVE ME MORE BEAUTY

The intent behind the drawings is beauty - no matter how manky the drawing turns out.

I will also add that I am now sufficiently pro enough in my ability to manipulate objects with the vacuum cleaners we use - I can open doors..

I doubt there'd be any point even trying to open a round door handle, but as it happens most the doors at most commercial buildings have the lever like in the pic above.

So I no longer care about losing my 4hrs at Wentworth Falls Public, really: I just moved the hours across to another site and one much closer - at Katoomba Public School.

The irony, that this other dood appears at my site to do it full-time and even though she was still giving me 4hrs/day at Wentworth Falls this other cunt had taken my hours off me in the only site I can think of to walk to in a few minutes, after TAFE -- any other sites not in Wentworth Falls would require a train to get to which I definately don't want to do.

But now, just as fast as he was removed from his school, I'm doing his school of seventeen years - and a school that, while not a 5-minute walk from TAFE, it is a 5-minute walk from home - no travel required each night after work.

To think, just last night I got two coloured sheets of paper from the stationary room at Wentworth Falls, to make Crows for the two blonde admin chicks - a dark-blue one for Jessica and bright-red for Lisa.

Assuming I'd be back there this afternoon so they can thank me for their birds, I ended-up not going back which adds a little, coincidence - making them on my last night without knowing it was my last night.

#origami-slut

I have both Vanilla-bean Ice-cream and Vanilla Custard steeping.

But mm I've also got a lot of other flavours - about 40 - and while many are similar flavours or the same flavur in a different brand, there's also a few flower flavours, Sweet Honey, Cola, Fizzy Sherbert, Glazed Strawberry, Banana, Blueberry and cereal flavours like crossaint, biscuit base, Cake Batter, maple syrup, coffee, vanilla cream, yeah there's a bunch.

Entry 14: Finally..

Thursday, 17th August 2023

7:51 PM

Cuteness first..

Our Chloe got herself a new iPad the other day, which - with the pen - is very nice to use: she let me have a go today and, yeah I finally gave it back after twenty-minutes or so of decorating her genogram 'index person' symbol - it's a lot more fun than a keyboard.

And here is the cute as fuck results of her finally drawing me something!

It's not half as dodgy as I would've liked, but there you go - she's improving her ability, of course her drawings have also improved

Then uncute work drama..

Even with the tablets and THC, I did not get enough sleep last night to feel like I'd slept at all, all day which is weird since I don't remember lying awake trying to sleep - I just laid down and must have slept because I don't rememver any lead-up to unconsciousness.

But also no dreams, which I usually have and, truly, some of those dreams are SO fucken out there they'd make great stories.

Also but, there's lots of dreams where the happenings of people or things inside the dream is, whatever, the atmosphere is so moody and, wait I gotta get comfortable - and a coffee maybe.

I seriously considered just skipping work this afternoon since I don't neeed to worry about any of the daily cleaning I could not go and was pretty tired by lunchtime.

But that would've been less money next pay, so I went - and talked to this replacement-replancement ah, replacement cleaner this afternoon.

I like him.

Hilariously: the first guy - the one who gave me the 10-minute talk on Monday about how he's really going to take this job ON and how he needs it because he's got kids plus relatives kids who attend this school and his whole focus now is this school, for 'these good people' and blabla blah.

Yesterday - just two days after telling me how into this job he is - he told our numbfuck supervisor he'd had enough and wanted another site.

Today, he'd quit my school and started at Katoomba Primary, only to quit again after a single 4-hour morning shift.

The cleaner here to replace that clown however, has been cleaning schools for longer than me and though he's a weird-looking old motherfuck - that one eye looks like a dog chewed it a while then it healed poorly - he knows all about how dumb supervisors are, how we're never given the shit we need, like new cords and vacuum cleaners and the generally shitty company culture.

An un-opened 1 litre tub of Vanilla-bean Ice-cream is for dinner.

Wait though, I've gotta add some Custard flavouring to the Glycerine I did remember: takes about a month for custards to steep long enough for all the taste to infuse throughout the liquid, so it gets better the longer you leave it.

Entry 13: The fuck is Chloe!

Wednesday, 16th August 2023

9:55 AM

You've got to come in Wednesdays.

Not just you, but everyone: imma start telling people to at least try and get to the campus, because there's no substitute for people physically being in the same room.

Today, there's Leanne, that old sour woman (who seems to have suddenly become very chatty sitting next to Leanne for whatever reason), the new blonde woman, myself and that's it aside from Hayley and Rahma, the latter of which I told should just dump the Student Support role and be our Wednesday teacher.

She said nope, though she's got the training to teach "That's not where I wanna be at the moment."

Pity; everyone likes her, she's got presence, she's intelligent and energetic enough to hold the room's attention.

There's no group dynamic when everyone is remote and videoing in - it's the problem with Wednesday.

Gotta come in.

All of you.

I will say: this room is much better than the normal computer room - huge TVs at the front, sound-proofed walls, a general 'room' camera and speakers so we don't have to fuck around with headsets or even logging into Teams.

Feels like an actual conference room, it's not as bright as our classrooms upstairs and we've got the unanimously prefered 'U' desk arrangement that sees everyone facing one another so nobody's gotta ruin their necks looking around at people talking all day.

I just return from lunch to find everyone's doing a graded assessment online, but I don't have time to stay and do it anyway.

Next Wednesday, we have Bernadette live in the classroom, so most of the class will be here just for a decent teacher in the room with us: proving my point, that the quality of teacher makes a massive difference.

I feel nicotine-sick from the chain-vaping a moment ago, but - while outside talking to Liz - she's told me she has a prescription for cannabis!

First I've heard of someone scoring a script for weed without having cancer or some other terminal shit: says she just told her doctor she's stressed and has anxiety - and got medical THC for it.

7:30 PM

Here's something mildly interesting you didn't know: the way the titles turned yellow after last nights entry? That's my mood_analysis(); module" it scans the entire diary file (/2023/august.diary in this case) and counts all the different kinds of words ($positives, $negatives, $emotives, $curses, $expressives and $romantics) then changes the color-tint of the page according to which kind of word is highest - the mood_analysis(); module creates the panel right below the page title with a summary, which needs to be smoothed out grammatically, but otherwise works.

Negative words - I've noticed - almost always are ahead of $positives: even though there's a perfectly equal balance of words like "can" and "can't"; "will" and "won't", you get it - as many common words as I could think of that have a negative counter word for balance.

Yellow tells is Emotional words are currently highest: if it's green there are more expressive words in the diary; white when they're all even.

I know, it's clever.

guido(); is even more clever.

Talking to one of these teachers this afternoon - a nice, grandmotherly woman - who has always called me Jason which, yeah I'm fucking useless with names so I hadn't worried about it, until yesterday when I looked at one the staff photos on the wall in the administration block and shortly afterwards, while she was walking past me with two other teachers I asked "Leonne?" and she's turned and agreed.

I ask if I got her name right and she looked very happy I'd decided to spontaneously stop and make a point of demonstrating I've learned her name, like a puppy whose learned a new trick!

But no, I walked in to wipe window-sills and shit and see this 1.8M snake skin on one the desks: later, this Leonne's returned to her classroom and explained it was a snake in her garden at home, then got her phone out to show me a bunch of pics of this snake as she explained the skin must have come from her python, because it's 1.8M and yes, this is how I know the damn snake is 1.8 meters long, which she knows because she measured the snake skin with tape and eyeballed the snake since she wasn't concerned enough about accuracy to pin the snake down and measure it> with her tape, but yeah I never disputed it was the snake that made he skin in the first place, but someone obviously has because she went to great lengths to explain that while she never saw the snake in her photos leave the skin, in logically has to be the snake.

I don't even know why it matters, like at all which fucking snake shed the skin - but she did.

Of course I "oo" and "oh wow!" to all her photos and it was more fun talking to her than working, so I hung out a while for her snake story, explained exactly why there's now 2 new cleaners here and between the two of them these idiots still have 10 dirty classrooms plus I dunno, other randomly interesting topics I don't have the time tonight to, include.

Cute snake though.

This extended interaction inspired me to text this stupid AF supervisor and tell her to just give me back my half the school, these idiots can flip a coin to decide who'll be staying of the two.

The new cleaner - after unloading of his life story at me - telling me how he really needs to make this job work and settle down - he's acting like he's just chomping to clean this school: after TWO DAYS of "cleaning" the site he's apparently had second thoughts about it - so another cleaner gets sent.

Make me an animal; any animal, any method you like.

OR, draw me one.

Entry 12: Bad day to be a spider

Tuesday, 15th August 2023

8:35 PM

And crying herself to sleep.

No, really it's very sweet - pure empathy, you have.

I had empathy for all the Spiders whose homes got stabbed to peices by what would look, from our perspective, like twenty street-poles at a time just slamming through our flimsy houses.

A whole school's worth - no Spider was safe.

Awful.

Well, ones under the floors or inside cupboards got to live, invasion-free.

See, if I talk myself into feeling bad for all those homeless bugs, I could.

So I won't.

Even cartoon spiders are weird and creepy.

The mouse is, incorrect and dodgy.

*...

Entry 11: Drip Drip Drip..

Monday, 14th August 2023

9:00 PM

My finger only just stopped bleeding.

All the way home the fucker dripped: I drew a halloween smiley in my blood on the window at Wentworth Falls station, then dripped on the carpet on the train back, blood on the milk I bought, blood drippin' on the fucking floor at the Coles self-checkouts.

Because I'd brought my own window scraper today I forgot I had the razor out and grabbed it - instantly knowing by the sting I just cut myself - right on the tip of my finger, probably why it dripped so much.

Can't believe I didn't think to take a photo of the cut, OR the blood-smiley!

I have Crow committed to memory now.

Crow and Turtle.

The Crow kicks arse: the more I make it, the more I like it.

Entry 10: The Crow

Sunday, 13th August 2023

11:40 AM

The Crow turned out just fine..

Make a few more while my clothes are soaking to commit it to memory.

Once you run out of black paper they're not really Crows anymore - though I guess you could make a 'red Crow' of anger, or 'The Blue Crow of water' if you really wanna be pretentious about it, Crows are black - it's an immutable fact.

Like yellow-crested Cockatoos having yellow crests and you don't see Cockatoo "Identifying" as Crows, or Crows as lizards or fucking lizards as Bears.

Just saying: the construct of choosing to identify as anything we feel like is the result of pure imagination and magical thinking from messed-up brains, not biology: nowhere in nature does any other species feel like another species - sure there's dogs who act like cats and cats who act like humans, but this is behaviour that's been groomed into the animal - take those pets away from humans and shove them back in the natural world and they will rapidly revert to being dogs and cats again - they evolved to act like dogs and cats over hundreds of thousands of years of natural biological improvements.

Now, the human race is reproducing in such lower numbers, few people are having enough kids to even replace themselves, so the birth-rate is down and getting lower all the time because everyone is so influenced by what they see other people doing around them and in media, I guess - I'm getting bored now, thinking about this.

And how did I veer off, oh, coloured Crows - yeah.

There's also a super-cute turtle here, but it requires scissors to cut the second set of leg-flaps, which seems not to be Origami-enough to me: once you're using scissors why worry about folding anything if you can simply cut a turtle shape?

Iunno...

420 Crow..

Entry 9: Human Adaptability

Saturday, 12th August 2023

10:34 AM

Curse and blessing..

Just a few days ago, I was writing about how muy rapido I adapted to suddenly finding myself homeless: right from day one I knew a place that was secure enough to sleep without being hassled by anyone, so I think I spent maybe 2-3 days absorbing the reality, culminating me sitting on a park bench in tears and not even about being homeless, but having been told to fuck off my this woman I was unable to walk away from.

Within two weeks I'd snapped out of it and started finding ways to be more comfortable, get what I needed and - because I was paying no rent at all anymore - even standard Centrelink payments were enough to easily get me through a full fortnight without needing to borrow money, most the time.

Jews in Auswitchz in the 1940s adapted to living like animals, using blood as lipstick and establishing a black-market within the camps to get them what they needed and in spite of being fumigated by the thousands each day, some learnt how to be useful enough to the Nazi guards to avoid the gas chambers - they might have taken longer to adapt than my two-three days, but they had, you know, a bit more to adapt to than simply no roof over their heads.

Humans ability to adapt to anything is great for survival, but there's the flipside of this adaptability.

Let's take that vape I gave Chloe: the moment I handed it over to her, she would have had her little internal (Woo! a new vape!) moment, then the very next second it's normalized - she knows she's got it, it's accepted - move on to the next thing.

If I buy a new phone, the unboxing will (I know) be the peak of Woo! I get out that device - once I've turned it on and transfered my old phones contacts and bookmarks over, it's taken for granted - it's mine, whatever great - move on to the next thing.

This speed of adaptability is always clipping the satisfaction of good things just as short as it does when the god of bad shit points to us and some kind of misfortune is on us.

Pisses me off honestly, that you never get any real lasting warm & fuzzies from good things that happen.

No sooner do you find yourself gaining something tangible that improves your short-term or long-term situation, you've accepted it as normal and looking for the next acquisition and yet, there's no escaping it because we life to gain: whether it's people, objects, artworks, money or comfort, as soon as we've got something new, the novelty is over until the next thing.

It just amazes me how fast this happens..

When we're kids, a new toy we really want might be a prized posession for weeks or months before we're sick of it or have something new to 'prize', but the older you get, the more shit you get and lose and get and get, the less those things mean - especially knowing you really have no control over whether you're able to hold onto any good things you acquire.

Few weeks ago, I'd only just finally started work and the diploma was about to start for the semester: suddenly I've been working pretty constantly in that time, bought shit, got money and started "studying" again only to get the shits about this 4hr school shift in the afternoon: I should be happy I've sorted out my sleep issues - chemically sure, but reliably - I've got the option to take another 4hr shift at the High School, I've got money in the bank and accumulated enough food to where I forget what I've even bought - I'll open a bag and realize there's 4 packets of Salted Caramel Tim-tams I don't even remember buying; I can order nicotine online again now I have a script, reducing the cost of vaping and eliminating the need to cough-up $40 for a disposable.

All these should improve my general mood, but I already adapted to them - making them normalized to me already.

Am I making sense?

I don't know whether this is some shit that's present across society because of the consumer-capitalistic society we have or because of technology, OR whether people 200 years ago were exactly the same way, but it's a bit annoying.

Chloe, by the way, did not attend Thursdays classes and really, I cannot push her to continuing with a diploma when the content delivery is so fucking awful - there's no way to sell it as anything better.

People will start dropping out the course, if we don't get a re-shuffle of teachers who actually know how to hold a rooms attention: Thursdays teacher - Sonja - with a teaching 'style' that sees all of us sitting in our chairs groaning our way through power-point presentations this bitch has no doubt been using for ten years, isn't engaging - at all.

Several of our classmates - Jade included - are very forgiving of the dull state of lessons and seem to be fine with this kind of learning, but I'm not fine with a teacher spending the whole day on auto-pilot like she has every other class she's taught for years.

Classmates should demand more from the people paid to teach them, because - as it is - two out of three days each week are disengaging.

It's like: primary school teachers are the most engaging and the most active in developing lessons that hold students attention to keep them interested in the content they're learning; then there's the high school teachers, pretty jaded, stressed most the time and teaching to classrooms packed with teenagers who don't want to fuckin' be there - high school teachers aren't as into it as primary ones, but they're still actively developing their lessons and delivery of them.

Then there's University teachers: they apply similar methods of group projects and a similar methodology primary school teachers use, because Universities are expected to deliver quality learning to people and are in constant competition with other Universties for student enrolements, so it's in their interest to make their teaching engaging and dynamic.

Then there's TAFE: bottom of the fucking barrel, teachers who have experience in some sector or another and just assume since they can train to be educators, that they should: their idea of teaching is a four-hour slideshow, sitting in a chair acting too dignified to do anything but explain the boring text on the wall and, iunno I'll have to edit this to be more clear but TAFE teachers - most of them - are fucking terrible at what they do.

Ever since starting at the primary school, even as a cleaner, I've seen all the effort and mixing shit up and activities the staff there create in order to keep kids interested in learning: why the fuck, should adult education be SO fucking boring?

Simply because we're adults, no effort should be made from those teaching us other than showing up with the same stale text on paper they've been using for over a decade?

WHY SHOULDN'T we have teachers who get us up for group games here and there, or random group activities throughout the day to keep us at least feeling like the teachers care enough about *US* as students to keep us locked-in on the lesson and them?

It's fucked.

And I might seem like I'm stuck on this poor-quality teachers thing, but I know I'm right because we had three good teachers for the Cert3, who not only started Thursdays off with a word-game, but with the role-play practice and other activities that got us up and moving around doing something different, often enough to be fully alert and focused on the teacher and though Janet is pretty boring, she still allowed the class to talk randomly to discuss things together - this time, you're meant to hold your hand up and wait for the teacher to stop talking long enough to allow you to ask your question.

So with the good teachers we had last semester as our comparison, this semesters new teachers have all been bad.

Honestly Chloe, fuck the TAFE and it's 0.1% good teachers: enrol to start a university degree in a field you're interested in - that'd be my advise.

I will be deeply saddened to not have you sitting there looking all moody and shit next to me, but 19 is the perfect age to start stacking degrees in shit that actually matters and I guarantee you will find even remote learning with a decent University, much MUCH more interesting than the dregs of educators the TAFE has teaching us.

Just have to give new origami animals to Kate once you're gone, I guess.

No, Kate is too entitled for me to want to give her anything and it would be innapproprate for me to suddenly switch to giving folded animals to anyone else.

And now I've been to town, shopped and returned to write this then settle in for the day, time to get stoned and learn this Crow: the mouse didn't turn out and looks stupid because one of the folds was not explained well enough for me to know how the fuck it's meant to. go.

Can't believe I was just given a quarter ounce of A-grade buds..

People CAN be nice you see!

I need to make more emojis..

I drew the smileys myself as SVGs, so they're not affected by being resized, but only created six or so, which is very limiting.

DO IT!

Look at something you're legit interested in, then go find the University with those courses and start accumulating degrees: you need more than one in todays world to get a career worth having, so start now - time you're 30, you'll be a fully qualified Kindergarten teacher, or pediatric nurse or Dr Chloe; there's literally zero reason you couldn't not only do this, but be exceptionally good at it.

But don't wait - thinking you'll get back to it later; you won't get back to it later because life will happen and you'll wind-up in a low-paying job at 30, when you can be a doctor or a teacher kids still remember in their thirties.

And yes yes, Nathan will become a billionaire and you'll simply spend his money and never need to work: that's NOT a plan Babe, because it relies on someone else not only still being there in ten years, but having the right opportunities line-up in just the right way for being a billionaire to even happen.

If it does happen, awesome: you will have a solid educational background and the ability to do what you really want to do, OR stay home shopping online with a bottomless credit-card.

But the chance of your boyfriend not managing to become a millionaire is far higher than the chance he'll succeed: not because of lack of drive on his part, but because the entire world is full of people wanting to be billionaires and all of those people will happily snatch an opportinity off you and yours, to benefit them and theirs.

So go start on Uni, NOW: online is fine to start with since your little town of ~1,200 people won't have yeah, you know, and online gives you access to all Universities in Australia to enrol with and all the specialties of all of them, like RMIT is known for it's focus on IT and technology-related curriculum.

Oh, and don't enrol in too many units at once, thinking you'll fly through each one without sweat in the semester: University is much more intense than TAFE - you will get so much information hurled at you every week, I would recomment enrolling in just 1 unit to start with, to see how much time you'll need - I did two online and I was overwhelmed instantly with all the material from both units - 1 would have been much more, fun.

Second semester, you'll have a solid idea how many units you can do at a time.

Yes yes, I'm nagging you.

Why do I like you so much Chloe: of all the people both in the certificate-3 and now the diploma.

No idea.

No, it's your energy.

The energy given off by the tension between someone who's obviously still a teenager yet who's had enough bad happen to her already in life to be more mature than a teenager, among other things.

Of course she's adorable, but her whole family's adorable, her Mum and Dad - married still and a happy family by all accounts - even work at the same business: her Father going out for repair shit, her mum back in the office doing admin, stuff, I guess.

Also of course, I like other people in the class: Jade, who not only drove me to hospital that day, but driving me first to Lawson because I hadn't slept the night before and wanted Psuedoephedrine to keep me upright the rest of the day, THEN drove me to Katoomba ER, THEN waited in there with me long after they'd stabbed me with adrenaline and given me steroids to swallow and I'd told her it's fine, and to go.

Problem now is, because Kate is playing passenger princess, with Jade both picking her up every morning for TAFE and driving her home afterwards, we no longer ever get Jade alone - it's always Kate and Jade, which has distanced Jade from us a bit, I think.

And yeah sure, maybe I'm also being driven to TAFE each morning now, by Leanne who's driving through from Blackheath anyway, I'm not joined at the hip to anyone to the point I'm always with her - I'm still socially independent within our group.

Fuck, Saturday's almost over already

Kellogg's Just Right for lunch.

Breakast cereal, then Crow..

You know what else I'll do: write a letter to the head teacher of social services, explaining in bullet-point clarity what we all need in a lesson to keep us focused and actually interested - I'll start it tonight and edit it nice and tight.

I swear someone's given me a cold or flu.

*...

Entry 8: Right..

Friday, 11th August 2023

7:53 PM

Fuck that 'hoe

Figure like a fucking Jelly-bean and a face just as plain.

For some reason this supervisor - I failed to add last night - still wants to leave me at the school "for now".

I'm not quite sure how long 'for now' is or why she thinks this dynamic will be a peaceful one, but she wants me to continue going afternoons to "detail" clean: this basically means running a cloth over windowsills and the tops of bookcases that didn't get done in the holidays.

This is just fine with me insofar as it's piss easy, requires no sweating or bins or vacuuming and means I'm no longer responsible for any part of the school being cleaned daily.

It's not just fine with me becaue I like that school and it's a ten minute walk from TAFE in the afternoons - since "policy" says I can't clean any TAFE campus because I'm a student, there's no other sites that don't require a train to get to after TAFE, which is still the only shift I'm willing to do because I refuse to get up at 3:00AM every weekday like a nigger to their job - not for a cleaning job anyway.

The new full-time cleaner has never cleaned a school before however and if she thinks I'll be doing anything at all to help him figure out how to juggle 20+ classrooms, hall, office block and all those toilets, well..

Of course I'll tell him where things are if he has any questions, but that's the start and end of my involvement in his new role.

But I explicitely told the stupid cunt to just find me a competent cleaner to replace Lillys 4hrs/day and her side of the school, and everyone will be happy: I never struggled with my half the school, not a single day.

Today however, I no longer have any responsibility for the daily cleaning of the school: this means I can just spend the afternoon fucking around with a squeegee cleaning windows; I don't need to empty a single bin, wipe a single desk, sweep any rubbish in the yard nor vacuum any carpet - this makes for very cruisy shifts, this vacation cleaning since you don't need to deal at all with the daily mess made by 300+ humans being there all day.

Still, fuck that bitch: a will start looking for another job so I can ignore any requests from her to cover sick dickheads or dickheads on annual leave.

Later...

Okay so I reckon I cleaned maybe fifteen windows in 4 hours, which - for anyone who's never cleaned a window - is very slow and about as relaxed as you could be without being asleep.

The cunt who's taking over the full 8 hours a day, he's the same age as me and felt some need to stop and offload his life situation to me, which is fine whatever - until he "wants to make this job work" because he "needs" it because he's "got kids".

That was the point I switched-off completely: not because because he has or hasn't got kids, but because it's such a common manipulation from anyone with kids to use it for sympathy: I got kids, so I need *whatever the thing is* more, man anything - lives tougher for me because I GOT KIDS kinda thing.

This afternoon, he organised the three cleaning cupboards and leaf-blowered the yard once people had left mostly.

He did not do a single classroom which he should have because now on Monday he'll be 4 hours worth of rooms behind from almost day one - but I also gave literally no assistance or advice on what he should be focused on and based on how he spent his four hours, I don't think he's realised how many rooms need to be cleaned every day OR how much time those rooms take to just look respectably clean - simply did walked around cleaning random windows, going next door to vape every hour or so and talking to staff.

I'm sure if I'm still there all next week, Kara will text to ask if I'll help with some the daily cleaning, which I will outright refuse to do.

I will admit, I was tempted to go in and empty the bins in my half the school, but caught myself each time so managed not to give into the compulsion - to fix the classrooms in any way at all.

You know what I need - to learn a new animal.

A Mouse.

*...

Entry 7: Fucking Lazy bitch!

Thursday, 10th August 2023

7:44 PM

There goes the school..

Really it's Lilly's fault: few days ago she tells me she's asked the supervisor to move her to another site, because she couldn't hack the workload at the school and of course, without her doing the other half the school I would need to have agreed to doing the school full-time, which I didn't and won't agree to.

But with her bailing, rather than find someone else to do the other 4hrs/half-school, they've got a new 'recruit' who's keep to do the school full-time.

As I've told everyone - including the office chicks - I want a life outside just cleaning, so I won't take any site twice a day five days a week.

Even if I weren't studying anything I'd still refuse a full-time site: within a week you're just a cleaning-nigger - there's the 3:00AM alarm every weekday morning, no time in the middle the day to really do anything, then not finishing until 6:00PM and not getting home until, like I just did - 7:30PM.

Fuck all that.

If I had the time, I would sooner take a second job somewhere different for the extra hours - not groan my way through every shift knowing it'll be a full year before I can even have a week off on annual leave - so no days or shifts off, ever, for a year

I love the school, but not enough to be feeling like a prisoner of the place.

Of course she instantly offered me Katoomba High School, which I refused - Katoomba High sucks dick: just the building itself is old, ugly 1950s shit that's never been updated and depresses you to be in.

Mostly though you know, primary schools are fun: the weird paintings and crafts all hanging from the wall, the cute animal murals around the school, the permenant xylophone installation in the yard, all the colours, the less stressed-out humans generally.

High schools are ugly: none of the above are present in a high school.

Entry 6: Zero Interaction Wednesday

Wednesday, 9th August 2023

10:11

Awful teacher we had.

Just because you have years of experience in social work, does not mean you can teach a room of people successfully - or hold the classes attention.

So awful.

I tried to mute her at one point, but then she unmuted herself to complain about someone muting her.

They should have at least had an actual teacher in the classroom with a camera/mic pointed at them as they teach normally, but more than that - a good teacher since I'm finding (a) not all teachers are good at teaching and (b) the bad ones can bore the entire class into silence, like today.

Today for reasons unknown to um, anyone, the teachers decided allowing everyone to choose whether to attend or not would be a good idea - even knowing the IT/network at TAFE is skanky as fuck, so 10 of us are in the computer room on our laptops while the rest of the class are scattered geographically and all listening to some fucking woman from Sydney monologueing at us about domestic violence.

The result of this idea, was one large group of people fucking around with their phones, playing Call of Duty or watching youtube plus a half-dozen or so single groups - our Chloe watching Netflix until she tell asleep and woke after lunch sometime - every one of us except Liam and "My Wife", the scraggy old miserable woman with the long-grey hair, fucking miserable facial expression constantly, never shows any positive energy but - fuck knows why - where's pink Mickey Mouse sneakers like that's enough to make up for the *drain* she puts in the room - If I were the Group Happiness Officer, that bitch would be out of the class.

Forbidden from re-joining until she's less depressing.

This bitch, I do not like - never see her react with any kind of humour to anyone in the class - just that miserable frown all day, gawd.

"Phoenix" is the same, now I think about it - never contribute anything.

Like Medusa, as long as you don't look at her, she cannot DRAIN you.

Domestic Violence as a subject should be interesting but how can it be, when the content delivery sucks dick and comes from literally a different teacher every Wednesday.

Not only is the 'meeting speaker' not engaging to listen to, the bitch has everyone on mute so there's not even the opportunity for the class to interact with the lesson - we're just meant to sit and listen all day to one woman talk up a PowerPoint Presentation she could have just put on fucking Youtube for us to watch in an hour.

Fuck this.

We gotta tell the teachers this shit is garbage so they can fix it - else the end the term will get here and we'll have learned nada.

What strikes me as surprising is what's considered effective 'teaching' in 2023: any boring cunt with the training can sit and send entire rooms to sleep at their desks - or drive them to switch focus to something more engaging outside the classroom - and actually feel they've done a good job as educators.

Makes me realize, we had three pretty good teachers for our Certificate 3 - compared to what we've had so far in the Diploma.

I even talked to the Kindergarten teacher, Tegan, about it at work afterwards: she agreed 100% that some people just aren't good at teaching, and some are - it's present or it's not.

Of the room full of people here at the campus only ONE of us us actually paying attention to this unknown and deeply boring woman: Tony next to me is playing Call of Duty again, Leanne, Jade, Kate and the hippie chick are all playing with their phones and while you're watching NetFlix Chloe, wait, maybe it's just out group that has a problem staying mentally engaged in courses.

That ONE of us who is taking it seriously - seriously as always - is, of course, the miserable looking old woman with the long grey hair who sits on the opposite side of the room: she's got her jumbo bag of donuts right next to her laptop and is godamn constantly reaching in the bag for another bite.. another bite.. another bite, oh maybe just ten more bites..

Compulsive eaters - the kind of people who cannot derive enjoyment from anything unless they're stuffin shit down their throats the whole time - repulse me.

It's just fucking food and shouldn't be anybodies primary source of pleasure in life.

I'm going outside.

Okay, so our Student Support chick email volleyed me back and forth and summarised, said my input is important because it's my education and she's told Hayley - the head of social services - so they will try another 'approach' to the content delivery next week.

I told her it isn't just "my opinion", "I'm speaking on behalf of most of our class - they all felt the same about todays lesson."

You know, those bags of little Croissants from Woolies: I figured they'd just be terrible, but they are fine heated up.

Warm Orange Muffins and Vanilla-bean Ice-cream

Entry 5: "Jason, where's todays entry?"

Tuesday, 8th August 2023

17:25

The Eager Beaver

Shame job, I am - all falling asleep and shit without thinking about, something..

Fuckers in my class all bailed today - like rats from a sinking ship: the moment one goes everyone else's ears prick-up and start wondering if they will be left behind if they're too slow to vacate; then two more go, then more until the classroom is empty in ten minutes and there's not even any point me going anywhere when work's the next stop anyway

Left me to listen to the background arse-kissing of Eager Eleanor (yes, this will be her alias for the duration of this diary entry unless you got something more fitting), doing her very best to relate to Neve about any-fucken-thing she could grasp at - literally switching topics every few secons until she found one that DINGED in her target.

Wait, I can write that better - when I'm not out walking in the dark trying to not slam into a fucking street pole.. I've done it in full daylight focusing on my phone while I walked.

So painful to watch a nerd trying to be cool to impress someone who actually is.

Thanks for leaving me to witness that awkwardness.

It doesn't seem disturbing, until you witness her telling completely different facts about herself to different people.

And you know, when I said YOU should write Chloe, you shouldn't: not that you couldn't, just shouldn't - it's a pain in the arse and you, you'll be able to get through life pretty well just smiling and nodding when you want something

And..

Also, you need to just insist on taking Nathan's laptop: if he has anything to say about it, guilt-trip him into it by acting OUTRAGED that he wouldn't think his future-wife should have to go to TAFE everyday, study full-time and he doesn't care enough to see to it she have what yiuy need; after all would make your study easier, which should get you his laptop.

No, wait.

Frown not smile - sad always wins, because men usually want to fix it.

"Don't you want me to succeed?!?", kinda thing - but aim for a mix of deeply offended and disappointed.

Sad-face wins.

You know what - lemme get ready for tomorrow and get out the laptop - and, since the Queen of laptop "building" couldn't fix yours, you gotta steal Nathan's.

Entry 4: My shadow brain

Sunday, 6th August 2023

17:25

That's how I've grown to view this site after nine years of uploading thoughts to it: a container to catch, explore and organise thoughts, moods and opinions as they slip through my head so they're not lost to new ones.

I started the site intending to use it merely to document the 16 months I planned on spending living in the national park with the animals, which I did - and which I also did - with a photo-diary that was written throughout the fortnight, then uploaded all at once in a single 20,000-word post for each two-weekly 'outing', but then Chloe, the strangest thing happened: even after returning to town, getting a job, woman and place - I kept on writing.

There was no national-park adventure to write about anymore but after sixteen months of doing it, I found I'd grown better at using words - so I kept doing it.

Snap forward a bit: I'd broken up with the woman, completely lost my shit over it and gave nofucks so I quit the job and stopped paying rent until I ended-up homeless in Katoomba for a year.

I don't mean Eleanors idea of homelessness either where you crash on peoples sofas then tell everyone you got no place to go: I mean outside all winter, sleeping behind a shop on concrete in a sleeping bag every night, rolling it up and leaving before the shopkeepers arrived in the morning so they don't know you're there; living out a single backpack with only what you need in it because you carry it constantly like a turtle does its shell.

Proper homeless.

But again Chloe, something strange happened: rather than sinking into a depressive state over my situation, I found myself quickly adapting to the point I got good at being homeless - I knew all the warm and cool places in town, where all the powerpoints are, where I could stash stuff in public places without it being found/stolen, which toilets are cleanest/best and so instead of panicking, I wrote about that too - in another photo-diary.

I'd create a monthly post then update it throughout the day, editing-out errors and re-wording my shit right up until bedtime, but instead of only writing thoughts and dry-as-fuck descriptions of things I did each day, I would write the year-long "Homeless Diaries" in a story format - using local town weirdos combined with my reactions to them to form the best writing I'd done yet.

I started liking it: only having to worry about deciding what I felt like eating, no bills, no working, no responsibilities whatsoever except finding a safe place where I wouldn't get bricked to death while sleeping, keeping reasonably clean with disabled bathrooms, eating double-cheeseburgers with chips for dinner and the rest of the day to socialise and write about it all.

Most remarkably, I learnt that when everything goes completely to shit, I'm perfectly capable of adapting to the worst-case scenario: the homelessness most people view as the scariest fucking shit on earth, isn't scary at all - it's inconvenient and not always comfortable, but also freeing and makes you feel 100% alive like a wild fucken animal!

But after a year, the second winter was rolling around and I'd already spent four seasons living that 'experience', so I started looking for a place and returned to being normal again.

Normal-ish.

And yes, being male was a huge factor in why I managed to do a year of that without all kinds of badshit happening: a woman would not be as safe being homeless like that, though now I think about it: as long as you're intelligent about where you sleep and make sure you've found a place nobody is aware you're at each night, well you cannot be a target if nobody knows you're there.

Wow you know I think I've actually trimmed my hair well this time: it all feels even and looks fine in the mirror, so I managed to take roughly half the length off without fucking it up!

Entry 3: Line the fuck up ducks!

Saturday, 5th August 2023

09:28

They are almost there..

Only missing one night's sleep last week and now with the melatonin to remove the need for alcohol for sleep, I've almost fully adapted to the new daily routine and next week, fully expect to sleep all seven of the nights - even Monday through Wednesdays - so my little black ducklings are chilling with Sunnies in straw hats ready to fuckin' rock.

Speaking of ducks, I need to find some square paper in town so I don't have to always be cutting-up shitty copier and notepad paper.

While the rest of the class were wracking their brains to come-up with a list of goals for the semester, mine were a simple three-item bulleted list and primary of the three goals: learn a new animal each week for Chloe, whose desk is already steadily accumulating folded origami while mine is accumulating Chloes dodgy drawings - blu-tac'ed to it's corners.

The other two: stay awake and catch-up on shitcunt moodle once my sleep patterns are in order again.

And speaking of sleep patterns, yeah I slept: 4mg melatonin worked perfectly - even though I woke up multiple times, falling back to sleep happened literally the moment I closed my eyes again.

Fuck, even while up, if I closed my eyes flashes of dream fragments would dance around under my eyelids each time I closed my eyes a second - fucking awesome.

I gotta go out, I'll outline the work environment later.

14:00

I am, very happy

Sure, outwardly I look no different to when I'm unhappy, but I am very pleased - internally, where it matters.

Firstly, thinking this morning about our group at TAFE and the dynamics of all the little sub-groups comprising not only our class but the class next door, I had a little premonitionary glimpse of how it'll come together once the dust settles: right now, there's a lot of people who don't know the other people around them and are still sniffing-around to find out who is who in the class as a whole.

Here's how our class social ordering will pan-out: once everyone's got to know the personalities and - further - the characters of those around them, a natural sorting will begin (quickly at first, then slower after an initial re-shuffling) where those who currently are gossip-queening their way into a sense of popularity within our social services section of the campus - that will see the more authentic, mature-minded and higher-quality of us will rise to the top and bond into a smaller more exclusive group who don't spend their lunch times waffling about some doods pregnant girlfriend or any of the dumb teenage drama and bullshit that goes with it.

Anyone reading who's not in our diploma class would not understand what I'm on about, since you have to be part of a group to have a feel for it's, "feel", but nono, there's no drama within the class at all - yet - since everyone's too new to be bored enough to start stirring shit; this is just my general projection of the future and how it will unfold, based on what I know of our history in Cert3 last semester combined with the new+existing diploma students personalities.

Secondly, having walked around town looking for square paper for folding, I found in the art store these little packs of gorgeous 15cm x 15cm Origami paper: not only in a protective plastic case, but double-coloured - each side of every sheet is a different colour, so when they're folded we'll have that two-tone effect

I also grabbed several pads of the cheap shit I found in Big-W - though they're flouro colours and only $3.50/80-pack in a pad, I can practice on these then save the two-tone sexy shit for the sexier final foldings.

Finally, I've got my lineup of long-sleeve summer shirts already in order, with one specific shirt - a pinstriped grape/plum kinda colour - my favourite: not only because the colour's great, it's shaped yeah, so it isn't just straight the way a Big-W or KMart shirt would be.

Still I was dripping sweat on Friday afternoon with the white cotton shirt on, but I cool off much quicker than I do in merino and spring is almost here so that's sorted.

Oh and on top of all that, I found my new St George card in the mailbox this morning: after two years using a split card with a busted chip that stopped me even withdrawing cash at checkouts OR tapping to pay like, at all, I've finally got a brand new, fully functional card that works like everyone elses

Just gotta activate the cunt and I am very happy to finally have access to my money like a normal person takes for granted.

Wait, I gotta wash other shit for next week and know if I procrastinate, suddenly it's Sunday afternoon and I've not done it.

I'll edit this smooth in a minute, or maybe after I've picked an animal for the week to learn.

I want to make animals!

I'll make animals.

Also I have to summarize the new cleaning job and people there: like my Chinese co-worker Lilly, whose English is SO fucking awful she sounds like a frog trying to use it's voicebox for the first time - every time she speaks - and all the defending I've had to do of her when teachers from her side of the school kept complaining about their classrooms not being cleaned for days on end; how I disliked her at first because I was sick of hearing about her not doing what she's meant to, but she's grown on me over the last few weeks and I legitimately defend her now.

I still can't understand any of the noises out her mouth, but I like her she's fine: just a perfectionist which I can relate to, but perfectionism has NO place in commercial cleaning - shortcuts and time-management are all that matter.

Or the two blonde office chicks who anytime I ask for something like a key for some soap dispenser, disposable gloves or more boxes of paper towels, both get up to go find it for me like it's a race to get me what I need first.

Competitive helpfulness.

The principal who tells me the last cleaner was so useless and lazy, not only did he rarely clean anything, he never even locked up the school before leaving - just fucking walked out each night - and wouldn't arm the alarms no matter how many times he was asked to; the kindergarten teachers who are the ONLY fun teachers in the place and actually have conversations after their kids have gone home for the day - I told them just yesterday, "I know I'm not supposed to eavesdrop and probably should have my earbuds on, but YOU TWO are the ONLY teachers who talk about interesting shit after school." which is true - ALL the other classrooms have single teachers, several of whom look fat, bloated and chronically depressed as they sit alone on their laptops WAY too long after the school has emptied, to the point *I* feel like asking - two hours after ALL the kids have left for the night, "Don't you have a home or somewhere you'd rather be?"

All these little details add texture and colour via the inclusion of real personalities to the diary, but yeah, no, I guess I don't need to literally start with all the boring little details for you to visualize as you read - okay I won't, I'll just work them into the script as though you already know the basics.

It's a school after all - it is basic.

Then there's the over a dozen new people in our Social Services class now who weren't in any course until they started two weeks ago with us - there's a lot of new people..

A LOT.

Weeping Tony with his spluttering boohoos, we'll save for a slow day when there's nobody else to write about

But yes Chloe, of course you are my central character for this diary, which will go on at least the length of the semester before I swap it out for a fresh *.diary file for next year: with a new diploma full of new people, dole-bludging scabs down the hall and a schools-worth of sad teachers who won't go home, someone has to serve as the familiar constant we all know and love.

That's you: Queen of bitchface calmness

Entry 2: Chloe, Chloe, Chloe

Friday, 4th August 2023

12:06

Yes she's our dark horse..

Also the Night Mare serving as our central character we'll be following throughout the course of this diary (horse-emoji-here)

And yeah, I fucking KNOW it should be titled "Dark Horse", but that lacks the clever wordplay of what we've chosen so shuddup.

The online definition of a dark horse is a person of which "little is known but who unexpectedly wins or succeeds.", which is Chloe and how I referenced her to one of our new teachers the other day during a game of musical chairs when our Wombat was the last to snatch a seat and had to stand there inside our circle of classmates and think-up a question.

Flushed red with embarassment she was, at having so many eyeballs on her at once!

SO cute

Of ALL the people within our class (and it is a larger class this time), our Chloe is the one my money is on to do the most with this crash introduction to Social Services: between her age, intelligence, introspective ability and disposition she would be perfect for the role she opined she could see herself doing - a manager of some kind - and she's smart enough to take that managemnet position and innovate new shit to improve the outcomes for whichever target group of people she chooses to work with - in hospital working with kids, is her latest thought on the matter.

Maybe she doesn't end up in social services after all: she could be a lawyer and still use this knowledge about the machinations of society and social inequity to brilliant effect too, or any other sector.

I'm starting to get hungry/tired: the former because I haven't eaten yet, the latter because I attended my appointment today and was given prescription-grade melatonin plus some other tablet whose chemical name I can't pronounce, but I've taken one of each just to see how they go: the sudden shift from only having to rock-up to TAFE and talk shit all day for six months, to rocking-up to a more serious course all day before then having the 4-hour cardio of a cleaning shift right after TAFE before finally returning home at ~7:30PM then mashing my alarm off at 5:30AM the next morning, has meant a small window of time at night to get organized for bed, which has resulted in my not sleeping purely through paranoia of, not sleeping.

Downing a bottle of red wine each night has worked the last week or so, but that's not good quality sleep and not at all a good pattern of behaviour to be starting, clearly.

So doctors appointment, which got me shit to get me to sleep without turning into an alcoholic - also good.

It's really just the shift in routine and adapting to it, though after a week where I was a walking corpse for TAFE several days running, I realized I do not want to be getting into a routine of not sleeping - everything sucks dick when you haven't slept and I need to snap myself to the tracks and roll, not crawl through the week.

Even better: I got a script for pure nicotine, which means I can order online again without any worries about customs snatching my shit and fucking my day up and - even better still - I'll be able to mix my own salt-nic in my favourite flavour again: custard.

Entry 1: The Diploma begins

Thursday, 3rd August 2023

09:35

Wait no, I'm in class..

Thursdays, are the MOST: the most boring, the most not interactive, the most sitting on one fucking spot listening to this bitch drone on and annn and onn..

Literally, she walks back and forth on the spot, using the same two-three hand gestures and talkng about herself, sorry "Myself" - ALL about MYSELF with this fucking teacher: never asks the class for any input - we gotta shove in anytime we're interested enough to actually contribute - not that she's remotely interested in anyone else's opinions anyhow - usually responding with a rapid grunting "Uh huh uh huh" to anyone talking, so we can ALL get back to another extended story about her brother, the doctor, or her "on the spectrum" son - fuck we just love another story about some rando none of us know or can relate to

Just don't even worry about this: clearly the woman needs my help to not be so DRY and STILTED in her teaching style and I will fix her, indirectly so I don't need to bitch about how boring she is forever.

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