Monthly Archives: May 2016
Orange Utans. #BloggersToBorneo – RRSAHM
Orange Utans. #BloggersToBorneo
I’m going to annoy a lot of you right now by continuing to cause you to seethe with jealousy. Listen as I tell you… I really don’t know a lot about orangutans.
In fact, in my head, I call them ’orange utans’. You know those weird things that stick with you from when you’re a kid? ‘Orange utans’ is one of mine. I remember being young– maybe eight or nine, I’m not sure– and in the car with my mum and my brother, living in Paradise but making the hour and a half round trip to the BigCityTown at least once a week. We played games in the car– long before in–car DVD players, I’m not even sure we had a cassette player. So we played guessing games and number plate games and Eye Spy and a more modified version of Eye Spy that was more along the lines of ‘I Think…’
“I’m thinking of something that is the colour orange, and it’s an animal” says eight or nine year old Lori on one particular drive. And, as is the fashion, my mum and brother put forward as many guesses as they can think of (”Tiger? Butterfly? Cat? Giraffe?”) while I sit, smugly, shaking my head ‘no’ to every guess they make.
“OK” says my mum after what felt like a very long time, “we give up– you’ll have to tell us the answer.”
“It’s an orange utan!!”
My mum laughed so hard she nearly couldn’t breathe and had to pull the car over to the shoulder while she recovered.
The whole ‘orange utan’ thing followed me around for the next couple of years, one of stories parents tell when they’re demonstrating how gorgeous and cute and potentially stupid their offspring can be.
And that’s, really, about as far as my knowledge of orange orangutans stretches.
Which meant it was time to do some research. And here’s what I dug up…
Nine Things You Really Should Know About ‘Orange Utans’ (especially of you happen to be trekking into the wilds of Borneo in just a few (eep!!) short months time).
- Orangutans are, like chimpanzees and us humans, classified as a Great Ape (remind me to put that on my Internet dating profile). The easiest way to tell the difference between monkey and ape…? The tail. Or lack thereof.
- Orangs are considered ‘solitary but social’ creatures. They live mainly alone, especially males. Females raise their offspring for six years before the wean and become independent, learning how to survive in the forest. But, while loners, orangs hang out in casual social groups, often connected by one dominant (big daddy) male, and have been known to interact and play when they encounter one another, especially if food is not scarce and there’s no need to biff on for it.
- Orangutans are one of the few primate species not to engage in infanticide (killing babies). Why? Well. It’s partly due to the inherent promiscuity of female orangs, who are, reportedly, flirts even into the first months of pregnancy– designed to confuse the daddy orangs as to who’s baby is who’s.
Other than that, orangs don’t kill babies because they’re just too cool for that.
- Orangs are arboreal- (is that not the up there with the most awesome words you’ve ever come across?) meaning they live in trees. They also build themselves intricate sleeping nests– with mattresses, pillows, the works– specifically designed to hold their weight, every single night.
- They not only have opposable thumbs… they have opposable toes as well. Not to mention a 360 degree rotating hip joint.
- Despite the rumors, make orang utans generally don’t get the hots for– or try to rape and pillage– female humans. Even if they are Julia Roberts. (It only occurred to me, writing that, the inherent redhead stigma that comes with that particular piece of tripe. Good grief… people are weird.)
- Orangs have been known to blow raspberries.
- Orangutans are chronically endangered, with less than 30 000 estimated to be left in the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra.
- It costs the disturbing, disgusting amount of just forty five dollars to buy a baby orang to keep as a pet in Indonesia. I can’t even tell you how sad that makes me. Especially when it costs just $55 a year through Orangutan Odysseys, to have that tiny orang utan cared for in a nursery, then hopefully rereleased back into the wild.
And that, ladies and jellybeans, is the facts on orangutans. In case you missed it (where have you been…?)
us bloggers are going to Borneo. You can come too.
If that’s waaaay too much of a stretch, I totally understand. So I’d love for you to donate just one dollar to help cover the cost of my trip, to ensure the awareness we’re raising for Orangutan Odyssey and the orangutans of Borneo comes to them for nix.
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March 2011 – RRSAHM
March 2011
Being away, being Home, it feels like bleeding poison from a wound.
I spend most of my days still in some kind of fog…. I’m there, as Mum, but for anything else… I am on the outside, looking in.
It’s not a nice feeling. Sometimes I wonder if this is how Tony felt, just Before.
I think I’m OK. I marvel at myself sometimes, at what I’ve been through, and I’m amazed that I’m still able to act like a normal person.
But then I look at myself, at how disconnected I still I am, at how different I feel from the rest of the world. It occurs to me how much I think about dieing, and death, and I wonder if I’m normal at all.
I stood, two or three times, on a chair in my backyard. Stretched myself on my tippy toes.
So I could see what he saw, last. Before….
Me, I think. Me leaning down to scoop up in the Bump, who was standing in the back doorway, between Tony and I. I leant down to pick her up, I broke eye contact for a second…
And it was Over.
Some days, I wonder how close to pyschosis I am. Not so much, now I’m back Home… but especially when I was living in the Purple House that was not purpke anymore, but still felt purple.
My mind would snap at me, play tricks on me. I would see Tony from the corner of my eye.
It’s a relief to grieve. I feel like my mind finally started to wrap around this, seep it in.
Take the poison from my blood, and wrap it around my soul.
But I’m grieving, normally. I’m remembering Tony, and absorbing those memories, rather than pushing them away. I can talk about him now, think abiut him… approach his memory in conversation with my son, rather than the other way round.
I help him create a book of memories of his father, as we all struggle to forget the pyshicality of him. The space he no longer fills.
It’s easier, when we’re not filling that space too.
But it’s so hard, when he was so big and strong, and dependable. How can you not ache for the pyshical presence of someone who was more than twice your size?
***
In the days just after Tony died, in the days he was in the ICU, I felt him everywhere.
Things would happen, that were too much of a coincidence to be one. I felt him, there, I felt the shadow of his atoms, as he ran his hand down my face and kissed me goodbye.
Logically, my mind tells me that this is a socially acceptable borderline pyschosis. That this is what the mind does, when confronted with such suffocatin, shattering pain.
Surely that’s more than possible. The hormones released in the body during childbirth… the body’s own euphoria makers, to deal with the pain you go through. People with brain tumours report religious euphoria, brilliant visions of gods….
Surely, logically, this is the same? I asked my pyschiatrist- does this make me pyschotic? Does this make me crazy? Because I feel crazy.
No, she assured me. This is normal. Normal, acceptable. Healthy.
But then there other things… the ring in toaster. A message from a friend, which came from a pyschic, that used a phrase that only Tony would use, and made perfect sense to me…
Those kind of things… they make me wonder.
***
I’ve been nominated as one of the Aussie Mummy Bloggers with the X Factor. And, hey, I’d love an iPad. You can vote here…. believe me, it’s worth it just to see all of us in cartoon form…
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Eventually, if you’re going fast enough, you are going smack straight into the wall.
I’ve run, and run… and here I am. There’s no further to run, from this point.
There is nowhere else to go.
I’ve left my life behind, and I have to start again.
This is just too fucking difficult, right now.
I’m exhausted. The reality of what has happened, what is happening, right now…. it’s sinking in.
I’ve never felt so alone, so afraid of the future, in my whole life.
What the hell am I doing here? The surreal quality of being here, of living in HomeTown again… it just adds to the vertigo.
Free falling. Life, as I knew it.. it’s over.
And while the rush of the free fall is exhilarating… it’s lonely out here, in the stratosphere.
What the fuck? How did this happen? Is this really me, living this… surely it has to be a bad dream?
I miss Tony so much, right now.. but it’s different, easier here. Easier to grieve for him. Easier to remember that he loved me, without a thousand people thinking he didn’t.
I’m a broken woman. I think of an adjective to describe myself right now… and ‘broken’ is the only one that comes to mind.
The adrenalin, the strength, the bravery… all that, I feel like I left behind at the Purple House that isn’t purple anymore. The reality of living here, in this tiny Cottage…
It’s beautiful, and relaxed. It’s a lovely place to live. We have kangaroos on our front lawn, and a handful of beaches to choose from. The kids and the dog adore it, having a big yard, and so much space. We have family just a few doors down.
But then there’s so much to do. Phone calls to make, mail to be redirected. Unpacking to finish. The Internet connection is slower than dial up, the TV reception is non-existent, and I don’t have a freaking dishwasher. I’ve moved the contents of a three bedroom, two storey house into a four bedroom, one story house, but no matter how much stuff I get rid of, it still refuses to fit in the storage space I have.
I know, petty, useless concerns, especially compared with what I’ve already been through. But I am so tired, so overwhelmed, so shell shocked by what’s happened- take away my creature comforts and you’ll floor me. I’m sick of being brave, being strong. I’m sick of getting on with it. I’m sick of having to make all the decisions, do all this stuff, when it was not so long that I had my big, strong husband here to help me, to do the hard stuff for me, to allow me to feel weak and vulnerable and miserable if I needed to.
I don’t really have that option right now.
And that’s all I want to do.
Curl up in a ball, and sob, and sob, with someone’s strong arms around me.
And wait for the bone crushing thud at the end of the free fall.
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It’s the very last day of my Purple Life.
And it’s all packed up and ready to go.
I’m terrified. Up until now, I’ve hated the word ‘brave’.
But this time, I feel brave.
Because this is a choice. This isn’t just grinding on. This is flight, or fight.. or simper.
Stay, in a place where I’m expected to walk around with my tail between my legs, head down, displaying to the world that Tony was, indeed, correct- what a terrible person I am.
Fuck that.
The same way I chose to be honest, with a story that was now mine, to prevent myself feeling suffocated, to prevent the shame and stigmas of this closing in on me… It feels the same as choosing to stand up now. To go, and be alone, in a quiet place, with my children, away from this.. toxicity.
I feel like I’m on the very edge of a cliff, ready to jump. Holding my breath.
Part of me longs for the crisp crack of the ocean, salt up my nose, my whole body immersed in feeling alive…
And another part of me, it waits for the body slam, that drives the air from my lungs and turns the air black with stars… (I took a friend with me to HomeTown, last night, and we stood on the beach and looked at the millions of stars, the milkiness of asteroid belt… “This is where they all run to, all the stars. They come here.”)
I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing. Two rainbows in two days, that seems to tell me yes.
I don’t care. I’ll figure out if this is right thing when I get there.(What if the light at the end of the tunnel is actually the headlight of an oncoming train…?)
This happened so quickly.. three months ago, I was normal. I heard Wanderlust speak at the ABC,and she mentioned ‘cognitive dissonance’.. how long it takes for the mind to catch up, when your physical circumstances change so quickly.
My head is still reeling. I’m not sure what I’m doing, but every instinct in body is telling to run from this trauma, run somewhere safe, so my mind can process it properly.
Home, it’s not here anymore. HomeTown, (Summerland) it’s the closest thing I have.
I bought home a child to this house, and birthed another one right here, in my backyard. I entered this house, deliriously happy, with my boyfriend who would become my fiancee who would become my husband.
I celebrated one single, perfect, happy wedding anniversary here.
I laughed and sang and danced with Tony here.
This was our home. The place where we were both so blissfully happy, with our little life.
It was the happiest either of us had ever been, and we said that to each other so many times.
Those memories.. I keep.
I have plenty, that I want to leave behind.
A creaking rope, as I shook him, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
Standing, saying, thinking, he was bluffing, he had to be, he was on a garden chair and his feet would touch the ground, how could he possibly hang himself?
A moment, the moment, the first night this happened, an hour after leaving Tony in the ICU, realising that this was over, really over, that he was my best friend and no matter what happened from here on in, I would never talk to him ever again, screaming that and pulling at my own hair and walking, walking, walking in circles because it was the only thing that took the edge of the pain. Like childbirth, but so prolonged.
Saying to my shrink.. “I can’t believe this has happened to my life“, and her looking me straight in the eye and saying, “Lori, neither can I.”
A social worker, next to Tony’s bed, crying and swearing and telling em how fucking unfair this was, there was not a single thing here that told her this man wanted to die.
The heavy, heavy feeling of waiting for your brother, who will carry the casket, to drive you to your husband’s funeral. Saying to him, when he arrives, “This is… sad. That’s all I’m feeling. Sad.” (And sadness, it’s such a heavy, heavy thing, my torso weighed tonnes, my legs were immovable objects.)
Telling my son, his daddy had died, and would not be coming back.
Wishing there was a note.
Being eternally grateful there was not one, that this was not planned.
Laying on my best friends lounge, eyes swollen from crying, trying to close my eyes, and seeing nothing but a blue shirt, orange rope, feeling the dead weight of husband’s body beneath my hands as I shook him.
All of those, I leave behind.
And the ones I can’t leave.. hopefully the sea, the salt, will wash away them away.
OK, my lovely jellybeans… this is Lori, signing off, for the last time, from the Purple House…. I’m quite literally about to turn off my computer and pack it in a box, so I’ll be back in a day or two. Let’s make a date for Sunday, but please don’t hold it against me if I stand you up.
Cheers.
Hold your breath, close your eyes…. and jump.
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Back To Black. – RRSAHM
Back To Black.
I think the only bonus to being prone to depression is that you can recognise it quickly when it happens. Even if you don’t want to admit it to yourself. Or to your partner. Or to the people who love you, a thousand kilometres away.
I woke up yesterday morning crying. It’s not just a matter of being tired, of waking up to my daughter six or seven times every night. It’s not just being sick, having gastro, and the sinus infections seep into our house like small, unwanted vermin. It’s not just this Melbourne weather, being cold all the time, and never knowing when it will rain. It’s not just being broke and worried about money. It’s not just missing my mum, missing my friends. It’s not just feeling as though I’m never on top of things, like I’m always behind and disorganised.
It’s all of that… and none of it. It’s this black dog that nips at my heels, that eats happiness as though it’s scraps of food thrown out too early.
I have this whole new life, and it’s supposed to be okay. It’s supposed to be easy.
It’s not easy, and I’m not coping. And I hate myself for feeling like this. I hate myself for hating myself, and then I hate myself some more. The meds reach the outer boundary of their effectiveness- they make it so I’m able to feel nothing at all. But not so much that they can conjure up happiness, not so much that they can shed light on this kind of darkness.
I give up on cleaning the house, give up on showering, stop walking the kids to school and choose the easier option of driving them instead. I cant write. I haven’t been laughing at anything much. My sex drive is non-existent. I don’t bother putting on make up, or wearing anything other than jeans and black t-shirts. I have strange dreams. I wander round in a foggy half state, not thinking about anything much– my consciousness is stuck in past tense, events from years ago swirling through my brain with such thickness nothing new gets through. I am a ghost of myself, haunting my New House that doesn’t really feel like mine at all.
I don’t look forward to anything much, right now. Looking forward to things would mean I’d have to feel something, and I’m not sure I’m capable of feeling anything right now.
I have a doctor’s appointment today. They can’t up my medication any higher than what it currently is… but I’m telling myself that, surely, a good shrink is going to help.
Leave a Comment
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
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November 1, 2013 at 2:18 am -
It will get better.
In the meantime…shower even if you don’t want to…get some exercise even if you don’t want to…maybe look into getting a lamp to help with the sunshine issues.
I know that I will have a hundred people screaming about how unhealthy this is…but when it’s been more than a week with no sunshine…I go to a tanning bed. I don’t go to tan…but I FEEL better afterwards
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October 31, 2013 at 3:53 pm -
Oh Lori , I’m sorry to hear this … Come up to Sydney , Me and Mrs Woog could take you out and make you laugh !? Hopefully things will get better , all the best for today , incredibly written by the way , as always x
- October 31, 2013 at 3:51 pm
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Comment
- October 31, 2013 at 3:26 pm
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Is there anything I can do? I don’t know what or how unless you tell me. Ring me if you need to talk and I am not scary as you once said.
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October 31, 2013 at 2:28 pm -
Aww Lori, :0(
You’ll be fine, better you’ll be great – it just your resilience has taken a bit of a hiding.
Dr Mac prescribes you immediately rent these films: ‘Intolerable Cruelty’ (watch this first as a mood lifter) then “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, sit down with your favourite chocolate biscuits and take the day off. (Paint your toenails if you don’t want to feel totally unproductive.)
“Everything will be all right in the end… if it’s not all right then it’s not yet the end.”
(Sonny; The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel)
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October 31, 2013 at 2:16 pm -
I hope the doctor can give you all the support you need.
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October 31, 2013 at 1:16 pm -
I’ve been in the hole lately too. My doctor changed my meds entirely and it seems to be helping. I just couldn’t cope and i was stuck in my head. Everything turned to tears. I’m so sorry you are here too. Please feel free to reach out if you ever feel like you can. Xoxo
- October 31, 2013 at 12:16 pm
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You need sleep, exercise, some counselling support. Can your mum visit for a few days to give you some sleep?
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October 31, 2013 at 9:16 am -
I really hope you feel better soon. Some people say having insight is a blessing, but all it really is is knowing what and how and why, it doesn’t stop or change anything. That being said, I’m glad you know what the go is and are taking steps to help yourself. I hear this is what grown-up types do (being not very grown up, this is mere speculation on my part
)Sending you sunbeams and other bright, happytime stuff.
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October 31, 2013 at 9:00 am -
Thank you for the transparency. We are not alone in this!
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October 31, 2013 at 8:37 am -
Best wishes from Alaska. I’m sorry you’re hurting.
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October 30, 2013 at 11:36 pm -
Lori, I don’t suffer depression but I have to say this wintery Melbourne weather has me in a real funk at present. It’s amazing how I really feel so much more positive in the moments where the sun has fought its way through.
Hopefully with some nicer days on the way and with the help of a good doctor you’ll be feeling more able to face the world.
Don’t underestimate what sleep deprivation can do to your mental and physical well being. My partner’s psych is very big in reinforcing how you can cope with life so much more easily when you are well rested and sleeping well. Hopefully the Bump is sleeping through soon.
Be kind to yourself.
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October 30, 2013 at 9:55 pm -
Hiello Lori,
Depression. It’s aptly named hey! Maybe dilibertating would better suit some days. I am going through a patch now too. Probably if I am telling the truth it’s 6 weeks since I heard it whisper that it was coming and like an unwanted guest you know is due to arrive I didn’t want to deal with until it got here. That was a couple of weeks ago now and I am once again in its grip. I suffered through this for many years without knowing why I felt this way. My family have been no help they don’t acknowledge the label they tell me they don’t know why I try to be happier. For years I thought I just needed to try harder. I could win lotto tomorrow and these feelings would still exist, don’t get me wrong I put myself through uni, work in a very demanding job, built a strong career all the time experiencing the black cloud at times some predictable some out of the blue. Your blog is honest and real I read it often comment almost never but you make me feel normal cause many more people suffer depression then admit to it and I too will make an appointment with my doctor. Thank you. N -
October 30, 2013 at 9:53 pm -
Love you.
You have my number if you ever need to talk. Any time, about any thing.
It’s ok to have these moments. Just make sure they’re moments and not weeks that stretch into months.
Miss Pink recently posted…What does Magique, Million and SuperLiner all have in common? - October 30, 2013 at 9:51 pm
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Hiello Lori,
Depression. It’s aptly named hey! Maybe dilibertating would better suit some days. I am going through a patch now too. Probably if I am telling the truth it’s 6 weeks since I heard it whisper that it was coming and like an unwanted guest you know is due to arrive I didn’t want to deal with until it got here. That was a couple of weeks ago now and I am once again in its grip. I suffered through this for many years without knowing why I felt this way. My family have been no help they don’t acknowledge the label they tell me they don’t know I try to be happier. For years I thought I just needed to try harder. I could win lotto tomorrow and these feelings would still exist, don’t get me wrong I put myself through uni, work in a very demanding job, built a strong career all the time experiencing the black cloud at times some predictable some out of the blue. Your blog is honest and real I read it often comment almost never but you make me feel normal cause many more people suffer depression then admit to it and I too will make an appointment with my doctor. Thank you. N -
October 30, 2013 at 6:39 pm -
October 30, 2013 at 3:52 pm -
Just keep hanging in there, you will get through this because you are a strong amazing woman! The only place to go from here is up! It could just be the post moving blues heightening your depression, which is totally understandable and acceptable. Went through this myself about six weeks after my move away from everyone and everything I knew.
- October 30, 2013 at 10:03 pm
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I’m so sorry Lori that your’re going through this. It must feel awful and disheartening after all the energy & effort you have put into the move to another city. Feeling nothing much would make me frightened. I hope you can be kind to yourself to ease the anger you feel at yourself. I know when I’m struggling mentally, turning my anger inward ups the feel shitty factor by 10 to the power of 10 and gets in the way of working through whatever it is that’s bugging me.
Getting some support, professional or otherwise is right on the money. I can recommend a professional who works on a micro level with feelings in Melbourne. I like this approach better than cognitive therapy. I can email their details if you like. You’re doing the right things Lori – even if you think you’re not
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September 2011 – RRSAHM
September 2011
After chasing me halfway around the countryside, from Paradise to TinyTrainTown, RRSAHM Speak bands are finally in…
I stole this piccie from UnderTheYardarm… because it’s a good one.
Initially inspired by this post, Speak, and the brain child of the lovely Mary, Speak bands have become quite a hit and I’ve had a lot of requests for more.
So… for your very own Speak band, to wear with purple pride…
Send a stamped, self addressed envelope to…
RRSAHM
PO Box 153
Picton NSW 2571
Australia
The bands are light and flexie, so the cost of regular postage, and I’m happy to post them back to where ever int he world you may be.
I would really love it if as many of you took me up on this offer as possible, and helped spread the word… all this pain, it can’t have been in vain. If nothing else, I’ll make sure of that.
***
On a different note, I was recently sent this absolutely beautiful piece of jewelery- it’s a piece of Silver with Character by Koolaman Designs.
I got to choose the inscription myself…. in case you can’t read that tiny silver stamped print, it says “All you need is love.”
Because I’m a hopeless optimist, and a useless romantic, I still believe in that.
And what does a social media addict do when she thinks she might be ready to date again….? She goes online, of course.
The adventures of Lori, Internet Dating Goddess (or something like that)… coming soon.
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From what I understand, Catholics believe suicide is a mortal sin… it sends you straight to Hell, and there is no redemption.
Is that true? Do the Last Rites even cancel that out?
If so, that’s another strike against Catholicism. Sucking hard.
***
Years ago, a mother in Paradise was driving home with her children when she was hit by an oncoming car that strayed into her lane. She died. In a small town, that kind of pain is as insurmountable as everywhere else.
I drive past the same spot often. It’s four lanes now, instead of two.
I see a lump in my lane in the distance. It’s moving. As I speed toward it, I realise it’s rat, brown and not as large as a bush rat normally would be.
This rat has run across three lanes of traffic. I hold my breath as I drive over it… it freezes, and stays between the frame of my wheels, unharmed. Still frozen with fear…. the car behind misses the rat too.
I watch in my rearview as it scampers across the remainder of the road ,into the safety of the bushland.
How does that happen? A mother dies, a family suffers… and yet a rat makes it across four lanes of traffic unharmed.
I’m not sure if that points towards the existence of God, or the futility of Him, or if it’s just another random consequence of timing and eventuality.
***
A friend posted this amazing story, in way of a film clip,on her FaceBook recently.
For those of you who can’t be bothered watching, it’s the story of a family who, tragically, lost all three of their children a car accident in 2007.
In early 2011, they gave birth.. to triplets.
Another random event, or an apology from a higher power?
Small miracles, indeed.
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The worst of it was knowing.
This neighbour on my doorstep,the look in his eyes… I knew.
“Is she dead? Is she dead? She’s dead, isn’t she? Is she dead?”
He asks me if my husband is there and that feels like a punch in the guts. My mate Bunny is there, thank goodness, and he goes with the neighbour to retrieve my dog’s body.
I am shaking and breathing fast and in the middle of a massive, rolling flashback. The words coming out of my mouth, that sick feeling of already knowing… I’ve very much been there before (“He’s dead, isn’t he? He’s dead, he’s dead…”)
And it intensifies as I walk quickly to my neighbours- again, blessedly, my son is asleep. I talk to the nice neighbours nice wife, crouched in her driving, crying.
I’ve been there before too.
It’s almost a relief when I realise that this is a flashback… it’s nt my husband dieing all over again. These emotions, they are not as painful and intense as that flashback would have me believe.
***
Bunny buries Scarlette in the backyard, crying all the while. I buy a lavender plant today, and plant it over her grave.
It’s a relief, again, that dogs are buried quickly and have so little- a bowl, a bed, a stick and a ball, and that’s it. A bag of dog food to be passed on.
My son takes it so much better than I expected, so much better than me. The resilience of this child fascinates and terrifies me. He tells me it’s OK, Scarlette is in Heaven with Daddy now, and how can I not smile at that?
Later in the day, it plays on his mind, and he asks me- is he going to Heaven soon? What about me, his sister, the cat? No, I assure, we are not going to Heaven for a very, very long time, we are staying right here.
And I feel like a liar. Because I promised him that about his dog, just six months ago.
***
Thank you all so much for your support and love, as always. I’m still a bit flabbergasted… seriously, what the f*ck?
On the upside, the Bumpy thing had an absolutely fabulous birthday party. Evidence here provided by my lovely Sarie….
Cute, hey? More on the Bump soon. She’s a big girl now.
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Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Giant.
Bubbles. – RRSAHM
Bubbles.
Shhhhh….
Today, I woke up earlier than I have in months.
Roused from that blackness by the sound of myself… giggling. Surprised by something I haven’t heard for such a long time, I wasn’t sure it was possible anymore.
My own laughter popping and breaking like fat iridescent bubbles in sunshine.
I think, for today, for now… that’s all I’ll write. I’m not accustomed to keeping things close, it feels like an act of physical exertion to hold things within my fingers rather than infusing them into words.
But I’ve had so very little of this, and it feels like something… real.
And happiness can be soap bubbles, too. Maybe the vibration of speaking too much could break them.
***
Posted, by me, earlier today on IG and various social networks…
The fact that any of you think of me at all is just so beyond awesome it baffles me… I’m not sure what goodness I’ve done to deserve this the pouring of love and support I get, but I’m always, always grateful for it.
You guys are… tops.
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April 29, 2014 at 6:30 am -
Thank you for the auspicious writeup. It in fact was a
amusement account it. Loook advanced to more added agreeable from you!
However, howw could we communicate?
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July 3, 2013 at 10:19 am -
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January 6, 2013 at 12:31 am -
Every so often I buy a couple of $2 bubble wands from the local supermarket, and my girl and I run around on the back lawn making as many soap bubbles as we can. She chases them around and giggles.
Bubbles are awesome fun
- January 5, 2013 at 11:18 pm
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Jellybeans for everyone!!!!!!
- January 5, 2013 at 9:59 pm
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I am SO happy to read this! And you deserve ppl's support and care bcs you are a Good Sort with a good heart.
Let those bubbles fly!
- January 5, 2013 at 7:35 pm
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Previous post: The Hotel- Blue Mountains, Part Three.
Next post: Clown Paint (Part One, Faces).
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: I Can’t F*cking Shut Up Wednesday. With Words And Stuff.
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Giant.
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Internet Dating 104- The Other Kind of First Date
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Not OK.
Blogging For The Good Of It
Blogging For The Good Of It
OK, jellybeans. Partly because of my ridiculous distracted state of the last few weeks, and partly because it was Christmas and no one ever has any spare money over Christmas; it seems been a month or two since I’ve begged, pleaded and bribed you all for donations for the Bloggers to Borneo appeal. (If you’re a casual lurker or late on the scene, feel free to catch up here, brush up on your orang utan here and check out my Edie-Wan hero worship here).
I’m going to make it very, very easy for you. This weekend, you all have a mission. Complete the following steps…
Step One: Take yourself to your car OR resident basket of junk that every house has OR lounge suite.
Step Two: (Depending on which action you took in Step One) Either identify gold and silver ‘church change’ in ashtray, on floor, in any of the one million tiny storage spots your car may have OR dump out basket of junk and sift through batteries, hair ties, nail files and phone chargers until you locate the slightly sticky coinage at the bottom of the Basket (or Drawer or Whatever) of Doom OR remove cushions, shake head, DustBust, and save whatever loose change you don’t suck up.
Step Three: Put your findings into your purse (give the coins a good hot soapy rinse first, if you must. Especially the sticky ones from the bottom of the Basket Of Doom). Then go to the Orangutan Odysseys website and donate the equivalent of whatever you just dug up from your PayPal account or credit card (if you find more than two bucks, it’s even tax deductible).
Step Four: Smile! Pat yourself on the back. Let the good karma roll on in.
And that’s that, really. You people rock. Don’t forget, if Borneo seems like your kind of place, you can still come with me- details here.
As a way of saying a big thank you, I have awesome giveaways coming this weekend- same jellybean place, same jellybean channel. Stay tuned…
{ 1 comment }
I get a stack of PR emails. Most are awesome. Some are not. The one I received recently titled something along the lines of “How To Look Hot After Birth” was most definitely in the ‘not awesome’ category.My response, as seen on Twitter, went as thus.
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| Click image to embiggen. |
And obviously, I was quite smug and happy with my response, yes… thanks for asking.
But it bitches at me in the most unpleasant way that, for every response such as mine, and for every twenty other people who received this email, rolled their eyes and moved on… there is probably at least one woman who didn’t.
At least one woman who didn’t dismiss it and return to thinking about more important things than looking ‘hot’ or ‘sexy’ or ‘reclaiming a pre–pregnancy figure!’.
For every one of us who hears sentiments like those and feels a bit disgusted, a bit cheated out of the ripeness that should be a feminine birth right; there is at least one new mum who feels fat and inadequate.
For every grown woman who views her body as a soft place, a miracle, a playground; there is a teenage girl who’s convinced, positive, that her bum is huge and life would be better if she were just that bit prettier, if her hair was that bit longer.
For every handful of us who find ourselves angry at such irresponsible, un-sisterly bullsh*t; there is at least one media outlet– social or mainstream– who has taken this PR approach on, who is promoting it, who is saying it’s a good idea to fill the heads of a million impressionable minds- male and female- with this crap. At least one publication who’s allowing this kind of unhealthy, detrimental pressure and focus to continue to seep into the spot where women are most vulnerable, where insecurities lay stagnant in dark crevices of the soul.
And I know (thanks, those in the peanut gallery– shut up already, this is my show), that by addressing it here I’m quite possibly giving it a voice, giving this platform attention it certainly doesn’t warrant.
But if I have a voice here, the let me use it. And if for nothing else, then let it be to ensure, every now and then, that things like this don’t seep into the female psyche so… quietly.
If this idea is to be presented to us as valid, then let there at least be a voice that speaks otherwise.
And so, to every woman reading this, to the mothers who are and who will be, to the grandmothers, aunts, best friends and cheer squads, to the millions of my sisters around me who bear the weight of being female, who feel all the weight of the immortal responsibilities of reproducing, nourishing and rearing, to you; let me say this…
Eat.
Eat… gloriously. In health, and good fortune, in company and pleasure. For sustenance and growth, for love and pleasure.
There is no hunger that compares to the famishment of a new mother, her body shell-shocked, tired arms cradling a baby freshly birthed. All energy has been spent, used, burnt– labour, birth, the body pulsing and recovering, retaining shape slowly like strong tempered rubber, producing food perfectly weighted and optimally nutritious. There is no meal that tastes as good as the first you eat following childbirth, no hunger that could possibly be so demanding nor so satisfying when satiated.
Babies eat and suck and chew calories from their mothers, swallow kilojoules in slurping breaths, literally and figuratively sucking your life away. Mother’s milk, enough to sustain life. Compound the exhaustion of constant waking, continual watching, always worrying. Then babies grow to toddlers and they move, fast and unpredictable, with you the only one to catch them and still their tiny feet. You the only one who’s energy is eaten and resources drained by the constant thought processes, the constant re-prioritizing that’s required to keep up with hundreds of questions, the mental fog of attempting to stay one step ahead and quench that frantic curiosity, that intense drive of seeing, doing, thinking, being; a constant sponging of information from the world.
And toddlers, eventually, they become children. And still it’s hard work, still it’s constant. Playing, running, making, hugging, cleaning, building, doing. It feels as though it’s been five years since I sat down, relaxed and put my feet up… maybe it has been.
Being a mum– being a woman, in general, I believe– it requires energy untold. I’m always tired, always slightly shabby. My body always feels as though it needs that little bit extra nourishment, something that bit more to get me through. As though it needs a big cuddle and warm blanket, a bad rom-com on DVD and a big plate of soft lasagna, with hot chocolate and marshmallows to follow.
There is, so they say, three guaranteed pleasures in the human existence– sex, sleep and food. Primal, tribal, biological…. urges that cannot be ignored.
So I say, mothers, ladies of all ages and denominations… let us eat. Let us eat breakfasts and brunches, lunches and suppers, dinners and teas and snacks and midnight feasts by fridge light. Let us eat food real and rich, cooked and raw, prepared or thrown together, freshly cooked or lukewarm and waiting for hours. Munch, nibble, graze, chew, masticate, relish, swallow and suckle; dine, pig, nourish, gorge, pick, fuss and tuck in. Eat real food, and enjoy every mouthful. Taint it not, for today, for right now, with weight and calories and peer pressure and pairs of size-eight jeans.
Just eat, the way you did as a child– ripe peaches held with both hands over a scratched stainless steel sink, flesh stuck between teeth and juice flowing down china, streaking the backs of forearms and pooling tangy iridescent on elbows. Sticks of fairy floss bigger than your head that leave sticky pink spiderwebs strung between your fingers. Mangoes eaten in bathtubs filled with tepid water at the humid height of a bushfire summer.
If you are, or plan to, or have been providing with every piece of yourself in order to nourish a new life on this planet; recognize the divine in that, and worship that divinity with the pleasure of food, eaten messily and hungrily and without care of who’s watching on, in the sunshine of the altar of life.
No mother needs to ‘look hot after birth’. Especially not by starving herself, by punishing herself with exercise that’s excessive to the detriment of herself and her child.
Nurture yourselves, ourselves.
Be kind to ourselves, and one another.
Being ‘hot’ is such a relative concept. As is being ‘healthy’.
But beauty comes from within.
And so I say- ladies, women, sisters… eat.
{ 4 comments }
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: I suck at being sick.
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Another New House In Paradise….
I Can't Think Of A Name For This Post. – RRSAHM
I Can’t Think Of A Name For This Post.
That effervescent effect last and lasts, buoyed by nightly phone calls where we speak for hours into the darkness about nothing at all, nothing important… little bits of everything.It’s not that it wears off– not even close. This is being fifteen years old again, falling in love for the first time. This is butterflies catching high in my chest, softly fluttering wings dusted with sparkling iridescence against the place my soul sits.
It’s just that even that can’t quite throw enough light over the other parts of myself to stem that gnawing darkness that eats at me, this time of year.
There’s something bizarre about having your internal self sitting on two such completely different levels. There’s this twisted guilt (always a twisted guilt, from the first moment the world fell apart) about having found this amazing, breath–taking person who tells you you’re beautiful and thinks you are divine… and finding yourself distracted from how decidedly blissful they make you feel, with the memory of how very ugly someone else left you imagining you were.
I do just fine, almost hallucinating with happiness to the point where I don’t even notice the 6th of January this year. My mind play games with me, and it seems I somehow miss entire days. The day I thought was the 9th is suddenly the 10th and I wonder how much of the PTSD I’ve conquered after all– isn’t rampant avoidance the most damaging, usually the most pertinent symptom of the disorder?
Whatever. I refuse to beat myself up for this one– I’m choosing to marvel at the inherently brilliant coping mechanisms of the human subconscious instead.
But I’m irritable, cranky, on edge. I jump a loud noises. I push pictures I don’t want to look at out of my mind, far away as they can go, rather than steeping and marinating myself in the horror and pain of them.
I don’t know if that’s healthier than confronting things, or not. But however much I tell myself that I am fine, that things are okay… my subconscious betrays me. Trauma symptoms bite and lick at me, leave a tense, highly–strung ball of insecurity that wants desperately to sob it all away while someone tells me it’s okay, I love you, I’ll take care of you.
Only the disgusting irony of the situation means I’m far too afraid to tell anyone how much it really hurts right now, how ugly and insignificant and alone and terrified for myself I really am. Because there’s been so few people who can hear that, see the truth of it… and stay.
And, as I’ve said, bubbles break so easily… sometimes you can’t even pick what it was, that made them pop. I don’t want it to be the ugliness, the disturbing reality of what happened to me, that makes this one explode, morph from circled rainbow into a soapy puddle of something that was.
***
I float through the tenth, the eleventh, the twelfth and thirteenth; existing only on the surface of my own mind, afraid to skim too deep. I zone out, find myself staring into space literally for hours at a time. As run into nights run into days again and I’m grateful, thankful… a few more days and all this will be over and I can run away to Melbourne again, back to a state of bubble and bliss and repair my fractured soul some more. I can lay in the arms of someone who’s beginning to love me, and find some peace in the fact that I have survive another year… and this one was so, so much better than last year.
I clean my house. Drop myself into a dozen emails to be answered, a hundred blog posts to be written. Have my butt kicked over and over again at PlayStation games by my five year old. Dance to stupid music with my daughter. And ignore my mind as it throws at me, over and over, a kaleidoscope of pictures I don’t want to see.
I see myself, from the outside. For the first time, perhaps, since all this began.
I see a woman, broken, sitting at a friends outdoor table, knees pulled up, hair hanging over her face and rocking back and forth, moaning… unable to stop sobbing, unable to stop the catatonic back and forth swaying. Then I see her jump up as if she’s been bitten and pace, left to right, feet a light thumping rhythm, breathing short and sharp and whispering “No. No, no, no, no, no…”
I see someone tiny, no bigger than your average teenager, and she looks no older than her mid–twenties. She’s looks even smaller, childlike, wearing a long, white hospital gown of cheap crumpled plastic, the type to be used once and discarded, along with any germs it may have come in contact with. Her eyes are red and swollen and she clings her hands together as she introduces the pastor of her local church to her husband. In that moment, she feels ridiculous, a farce– her husband cannot hear her, his brain is cold. But she doesn’t know what else to do, how else to approach this. And everything else about her feels so pathetic right now, that emotion is barely a scratch on the surface of what was once her self esteem.
I want to cry for her. I’ve spent two years now crying, grieving for him, for my kids, for what we had…
Now, I cry for me. For a woman who had everything she knew about love and trust and happiness taken away from her in the cruelest way possible. For a shell of a person who spent over a year walking around half–alive, who sometimes wonders if she is only half alive… if she’s a ghost, in its true sense. If she died that day, the same time he did. (”Why do you think,” asks Charlie the Shrink, “that cases like yours are so uncommon? Because most if the time we don’t see this. Most of the time, what the police are called to is a murder–suicide. Not someone who witnessed a suicide.” And I’ve heard that, time and time again over the last two years. But it only just sinks in now, only becomes part of the reality of the situation now that I’ve let it all go enough to be pissed off, to be angry. Forgiven my husband enough to be able to hate him.)
I chew my fingernails to the quick over the last few days, as I’m inclined to do when I’m anxious, when things are eating at my insides without my express permission and acknowledgement. I’m alone in my car, singing along with happy music, when I bite off a glitter, shellacked strip of keratin and spit it out my open window. (Dirty habit. I know. Whatever.)
And that’s enough… the tiniest action to set in motion a breaking of dam walls, a flood of held back trauma. Some kind of primal distress whirls into a frenzy from my feet upwards, obliterating my face in it’s humiliating, nauseating fog. I pull the car over and become that shell again, rocking, crying, clinched in a massive panic attack, my. Mind repeating over and over ‘He spat on me, he spat on me, he spat on me…’ until it feels like a horrific, disjointed anti–matra.
He spat on me. He spat on me and he hit me and I was his wife. And all that brings another shutter click of an image. A woman of just over five feet tall (again with the tiny, but it kicks at me, my height compared to his, my feather weight in opposite to his bulk) holding a baby. Screaming, begging, for the love of your daughter, please stop.
I think I’m seeing, for the first time, the absolute awfulness in that, in what he did to me. It’s come with accepting, for myself that I did nothing to cause this… I couldn’t possibly have. It doesn’t add up– I’m not what the sum of his actions would have myself believe.
And if I’m not to blame myself any longer… then I can blame him. I can be pissed off and angry and disgusted, the way I probably would have been to begin with, had he had survived. But the outcome changed everything– all best were off. He was my husband, and I’d taken an oath. I sat by him when he needed me. I practiced forgiveness where I needed to.
And now I can be… furious. I can scream in anger that this wasn’t fair, how the fuck could you do that, you fucking spat at me, your daughter was there, you bastard. And I can be angry at him, instead of the ethereal universe around me.
It feels good, to be angry. It feels alive and justified and vindicated and real.
And if I can be angry, because this wasn’t my fault; if I can get through the torture of early January with only the smallest of misgivings, the most minor of psychological hiccups… maybe I can find some essence of myself, some essence of feeling alive every day, all over again.
I’m an optimist. I’m counting on it.
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January 17, 2013 at 9:58 pm -
January 15, 2013 at 6:46 pm -
I have never commented before but may I say that I have waited so long for you to reach this stage. You go girl.
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January 14, 2013 at 5:58 pm
Previous post: Internet Dating v3.1- All Fun And Games.
Next post: My GrandMothers Things.
Urban Exploring
Urban Exploring
This post isn’t sponsored, or in any way affiliated with anything. It was just a really good experience that I wanted to write down.
***
What’s left of Pentridge Prison is a strange place.
If you don’t know, Pentridge was one of Australia’s biggest gaols. It closed in 1997 and was sold off to developers. For a while, I imagine, it just sat. Huge and looming and blue-stone grey, taking up a huge pocket of Melbourne’s northern suburbs, bleeding its violent oppressive vibes into the atmosphere.
After a while, life began to seep into it again. A small suburb began to rise there, where cells and sheds and big solid buildings stood before. You can walk around the streets of the Pentridge housing development. It looks and feels like a normal suburb would. Flowers grow in gardens. Lawns get that scruffy “I’ll mow next weekend” look to them. Children’s bikes sit in driveways. Noise tinkles from people’s houses and apartments.
The developers, to their credit, didn’t bulldoze the old structure into the ground. A lot of what was there is still there. Occasionally you’ll see a forbidding stone archway, a blue-stone wall. A guard tower left standing.
The buildings of B, D and F Division are still whole, both their exterior and interiors. But they are slowly being swallowed up by the surrounding development. You have to search to find them. You need to know they are there. The options for urban exploring are minimal- breaking into a prison involves much more than kicking in a weak, rotting wooden door.
D Division has been cleaned out and gentrified, and is now an events venue. All the original staircases, guard offices, even the outdoor exercise yard remain exactly as they were. It’s just that you can party in them now; hold bachelor parties or wedding receptions within the multi-level building.
They also run late-night ghost tours in D Division. The Most Amazing Man bought two tickets for us for my birthday and, faced with a chronic lack of babysitting options, we only managed to take advantage of those tickets very recently.
It was well worth the effort. D Division is scary. Terrifying, actually. The whole building is laced with a tough coldness that settles on your skin and creeps icy fingers up your back.
The inside of the building looks just like you imagine the inside of prison built early last century would look. There are three floors. The walls of each floor are lined with cells, both to the left and right.
One of the few photos we were able to take.
Each tiny cell housed two full-grown men. Each has a wooden door with a peep hole and a food slot in it. Floors Two and Three are not really whole floors, more corridors that stretch along the walls. It’s like the inside of a shopping centre- from the top floors you can see right down to the bottom.
The bottom floor in the middle of the building leads out to the exercise yard on one side. On the other side, the hallway passes the floor-to-ceiling bars with a gate cut in the middle, and past a huge kitchen. A large door opens onto an outdoor courtyard. The courtyard is gravel on dirt, with scabby weeds at the edges. It was once an unofficial cemetery- a dozen or so bodies of hanged prisoners were buried there in unmarked graves. One of them was the headless corpse of Ned Kelly.
The bodies are gone now. It still feels like a graveyard.
The tour itself was interesting enough. The actual amount of ghost stories recounted were minimal- the tour guide focused more on the lives of various prisoners than their afterlife activity.
There’s a hangman’s noose in the middle of the second floor. I see it before we get to it- I spot it from the first floor. So I’m prepared for it.
It still makes my knees go weak. It still comes with a slew of horrible memories.
On this tour there’s a group of young guys, maybe eighteen or twenty years old. The more scared they are, the more bravado they pump across and the more irritating they become. By this stage they’re assessing the noose and talking about swaying bodies and involuntary excrement and I feel myself shudder. I step back from the group and lean myself against my Amazing Man. I take deep breaths and remind myself that this is probably good for me. This is desensitising and that’s helpful, even if unpleasant.
For nearly fifteen minutes we stand in front of that damn noose and listen to stories of people hung. It’s okay. It’s okay and I do it and when it’s over, I’m proud of myself.
Besides, the next bit is where the fun starts. The final half hour of the tour is reserved for photography and general wandering. We can go where ever we like in D Division. We have free run of the building. It’s easier to feel that eeriness without a large group of people surrounding you.
Left to our own devices, we wander to the third floor. Most of the cells are open and the creepiness intensifies as we step into them. Some of them feel cold and empty… just rooms.
Other cells feel different. They zing with energy and feel full of things that we can’t see. Some of the cells smell of cold and stone. Some of them- sixteen years after the last inmates have left- still smell of heavy sweat and blood and men living in close quarters.
We plan to take heaps of photos. And we would have… except our camera stops working, for no discernible reason. No matter how much we fiddle with settings and focus, it will only take sporadic, occasional pictures. We can see through the viewfinder just fine. But clicking the shutter button results in nothing but a whiny, whirring sound of the camera attempting to focus and being unable to.
I step into one cell and hear a furtive tapping. Tap, tap, tap, tap. It sounds like it’s coming from inside the wall, not behind it. And I’m the only one here.
It’s the exercise yard that holds the worst of the vibes. Standing under the stars, looking at the twenty foot high blue stone walls topped with menacing, brutal coils of razor wire. The showers and toilets are still here, the metal tables and chairs still bolted to the ground. The Most Amazing Man and I stand alone in hushed silence in the middle of the tiny concrete yard. But it doesn’t feel like we’re alone.
Having given up on the bulky digital camera, The Most Amazing Man has begun taking photos on his phone. It’s in the exercise yard that the phone camera stops working too. We both watch as the flash lights up the yard and the fence that borders it. But the photos come up pitch black. Later on, at home, we play with the exposure and the colours. There’s nothing there– not even the faintest trace of the photo that we’d taken.
As we’re soaking up the atmosphere of the exercise yard, discussing the bizarreness of that phenomenon, the flash on the phone turns on and stays on for ten seconds or so, again with no good reason.
That’s enough of this for now, most definitely. As we leave, the Most Amazing Man tries to take one more photo on his phone, from outside the exercise yard looking in. This time it works. It’s not until later that we notice what appears to be ghost faces suspended in a funny yellow light. (Pareidolia not withstanding, of course).
Zoom in, on the right, for creepy faces.
After that experience, it feels as though it’s time to leave. It feels as though the dark, bloody, violent vibes of the prison are nipping at our heels, pressing on our lower backs. Telling us to go, and quickly. So we leave, slightly terrified and feeling slightly ridiculous for being so terrified. Everything in our rational adult minds tells us not to be silly. Every instinctual vibe we have tells us otherwise.
I am still not sure if I believe in ghosts. But I believe in residual energy.
And Pentridge Prison is a very, very strange place.
{ 5 comments }
I find myself searching for… something. Something to make me feel connected to this new place I’m in. Something to make Melbourne feel like mine.
So I do what I always do, when I’m seeking a connection, a way to feel the spark of other people’s lives.
Melbourne takes much better care of its abandoned buildings than Sydney does. Truly deserted structures are difficult to find here, and I haven’t seen enough of the suburbs to know where they are. Internet searches are lousy for that kind of thing- after all, revealing your locations publicly breaks the rules.
But the Brickworks stand out. A bit of online digging, and the address is easy enough to find.
It’s a half hour drive away, which is a short car trip by Sydney standards, an epic adventure for Melbournians spoiled by their unclogged roads and ample public transport. I sneak to the the Brickworks and back between school drop-off and pickup. It pleases me, this secret life I have sometimes. Stepping out of reality, doing things my children have no idea of and may not understand.
Like the Maltings, and other premises that are stalwarts for urban exploration, the Brickworks is easy to access. You just need to know what you’re looking for. The fence on one side is surrounded by homes, well tended and well kept. There will be no point of entry here.
The other side of the fence, however… look hard enough, and you find it. The mesh fencing bent up and over, leaving a hole big enough to squeeze through.
The parklands that surround the Brickworks are dotted with people who are out for the day. When trespassing, it’s best to act as though you have every right in the world to be there. My camera bag is slung over my shoulder, and I have my usual bullsh*t excuse ready. “I am a photographer, documenting this place…”
Not that anyone has ever asked. I like to think that it’s because I radiate self confidence. More likely, it’s because no one cares.
The Brickworks is, as the name suggests, a factory where bricks were made. It’s been closed for years, so long now that any evidence of it’s former functionality is gone. What remains is the evidence of people who have come here after its closure. Graffiti kits, empty spray paint cans. Litter. And a coating of fine, chalky brick dust, a few inches thick in some of the more undisturbed places.
Within minutes, my shoes and pants are covered in it. I’m dusty up to the knees of my flared jeans.
This is a gritty, grungy, post-apocalyptic scene of a place. The bright colours of the street art clash and spangle against rusted iron and rotted wood.
The machinery that has been left here is old and huge. Too cumbersome to have been moved on, probably useless for relocation And it’s all so set in itself– to remove the giant urns would be to defile the structure of the place completely, to risk having it all fall down on top of you. I can see why this abandoned site remains so, when the rest of Melbourne’s urban ruins have been cleaned up and cleared out. Just bulldozing it would be impossible. Tonnes of hulking steel equipment would be tedious to rip out. So it stays, looking more and more like iron oxide modern artwork with each passing year.
I pick around the place, wandering, marveling at the solidity of the equipment. One half of the building is open and cavernous, no more than undercover storage. A forklift is parked neatly by one of the poles toward the edge of the huge room. It seems put of place– too modern, perhaps, for somewhere that feels so antiquated. Not as rust eaten and grubby as its surrounds.
The forklift is tagged in jagged graffiti, a mish-mash of colours and styles. The surface of the forklift is too small for anything rampantly artistic, but the brick walls dividing the building into rooms and sections make the perfect canvases for spray painted art. Colourful cartoon creatures and shiny, six foot high typography cover the brick work.
I wander around, feeling the emptiness of the space, the way it’s hardly a building at all any more. It feels organic, settled in to its environment. Nature is beginning to spread itself within the building. Weeds take root in the base of the corroding steel. Grass grows where the sunshine allows it to.
Walking out of the main building, there’s a second structure. It’s large and circular and squat. The massive chimney soars skyward from the roof. There’s a strange flared skirt of corrugated iron covering the bottom of the building, stretching six foot up the meet the walls. It appears impenetrable. Despite all the people who have been here, left their rubbish and their tags and their spray paint cans, no one has peeled back the skirt and attempted the access the space underneath.
Two smaller outbuilding flank the main one, both of them damaged and spray painted. Door frames and windows smashed, floors are burnt out. The artwork is amazing. But there’s nothing to be felt here. It lacks the romance of the Maltings, the sense that lives have been lived here, the essence of souls left behind.
I leave, my feet padding softly through the brick dust. I find the hole in the fence that I first came through and slip back into reality, settle myself back amongst the people in the park.
I get back in my car. As I close the door, it begins to rain.
Whatever I was looking for, I didn’t find it.
{ 11 comments }
It’s been a while since I’ve been ghost hunting. Ghost hunting feeds into urban exploring, I suppose, and vice-versa. But I guess I stopped seeking out ghosts once it felt as though there was one looking over my shoulder all the time.
But I love mysteries and old things, and stories left untold. So when RedBalloon offered me a ghost tour of The Rocks, the oldest district in Sydney, I decided I should take them up on it.
Not that I was prepared to do this alone. I took The Most Amazing Man In The Universe with me. Because if I’m going to be scared, I might as well have someone to cling to.
That was the theory, anyway. Reality, as usual, didn’t quite compete with my imagination. While ‘interesting’, ‘informative’, ‘entertaining’ and ‘well worth your two hours and forty seven bucks’ are all adjectives I would use to describe this experience, ‘scary’ is probably not.
Our tour group consists of about thirty people, and is led by a guy who, in this occupation, has totally found his calling in life. ‘GhostHost James’, as he introduces himself to us, is decked out in a black hat and long black raincoat. He is a brilliant storyteller and his stories don’t come across as scripted (though, admittedly, I’m sure they are). Add to that his comforting, rolling British accent, and we have ourselves one very appropriate tour guide.
To add to the feeling of creepy authenticity, on the night of our ghost tour it rains in Sydney; constant soaking sheets of water. The uneven, picked and pocketed sandstone streets of the Rocks are filled with puddles. The rain drips down over the brim of GhostHost James’ hat as he leads us through bendy alleyways, down two hundred year old staircases and into tiny spaces that once used to be cellars and basements, with original fireplaces still tucked in the carved block corners of the rooms.
Ghost tours run rain, hail or shine, evidently. GhostHost James’ hands out torches and big, white plastic ponchos. They’re totally unfashionable and I keep tripping on mine every time I walk up a set of stairs. But, dammit, they’re convenient, and dry, and practical.
We walk around the Rocks in a huge circle, stopping at various places along the way. We see the the original morgue next to the Harbour- I’ve eaten lunch there a few times. We’re shown the staircase where the well-known ghost of the Weeping Mother roams looking for her child, thrown off the cliff by a roaming criminal gang in the late 1800′s (apparently well-known, anyway. Not well-known enough for Google).
The tour group visits the basement of an undertaker who was murdered by his convict employee, and the fireplace where the employee attempted to burn his cut-up body. The site of two tragic twenty-first birthday parties, held forty years apart, with two twenty-one year olds dead in grisly manners. The foundations of the house where the Bubonic Plague first struck in Sydney.
It sounds creepy, does it not? But this is the Rocks, jellybeans. At eight o’clock on a Saturday night, there are people everywhere. The pubs and restaurants are swarming.
And out of a group of thirty people, there is always one who has to be a total douche by refusing to turn off their mobile phone, and ruining the punchline to all the storyteller’s stories.
Anyway, douche aside, we got to explore parts of the Rocks that, while open to the public, aren’t easy to find– if nothing else, the Rocks retains its original rabbit-warren infrastructure; and older buildings sit metres lower than current structures.
The final part of the tour was by far the most interesting. GhostHost James led us into the deceptively-named ‘Windmill Cottage’, which is actually located beneath a towering block of units. The remains of Windmill Cottage– including the kitchen, complete with its hearth and sink– were found buried metres underground, as the area was being excavated to build the apartments.
Windmill Cottage is stone-cold and bizarrely silent. We’re told that if we are to see a ghost tonight, this will be the place for it. But were also told not to expect any ghosts. I’ll definitely give GhostHost James credit for that- while big on the storytelling, he was not big on bullsh*t. He recounted things fairly matter-of-factly, didn’t seem to be making stuff up (as he pointed out, had he been making it up, his tally of one ghost seen in three years would be pretty poor form). There was no promises of psychic abilities, nor any inspecting our photos for specks of dust that might just be orbs.
The focus of this ghost tour is definitely ghost stories, as opposed to ‘ghost hunting’. Having said that, I’d totally recommend it for fun. But I will confess that the only ghosts I saw all night were a large number of white shrouded figures, following a man in black.
And as it turned out, that was just another tour group. Also dressed in those totally fashionable white plastic ponchos.
***
Thanks to the team at Digital Parents Collective for inviting me to be a part of the RedBalloon Experience Program. Stay tuned- more awesomeness over the next few months. As always, all opinions are my own (because no one else would want them…?), however the experiences are complimentary.
And, just for jellbeans,
there’s a special offer for RRSAHM readers- Spend $79 or more on any RedBalloon experience, and receive $20 off.
To redeem: Visit www.redballoon.com.au and enter the promo code
REDBLOG14 at the checkout to receive your discount.
Terms and Conditions: Offer valid until 30/06/2014. Promotional Code can
only be used once
per person. All purchases are subject to Red Balloon T’s and C’s.
per person. All purchases are subject to Red Balloon T’s and C’s.
{ 6 comments }
Search: label/trains
Search: label/trains
As we’ve discussed many times before, my kids have a thing for trains. Steam trains, in particular.
I consider it some kind of karmic punishment. I hated Thomas as a kid, probably only because my younger brother adored it. The old–school Thomas theme (before words and personalities and whatnot) carries with an unpleasant undertone of cranky sibling nostalgia. Even with that in mind, I’m still slightly suspicious of the Thomas and Friends revamp. With words in the theme song, and trains that have animated faces and each their own individual voices.
And, because I am old, I just really miss Ringo Starr.
Whatever. TV show and merchandise being mostly unrelated, anyway, I held no preconceived grudges against the Fisher Price Thomas Speed n Steam that was delivered to the TinyTrainHouse last weekend. And I’m grateful for that. Because when I say this is the coolest toy I have ever seen in my whole life, you might believe me.
And I mean that- really. This Thomas is truly awesome– everything you hated about remote controlled toys for little ones, Fisher Price has already thought of. And they’ve fixed it.
There’s no annoying, thin metal antennae to snap, bend and render the toy useless. Secondly, the controls are so, so simple. The green arrow goes forward. The blue button changes ’modes’, but only requires one press on it to make Thomas get all piston–happy and shoot off across the floor. The yellow arrow is, technically, ’reverse’– but not. The most frustrating thing for a three year old is attempting to manipulate an RC toy when the concept of a three point turn is many teenaged years away from them. So Thomas doesn’t just reverse, he also spins himself around, so he’s facing back the way he came from. Or any other other direction you like, really– he just keeps doing 360′s until you take your finger off the button.
So ridiculously simple. So damn ingenious.
Thomas Steam n Speed also, as his implies, blows real steam– but cool steam, not hot steam–from his smoke stack. Say what you will about children and imagination and so forth, I do, even from my fantastic plastic standpoint over here, totally get what you’re saying. But the reason Thomas is so very cool is that he’s a steam train. And, unless you happen to live in the TinyTrainTown, you just don’t see them all that often. Filling up his tiny water tank seems to last a very long time, even with only ten ml’s of water in it; and is super easy thanks to the little plastic dropper provided which actually tucks into a compartment underneath Thomas, so it won’t get lost in that draw of batteries, phone cords, paper clips, pens and other junk that I know you have somewhere at home. Because everyone has one. I call it the Basket of Doom. Speaking of, Thomas takes four AA batteries… consider yourself forewarned, and therefore forearmed.
Anyway. The Thomas Speed n Steam is, completely honestly, one of the most awesome battery–powered toys for little kids that I’ve monopolised away from my children. And, of course, the Chop and the Bump love it, too– I can tell by the way they are prepared to fight one another to the death for possession of the remote control.
So this one gets an extraordinary five out five jellybeans on the RRSAHM Ranking Stuff Scale. Well done, Thomas, well done. Cinders and ashes, indeed.
So you can buy your very own Thomas Speed n Speed, I’ve got a $100 Toys’R’Us voucher up for grabs. Fill in the form below and tell me- do you groove on the new, animated Thomas; or are you more of a traditionalist Thomas fan?
25 words or less-ish, please, and Australian residents only (again, I know, I know…). This one opens Monday 17th November and closes midnight Wednesday 19th Novemeber AEST. You can find the T’s and C’s right here.
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This post has been forming itself, crocheting itself in tiny stitches in my mind, ever since I walked through the door of the TinyTrainHouse.
I’ve been reluctant to write it… because I know, psychologically, that what I’m doing here is called ‘meaning making’. Taking something as torrid and awful as the death of someone you love, and trying to put some form of purpose around it, some kind of framework for it to fit in beyond a group of atoms and cells that grow, and live, and die, and decay.
But knowing that… does it change it? Not at all. You can know exactly how something works… and there can still be magic in it.
***
Because does it feel like Tony sent us here, to this house; that he sent this house to us? Of course it does.
How could it not? When it’s just the type of house we always discussed buying for ourselves, in a few years time… taking our Purple Life with us?
When it’s got everything I always said I wanted in a house- floorboards, a dishwasher, built in ‘robes, a ceiling fan, a Hills Hoist clothesline…
And a garden full of flowers, for his daughter and his wife. The flowers we didn’t have at our wedding, cost and time prohibiting, and he always promised he’d give me.
And then there’s the steam trains… the Chop’s favorite thing on the planet. We did steam trains, in our Purple Life. Trains even has it’s own label on my blog.
And every Sunday, here in TinyTrainTown, the view from our front window is this…
I know… a string of small coincidences, that might mean nothing at all. And after losing the dog, my faith in the whole idea was sorely shaken. But, as I mentioned In The Powder Room, my mum and her philosophising helped a good deal (as the philosophy of mothers often does)…. that maybe Scarlette stayed as long as she could, until she knew we were safe… and then headed back to her master.
That helps enough, fits enough, to fit in with the scheme of things… we’ve found a perfect little family home for the little family that is the three of us, at a price that suited perfectly too.
It sounds melodramatic and over the top…. but ‘heaven sent’ seem to be just the right words to use.
{ 23 comments }
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Fishing.
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: F*ck.
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: The House That Love Built.
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: I Can’t F*cking Shut Up Wednesday. With Words And Stuff.
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Fuck You Too.
RRSAHM — Random Ramblings of a Stay At Home Mum — Page 4
I’ve got a real, big-girl job for the first time in about six years. It’s only two days a week; and it doesn’t sound like a big deal… but it feels like it is. I’ve been lucky enough to make some money from blogging… but I’m not sure it really counts as a job.
I started work last week. For reasons of confidentiality, it’s not something I’ll write about much. I will say that’s it working with teenagers in a medical setting, but providing entertainment and distraction for them. I’m employed by an organisation I used to work for years ago, before I had my kids. It’s something I love to do and I’m passionate about and I’m feeling pretty blessed to have gotten the job I did. It all sort of fell into pace. I needed something to get me out of the rut I’ve been in, and I think this is perfect.
But it feels weird. It feels strange to leave my kids for such big chunks of time. The Most Amazing Man has been pretty damn awesome about it. He takes care of the kidlets, and they love being with him. The guilt remains though. It’s not mortally heavy… it will pass, I think; get that little bit easier every time I don’t pick them up from school or tuck them into bed myself.
Going back to work feels like being in a different world. One that’s outside my own head. A world that encompasses a bigger perspective than the one I see in front of me all the time.
And it feels like there is some pressure off. I lost a bit of my passion for writing, for blogging, because it felt like a necessity- I had to write, to make money. And now I don’t, not so much. The pressure to take on sponsored posts won’t be as great. So I write what I like, when I like. I know there’s been a bit of a glut of sponsored content lately, and there’s a few more posts coming up that I’ve already committed to doing. I’m sorry about that. I can fairly confidently say that there won’t be nearly as many after the next couple of weeks.
Anyway. The good news is.. I’m in a happy place right now. Things feel exciting again. I’ve rediscovered that passion for living that I’ve been missing the last six months or so.
Things are good right now. I’m just basking in the warm, happy glow of it all.
{ 8 comments }
This post is brought to you by Nuffnang.
***
I’ve been asked to write a post to raise awareness about gambling. About how many people it affects when it becomes a problem. About how difficult it can be to ask for help…
There’s such a stigma that surrounds problem gambling. The same kind of uneasy, shameful silence that stops people from speaking out about other addictions and mental health problems. I guess a big part of it is that feeling that it’s your own stupid fault; that if you were a better person you’d be able to resist temptations and have more control over your own mind.
I really don’t understand people who think like that. When you strip us all down, everyone has something. Whether it’s alcohol or cigarettes or drugs or fast food. Whether it’s periods of anxiety or depression, or generally hating the world. How is it possible to have no faults, no abject personality traits that you have no control over?
When I was very little, my parents owned a TAB- a gambling agency. It was just one part of the multi-faceted business they ran in Paradise. A TAB, fishing tackle, and video hire store, all rolled into one tiny shop on the main street of the town. I spent a lot of time there as a child.
I didn’t get it, until I was older. It was only in retrospect that I understood the handful of men who seemed to be in the TAB every week for hours. It wasn’t until I was a teenager and heard my mum talking about watching people gamble away a week’s wage in a few short, hopeful hours, that I realised how very sad a place it was.
I’ve stayed away from gambling, successfully, for my entire life so far. Maybe because of that early exposure. Maybe just due to being lucky. I have such an addictive personality… I know what it’s like to feel control over something slowly slipping away. Wanting to stop, but not being able to, the promise of a potential reward being far too sweet and far too needed to resist.
Addiction- any addiction- it’s a difficult thing. I know a handful of people who have no addictive tendencies, and I envy them. I comfort myself by thinking that surely they’re all screwed up in other ways instead.
Anyway. The point of this post is to simply raise awareness of gambling and the problem it can be, not only for the person who is gambling but also their family and the people they love. Gambling is like any other activity – it’s best enjoyed when you’re in control of it, not when it’s in control of you.
Less than 10% of people with gambling problems ask for help, mainly because of the shame and stigma attached. Like any stigma- the only way to break it is to talk about it.
***
The Fight For The Real You 100 Day Challenge encourages people to talk about and take control of their gambling- whether that means stopping altogether is up to you. The fightforyou.com.au website also features 24/7 help advice and support. It doesn’t even have to be forever- just 100 days.
But if habits form in 28 days… then 100 days could be enough to break one.
Free, confidential help and information is available for gamblers and their families, 24/7 through Gambler’s Helpline 1800 858 858 or Gambling Help online.
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Parents are domestic wizards in the eyes of our children. We understand how complicated things work. We fix broken toys, tape together the ripped pages of books. We heal bruised skin with kisses.
After years spent working as a clown before I had my kidlets, I was more magical than the average mum. I could make things appear and disappear. I could pull colours from the air and drop them onto the empty pages of a book, produce handkerchiefs from behind my son’s ear. I would allow him to hold my special magic wand, only to have it bend or break in his hands.
For a little while, my son believed I was magic. I never performed magic ‘tricks’ for him– there were no tricks here. I was magical, and I made these things happen.
I knew, logically, that his suspension of disbelief would not continue forever. Watching your children figure out the world is not always rainbows and lollipops, it’s sad. It hurts, when you wish you could keep them in a bubble; keep them innocent and tiny and sweet forever.
My son came home from school one day with a totally new perspective on everything. He had discovered the secret to one of my illusions and suddenly realised that it was all tricks. Not real magic at all.
The magic book I had, one I’d entertained him with many times before, was not quite as amazing as I’d made it out to be. You expect your children to learn all kinds of things at school. The secret to your magic tricks isn’t one of them.
One of his friends had a book, he said, the same as my book, and showed the class how it worked. A simple deception. A sleight of hand. An illusion, ruined and distorted. It made me feel a little bit like a liar.
It’s not a big deal at all, in the scheme of things… children learn little truths all the time while we’re not watching. But it felt like a loss. A tiny loss. I find myself using the word ‘lost’ as a synonym for ‘growing up’ so often these days.
To compensate for this piece of the real world thrown at us so unexpectedly, I confess my trickery and let my boy in to what I’ve been keeping from him. I spend the next few days showing him how silk handkerchiefs disappear and how wands break in half. How to make things appear in velvet bags, how to multiply what you have in your hands. I watch him wonder at this skill I have, at the things I can teach him.
The magic isn’t gone. Just shared.
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Purple House Garage sale. – RRSAHM
Purple House Garage sale.
Leave a Comment
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
- July 17, 2010 at 10:40 am
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I feel ya girl-not enough time in the day. Green apple martini for me though!
- July 14, 2010 at 5:49 am
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Well aren't these stickies just hilarious! I have 3 boys, 2 with ADD and a husband to trade, I might even pay someone for a weekend of room service and quiet sleep. They are on my last frazzled and frayed nerve.
- July 14, 2010 at 3:54 am
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LOL!! I post-it posted about sleep today too!! And my poos-a-lot dog has been especially nasty because he eats tissues…but that's TMI!!
- July 14, 2010 at 2:39 am
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Haha, you're too funny! love these! Mmm.. green apple slushies? Yum!
- July 14, 2010 at 2:31 am
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CAn I put my managers up for sale? All they do is feed me bull-sh*t and I am very allergic to bull-sh*t.
Thanks for the chuckle as always!
- July 14, 2010 at 1:01 am
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Sometimes we all feel that way!
- July 13, 2010 at 11:53 pm
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I loved the relatives post-it. But do you think we could just put all the crazy relatives on some ship to no where?
- July 13, 2010 at 11:03 pm
- July 13, 2010 at 8:36 pm
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Every one of those post-its was right on the money. Especially the one where you'd sell your soul for 8 straight hours of sleep. I would so be on board for that one! Happy PINT!
- July 13, 2010 at 8:22 pm
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Just don't think I could part with the apple slurpee. not even for a mostly useless dog and husband. Good luck with your sale.
Gosh your funny. Crazy. But funny.
- July 13, 2010 at 7:49 pm
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I just had a green apple slurpee……..just think, I could've traded it for more feckin' shite I just don't need……..LOL! xx
- July 13, 2010 at 7:23 pm
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Of those, i think i'd take your dog. We like dogs and we dont have one so…. trade ya for this comment?
- July 13, 2010 at 6:03 pm
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Oh look, I'm the first commenter. Hoorah! Am taking a mini break from my AMB Blog Carnival Commenting marathon. Hehe.
Me want some green slurpee too.
- July 14, 2010 at 12:40 am
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I trade chocolate for nothing with no one!
- July 13, 2010 at 6:32 pm
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LOOOVVVVEEEE it Lori. You are the sunshine of my life. xoxo
PS Buy one husband get one free???
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Next post: The Weilder of Magic Sticky Tape.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Honestly, the awesome-ness will move even further into surreal when you actively participate with them in the wild. I haven't been to the Kalimantan section of Borneo, but both Semenggoh (Sabah, Malaysia) and Sandakan (Sarawak, Malaysia) also offer a few remaining opportunities to see them in the wild, as well as in sanctuaries. What is really heart-breaking is the LONG drive past Palm Oil plantations to reach the animals.
I love reading this – give us more. And feel free to check out my review about Semenggoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre.
You are so right, I AM seething with jealousy, because I'm petty like that… You are going to have the most awesome time ever.
But really, Orangutans are extremely cool. I went to the zoo once and the big male was sleeping in this hammock thing. There was a sign on the wall saying he made the hammock himself, HE MADE IT WITH HIS COOL HUMAN-LIKE HANDS! Anyway, he was sleeping and I was sad that I didn't get to say hi to him, but for some reason he woke up just as we were leaving his enclosure (I swear we didn't bash on his windows or anything, really) and came up close to the windows so we could see his awesomeness all close up and stuff. It was extremely cool.
Really, I'm a huge fan of all primates, particularly the distinctly over-sexed Bonobo (look them up, they just love to get it on.)