firstperson thirdcat

PC has been talking about signs which talk about children which reminded me of something a little odd that I wanted to share with you.

Obviously, the last few weeks have been a bit awful, but during the school holidays, I did try to do a few things with my boys apart from putting them in front of televisions, computers and DS screens. One such thing was a visit to the Old Adelaide Gaol, a trip which I intend to blog about at some length. I was actually trying to teach my boys about the complexity of prisons and imprisonment. They play all these games with guns (pretend ones, obvs, because ‘we don’t have guns in this house’) and constant phrases such as ‘I’ll lock you in jail’. My friends seem to be divided on my approach to this form of education, but it was an interesting day nonetheless and had some of the desired impact.

Anyway, I’ll tell you all about it another day. In the meantime, I thought you might be interested to know that one of the first things we saw was this:

It says a lot, no?

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I also wanted to say thanks so much for your comments and emails and messages of support. I’m going okay. Sad, but okay.

We went through one of those new self-serve checkouts today.

I must admit, I appreciated the opportunity to not interact.

On the other hand, checkout chick was my first job. In the Grote St Coles. Pay came in your actual packets. Pay packets. Yellow envelopes they were.

We had 1 and 2 cent pieces back in those days and everyone paid for their groceries in cash. If anyone gave us a fifty dollar note, we had to ring the bell, hold the note in the air and say to the girl next door: ‘check fifty’. We used officious tones for that, and we didn’t have to say ‘please’.

…

*I am not at all sure how to use parentheses correctly, and right now I know I should go and double check, but I just don’t feel like it. I’ll put it on my to do list for next week.

“And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle in that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night

…

And of all the gifts my father gave me, the final one was to let me be there to hold his hand. And he waited for a moment when I held no rage. Only love. Thanks Dad.

…

PS You can listen to Dylan Thomas (I’m pretty sure it’s him) read the poem here. It’s gorgeous.

So, I was planning to be here:

doing some more of this:

it’s really not the weather for this:

I’m not there, because there’s other things that need to be done.

Sitting mostly. Knitting. Cooking soup and casserole. And that thing you do at the stop lights on the late drive home.

I had something like a dream last night. I’ve had it before and I’ve been waiting for it this last week or so. It’s not a dream exactly. But a sense and a feeling. And it’s been following me around. It’s to tell me that everything will be okay. It’ll be hard. But it will be okay.

You’re right, mum.

Because I was out last night, it’s the mister’s turn to go to the party (one day we’ll go out together again, won’t we?) so I am at home sorting my photographs. My digital photographs. My camera(s) download the photos in singularly-dated folders which is really a very awkward way to have photographs organised.

I have created a small number of large-ish folders and transferred the photos appropriately.

This is a most satisfying exercise. I highly recommend it. Now, I am backing the up onto CD-Rs. Whatever they might be. Round shiny things. That’s all I need to know, isn’t it?

All in all, it’s been a rather emotional day, and I’m quite enjoying the satisfaction of all this sifting and sorting.

One thing I’m wondering though: are we supposed to be printing out all these photographs, or will it be enough to have them on these-here CD-Rs?

PS In today’s The Advertiser there was a list of this state’s 150 most important people - I think because The Advertiser is 150 years old or some such. I’m not that great at counting (Amazing Race in-joke there, hilarious, no?), but on my calculations, there are 20 women and 2 Aboriginal people in that list. I know, what else should I expect? But really.

‘Mum, we need you.’

‘Yeah, can you get the ball…’

‘Can’t you get it yourselves?’

‘Well, I’m afraid of the dark and he can’t climb the fence.’

So, I was reading genevieve, who has been reading locus who was (or perhaps were), from what I gather, reading angela, who, has, in turn, been reading krissy who made me think that I think too much and write too little (and not to say that she thinks too little, just to say that her writing discipline inspired me to do more with my thoughts than just think them).

So, I started writing again. Just a little something while the boys watched ABC Kids.

Somewhat alarmingly, I find myself with little to say.

And even that title is a lie.

Current status: all of my fingernails are shorter than I would like them to be.

Or, in other words: nothing to see here. Move along please.

At least I got to watch the Sh*ple C**y special(s), before Sam Newman came back to The Footy Show and I had to start boycotting Channel 9 again.

Probably at around the time, Ampersand Duck was enjoying sushi, I had a plastic bag around my hand, retreiving the sock which had fallen into the toilet bowl. I had to do this after the poo had been done, but before the paper had been used. Other things about this incident you might be interested to know: I was not in my own house.

One night, I texted one of those numbers they advertise after half past nine to find out the name of my perfect match.

John.

So, the teachers went on strike, we met some friends in the park, there was an uneven number of children wanting to play soccer, I didn’t like the look of the ensuing conversation about who would have to sit out, so I said ‘how about if I play’.

‘Yay! Yay! ThirdCat’s gonna play.’ The two big girls jumped around.

My boys looked at each other. I’m almost certain they raised their eyebrows. ‘She can be in your team,’ they said.

‘You go in goals,’ the big girls said, ‘cos we’re really good at attack.’

After my eldest boy had scored three goals against us and I had scored one own-goal, the tallest of the tall girls said ‘maybe I’ll go in goals’.

Halfway down the field, my left foot tripped my right foot over. I am a grown up, so must laugh such things off, but fuck, it hurt (and would for days to come).

I scored a goal!

And then, I had to go in time out, because there was a boy, crying on his mother’s lap, his face etched with the etchings of a ball kicked by an inaccurate foot, and his words ‘I don’t want ThirdCat to play any more’ and my boys ’she’s hopeless, our mum’.

The moral of the story is: pay teachers more.

The lovely meli tagged me for this meme. She has tagged me before, and I’ve never done the memes. Mostly just because I’ve never got around to them, not because I don’t think she’s lovely. You’ve nearly all done it by now, but here’s my answers:

What was I doing 10 years ago?

2007. Just returned to Adelaide. I was: still thinking that I would always be able to speak Spanish; believing that having had my first story published in a Penguin anthology, my second story would be snapped up no problemos; planning to have a child, deciding not to have a child, planning to have a child etc etc; being gobsmacked by mister’s extravagance when he bought a bottle of Grange; going to a lot of films; thinking to self ‘if I don’t get my first novel published by the time I’m 30 it means I’m a miserable failure; wishing that Melrose Place had never had to end; writing a really appalling novel (honestly, it had a scene where these two young people sat on a cliff looking out to sea and wondering - out loud of course - how people could be so unkind).

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world:

I go to the gym and now live in a perfect, non-weight gaining world

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world :

Cheese of all descriptions (even that stuff that comes in the blue box and is wrapper in alfoil - do they still make that); cashew nuts and almonds; anything the mister brings me with my cup of tea while I am watching Tony Jones.

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Get extra solar panel for Kangaroo Island residence, allowing use of three lights and fridge all at the same time; have servant to draw curtains and bath at my request; good works; get in my jet plane to meet James Spader for lunch; set up own publishing company with editor who would never reject my work.

Five jobs that I have had:

Project officer, youth services librarian, manager of Community Aid Abroad shop, executive officer, temporary electorate officer to local member of parliament while permanent electorate officer took annual leave.

Three of my habits:

Blogging, checking bloglines, refreshing bloglines

Five places I have lived:

Clare, Port Pirie, Auckland, Parkside, Blackwood

Five people I want to get to know better: (A nice way of saying TAG!)

yes, well, like I say, I think everyone has done it by now. But fifi hasn’t. You all read fifi’s blog, don’t you? You should be if you’re not. Jennifer. Her blog is excellent too. Unique, thought-provoking stuff. Also, she’s an actuary. I don’t know any other actuaries. Deborah is from New Zealand and lives in Adelaide. I used to be from Adelaide and live in New Zealand. She writes very interesting things and I keep meaning to ask her if she’d like to have a coffee at the Art Gallery sometime. Mikhela’s just had twins, so she hasn’t got anything much to do. I’m sure she’ll have time for a meme. And finally, tut-tut. She’s trying to find a good home for a lovely dog. But we live too far away.

Youse don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.

Also, no idea why the formatting and fonts are all over the shop like that, and I don’t really have the inclination to find out.

Young enough to believe that ‘your chance to win…’ means that he probably will, oldest boy says ‘It’ll be great to win that trip to Disneyland’.

I say ‘why’ wondering how he even knows what Disneyland is.

‘Because it’s the only place we haven’t been’.

Its enormity, which I believed I understood, has been settling on me in waves.

Like yesterday, as I sat at the side of the bed of a man I love, a woman I have been smiling at all week but whose name I do not know, stopped and said ‘we’re going home’. Her nod, her smile, her look were small. ‘It’s at that point. There’s nothing more they can do for him’. I don’t speak because there is no need and because this time is hers.

I wonder how much more there is I am yet to understand. And how I ever will.

And then, in bed at seven, because I couldn’t stand or sit or think, my boys snuggled in with me. They brought me a glass of water, did sums together, took turns to pat me, and when the mister got home (delayed by fog) they said ’shhhh…Mum’s got a thumping head’.

“If Obama lived in Adelaide do you reckon he’d barrack for Port Power or the Crows?”

“Go to sleep.”

Nah, really, the gym didn’t kill me. In fact, I went back this morning and almost enjoyed myself. Plus, I went to Sydney for a couple of days, had a meeting, saw a submarine and two whales in the harbour, used the hotel gym and got chatted up. I jest not. Along the lines of ‘haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’ Good grief.

My mind has been occupied with such questions as ‘how many more people are going to write letters to the editor talking about how we shouldn’t have maternity leave because not everyone will use it’? It is true that not everyone will use it. But thankfully, not everyone uses workcover either. Not everyone needs an unemployment benefit. Also, howcome our arts minister is making weird comments about art, but our sports minister sees no need to comment on poor attitudes to women (in my opinion, bordering on violence against women) as displayed on certain television shows.

Geese, the world is full of geese. And whales.

Am also very busy trying to act like an adult all the while feeling that certain elements of my existence are being given no respect and that particular important relationships are being given no oxygen. Life is complicated, no?

My boys are absolutely gorgeous at the moment. They give me spontaneous hugs and kisses and make up jokes to make me laugh.

The dog is slightly better trained, though he is still getting on the table to look for food scraps (of which there is a great many, this being one of those houses where the dishes do not get taken straight to the sink).

I am considering taking up golf though the mister feels that I will feel myself out of place.

I got a speeding ticket - the first one I have ever had. Nearly two hundred dollars. It made the twenty dollar parking ticket hurt less.

The mister rocks. He is also a rock. From time to time his rock-ness gives me the shits. But more often than not, his rock-ness keeps me keep-on keeping-on.

It is not a good time to be trying to sell a house. It is never a good time to be selling a house on someone else’s behalf.

And all the while, I am madly trying to write putting the finishing touches on my first solo show for its debut in August.

The colour-coded books are beginning to look most ace. Photos to come, hopefully after this weekend when I get them all finished.

Morning: join gym

Afternoon: die