The Way I'm Heading

There is a condition that many of us (especially females) have to live with daily. I am not exempt from this disorder and in fact suffer quite severely from it. I see a page of black, red and orange lines with green and yellow spots and squares. A blur of arrows and colours are before me. For a CantworkoutwhereI’mgoing sufferer, maps just don’t make any sense.

I needed to get myself to Women of Letters on Sunday afternoon.  I picked up my faceless Melways and got as far as the turnoff at Chandler Highway. From there my disorder got the better of me. Was I to go left? Or was it right? If I turned my Melways upside down would that help? Why does Westgarth Street look like it’s off a service lane? These are the questions that flash through the mind of a person with no sense of direction.

I find my way to places through visual markers. Looking for a postbox, shop front or unusual house. Verbal directions also tend to stick. I’m the sort of person that goes shopping, enters a store and then walks back in the same direction I’ve come from until I see a shop I’ve just been to.

Being in unfamiliar territory is quite daunting for a CantworkoutwhereI’mgoing sufferer. “Just use you sat nav!” I didn’t bother getting it in my car because I couldn’t understand it anyway. More complicated electronic maps and distances to grapple with. There is always the mobile to “Come and get me” or the wind down your window “Excuse me, how do I get to..?” Luckily, I don’t mind approaching people because I would have been late to many functions when I simply lost my way.

I had to suddenly turn left and jump across lanes when I realised that right was not left, but I made it in good time for Women of Letters. I even managed to find the toilets from my memory of walking up a small flight of stairs last time.

It was another enjoyable and uplifting afternoon listening to distinguished women discussing their letters of complaint. Whether it was their working conditions, our disregard for the environment, employment issues, disenchantment when championing for a cause, or a distracting psychotherapist and writer’s block, it had us chugging back the vino with big belly laughs or sympathetic smiles.

On the way home, I proceeded to get swallowed up by traffic and disoriented by road closures for the Grand Prix. My hubby even had to come and meet me when his “turn left,” “travel 400 metres” and “adjacent to the stadium,” instructions washed over me like an undeveloped image.  I was there but not really there.

I battle on with my disorder and the impossibly of reading a map, but thankfully I have my own ‘sat nav’ hubby on standby to show me which way I am heading.

P.S Ironically, it’s 15 years to the day since my lack of direction got me into real trouble on the streets of BudaPest. At least I’m not scared of spiders!

Lines and Words

Lines. Charting our wayward heartbeats. Forming grids in our maps. Guiding our vehicles. Cocaine ready to snort. Words ready to be penned on them.

A thin blue or pink line is even better if it’s parallel to another blue line. It can be ecstasy for some couples and devastation for others. It’s amazing what those two dye indicators can tell you. Lives forever changed for better or worse.

When did words become part of a pregnancy kit test? I couldn’t believe it when I saw a television advertisement for a very advanced ‘wee on a stick’ pregnancy indicator. You can now be told after that five minutes of anticipation that you are “three weeks and two days pregnant.”

If you want to be really ‘New Age’ you can grab a USB pregnancy test kit and the device will tell you how many babies (if any) and your estimated due date in words*.

I am past the days of pregnancy testing kits but thought it was an interesting example of when words weren’t really necessary.

The lines, bold, faint or absent, speak as much as words.

*http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/pteq.html

My House

The following is a small piece I had to recently write about my house as a child for my online Novel Writing for Junior and Young Adults Readers course:

The French doors were unlocked as always. One of the kids had lost the key years ago. If we went out for a long time, Dad tied the handles with rope to deter would-be thieves. Mum said we had nothing of value any way. Her precious possessions were us.

The lower door panes had been splattered with the wet dog whiskers of our Old English Sheepdog and the green paint was chipped from where you had to kick the door and push it open when it expanded and dropped in wet weather. “We’ll put it on Dad’s list,” Mum would announce. It’s still on Dad’s list.

Luckily the carpet has been replaced. Our home had singular brown carpet squares that you inevitably skidded or tripped over as they came unstuck. They were rough and cheaply made, exposing smooth pine boards as they peeled off. Textures so contrasted, it was like walking on an infant’s sensory book. Only there was no soft fluffy duckling-like surface.

After our homework had been done we were allowed to eat a snack in front of the T.V. There were only four chairs for five children and ‘chair rules’ applied once you had secured your seats. The seats were soft and spongy and had twice been recovered by Mum after her upholstery course.  The orange plastic K-Mart stools were our makeshift coffee table to place our snacks. Books about birds and Australia wedged the T.V in. My brothers’ footy trophies adorned the shelf above.

Amongst this mediocrity a billiard table was placed. Strong with feminine curved legs, it stood in the middle of this vast room. Almost out of place with this eclectic cheap furniture. Polished and strictly out of bounds for food and drink consumption – back then any way.

The walls were bare apart from a photo that was the result of entering your name and winning a free family portrait. Dad’s tense look indicated his frustration at the dithering photographer. I wore my favourite brown velour skirt and my cute as a button sister wasn’t allowed her teddy in the photo. This image only ended up costing five hundred dollars when my parents were coaxed into buying albums and frames. Free?

Further down the corridor, bedrooms shot off in all directions. My bedroom that I shared with my younger sister was large and framed by a delightful bay window. Northern sunlight streamed in as I lay on the unyielding itchy gold carpet and played with my Barbie dolls. When I was a child the road outside was unsealed and clouds of dust would waft through the Liquid Amber tree when a car ventured to the orchards opposite.

From my room, I could hear Dad preparing the morning cup of tea in the kitchen. This narrow room had equally narrow benches with barely enough room for seven lots of sandwiches and one single stand-alone cupboard to cram in all the food stores. The potatoes lived under the sink. So did the occasional family of field mice lured by the promise of a decent meal. The kitchen was a cramped and dark space with a dodgy oven and one small rectangular window. Still cracked from a cricket ball mishap after a game of backyard cricket.

The gardens smiled with colour and growth and the backyard was shaded by a towering gum tree, standing proudly and often in full flower in the centre of the lawn. A makeshift swing hung off a branch and bark concealed a nest of bugs and spiders to terrorise. There were lots of nooks and crannies where we hid our annual Easter eggs.

There was a plentiful supply of hard-shelled eggs. At the bottom of the garden where the brick path meandered was an aviary. It housed Eastern Rosellas, Cockatiels and Silky Bantams and the everyday speckled hen (rescued from its demise at the chicken farm when my brother smuggled it home after being on death row for cosmetic reasons.)

Mum and Dad’s abundant veggie crop was the benefactor of all the chook poo and grass clippings from the acre property. I could smell that fresh cut pile of clippings from the bathroom window when I stepped out of the big blue porcelain bath. This was another space in much need of a renovation. That wasn’t going to happen with a single income and Dad busting himself to send us to private schools. We were used to the old shower, so dark and unventilated that occasionally tiny mushrooms sprouted in the far corner. The loo didn’t have a separate light, but interesting black and white wallpaper of naked nymphs with strategically placed vine leaves and wandering hands. It was my first crash course in sexual desire.

On the outer, the home was weatherboard with a tin roof that amplified the possums bumping and thumping every evening. On the inner it was simple and predominantly yellow and brown, just as well we are avid Hawthorn supporters. Our house oozed character and a sense of belonging. It was my home – mice and mushrooms included.

Black Swan

What a lovely day for a picnic. Let’s have my birthday in the Botanical Gardens,” said Dad. “We can make some gourmet food, go for a run, kick the footy and it will be great, reinforced Mum.” Sounded just like The Bears’ Picnic by Stan and Jan Berenstain. I wondered what disaster was to befall us and didn’t have to wait long.

There we were perched on a rolling hill eating our medium rare beef and Asian duck on involuntarily collapsing plates with precariously placed wine glasses. The distant hum of twenty Grand Prix Formula 1 racing cars was a precursor to the invasion. A determined black swan waddled up to us and tried to move in on our picnic.

“Nothing can bother our picnic here! Lay out the picnic things, my dear.”

My family all tried to send the swan on her merry way, minus my sister who had been terrorized (along with me) by our brother holding mangy chickens to our heads fifteen years ago. Ornithaphobia is on our profiles now.

Someone foolishly threw a crust, another tried his bravado with a picnic rug matador-style, but the wisest one brandished the shopping trolley and drove the pestering bird back to her lake…or at least the outskirts of the picnic.

“Now take this perfect piece of ground. No one but us for miles around!”

I was expecting ants, seagulls or bees but certainly not an adult swan and a persistent one at that!

“No noisy crowd! No pesky planes! And no mosquitoes, trucks or trains.”

The Bears’ Picnic follows the adventure of the Bear family. Papa Bear is enthusiastic about taking them on a picnic and doesn’t lose that excitement in his quest for a lunch spot, despite his poor choices. Papa Bear is an optimist and oblivious to the dark and impatient mood of his family. It is a fun rhyming story that allows children to pre-empt the problems and identify the mixed emotions. It also shows us that outings don’t always go to plan.

This story is shades of our picnic when my brother (same chicken trickster one) wanted to boot the swan out of our picnic with a drop kick into it’s feathery behind. My sister and I were anxiously watching the swans every flap and waddle. It could have ended in tears and one very irate swan. Not to mention a report to the ranger from a woman giving us a discerning look on a nearby path.

Cynicism aside, it was a nice evening despite our imposter and the fact that my pistachio birthday cake resembled unleavened bread. Ever the optimist, family friend Doris said she preferred smaller serves anyway. Perhaps Papa Bear needed Doris at his Picnic!

Abandoned Kittens - Free to a Good Home

Isn’t it ironic that someone who prided herself on her dog-only policy and couldn’t give a fish-cake for the felines, is now housing a tiny five-week-old kitten? Who let the cat in?

Let’s face it; you’re either a dog or a cat inclined person. You prefer to go for walks, scratch bellies and throw balls, or stroke your lap cat (I’m not calling it a pussy for obvious reasons.) Or so I thought…

Our lives took a different turn when I peered into a cardboard packing box outside our Prep classroom on Monday afternoon. I had been lured by the sign Abandoned kittens – free to a good home. I always have a soft spot for the Aussie Battler. Five little sets of eyes lovingly lasered me and one smoky blue pair belonging to a grey kitten with flecks of ginger and white, pierced my inner resistant cat-core. I was meant to rescue this kitten. It was as simple as that.

I didn’t get swept up in the moment and take the kitten. Instead we went home and our daughter quickly broached the subject and gained leverage with her dad. We even had a Brady-Bunch style family meeting. It didn’t take long because hubby has been brought up with cats and wanted his own for years, but my disinterest put it on the backburner. I was still the one having mice and dead birds flashing before my eyes.

Little Ping, who won’t be a she or he until the vet visit this afternoon, is now officially part of our family, much to the horror of Wonka our Chocolate Labrador. Who’s this ‘fluff ball’ eating three meals a day and sleeping on the couch while I’m outside peering in? We introduced the new siblings but it may take them a while to warm to each other. I’ve even confined Ping to the kitchen area and encouraged Wonka to come in the lounge and sit with us. She’s more concerned about leftover cat food than family bonding.

Trying to raise a cat is like being a first-time Mum. I’ve been Googling cat sites, reading books and packets of food for clues. I needed an overview on cats and picked up some interesting information:

On the fun side, there are lots of famous cats. Old favourites like Garfield, Cheshire Cat, Sylvester, Heathcliff and Cleo, Pink Panther and Felix the Cat. Some cats are rehashed like Puss in Puts in Shrek and The Cat in the Hat from the Dr Seuss story. Modern pussycats like Hello Kitty, a Japanese global export hit, also come to mind.

*In Egypt, mummies use to be made of cats and they even embalmed mice for the afterlife. In one ancient city, over 300,000 cat mummies were found. You wouldn’t have stood a chance as a mouse in that city!

I was surprised to read that some very famous writers made bold statements about cats, like Mark Twain who said, “If a man could be crossed with a cat, it would improve the man but deteriorate the cat.**” He is referring to a cat’s independence and refusal to be conform.

I wasn’t shocked to read that dictators like Mussolini and Hitler were cat haters (ailurophobes,) along with Genghis Kahn, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Obviously these were men that didn’t like creatures who refused to jump through hoops for them.

Little Ping has all of us wrapped around her tiny paws and jumping through hoops. We have to be careful where we tread as she follows us around the kitchen. I’m still getting use to the guttural purr.

I continue to live in trepidation of the day Ping rewards us with a mouse or bird on the doormat. I’ve told hubby if that happens, I will throw a sheet over the victim and he can clean up the carcass when he gets home – urgh! I recently rescued a common pigeon from being pecked to death by a Magpie but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t repeat this with a rodent.

If I hadn’t seen that sign or the look of ‘dumped’ kittens, I may never have spent half an hour in the supermarket aisle working out what and how much to feed a kitten. I probably wouldn’t have bought a pink fluffy cat pillow for her bed (I think she’s a girl,) and she wouldn’t have a God-kitty Mother. I wouldn’t have Googled cats and without a doubt I would not be sitting here with a lap kitten typing this blog.

Perhaps you can like both a dog and a cat. You’re proving me wrong Ping.

References:

*www.rulingcatsanddogs.com

* * www.catquotes.com/catfacts

Message – Book Review (Young Adult novel)

“I did it because you are the epitome of ordinariness…”

Markus Zusak once again cleverly goes into the readers’ minds in I am the Messenger (published by Random House) and keeps you guessing about the real story’s message until the end.

A bunch or ordinary card playing, boozing mates are intertwined in a game of discovery of ones self and the greater person.

Ed, twenty something, is sent a playing card and instructed to follow the clues by a mystery source. The journey creates extraordinary ramifications for ordinary people. Simple acts of kindness involve bank robbers, priests, wife beaters, old ladies and even ice-cream. We also observe Ed’s relationship with his trusty dog ‘Doorman’ that gives the story some commonness.

I relate to Zusak’s descriptive writing. He brings everyday situations alive with his personifications: “a small tear lifts itself up in her eye. It trips out to find a wrinkle and follows it down.” Sounds so much better than “she cried.”

Zusak has created a book that we can all assimilate life with. The times we could have mowed the neighbours lawns when their kids were sick, cooked an extra batch of Bolognaise for a new Mum when we had the chance and simply paid an honest compliment, at the risk of sounding contrived, when we thought it was due. His message is a powerful one that centres on our collective vulnerabilities and innate ability to reach out. It could be perceived as a little ‘schmaltzy’ with its deeds but the fact the deeds are simple everyday ones most of us could do, gives it credence.

Zusak even gets Ed to say: “What would you do if you were me?” He invites and involves the reader like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. “Your fingers turn the strongness of these pages that somehow connect my life to yours…the story is just another few hundred pages of your mind.*”

This book cannot be compared to The Book Thief. It is written in a different time and language. However, like all of Zusak’s books it talks about hardship and overcoming adversity with human spirit.

I like hopeful endings.

"Stories have always told me where I was from," Zusak told Teenreads.com interviewer Tammy L. Currier. "[My parents'] hardships and struggle to live decent lives are probably the basis of everything I approach. Also, when I see my friends, we laugh and carry on, and it's our stories that give us that laughter. I guess without stories we'd be empty."

*I am the Messenger, Zusak Markus, Random House Publishing, 2003, p.89

http://biography.jrank.org/pages/389/Zusak-Markus-1975

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/markuszusak/

Tupperware - Argh!

Tupperware party – I hear the words and I run a mile. Not another night of listening to useless information about overpriced plastic containers and contraptions. Not to mention feeling inadequate as I scan the catalogue for something under thirty dollars – oh look a spatula. Meanwhile Auntie Lyn next to me has spent her one hundred and fifty dollars to get the host up to her gift quota. Help!

I must attract party planners because I have been to several over the years. Chef’s Toolbox (another spatula,) ENJO (everyone need s $50 cloth – not!) The Body Shop (at least I got a foot pamper) and the trusty Tupperware party (got about six melon ballers and three egg separators I never use.) Thankfully, I’ve avoided others like Learning Ladders, Bevilles Jewellery, Scrap’n Stuff Scrapbooking, Sketch Kids Clothes and Intimo to name a bunch. Hubby had a meeting or I was definitely away that weekend – nudge, nudge, wink wink.

There is an unspoken rule that if you go to one of these home party-plan events that you make a purchase. Some demonstrators even come up and ask you what you are ordering. I wouldn’t dream of siphoning money from my friends’ purses. I’d prefer to have them over to eat, drink and share stories not pass $30 lunchboxes around. But that’s just me.

Perhaps I’m beyond the orderliness of Tupperware, have an aversion to plastic ware, or I simply don’t have time for small ‘polymer’ talk. I can’t think of anything less riveting than a Tupperware night. Especially when your bogan demonstrator dishes out the same insipid comments and tired jokes. Do I really need to know about how a freezer works and how to cram five hundred grams of mince into a plastic tub? It’s meant to be my night off.

I’m like the annoying kid in the class with snide comments and loud whispering just to get me through to catalogue crunch-time. Then I spot something I think would be useful and it’s about forty dollars over budget, or sorry we don’t have one of those, it’s out of season. It’s plastic for Pete’s sake!

I have very good friends that swear by the world of party planning and it has launched them back into the workforce, boosted their confidence and opened up new opportunities. I commend them for this but it doesn’t mean I support the sneaky marketing schemes of the big businesses behind them. Spend over fifty dollars and you get a free product, but the product you want is five cents short of that of course. Book two more parties to secure your host (the one who has fed and wined you) a gift that they deserve. A lifetime guarantee (with clauses.) They even have a party plan portal where you can get advice on how to lure in the masses.

I did my bit for conserving the environment and minimizing cling wrap. I purchased a Bake to Basics thirty-four dollar and forty five cent square container. Good for cupcakes and slices it says. Aunty Lyn was happy with her rice cooker and Fridge Smart set. 

I know that I could talk the talk and insert jokes to the script just like a Tupperware demonstrator, but I also know how insincere it would be of me. I’ll just stick to being a Tupperware cynic with my fellow ‘what’s wrong with Décor?’ critics. That’s for you Mrs H.

Have you seen this great new ‘must have’ range? Trust Suckerware…oops Tupperware.

  

*Plastics are polymers, and are composed primarily of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen

Say Goodnight, Not Good-Bye

I have this thing. In fact I have lots of these ‘things’ but it was this particular one that resurfaced at my Uncle Des’ funeral yesterday. I must go to sleep, exit a phone-call, or farewell a friend or family member with a see you soon, later gator or goodnight and definitely not a goodbye. The latter has an eerie finality about it that doesn’t sit comfortably with me.

I’m not a seasoned funeral attendee and still cannot believe what has transpired in the last two weeks. My healthy, fit and dry-witted uncle who was living ‘the dream’ with his newly built home in Inverloch had a massive stroke. Sixty seven years young. Of all the uncles he was the least likely to be resting in a casket. Tragically he is and I had to watch his gorgeous wife and beautiful four daughters weep with sorrow and say goodbye…or was it goodnight?

I didn’t hear the lyrics incorrectly. The song sung by Beth Nielson Chapman, written after her own terminally ill husband passed on, said exactly the thing I insisted on, “Say Goodnight, Not Goodbye.”

Say goodnight not good-bye

You will never leave my heart behind

Like the path of a star

I’ll be anywhere you are

In the spark that lies beneath the coals

In the secret place inside your soul

Keep my light in your eyes

Say goodnight not good-bye

Don’t you fear when you dream

Waking up is never what it seems

Like a jewel buried deep

Like a promise meant to keep

You are everything you want to be

So just let your heart reach out to me

I’ll be right by your side

Say goodnight not good-bye*

Nothing can bring back the physical when life is spent, but the spirit is sleeping and will never leave loved ones. Small but comforting words.

In these tender words of my sweet cousin Kim** “despite the difficulties, despite the tears, we laughed, we remembered, we rejoiced in what was truly an inspirational life…his words still linger, his opinion is still known. 

Even though we knew him, we now know him so much better because we have all come together to share our stories, through the blog, through the eulogy, through the pictures, and through the memories.”

My dear cousin Jane’s blog was one of the most moving things I have ever read and even a stranger that didn’t know Des would have felt his family’s suffering and ultimate love that just said goodnight…for now

* Beth Nielson Chapman – lyrics to Say Goodnight from the album Sand and Water

**Comment left at www.desmeagher.weebly.com written by Jane Meagher (daughter of Des)