Me, Fry and cigarettes

We sat in the “Great Court”, surrounded by what we imagined to be sandstone buildings, but in actual fact was merely cladding over ordinary boring standard bricks. There was an element of pride sitting outside the cafe at this great university. Of course we sullied it with our language and our cigarette butts, but that doesn't mean we didn't appreciate how beautiful our surrounds were. 

Looking back, I wonder about my fashion choices. I seemed to be going through my slightly slacker phase, having bought a retro 1970s suede jacket and my skater shoes. The rest of the group in some semblance of that same theme. Sneakers, raver shoes, platforms those were footwear styles that defined the late 90s.

So we’d sit in this here called great court and believe ourselves to be full of promise. My arm would be raised with my elbow rested on the back of the chair and a cigarette extended from my fingers. I would follow the cigarette with my eyes as I brought it to my lips. Inhale and exhale, watch the smoke leave my lungs and my lips. I’d gesticulate wildly with the hand holding the cigarette, watching the great arc of light I’d created from the lit, colloquially known, cancer stick.

It’s because I’ve been reading Stephen Fry’s "Fry Chronicles" that this memory has pushed itself to the forefront of my mind.  I find Fry pee your pant funny as well as being incredibly brilliantly minded. One of my favourite  parts, so far, covers cigarettes and how hard it has been for him to give up the wretched habit.

I can’t really empathise with that bit, as I am not a 100% non-smoker. Well I am as far as any response to a survey would suggest, but I am still a sometimes-when-I’m-drinking smoker. The reason is that I had a love affair with cigarettes, and they were also the essential accessory to my late high school and university years. Smoking now, when I do it, makes me feel young. I forget the wrinkles, the sagging boobs, wide bum and I remember what it was like to be free. It's the next day that I am wracked with guilt and worry about my health.

Cigarettes introduced me to people I would have never met. There’s a smoker’s convenant, and us smokers would huddle in groups outside of buildings making immediate friends with strangers. Cigarettes provide opportunities for people who might be slightly socially awkward. On some level, I probably believed they made me cool. I’m fairly sure that cigarettes helped define me, or my brand, in my own mind.

I was wholly convinced that I smoked to still the dizzying speeds of my mind. Now my brain is so slow that thoughts stumble across my brain like drunken, disoriented old men and they are so rare I am so delighted to see one that I grab onto it with both hands while mentally doing a 'congratulations for still thinking' dance. The little suckers, (ha) were quite powerful in terms of their abilities  to make me believe I couldn’t do anything without having a cigarette first.

But again, thankfully I don't smoke all the time anymore. If I had any self control at all, I probably wouldn't smoke at all. Well I do think I have self control until I have a drink...then things start falling apart. From bad food to cigarettes, after booze I am apparently still a teenager at heart. 

So when Fry tells his story of addiction, I am amazed that someone as supremely intelligent as him can have such issues. I'd have expected him to be more in control than the rest of us mere mortals. So tomorrow, when I catch up with my uni friends, I am will hopefully not feel quite as guilty as I usually would, because even the likes of Stephen Fry finds it hard to give things up. 

Lost in execution

You would have noticed that my last post departed from the usual style and focused on something other than the first person stuff I’ve been banging on with. I’ll probably do that from time to time as I am so frequently outraged by some numpty or other in the news, I may as well share my opinion with you too! However, today we go back to my usual banging on.  

LSH is Canadian. Not sure if I’ve mentioned that before. But he is. And we forgive him for it. That’s a joke, by the way. I truly love that he’s Canadian and a proud Canadian – at that. I am, mostly, a proud English person. I love the country that I’m from. There’s so much about it I find wonderful. Okay, mainly just the awesome access to music, great variety of fashion, great junk food and the pub culture. But there’s something different about the way LSH truly loves being Canadian. He wears Canadian shirts (apparently something they all do, but I am yet to see for myself) loves his Roots (the brand, you dirty minded people) and he love loves ice hockey.

Roots is a ridiculous name for a brand, I admit that. LSH bought me a Roots jumper a few years ago on one of his trips home and it said “Roots Squad”. I wore it to my parents’ place for dinner one evening and told my dad that I was in LSH’s Roots Squad. Only now am I realising how completely awkward that joke was. At the time, LSH went bright red and slid under the table. Not sure if he was embarrassed for himself or for me.

Anyway, occasionally we have some lost in translation moments. For instance, instead of saying orange, he said awnge. Of course he thinks I say oringe.  Instead of mirror he says meer. Again, LSH says that I say meeeroor. He says Ceyan wrap for Glad wrap or cling film. He seems to believe that I say porn shop instead of pawn shop (since we don’t actually frequent either establishment, you’d be surprised how much this comes up in conversation). Apparently the difference is that porn, as in buw chicka bup bow, is pronounced porn, whereas pawn, as in second hand, is pronounced pahan.

Occasionally, he’ll add an “A” to the end of sentences. So “let’s have lunch”, becomes “let’s have lunch A”. Oddly, and probably thankfully, for fear of my merciless teasing, he doesn’t say aboot.  So, after nearly eight years, I’ve grown accustomed to some of his vernacular and he mine. However, just this very morning, we had one of our “huh” moments.

I was sitting on the couch, eating my porridge, as I do, for breakfast. Our dog loves porridge, and since I have lactose free milk, she is often the happy recipient of my leftovers. So we sat, Ginger, the dog, with her head on my knee looking wistfully into my bowl of porridge, and me tyring to ignore just how cute she is when she wants something.

LSH pipes up with “she only has eyes for the porch.” Now, we don’t actually have a porch in our house, we have a front deck, but no porch. So, I said, thinking he has lost his mind from too much caffeine, and couldn't see the dog such was his hallucination, “but she’s right here, in front of you and in front of me.”

“I know,” he said, “she’s only interested in the porch.”

So now I’m thinking is he calling me a porch. Is he making comment about my thighs? Is my knee a porch? So while, perhaps, he might not say that I’m the size of a house, he would instead say that I’m a front porch?

“What are you talking about?” I said, starting to lose my patience, as I so often wrongly do when I don’t seem to understand something. I have a tendency to think it’s the other person not, as the case may be, my lack of intellectual ability.

“Your breakfast,” he raises his voice, “that” and points to my porridge.

I start laughing, “how on earth can you possibly think that porch is porridge?”

“It’s porch. Porch. How can you not understand that when I say porch I mean porch,” LSH is starting to get frustrated and sharply stabs his finger at my porridge.

“Uhm, because it’s porridge,” I say, slowly,  like I'm talking to an idiot. I think I'm being funny so much so that I start to laugh again and a little bit of spit and porridge may have fallen out of my mouth. LSH is trying to be stern but is having one of his Seinfeld moments where his voice raises an octave when he's trying to prove a point and not laugh all at the same time.


“Again, you’re saying paaawreedge. You should just say porch. It’s just like how you can’t seem to phonetically differentiate between pahan (pawn) and porn… ”

Here we go again. Half the fun of our relationship is never really understanding what the other person is saying.  Realistically, that’s probably why it works.

And the man said, "Racism is in our DNA"

Australia’s Race Discrimination minister, Graeme Innes, said, “Racism is an inevitable part of society and it’s almost part of our DNA,” last week when he spoke of a project to improve relations between the police force and Muslim communities.

There were millions of alarms bells clanging loudly in my mind when I heard this new piece. And I have two major concerns.

One. So, racism is almost part of our DNA? What this means is that hate based of ethnicity, race and colour and not personality, are inevitable.

If it’s part of our DNA, we can’t help it or stop it. If racism is as natural as our genetic strengths and weaknesses, then much like we can’t alter our propensity for disease, we also can’t alter our attitudes. Surely this makes programs such as teaching police officers how to interact fairly with the Muslim community, futile – well at least until genetic engineering becomes more commonplace.

We can throw money at anything, doesn’t means it’ll stick. Of course, my more politically astute and sometimes cynical LSH will say that it’s not the result that matters, it’s the perceived intention. If this is the case, the government is winning hand over fist. They have mastered the illusionist's trick – the art of diversion.

Two. If we need a program to help improve the relationships between police and the Muslim community, then I’d imagine we need a program to help police engage and relate to the Aboriginal community due to the overwhelming number of aboriginal deaths noted in police custody.

If we are hell bent on overcoming our genetic predisposition, surely we also need education programs in workplaces, in schools, in restaurants, in shopping malls, in suburban streets, in every single space that humans may inhabit.

However, for a moment, let's believe that racism isn't in our DNA and that it's a choice, why do we need these programs for the police force? Surely, the police, in upholding a least one corner of the moral flat sheet of our society, realise, understand and appreciate the laws protecting citizens from racism and if they don't they should, at the very least, not partake in negative behaviour. However, it seems that, unfortunately, the police force could potentially be one of the most corrupt, both morally and behaviourally, institutions on the planet. If Mr Innes is right and we have racism in our DNA, it would only be natural, literally, for there to be issues and they cannot be fixed. 

Since I disagree with Mr Innes and believe that racism is in fact a choice, surely the hiring practices should be more stringent for police force than they are for regular organisational roles. Perhaps attitude to race and ethnicity should be included in the psychological testing. Of course, not all police are corrupt, but as a group, as a mass under the microscope, there appears to be a lot of toxicity. And the toxicity spreads far and wide, initiated by all types of people, into parts of the community and into people's lives causing damage and pain.

For a community that constantly talks about being multicultural and respecting each other's differences, its astonishing that these types of scenarios with these outrageous comments are still commonplace and happen more often than anyone would think.

I love this city...well that one actually.

We went to Sydney for the weekend and it was amazing. It was my birthday the week prior and the trip really just happened to coincide with that event. While the trip was a much needed getaway, we said it was my birthday celebration.

So last Friday morning, I managed to get onto a plane without hyperventilating and flew to Sydney. Shortly after disembarking we jumped on the underground train and headed into town.

I hadn’t been to Sydney for pleasure for about a year. I’ve been for work a couple of times, but that doesn’t count since all I do is hop into a cab, go to an office, hop into a hotel bedroom to order room service and talking to LSH on the phone.

As I exited the train, the cool Antarctic winds chilled the otherwise scorching 30 degree day. The people moved fast, the city buzzed with life around me. I felt like I was back amongst it again, like I was alive.

I did live in Sydney for a while after I returned from a stint in London, only I hated it then. I thought it a poor cousin to the vastly more interesting, fabulous and fantastic London. I worked for a branch of the company I had worked for in the UK. The people in the satellite office were dramatically different from those in London and we just didn’t click. These people were sour, rude and a little bit wanky. All the while the people in London had been really welcoming and fun. So I left, came back to Brisbane, where I figured I would spend the rest of my days. Now, I’ve been here for so long that going to Sydney seems so appetising, so tantalising and so much like the big smoke that I almost wonder if I now look like a backwater local to the city’s residents

It took a few months to learn the “well ‘ard” face of a Londoner, not sure how long it takes to master the stern, determined face of a Sydney-sider. I am sure I didn’t pick it up over the weekend, although I did try to look pensive with furrowed brows, ducking out from under my sunglasses.

There are so many things to love. I love that there are tourists filling the city, pouring out of every orifice, yet there’s a professional purpose to the city too, people walking officiously about with headset to ear, talking in bullsh*t bingo buzzwords that mean nothing really, except to their own sense of self importance.  I love that the city is caressed by brilliant blue water, I love that there’s an enormous bridge that takes my breath away. I love the old dodgy looking opera house that everyone raves about. I love the recently revamped suburbs that were once home to drug dens and prostitutes, but are now filled with incredibly wealthy yet tortured, arty types.  I love that things are old and there are architecturally interesting buildings. I even love the merchandising in the stores, I especially love the great expanse of brands, I love the choice. I love the variety of people, products, music, food, sounds and smells. I also love driving out of town for 30 minutes and sitting on a the back deck of our dear friends' house listening to the kookaburras that rest in their yard of paperbark trees. I love it all.

It seems that I have managed to properly fall in love with Sydney, this time. And just like a new crush or lover, I can’t stop wondering when we’ll next see each other.

Soon my dearest, soon.

Dear liza...

There’s a whole hole in my brain. I’m sure of it, simply because information, data, instructions, to-do lists, fast facts, quick quips, punctuation, spelling, all fall through the giant, gaping hole in my brain.

I am unable to remember the basic of things. I walk into my wardrobe then out again meaning to tell LSH some salient point only to have it vanish, just as quickly as it appeared.

I am often left standing in the lounge, in my underwear, pointing to the sky, mouth agape, with my eyes twitching from left to right searching my brain for the story I meant to tell. The dog’s heads lifts from her paws as she anticipates my  no doubt great oratory (loyal little pumpkin that she is), but is instead left confused, re-resting her head on her cute feet, wondering why she bothered.

A couple of years ago, I was finishing a post graduate degree (I know, roll your eyes, I sound like a self promoting twat), while working insane hours. I discovered back then that pieces of information would fall out of my brain as I tried desperately to retain anything to do with the degree.

“It’s because I’ve got so much going on, two subjects at uni, lots of crazy work hours, while planning my wedding,” I thought, “It’s no surprise things fall off the radar. When I stop studying, things will be better.”

Only things aren't much better. Now, I have nothing to exercise my brain with and I’ve more time to drink. I’m sure I did serious damage to my brain over the Christmas break when I consumed almost three bottles of champagne to myself plus some further glasses of vodka in one sitting between 1pm and 11pm.  It was very messy. I woke at 3am feeling a strange heat bubbling under my skin, with the hairs on my arms standing up on end. I was feeling faint all while my stomach churned Malaysian curry, champagne and vodka from left to right, up and down and back around again.

An overwhelming urge made me shift to the lounge room floor so I could feel the wood beneath my back. I’m fairly sure I fainted. The indelicate thud of my body, crashing to the floor woke LSH. Sober as a sensible judge he asked, “Do you need anything my love?”
 “Nope, I’m fine, only I feel hot, weak and like I need to rip my skin off. Plus, I might throw up. But that aside, all good”
“You’re going to throw up here?” he asked.
“Yup,” I said.
“So, you’re going to throw up on the lounge room floor?”
“Yup”.
“Okay then,” he said in a way that suggested he’d had to put up with my ridiculous behaviour so many times before. He fetched me a pillow and went back to bed.
I lay on the cold floor trying to remember how Jim Morisson died ( lookey there, I remembered something)!

Previous to that drinking binge I’m sure some synapses were still firing, but that night made the left side of my brain completely separate from my right, voiding all synapses and creating a big black gaping hole in between.

Soon, I’ll be one of those poor people who drank too much in their formative years only to have their limbs stop responding to their brain neurons firing instructions to the extremities of their body. You’ll spot me walking through the mall, dragging my left leg behind me, inarticulate, unable to calculate % off discounts in my favourite stores unable to remember who anyone is. Here’s hoping I don’t lose bladder control too. Or I’d give new meaning to pissfit.

I’m still contemplating a glass of wine tonight though, I’ve had a tough week. Or at least I think I have, if only I could remember it…

It's a mighty punch and a kick

I’ve a new thing to be anxious about – some other series of thoughts with which to knot my stomach. These thoughts are about the fact that it appears the planet might very likely explode kind of soonish.

It appears mother nature has had enough of my big feet stomping all over the earth. She’s tired of your feet too.  Frankly, she hates us all. She’s the geek in school, the one all us “cool” kids made fun of, ignored, treated like a pariah while blowing smoke in her face from our big fat cigarettes and now she’s turned into an enormous angry mother and is seeking her revenge.

We’ve been in drought, had 6% water in our dams, we’ve then been flooded with 197% water in our dams and we’ve had a cyclone or two, bush fires and now a massive earthquake in New Zealand.

Something about the footage from New Zealand drags on my heart strings. Sure I watched the footage of Haiti and I was both moved and saddened. But in counties with low GDP, I sort of callously expect their buildings to crumble when their foundations are shaken from underneath. I don’t expect New Zealand’s to.

I’ve seen devastating footage of earthquakes in California, but their earthquakes seem so much more severe, with giant rips through layers of bitumen – it’s an earth split, rather than an earth shake. 

So this Earth shake has, in an instant, left families without their mothers. This image I saw online, scratched at my throat. The look on the boys face as he tries to swallow his sob captures it all. Just one moment and someone you love is gone in a horrific natural disaster.

I regularly say to LSH after part of our country is affected by flash flooding that it would be the worst thing, in my mind, to have my life or the life of someone I love, taken in a natural disaster. There’s no good way to go, I can’t imagine anything is good, after all, grief is grief. But to get up, say, “I love you, have a good day and I hope you’ve packed your lunch” before heading off to work, only to either be swept away in some random flooded river water or have your office wall crash down around you, that’d be, again, in my view, very very shit.  More than shit, actually, completely fuckety fucked.

A split second changes it all. It’s mental. It’s crazy. I can’t get my little brain around it.

I know trite platitude after trite platitude: life’s fragile, special, short etc etc blah blah, but we never think it when we’re in it. I spend so my time wondering what I should be doing with my life, as I run round and around in circles chasing some invisible goal, but there are those moments, that unify us for a moment and quiet the dull drone inside our heads a feel something for someone we don’t know.

So, I have a knot in my stomach, and it’s getting bigger with every mighty punch from mother nature, as I am more convinced that I’ll have no choice, it’ll all end with a massive natural disaster.

I really hope the planet calms down soon, it’s getting to be beyond a very bad joke. 

Something to be grateful for.

Everyone said, “don’t have a list”.
“You’ll never find Mr Right if you have a list. It’s too prescriptive,” they said.
But of course I had a list. Not having a list is like going shopping for shoes without knowing the colour, style, heel type, toe style, material or price range and expecting the perfect pair to magically appear and match every outfit in your wardrobe.

Mine was a relatively specific list, but I was prepared to wait to have at least most of the “requirements” ticked off. I noted things like:

• must have straight, white teeth
• must have a strong, biggish nose
• must be a few years older (men my own age have not stood the test well and there’s something super sexy about someone a little bit older…)
• must have blue eyes and brown hair.
• must have good sized ears. (I dated a man once who had small ears, it was weird).

Then when I wasn’t so superficially preoccupied, I added:

• must make me laugh
• must laugh at my jokes
• must be easy going
• must not be moody (I’m moody enough, thank you very much)
• must be able to deal with me and my many other personalities
• must get along with my friends
• must must must love dogs and animals in general
• must love all music (except country and western, I can forgo having to listen to country and western)
• must have travelled and be interested in travel
• must like curry and food in general
• must like alcohol and be good with it.

I’ve had this list since I was about 15, adding and subtracting where necessary. And as a result let’s just say dating was always a pretty boring occasion, until I met LSH. Unbelievably, he meets every single one of my criteria and so many more (and a fair few others that aren’t mentioned here). I often wonder if I ever meet any of his.

He’s my incredibly wonderful, unbelievably generous, totally selfless, caring, warm,  centred, funny, sarcastic, understanding, fun, patient (except when he’s driving),  sometimes argumentative, pissfit, smartass, tender, honest  and kind husband. 

I call him my Long Suffering Husband (LSH) partly because he’s a very private person and tends to merely tolerate my telling our stories both here and out in public with a laugh and a shake of the head, but also because he puts up with all my many idiosyncrasies and they are many. So plentiful are my slightly crazy habits that my mother once said she never thought any man would ever want to commit to me, but would rather have me committed.

He’s the warmest person I’ve ever met. It’s really hard to explain, but usually I feel kind of filled with a frenetic energy going in every direction. My emotions move up and down, while my thoughts go around and around. Yet, when I’m near LSH it all stops. I’m still because he is still. I am convinced his energy, which is so steady and centred, spreads to me when I am near him. Someone once said that talking to LSH was like smoking a good joint. That person was patently an idiot, but I understand the sentiment that was being expressed. Being near LSH, for me, is like taking a really deep breath and then exhaling. This all sounds so selfish. This is what he gives me. And I have to say I feel like it’s everything. I am not sure what I provide him in return, except perhaps a headache and maybe even hypertension..

I do know that I am the luckiest woman alive, I’m lucky to have even found LSH – what will all those criteria, let alone have him love me with the same limitless and never ending amount that I love him. 

Happy V day all and, in particular, my dearest LSH!

Loose cannons and Sunday roasts

My parents have, what I would consider, connections with people who live in Offensive Town. A place that shares its borders with  Ignorant Ville and Judgemental Hill – where the glass houses have views of the high horses put out for agistment.

There was once a “friend” who made comments about my sexuality when I didn’t bring any boys to dinner. He would also question my political beliefs as a young woman at university who was enjoying sharing feminist ideals with her new colleagues, by eloquently stating that “you can’t be a feminist because you wear a bra”.  How underwear relates to one’s ability to think, I’m yet to learn.

In this man’s presence I drank and smoked more. It was my only line of defence. No point in arguing with someone who is patently stupid. Plus, my mother would take umbrage with my calling him a “fuckwit”, at someone else’s dinner table.

His wife, when I met LSH – the first man to be tortured by being a guest at one of these gatherings said, “I am pleased you’re happy.”  I smiled, although thinking that I hadn’t realised I was unhappy before. I’m being harsh, but that type of un-thought out platitude makes my trite-ometer go haywire.

Until recently, I’ve been safe, somehow protected from the silliness of my parent’s friends. Now married and having been working full-time for what seems like an eternity, I had my lifestyle choices being challenged over a Sunday roast.  I’ve mentioned before I’m not a great wife in the traditional sense of the word. I don’t actually like the terminology for married folk particularly that of ‘wife’. They are too labelling and smell of pigeon holes. LSH and I think of ourselves as a high performing team, working synchronistically to achieve goals. This, for so many people of my parent’s generation seems impossible to fathom.

“Do you make lunch for LSH?” One woman asked.
“No”. Was my deadpan reply.
“Who does the ironing in your house?” The same one woman asked again.
“I do it, in the main, but when I’m out or too tired and it needs to be done, LSH does it.”  I said, wondering why I am giving away all this boring, mundane detail about our household chores.
“Do you cook for him?”
“Uhm, sometimes,” I replied.
“Do you clean?”
“Yes, we share tasks.”
“When you have a child who will look after it?”
Things are starting to get out of hand and I, in turn, start to behave like a five year old.
“Oh, LSH will,” I say, my tone thickening, “He’s better with remembering to feed things than I am. I can barely remember to feed the dog.” This is not entirely true, I just take longer to get ready for work than LSH does, so he’s already on the front foot with dog things.
“Oh Michelle.” Super offensive nosey woman says. “Tsk, tsk tsk. Poor LSH.”

LSH who doesn’t do confrontation, said nothing. His silence  made this woman feel like she’d uncovered some great relationship secret LSH had been hiding from me. She gave LSH a knowing, pitying look of knitted eyebrows, sad down-turned lips and puppy dog eyes. I’m insulted for both me and for LSH. Apparently while I am a crappy, selfish wife, LSH is an idiot who can’t cook or clean for himself.

I can’t believe I have to endure these types of conversations. Anything I say as retort is going to be inflammatory, hence I say nothing and bury my face in a big glass of wine.

“Are you getting drunk?” asks super offensive woman.
“Yes.” I reply.
“Don’t you have to go to work tomorrow?” she asks.
“Yes. And that’s precisely the point of this entire conversation.” I say, while my inner voice does fist pumps.

I've joined another institution

For the first time in my life, I have joined a gym. I never thought I would. I have been idealistically opposed to the idea for so long for so many reasons.
some of these reasons are:
1. I’m not so keen on parting with my cash unless I’m buying shoes, pants, necklaces or handbags.
2. Gyms scare me.
3. It's institutionalised and I'm convinced I partake in enough institutionalised activities.
4. I’m not good with routine. Well I am, but not long term routine. In fact, what I do is get fit and trim, then slowly get bigger only to then get trim again. The only difference that this time, getting trim has been difficult. The doctor tells me that my metabolism is slow and my thyroid is lazy. Yeah, you don’t say.

After last year's holidays and eating a week’s worth of great food, I realised that a lot of what I might have considered healthy eating is, in fact, terrible. As a result, I have cut out most wheat and most unnecessary dairy – like ice-cream. Apparently, I don’t need ice-cream to survive.

So as part of the next phase of my fitness and, I suppose, my life, two weeks ago I put all my anti-gym sentiments aside and I joined one! In saying that, though, some anti-gym sentiment remains as I have yet to dispell the idea that gyms are, in the main, horrendous places. Vacuous, sterile rooms with palpable undertones of judgement and general evil. Even the little tiny gym I have joined has me paranoid. Just this morning, in fact, I was on the treadmill, merrily walking and jogging to some classic ministry of sound tunes (LSH thinks that’s an oxymoron) when in my peripheral vision I spot two girls on the elliptical trainers behind me and one of them starts laughing.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My paranoid, high school shackles are raised. Is she laughing at me? Is my running style so bad that I make people laugh? Sure, I don’t wear make-up to the gym, but surely my face, well what she can see of it at least, isn’t that funny? I love the idea of working out in solitude and I like going to the gym on my own. But when there are two or more girls together, I feel small and vulnerable. I’m not wearing my face armour and I am not wearing my heels, nor a great pair of pants to protect me from being judged. In fact I am looking at my worst, wearing some crappy pants, an ill fitting tee-shirt and a hair bandana my folks picked in Bali that looks like it was made by a pot-smoking hippy in Nimbin. Suddenly I realise why Lorna Jane does so well. Her brand of gym gear stops women from feeling so hideous in front of other, fitter women. Wearing Lorna Jane says to the potential judgement maker: “caste your judgement elsewhere, I am wearing great, expensive, pants.”

I stop running and start speed walking only to realise that I am absolutely on my own. Stopping the treadmill, I worry about my next move, which is to go upstairs into the weights area. Suddenly, I don’t want to. I see these girls on the elliptical trainer and I want to leave. I can just imagine them whispering behind their hands about untidy hair. At that moment, I’d rather come back some other day when there are other, older, more quiet, mind your own business types in the gym. Thankfully, some part of my brain kicks in and tells me to stop being ridiculous and grow a pair. I grab hold of that thought tightly and walk upstairs, where one guy is stretching and he politely asks how I’m going. I grab my weights and start moving my arms. He doesn’t look at me, or laugh at my little weights. He just goes about his own exercise regime. I let out a giant, yet silent, sigh of relief and berate myself for being such a fool.

Returning downstairs, I see the young woman who was laughing is watching “Who’s line is it anyway?” A show that makes me laugh out loud too. Turns out, I was paranoid for no good reason. Well, if there was good reason, it wouldn't be paranoia, it'd be reality, but that's beside the point! I'd even go so far as to say that it is likely that no-one even noticed my existence. It’s just such unfamiliar territory and I’m not comfortable there yet. Probably none of the people are, since the gym is still quite new. It is possible we’re all just pretending to be cool and get on with our workouts, while hoping no-one notices our back sweat or any body odour. It’ll be a hard balance. I don’t want to make friends with anyone at the gym, even though I know that would  make me feel more comfortable. Yet I don’t want to feel like an awkward teenager either. Hopefully, the next two weeks see me establish some level of comfort and a good routine and I'll be institutionalised in no time. Mwa hah ha ha.

Nothing ironic about this...

 

"Flood" at Brisbane Powerhouse. Nothing ironic at all.

And so the rains are here.

So Brisbane, the town I’ve lived in – on and off since I was a teenager, looks like it’s about to be pummelled by flood waters.

We’re not used to this type of thing here in Brisbane. We’re a capital city for goodness sake. Maryborough, Rockhampton, Townsville, those northern and extreme parts of the country are the ones that are most affected by nature’s extremes. Brisbane, well, we pull through, unaffected, right?

Apparently, not this time. Apparently, this is like some enormous payback for getting through the other times.

Yesterday, Toowoomba, a town 2.5 hours west of Brisbane, was flooded and people died in a sudden and horrific torrent of water rushing, gushing and ripping through the city streets. It’s a town that sits on a mountain range, so it’s flabbergasting how this can even happen. My dad, due to go to Toowoomba for work today, said he didn’t believe the news. Said “newsreaders always like to say the closest township so people know what, or where, they were talking about”. This is true to an extent. LSH’s family in Canada saw the floods in Rockhampton and were told through their newscasters the images were from Brisbane. Only slightly funny because Rockhampton is a 1.5 hour flight away. Dad probably still doesn’t believe that it was Toowoomba.

The water from Toowoomba’s inland tsunami is set to rush through Ipswich to the Brisbane River where it will break the banks and gush into our suburbs. Tears welled in my eyes as I saw my floating boardwalk at Southbank, where I often take a Sunday stroll, is under water. And this is just the beginning. Can’t even begin to fathom how I would feel if I saw my home like that.

I always think, in times of these natural disasters, “I hope they have insurance”. Funny thing is we’re with NRMA for our home and contents and they don’t insure for flood damage caused by overflowing rivers in Queensland. Of course, five years ago when I took out the policy, we were in a drought and I no doubt scoffed at these limitations. Frankly Brisbane hasn’t flooded since 1974 – so NRMA, in my mind are just pricks, if every 30 years is ‘prone’ in their books – I don’t know what frequent would mean. So, regardless, this morning, I started ringing around multiple insurers and my suburb is on an embargo list – along with 70 or so others. Do Not Insure, they say, likely flooding. Hmmm. Comforting words.

Maps of the city have been drawn up to show residents which houses are likely to be affected across which areas. We’re in a state of emergency, declares our Premier, a woman who looks too much like a girl I went to school with, it’s awkward and scary. The water is all starting to roll down the mountain. And the non-stop rain isn’t helping.

Our city centre was evacuated. How on earth does that happen? Our financial district, our government services our central retail all shut down. I work out of town, thankfully, but my drive home at 12.30 today was manic, thousands of people left their offices and hurtled home so as not to be stranded. The roads were busier than at peak times. Some workers were already stranded. Some people weren’t able to get home, already. I thank the universe that LSH and I have been able to arrive home and pop our dog upstairs.

People’s attitudes are interesting. My workplace said, “Look after your families and friends, look after your homes and your pets. Be safe. We advise that you don’t visit any areas that are flooded.  Work will be here when you get back.” LSH’s company and a husband of a friend of mine’s company both said, “nope, no need to leave.” LSH was nearly flooded in and unable to leave his office.

My personal attitude has been to stress and worry. I have no flood insurance. I might have a flooded home tomorrow. Not sure how high the waters are running, might be my downstairs, might be my upstairs. Might be none, might be all. I have now consumed three very quick glasses of bubbles and am starting to relax. 11pm tonight is going to be the worst, and we’re expecting some king tides tomorrow and Thursday. Some sunshine might raise our spirits a little. It’s harrowing, surreal and also completely ridiculous. I was planning a dinner out tomorrow, dinners for the weekend. Gym excursions and walks as well as mini-breaks to Sydney and now…we’re wet. All just wet. I’ve left the PC downstairs, here’s hoping that wasn’t a really silly decision.

A day of Facebook updates

“Marbles loves it when the alarm goes off in the morning and she throws a lazy, tired arm across LSH’s chest for five minutes of snoozing, before taking the dog for a walk.

“Marbles smiles widely at her dog who walks like a crazed lunatic.

“…dislikes looking at a wardrobe full of clothes that seem never to be quite good enough and don’t match any one pair of her boxes of shoes. Anyway, she would rather wear pyjamas to work instead. She also believes that one should be judged on one’s ability to one’s work, not by one’s clothes. She storms off to the bathroom with determination to start her new world order, but knows she’ll end up at the shops at lunch, instead. 

“…arrives at work, early, in a bid to get a kickstart on her day. But due to new found memory loss and truncated attention span, can’t remember why she’s even there in the first place.

“…does not enjoy being talked at by people who talk about themselves and their activities in terms of money. “I drank an $200 bottle of wine last night”. “I rode my $7000 bike on the weekend.” “I’ve just had a $30k pool put in.” She wishes somebody would save her from this boring self promotion/absorption.

“ …Tunes out in most meetings and really rather likes the smell of nikko and petrol. She wonders if tuning out and sniffing toxins are related?

“…thinks that perhaps some people are sent to drive her crazy.

“…gets cranky when LSH takes four hours to reply to her email. What do you want to eat for dinner?!!!!

“…also finds herself getting cranky at people who have the audacity to call  instead of email her. She dislikes talking on the telephone about work. Email and face to face are fine, thank you.

“…is starting to wish it was the end of day, week, month year.

“…is troubled that she’s wishing her life away and doesn’t seem to achieve much except working, drinking and eating.

“…spends much of her day wondering about the point of her existence and the meaning of life. Then gets sidetracked and starts thinking about new shoes and exercise.

“…pushes things around, walks with purpose and plays this little game called “grown ups”.

“…leaves the office and has supreme case of road rage after total muppet changes lanes in front of her without indicating and nearly cuts off the front end of her car. Sadly, the driver of the other car did not notice her wild gesticulating and jumping around in her seat in anger. Others, however, did. Now she’s worried she’s made a dick of herself… again.

“…opens bottle of wine (not $200 worth) at home and sits on the couch.

“…enjoys a nice comfy snuggle with dog and LSH and wonders when she’ll win the lotto.

“…speaks to electricity people and narrowly avoids major confrontation. She sighs, finds the fish bowl and fills it with wine. *Drinks*.

“…is pissed and off to bed.

Beige pants and white shirts

There’s a man that stands by the side of the road and we pass him, each day, as our dog takes us for a walk.

We only ever see his back as he stands, waiting patiently for the bus. His head is hairless, his shirt always white and pants always beige. He carries his backpack, probably full of lunch and papers, slung over his left shoulder and he stands with his feet slightly apart. I don’t think I’ve ever seen his face. Every day I consider saying “morning”, but I never do.

I can tell he knows we’re coming as the dog huffs and puffs, pulling me and LSH behind her and making them walk faster than they ever ordinarily would. He doesn’t say anything either, just slightly turns his head to the side and then returns it back to front and centre.

It’s been the same routine for months. We get up at the same time, walk at the same pace and pass him waiting for the same bus every day.

That is until today. This morning we still saw the back of a man’s head, but this head was covered with dark, thick, brown hair. He was also wearing a white shirt and beige pants. It was the same outfit, but a different guy. This made me think, quite logically: what if our man has was part of some space/time continuum experiment and is now 30 years younger?

He’s wearing the same daily uniform, his stance is the same, he wears his backpack in a similar fashion. The time space continuum has done him some favours, he looks good, a bit trendy, even if he is wearing chinos. Perhaps he works for a bank – wearing chinos, he’s unlikely to work for an advertising agency, but none-the-less the experiment seems to have been a roaring success.

According to appearances, only his hair is different. But there is something else. Without saying anything, he seems louder. His presence is louder, more assertive, more filled with exuberance and frenetic energy that those within two feet can feel. So without his saying anything, we can hear him.

I’d imagine his rocking up to work, saying “hello laydeez” with his new style and hair. No-one questions how odd it is that he looks younger, better, more alive than ever before. So he doesn’t tell them.  I wonder what he’s thinking, what he’s going to do with himself now that he has his time over again? Should he have wisdom or should he continue to make foolish decisions? What will he do with his 30s? What will he change? What will he keep the same?

Then I realise, if he had been in a time space continuum experiment and ended up 30 years younger, he wouldn’t be pootling off to work, by bus.

Hopefully the bald man who stands, quietly, by the side of the road waiting for his bus will be back tomorrow. Change to my morning routine appears to make me uncomfortable.

Night terrors

This is something I wrote one night before I fell asleep. It’s not my life. It’s an amalgam of some of the women I know and have known and things they’ve (we’ve) felt. It was spawned, undoubtedly, by Portia De Rossi and her coming out of the anorexic kitchen (so to speak). 


*

It was pitch black and all was quiet outside as she sat cross legged on the floor, in front of the open fridge. The little yellow interior light caste a long shadow that shuddered each time she jammed a fistful of cake into her wide open mouth. From the back, her arm moved from cake to mouth in quiet, methodical motion. From the front, the view was markedly different as she grabbed at the cake, with her hands, tearing it apart, digging into the rich, triple layer chocolate sponge. She had dark mud coloured sponge under her nails and the chocolate fudge icing stuck to her fingers. She didn’t care, she just wanted to shove as much cake into her mouth as possible, cramming it in, ramming it down her throat. All too soon, however, the family size cake was finished and she started desperately licking her hand, in a rapid feline motion, preening her hands free of dried fudge. She gnawed at her nails, plucking out the remnant chocolate with her teeth. Not satiated, she grabbed the plastic cake tray and lifted it to her mouth, where her teeth began tearing at the surface to remove all evidence of there ever being a cake.

Suddenly, she stopped and looked back into the empty fridge. Her eyes darted left to right as she calculated the calories she’d devoured and the weight she was about to gain. Her breath quickened with the short sharp bursts of air that started to wrack her small body. Moving to double breathes in half the time, her mouth suddenly swung open agape and distorted. Brown coloured crumbs hung, in limbo in the stalactite of saliva that hung from her lips as she began to sob.  “No, no, no” she cried out, hands clasping tight around clumps of hair, tugging at the roots. She had devoured the whole cake in 10 minutes and eaten a week’s worth of calories.

Her name was Carmel. Like caramel, like the caramel colour of her skin and of her hair. She was beautiful, but couldn’t see it. She was funny, but couldn’t see it. She was already so thin but completely missed it.

“Okay, okay, calm blue ocean,” she huffed to herself. “So if I go to the gym for four hours tomorrow and eat only apples, this will be fine, right?” All while trying to work out how to fit in four hours of gym. “Oh god.”

She picked herself off the floor, slammed the fridge door shut and ran towards to the bathroom. Too much of a princess to even think of hanging her head in the toilet, she ran to the bathroom sink and stuck her fore and middle fingers down her throat, tickling her tonsils, until her stomach spasmodically started to heave. Her body convulsed with “bmmmmmlear” “bmmmlear” over and over, but nothing would come up. As her stomach started to ache with the almost unstoppable motion of being turned inside out from years of practice, tears streamed down her face and Carmel started to shake.

“Why, why, why can’t I even do this?” She slumped against the bathroom sink cabinets. And again started to cry. “Why you fat, ugly, fuck, can’t you stop eating?” The verbal flagellation she beat herself with was becoming too familiar and the words were starting to lose effect. He head in her hands, lump of disappointment and fear in her throat, she rubbed at her eyes with her palms, and kept rubbing until they were red and raw.

Empty of any more tears with a sore body from sitting on the cold tiles of her bathroom, she leant over to all fours and crawled her way past the scene of her crime, the kitchen, and back to her bed. She drew her sheets to her chest and closed her tired, red eyes. Exhausted from self hatred Carmel fell into a deep sleep and dreamt of being skinny.

The curious case of how to meet your baby.

I just want to mention that I have added a guest post on a beautiful young woman’s blog: http://www.cozshelikestoeat.com/blog/2010/11/malaysian-food-experience.html
about a Malaysian food experience we recently enjoyed while in KL. Please pop over and check it, and her blog, out – particularly if you want to devour her recent food experience of Greece!

*

We watch a lot of “How I met your mother”. It wasn’t a love at first viewing thing. In fact, it was only when some friends recommended the show by piling the entire series on DVD into our hands with enthusiastic faces did we sit down and dedicate any real time to the show. And it made us laugh, out loud.

LSH was even so bold as to say it was better than “Friends”. In some ways yes, the relationships seemed to have more depth. In others, no, because it wasn’t quite as funny and the characters weren’t exaggerated versions – to the point of caricature. I guess that’s what LSH liked about it so much.

The show is very clever in the way in a couple of ways. It uses flashbacks to excess, but in a fantastic and hilarious way. It also uses a continuing theme to tie multiple episodes, which are not necessarily obviously related, together. There’s one character, Marshall, who is allowed to punch his mate, Barney, five times – and every season there’s an episode dedicated to “the punch”. It’s exactly like a real friendship where the past is often brought up in moments of hilarity.

There’s also an obsession with doppelgangers. Marshall and Lilley, the married couple, have a pact that dictates when they see each of their friends’ doppelganger the universe is telling them to have a baby.

LSH and I have discovered we have a similar thing. While away on holiday I brought to LSH’s attention that some of the people who passed us on the street looked, to me, as if they were the Asian versions of some of the Caucasian people we know at home.

It’s a particular idiosyncrasy that when I look at someone an element of their face will often remind me of someone else.  This is better than my friend who looks at people and sees animals. She’s forever telling me that such and such looks like a rat. Or such and such looks like a lizard. Personally, I prefer to tell people they look like movie stars.

For instance I have a friend who has the same lips as Angelina Jolie. Another who has Angelina’s eyes.  I know someone who has Daniel Craig’s nose. It’s like Kym Valentine (Libby of Neighbours) reminds me of Cathy Freeman, I even think their accents are similar. LSH mainly humours these ideas, acknowledging only that I am slightly mental, but he certainly started to warm up to the Asian doppelganger idea. I pointed out a guy who looked like our friend’s husband, even a guy who looked like LSH’s boss. Suddenly he started getting into the groove and pointing out some of his own examples. Saying of that woman looks like your friend Susan, or that woman has hair like her friend Mary. Granted his examples were much more tenuous and inaccurate than mine…but he was getting the general idea.

It was then that we decided to steal from “How I met your mother.” We’ve been deliberating about a baby for a long time now. Do we? Don’t we? If we do, when? If we don’t, will we change our minds in a few years and it’ll be too late? But now we have a decision. When we see the Asian version of LSH and the Caucasian version of me,  we know we should try to have a baby. Of course, we didn’t see the Asian version of LSH or the opposite version of me while on holiday and haven’t seen anyone even remotely close since. So, the universe is sending a message, loud and clear, that we shouldn’t have a baby yet. Message received universe. That solves that dilemma, quite nicely, doesn’t it?

This isn't toilet humour. There's nothing funny about this loo!

Without wanting to state the obvious, it’s been ages since my last post/confession.
So many reasons, but only one valid; we’ve been away in Singapore and Malaysia for an eight day whirlwind trip.

It was fantastic and much needed. I was practically tearing myself out of my skin before we left, really desperate to get out of my house, state and country and in need of seeing something different.

It might come as a surprise for some of you who know how much I hate flying that I managed to go anywhere. I hate it so much my whole body shakes before and during a flight. I do fly, of course. How else am I to see the world? So I bought a book about conquering the fear of flying and it helped. I no longer shake. I just feel sick and dry mouthed. So I sat nine days ago on a plane, dry mouthed ready to experience something else, touching wood the whole time that I would make it there alive and not make news as a passenger in Australia’s biggest air disaster.

We arrived early into Changi airport after seven hours of quite unnaturally, flying through the air, where I couldn’t use my phone or my keycard to get money out. Turns out my global roaming hadn’t been turned on and my keycard didn’t work either. My cousin was late picking us up, so I felt very much stranded. Thankfully LSH’s card worked in the machine and my cousin arrived 15 minutes (that felt like an hour) later.

The rest of the trip really went by in a blur. A blur of colour, taste, excellent food, deep, rich spicy smells, great shopping, dodgy side streets in KL, fear of dysentery again in KL and some of the scariest toilets I have ever been to in my entire life.

The toilet thing is really a thing. It’s a very traumatic experience visiting a scary loo. Particularly for a woman. I even took a photo of one of the “bathrooms” I visited while on a bus from Singapore to KL that housed Asian toilets. Asian toilets in general freak me out. They are porcelain holes in the floor, which a woman has to crouch over and pee into. As a kid in Singapore I was traumatised by this concept and refused to go. I strongly believed, and still do, that I might fall in to the hole in the floor. My thighs are useless at the best of times, let alone when it comes to something important like hovering above a hole in the floor. Even with months of yoga behind me as an adult, I couldn’t see how I could manage it.

So, in some places, like this place, there are only one or two European toilets. You know, the ones where you just sit and don’t have to squat. I say it but I even hate the word squat. I don’t like to say squat and in fact rarely do. I don’t like seeing people squat. I certainly don’t like to squat. I am entirely unsure why. A couple of years ago, mind you, I couldn’t bring myself to say nipple. I couldn’t even hear it without it making my teeth grind. I’m over it now, though. So perhaps squat is the new nipple.  Just another idiosyncrasy to add to an ever growing pile of lunacy.

Anyway…I was in this “bathroom” in KL, and it was hideous. Dirt was on every inch of this room. Greasy cardboard lined the floors, the doors of the cubicle didn’t hang straight, and there was one European loo and it was all wet. Each cubicle is hosed down after each use, which kind of sounds great in theory, but the floors are always wet and I am a very suspicious person. There was a stench of waste that had been boiling in the 34 degree heat and it didn’t just waft by, it firmly rammed itself right up into the depths of my nostrils. It was all I could do not to gag.  If my bladder wasn’t ready to burst and I wasn’t reminded of the American woman who held her pee for so long in a ‘Win a Wii’ radio competition that she died, I would have waited until the hotel in KL, another three and a half hours away.

Instead, I held my breath, tried to look kindly at the people in the queue and asked in some crazy broken English, which was really me speaking English with a Malaysian accent, about the tall toilets. “You know, the tall ones, big toilets, off the ground? Where is that one?” Thankfully the attendant hired to rinse the cubicles out, but clearly not clean the bathroom, knew my persnickety kind and pointed me in the general direction of a loo. I breathed a sigh of relief that is until I opened the door of the loo and saw a seatless porcelain bowl.

“FARK” was pretty much my first thought. I thought of the woman that died and thought of my kidneys and shut my eyes, tight, while I teetered over the loo and held my pants around my knees so they wouldn’t touch the wet floor, while on tip toes so the bottoms of my shoes wouldn’t have to touch the floors either. It was practically a acrobatic feat. Trauma over, I went back to the bus, where LSH gave me a look that said his experience was equally disturbing. I felt comforted by this. I always know that if LSH thinks the same as me, I am not doing what I do best, which is over-reacting.

I am always very aware of my behaviour in other countries. I don’t want to be the tourist that everyone complains about, like when you watch Amazing Race and there is always an annoying couple who wonders why no-one in China speaks English. I don’t think I am half of that couple as I am, in the main, open to new things when overseas and aware of  everything being different/interesting. As one would expect the rest of the trip was more than marvelous and more than made up for the challenging latrines.

So traumatic I took a photo.