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Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Diary of an NDIS Support Worker

 7/11/2024


Dear Diary,

It's a lot like being on a dating app, the font is even the same.

I build my profile, and start swiping. 

Provide social support and help with light housework to Evie in Mornington.


I'm on this NDIS platform because I quit my job last week.
Had no choice really - got told my humour wasn't appreciated and some people in the office didn't like me. Ouch. So I quit. Needed some income quickly. Had zero appetite to demonstrate my skills in anything other than the simplicity of offering social support and some light housework. 

I do a an online training session on 
'Securing Your First Client.' A soulless moment - guided through the platform, no introduction to other workers. Told how we can build our own business as NDIS support workers, and we're off. 

Police check, working with children's check NDIS approved and the rates of pay are ok.

We're encouraged to have a 'meet and greet,' offer that for free, then take it from there.

But J from Bentleigh has had trouble sleeping because of all the medication they are on. They are unsure how to navigate the platform, and need someone to come out and help. They are embarrassed at how far they have let their life slip..

I slip into no judgment mode.   
And try not to let my eyes widen in disbelief.

'What is the best thing I can do for you today.'

J is between tears. She gestures to a painting she did with the last worker. A dapple of purples and oranges, floating there on the table that is so cluttered I can not imagine how they managed to find space to paint.

The cat eats his food, which is balanced between two chairs. His fur is matted and his eyes are watering.

The dishes I propose optimistically. I could do them whilst I'm here. The agreed four hour shift hovers uneasily ahead of me.
I focus on what J is saying, the litany of despair, the workers who have let them down. The shame of how bad she has let the place go.

I focus on what J is saying, suspending my disbelief at the piles of papers and other things,  the dishes higgedly piggeldy scattered across the sink and every surrounding surface close to the sink.

Of course there are rubber gloves. The unopened packet is a beacon of cleanliness in the chaos.

Mould blooms between stacked dishes. Rotten lemons are not to be thrown out. The organic garden awaits them. 

Help with organic garden was partly why I had swiped on this profile. The blinds are closed though. And as I begin to clean the dishes, my hope that this job will be what I expected fades.

As I sort and wash the teetering piles of dishes, J cries intermittently, catalogues her illnesses, medications and abusers. 

I go to the laundry to scrape off a froth of mould from a dish.A load of washing churns.

Been in there three weeks now. Don't have the physical capacity to hang it out, J tells me.

I don't offer.

Four hours later the dishes are washed and put away.

The carpet in the hallway is drenched in cat piss.

I avert my gaze from other parts of the house.


You've been great J says. When can you come again?

Let me take stock I say.

My throat stings from the stench of cat piss. 




 & Trump wins the election.




Saturday, December 16, 2023

Excuse me there's glitter in my comedy




Mistress of Mirth's COMEDY Tour

Launch Party
BUY A SIGNED COPY

HERE 







Excuse me there are crumbs everywhere

 


Measured Silk & Other Stories 
Launch Party







Christmas Day Breaks

 7am 

    Christmas Day breaks
    Children wake
    Parents quake

    10am
    Too early for gin?
    Never
    Someone somewhere grins

        12pm
    Footpath pageants
    Foil wrapped foods
    Kris Kringle cringe

    1pm
    Yank a bon bon
    Don a crown
    Monarchs for a day

    2pm
    Kinfolk play charades
    Grandpa's lost his teeth
    The turkey takes a bow

    3pm
    Bells ring out to
    Crisis lines
    Rudolph takes the reigns

    6pm
    Leftovers
    Love Actually
    Indifference basically

    8pm
    Parents cry alone
    Court orders intone
    No kids here till next year

    10pm
    Children sigh
    Teens get high
    Christmas Day breaks
           
    

Measured Silk & Other Stories


 Measured Silk & Other Stories is a collection of fourteen linked stories.

The collection is a meditation on loneliness. 

Settings, characters and objects appear and reappear.

I'm super proud of the book.. and what some of my favourite authors have said about the work.

You can order a copy HERE.










Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Brene Brown of Brunswick


Hope and purpose are muscles 
Go work them out

Shame
Self loathing 
Abandonment 


Need hope and purpose 
To be in better shape than them

Patterns help 
So seek them out 


Be kind to yourself 

Exercise
Good diet
Sleep
& people who are constant 

Awe and wonder in nature 
Go seek them out




Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Mistress of Mirth's COMEDY Tour

 






LAUNCHING 9 APRIL 2022
AT ATHENAEUM LIBRARY MELBOURNE 

MEDIA RELEASE HERE 

It's a bit of a joke how tricky it can be to navigate the live amateur stand-up comedy scene in Melbourne, so I created a C.O.M.E.D.Y Tour which begins in Bourke Mall and ends with a polemic of a punchline.

 

I'm a Mistress of Mirth having written, performed, researched and taught stand-up comedy for many years and together with millions of other women across the globe we have enacted a mirthful mutiny taking on the unwieldy and historically or is it hysterically? male dominated world of stand-up comedy.

 

Woven with comedy fun facts and darkly funny short stories The C.O.M.E.D.Y Tour, like all good jokes is concise, clever and takes you somewhere completely unexpected.


C.O.M.E.D.Y is an acronym for Call Out Male Entitlement Daily Y'all