Category: things I love

And on Fridays we shall dance

We lived in New Zealand for several years in the early and mid nineties, and I saw more music there than I ever have or ever will. Something about New Zealand music and the New Zealand sense of humour that I just loved. Also, views of volcanoes. I never got sick of seeing volcanoes. I have lots of happy music memories. This is one of my favourites. (embedding disabled)

PS Also, can you remind the mister I want this somewhere, sometime at my funeral…he’s sure to forget.

Update: lads to me, ‘okay, one more time, and then that’s enough, all right?’

That’s that then

I said to the mister the other day, ‘You know, I’m sick of taking up so much of this family’s oxygen. It’s too much, I’m tired of my tiredness dominating everything.’ It’s time, it really is, to move on, to be grateful for what life gives me instead of mad becuase of what it takes away. I know that. And I’m trying, I really am. If I knew a counsellor here, I would have gone to one, and I’m sure they’re out there, but honestly, I wouldn’t know where to look, and I don’t know the right questions to ask, and so I’m relying on books and the internet and lessons I’ve learned.

Now, all sorts of books and websites and people say you should keep a gratitude journal. Every day you should write down, three or four or ten of the things in your life that you feel grateful for. Honestly, that’s a bit…well, let’s just say, you couldn’t grow up with my mother and take such a thing seriously. Cynicism? We haz it. In bucketloads.

Don’t get me wrong. Lots of my favourite bloggers have done it, and I’ve always loved reading them, and I’ve sometimes thought, Maybe I should. But then, the blogger moves on and so have I. However, I’ve been lurking at Anita Heiss’s blog for a long time now, and she keeps posting post after post after post of the things she is grateful for. It is such a gloriously warm and generous blog…I challenge you to read it for a couple of days and not feel good about life, the universe and everything. So the idea of a gratitude journal has been growing on me.

And then, last night, I found myself with a random half an hour of nothingness and I thought, I shall sit and watch television and knit another few rows of this beautiful but mistake-prone silk, the first skein of silk I’ve ever bought.

And anyhoo, and moving on, it came to pass that what I watched was Scrubs, and I thought, What would I do without this show? And then I thought, There’s my Answer.

So here it is. My gratitude diaries. It’ll be a bit half-arsed, because I am my mother’s daughter and that’s something about myself I don’t want to change. Something considerably less than a gratitude diary then. A series of occasional posts about things in my life that rock.

Things that rock #1
ScrubsThe day after my father’s funeral, I lay on the lounge, a pillow, a quilt, cups of tea, glasses of wine, toast and cheese, and I watched an entire series of Scrubs. I chose it because it was simple, easy to watch and would help to pass the day. But it was more than that. There was something perfect about Scrubs.

Scrubs is funny. Hilarious. It always makes me laugh. To do that, it relies on silliness and character quirks. Now, myself, I’m not much into a quirk for the sake of a quirk. Quirks, in the wrong hands, can encourage lazy writing, readership and viewing. I blamed the late-nineties, when the quirk became everything. But Scrubs takes quirks and uses them to give the characters depth. I have tried to write ‘my favourite character is…’ but I can’t. Perry of course, because he has the best lines and because of his humanity. Carla because she’s sassy and I like the way she twirls her hair. Janitor, though I wish they’d kept him imaginary. Elliot. JD. Turk. Kelso. Whoever I’m watching at the time, that’s my favourite character. These characters are flawed and they make mistakes (in my mind these are two separate things). Their lives do not go smoothly. But they keep on keeping on. With humour and empathy and humanity and grace.

Scrubs was the perfect choice for a day when, despite it all, life goes on.

And that is why I say, Scrubs rocks.

(PS And I know I should be grateful for skeins of silk, but I dropped a stitch and had to spend half an hour finding it, so I will have to write that another day or it will defeat the porpoise somewhat)

Between the bus stop and our house

So we’re past the daisies, and not quite to the peppertree, and the conversation turns, as it very often does, to Pokemon, and I say

hey! I just found out there’s a Pokemon trainer called ThirdCat

and they say, not quite in unison

it’s spelt differently

and then little-boy-who-sometimes-comes-home-with-us says

my neighbour’s called ThirdCat…the one who lives upstairs

so of course I say

really? is she as cool as me?

and he stops

and his eyes are as clear as his skin

and he bites at his bottom lip

and he pulls at the strap of his bag

before he gives himself a tiny nod and says

she’s got a carpet python.

And then he looks down

and we take two steps

and he says:

she lets me hold it sometimes.

I scratch the back of my neck and notice that my fingernail catches in my hair and I say

who wants an ice block when we get home?

jo from little women


window

Originally uploaded by adelaide writer

So, here’s my very own garret (sp?), complete with skylight. Goodness knows what the previous owners used the dark, airless box for before. My companion is a present from one of the mister’s aunties. In the tradition of all good aunties, she only visits when she is loaded with presents. She’s generally known as Aunty Christmas, and I’ll let your imagination do the rest of the work.

All the girls got one of these Santas, after we all admired Aunty Christmas’s own one. As I said to the mister ‘my silence was misinterpreted’. But we have got quite used to having the old fella around now, and he is a good companion all year round.

My eldest boy is now slightly taller than Santa and soon my youngest will be five. I’ll let your imagination do the rest of that work too.

Inevitability

If you need to ring me, please use my normal phone, because a replacement charger for one of these costs about $80 and seems to be unavailable anywhere in Adelaide. I have it switched to the function that uses the least amount of power (so can’t make calls or receive text messages) just in case the mister is able to find one at one of the shops he hasn’t yet visited.

Soon I will lose all of the numbers I haven’t transferred from the phone’s memory to the SIM card. And I will lose the last six months of text messages. I already lost the previous two year’s when it went flat sometime last year.

I know no one sends cards or letters anymore, but now we can send messages back and forth from the top of a London bus. Updates from the hospital when we’re too exhausted to speak. Good lucks to people before they walk on stage. How are yous because we want to know, but there’s still the dishes to do and a load of washing to hang.

When I walk past the phone, which I often do, because it is on the bench which is between the rest of the house and the kitchen sink, I take a look at it. I am watching the charge bar drop lower and lower, and thinking about the loss I’m about to have.

A sadness of the 21st century.

Watching the Royals

With hippie left wing parents, it can be hard finding a way to rebel. And so, when I was around twelve, I developed a bit of a thing for the Royals. Because I knew it would give my mum the shits. Cut out pictures of Lady, then Princess, Diana and stuck them on my bedroom door. Stole money from my mother’s purse to buy the Women’s Weekly (these were the days before Maxine McKew came on the news to tell us it would come out monthly, but still be called weekly – you don’t remember that, do you, but I do). That kind of thing. I tell you, it was all change the world with me.

Anyhoo, old habits do die hard, and so, despite the metres of ‘Vote Yes for a Republic’ bunting which is stored in our attic and studio (these are, as I think I have explained, fancy names for rather ordinary things) I’ve never been able to quite stop watching the Royals. And so, I was as fascinated as anyone* else when Willsy and Kate called it off. I must admit, I approached it with a bit of a ‘oh, two young people have decided they don’t want to pash anymore, not so surprising that’, but I do sympathise with Kate because when I used to stay with cousins or friends, my father, as he drove away from the curb would call out (and he has a loud voice) ‘and don’t forget to go to the toilet to pick your nose’. And I can still hear the mothers of my friends as they turned their heads, sniffed and said lavatory, it’s not a toilet, it’s a lavatory.

How I got to be the well-balanced success you see today I’ll never know.

Like I say, tiara recommended.

*You might need to scroll down a bit, I can’t work out how to do the links to individual posts in blogger anymore.

Music memories

When I were a young thing, I had the standard music tastes of a country town girl: INXS, Midnight Oil, Prince (and yes, that was before he was formerly known as), Eurythmics and maybe one or two others. All right, I admit, I had a Dire Straits album. On cassette. Love Over Gold. Also, I knew the words to a lot of Phil Collins, but that’s not my fault. There was only one radio station and I had to listen to that so I knew my day’s horoscope. I couldn’t go to school without hearing my day’s horoscope.

I also very much liked Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. Rattlesnakes. Very, very much. So much that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to buy it on CD now (that Frankie Goes to Hollywood I recently bought on CD I do feel a bit…well, you know, like it wasn’t the best money I ever spent). And look. But I put the notification email into a spiffy ‘for later attention’ folder and forgot all about it and now all the tix have probably gone. I’ll let you know.

Gee I loved that album. Just thinking about it makes me go ‘you know being fifteen really wasn’t that bad’. Except that of course being fifteen was otherwise I wouldn’t have such vivid memories of being under my bed while I listened to it with my headphones on.