Monthly Archives: May 2016
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Lucky.
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Possible Indicators That You Have PMS And Everyone Should Clear Out and Go To Hell
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Hanging… On…In….There.
Your Mission For The Weekend- #BloggersToBorneo – RRSAHM
Your Mission For The Weekend- #BloggersToBorneo
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…
Previous post: But All That Can Be Fixed.
Next post: Mirror Shards
An Onion Life. – RRSAHM
An Onion Life.
‘This is what we Japanese called the “onion life”- peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while.’
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden.
Some days I just cry.
It’s not anything in particular that sets it off, makes it worse. It’s just the way it is, some days… some days I live through a veil of tears that I am unable to stop. Holding them in just means they release themselves in a symphony of hiccuped, breath drawing sobs, rather than a silent flowing river of silver pain.
“I’m not buying you another box of tissues,” my mother jests gently. “Pull your socks up, calm down and get on with it.”
I am getting on with it, I tell her. My socks are so high they suffocate me. As I speak to her phone, I am folding a load of washing fresh from the dryer, tears coursing my cheeks as I do so.
This is, I think, the way of those of us who are grieving deeply, keening over losing the loss of someone so close, be it a husband, baby, someone else who kisses your soul… you keep living, you keep doing things, shedding a thousand tears as you go.
The onion life, as they say. Stripping away a layer at a time, crying all the while… not financially, or with material possessions, as in the book it’s quoted from. In this context it’s layers rubbed off my poor, weary soul, exposing the flesh underneath all over again, before it’s even begun to heal.
So, those of us who mourn as I do…. we cry as we go on with life. We sob as we fill out paperwork for mundane medical medical matters, we keen softly while we mop our floors. Tears run down our cheeks as we make rumpled beds. A river of pain and sadness and regrets wells on our cheeks as we take the meat from the freezer from dinner.
Why…? Because there is simply not enough time to cry, to mourn, to grieve and wallow. Life goes on far before we’re ready, far before we’ve had time to process the damage that’s been done, cry all the tears we need to.
A life punctuated by crying. It can’t be like this forever… surely it’s just the grief, washing itself away, over and over and over again.
Leave a Comment
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
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December 18, 2011 at 3:25 pm -
I hear you in this post and the next. Divorced. 2 young boys. Things and I will never be the same. Tears in the car, cooking, folding washing, looking at housework. Never ending. Resentment. Struggling to find joy in the children. Impatient. Pain. Wondering every day what is it all for? Mean to myself. Dislike. Cynical. Regret. Loss. I don't think I'll ever be the same and I hate myself for it.
- December 13, 2011 at 7:09 am
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oh sweety *hugs* one day it will stop xxx
- December 10, 2011 at 1:53 pm
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Lori I remember the tears and they do seem like they will be a new forever companion to random daily activities – folding washing, doing dishes, driving, walking, sitting, thinking, sleeping. And for the longest time, they are.
Let the tears come and then let them go too <3 The level of emotional clensing required after what you've survived is such that its gonna take a *lot* of tears… so many tears that you will probably forget/give up hope that there will be a time when your spirit is truely renewed.
But by stealth it will happen and one day, your spirit will sing and you will realise that renewal has happened and your are living in yet another *after*… one you will reflect with surprise is quite ok, quite agreeable, and even regularly beautiful.
- December 9, 2011 at 6:50 am
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Today I had a hospital procedure. When the nurse said 'why are you crying' I could only answer 'just a little worried' and looked a fool. I could not say because the last time I was sat in a booth like this I was holding a dying man's hand. My onion layers. Thank you for voicing something I couldn't and helping me to let it out xx I think the other comments you've had will help you more than this but thank you for helping me xx
- December 9, 2011 at 4:35 am
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Cry yourself a river, then dive in, do some back strokes, float around a bit, enjoy the salty water. You are certainly allowed to grieve for as long as you need to. But I do agree with your mom, that at some point you must put the big girl panties back on and well, try your best to make the rest of the short time we get to be on this earth as wonderful as you can. But for now, you are entitled to be as sad (or happy)as you like. What Tony did was CRAP. But you loved the man so very much, you must grieve him and the life that once was. My heart goes out to you and your kids!!!! Lisa
- December 9, 2011 at 3:36 am
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Lori, I have been reading for a while also but this is the first time I have posted. Not sure why it's taken me so long? My heart aches for you. I am so, so sorry for your's & your babies loss. I wish there was some way I could help you through this, even just some small way. Thinking of you. Natalie x
- December 8, 2011 at 10:51 pm
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Oh Lori. Yes. Yes. Yes. I can't help but think of this in medical terms. Your body knows something is deeply wounded inside of you and the tears wash it away, a teeny bit at a time. Keeping things clean, moving forward, healing.
Love love love.
Cry all you need to. - December 8, 2011 at 9:39 pm
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Mourning seems to have become a privilege. What you said about crying as you go through the motions of daily life touched me. Yesterday, while stretching in class, the tears welled and overflowed and I just kept stretching. Then onwards to the dancing, with red eyes and everyone facing front so no queries.
We live and we mourn and we laugh and it is the now. - December 8, 2011 at 9:05 pm
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This is a powerful post, full of pain, yet with hope too. It leaves me needing to say something but almost speechless as well. You have a beautiful way with words reaching deep into the heart and soul of your readers.
- December 8, 2011 at 8:02 pm
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Are you still getting councelling? Or was that a temporary thing??
I like the onion thing. I think it can explain a feeling well, the suffocation of having emotional pain piled up.
I also think it's so brave you cry. So so brave.
- December 8, 2011 at 7:51 pm
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Oh you take my breath away with this… I can imagine it must be the simplest acts that can cut the most… Grief is a beast that knows no bounds. Your tears are allowed, you do as you need to x
- December 8, 2011 at 7:46 pm
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salt water – be it the sea, or the tears you shed is healing… You are healing my love. x
- December 8, 2011 at 6:39 pm
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So beautifully (and accurately) written.
- December 8, 2011 at 4:59 pm
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oh lori,
grief has no fixed form…it is what it is. Cry, go with it, take action, keep living, cry, reminisce, cry, resent, cry, feel the missing pieces, cry, laugh, cry, keep living.
Everyday doesnt have to be positive to be successful.
much love
Jane - December 9, 2011 at 1:23 am
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Your right, there just isn't enough time to mourn, life just keeps happening, going forward. Its good to cry, cry as much as you need for as long as you need. Huge hugs Xx
- December 8, 2011 at 2:16 pm
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Lori-it has been three and a half Years since my sister dropped dead at 49 and I still cry every single day .. usually more than once.
Added to my only sister's death are co-workers: three from same job, patients, first circle friends, neighbors, and the son of dying patient…
My only younger brother too, just barely six months ago.
Does living get better or easier for me? It's different but no better since that Sunday night in July when a ringing phone sounded hours too late for good news.
Hope your psyche settles down as time goes by.
- December 8, 2011 at 2:16 pm
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Have been following your blog silently for a while Lori. The onion thing is grief, layers and layers of it. Every time you cry you peel away another tiny layer and make it smaller. Crying is so good for you. The loss of dreams may never go away but the intensity of your feelings will gradually subside until one day you will be able to think..the grief is gone. But the whole process can't be hurried and you need to take your own time and be gentle with yourself. You are obviously an incredibly strong person just to be able to look after two little kids with what you have been through. I am a 62 yr old mother and grandmother and I say … have a good cry and you will feel better. Xx
- December 8, 2011 at 1:59 pm
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Turn this up loud: http://youtu.be/_TJkxf4qPRI
(Holly Cole: Cry if you want to) - December 8, 2011 at 1:40 pm
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"We keen softly while we mop our floors." God, that, exactly. You nailed it. Sending you peace and hugs. x
- December 8, 2011 at 1:14 pm
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And if you remember the end of that book Sayuri ends up a survivor. She may not get everything she ever wanted, but she comes through the other side and she survives.
And so will you.
xx - December 8, 2011 at 10:39 am
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Sad but beautiful xxxxxx
- December 8, 2011 at 9:26 am
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Yes. Just yes. I believe it's just washing itself away.
- December 8, 2011 at 9:04 am
- December 8, 2011 at 10:58 am
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Oh, Lori, you expressed that perfectly. There ISN'T enough time to mourn.
xxx
Previous post: 1 +1 = 2
Next post: The Active Avoidance of Resenting My Kids
Medicine Woman- Apothecary, Part Two. – RRSAHM
Medicine Woman- Apothecary, Part Two.
I find myself, after the herbal healing course I took, fascinated with all matter of weeds and shrub, seeds and greenery.
I begin with things so basic they’re not really medicine at all. Capsules of ground cayenne chilli powder mixed with ginger, to treat viruses and head colds. The same chilli powder in my shoes to keep my feet warm and toasty- my limbs are constantly chilled in the Highlands cold winter.
On the advice of Pat, the herbalist who teaches the course, I fill a small Tupperware container with Epsom salts and just enough water to cover them. I label it and place it high on a shelf in our storage cupboard. A week later when I scald my arm with boiling water while filling hot water bottles to take the first chill off my children’s bed sheets; I remember it’s there. I soak a clean cloth in the Epsom salts then wrap it over the red, thumping welt on my forearm.
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| Herbs drying on the TinyTrainHouse front porch. |
The salts dry and crystallize, leaving a fine white powder on my skin. But the relief is immediate, and the long term effects astound me– within an hour, there is no mark, no pain, no evidence of a burn at all. Burning human flesh removes the magnesium from it– Epsom salts, almost totally magnesium themselves, replace it.
I make my first batch of tinctures and elixirs and hand them over to the few friends who have agreed to act as ‘tested on humans’ guinea pigs for me. There’s a reluctance as I hand them over, labelled with usage and dose; a lack of belief in a medicine that doesn’t come subsidized, mass produced and squashed into tiny pills. And so I surprise myself all the more when I discover they do work. Two weeks of steeping calendula blooms in alcohol, doused in the bright sunlight that comes through my kitchen window, and their healing properties had been transferred to this liquid.
A few weeks ago now, I happened to be in a piercing salon to get my eyebrow bar downsized and, being the highly suggestible type of person I am, I walked out with two new dermal anchor peircings on the left side of my chest, to match the ones I already have on the right. Long story, short; it was a case of a model that didn’t show up, two trainee piercers with no one to practice on, and an offer of very cheap piercings. It doesn’t take much to make me say ‘yes’.
Fast forward to a week or so ago, and one of those piercings had popped from the skin and was rapidly becoming infected. If you’ve watched this vlog you’ll know why I was reluctant to have a GP scalpel it out, and finding a piercer to do it is difficult in this age of rampant litigation. On finding one available it’s a five day wait to have someone cut out a small diamanté, anchored into my body by my own skin, and charge me fifty bucks for the privilege.
In slight desperation I begin applying the calendula, half strength with filtered water, straight onto the piercing. Within hours it has that tell-tale deep itch that I recognize from so many self inflicted body decorations. It’s the healthy, deep, maddening itch of soft tissue healing.
Morning and night I clean the piercing– and it’s rapidly swelling twin– cover it with fresh band aids (Wiggles bandaids, of course, are the only ones I have in the house). I take four drops of the tincture orally, undiluted, morning and night.
After two days I remove the dressing and it’s covered in murky drying puss. I touch the still slightly swollen skin and more bile yellow liquid oozes out.
After four days the piercing has popped back into the hole in my flesh, originally created by a biopsy cone, from whence it came. My skin is still tender, but the infection, redness and swelling have disappeared almost completely.
I cancel my appointment. And I’m hooked. I’m a believer.
My windowsill becomes lined with glass jars of all shapes and sizes, holding all variety of herb and weed. Clivers, prickly lettuce, yellow dock stem and root, lemon and lavender suspended in base oils. In the foothills of Ophir I spot a sprawling, wide leaved plant I’m sure I recognize from my herb books, and filling a bag with it pays off. I boil the horehound with sugar and water and the result is a horrid looking, foul tasting concoction. After adding liberal peppermint essence and respiratory tinctures such as plantain and wood sorrel I test it on myself, full strength, and again it works. I’ve made my own natural cough syrup.
I love learning new things. I love when something piques your interest enough that you stay up that extra half an hour to Google it, or spend that twenty dollars you can’t really afford on supplies for the next part of your project. Feeling my brain stretch and freshen it’s cells in order to accommodate new information takes the stale crispness off life. I’m always enchanted by the complex synapses of my own mind when I realize I have learnt things without effort, simply absorbing facts as I go. I can spot a dock plant from twenty paces, identify thorn apple bushes in the middle of roundabouts as I’m driving past and see the patch-worked brown waves of foliage on local farmlands as the noxious, all consuming blackberry bushes they are.
And in the same way, the knowledge of what each plant does and which parts– root, stem, leaves, bark or seeds– are used seems to be settling into my mind innately, too. The two texts I bought are muddied, missing pages and dog eared after only a few months, and I’m sick of flicking from index to page and back again; so I decide to write my own, in a notebook in long hand, and it’s soothing and feels different when I spend so much of my time typing on my flat iPad keyboard.
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| Spot the hippy- Lori, harvesting. |
Despite how well they work, there’s that obvious reluctance in myself and my human guinea pigs to place too much trust any potion I cook or steep or to even expect it to work. It’s certainly not personal– in fact, I see it as a fantastic leap of trust that my friends would ingest anything I make, considering my cooking– there’s just that overwhelming, deeply ingrained notion that fifty years of powerful pharmaceutical propaganda have left us with- if it’s not mass–produced and pressed into a tiny pill, it will certainly be, at best, ineffective and, at worst, quite dangerous.
I’m proving that concept wrong with every lotion and potion I produce that seems to work like a magic spell and costs next to nothing, harvested and cooked by my own hand. It’s a pleasant, peaceful feeling– the search, the harvest, drying, chopping, steeping and boiling. It feels like a connection to a generation of women that’s been lost– witches and healers, apothecarers and midwives. Medicine women.
Non-believers, scoff and roll your eyes all you like.
In the event of some kind of holocaust, I assure you I’ll be the first person you come looking for in the aftermath.
Leave a Comment
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
- July 26, 2012 at 4:51 am
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Awesome post… it makes me wonder if I could do the same. Though I share the cynicism of disbelief you mention, I have an ingrained mistrust of modern medicine, as well. I'm not sure what in the way of healing plants Alaska, USA might have but your success tempts me to find out.
For a person who has neither cooking skills nor even basic knowledge of plants, it could be quite the (mis)adventure.
- July 24, 2012 at 7:07 pm
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This post is so inspiring, I'm off to search for local classes to reaquaint myself with herbology. I used to love it but life got in the way.. Lori, you are a witch on a path of learning, writing a book of shadows as you go. All power to you!
- July 23, 2012 at 9:38 pm
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Becoming a healer of wounds …. Very profound! By the way I love the word 'tincture' it's perfect
- July 23, 2012 at 9:54 am
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I think your new skill set is awesome. I've always had a yen to try it myself but have been super intimidated. That pharmaceutical propaganda HAS been ridiculously effective; all the ingrained fear does not go quietly. Good for you for breaking free.
- July 23, 2012 at 9:49 am
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All sounds so good and interesting.I would love to do a course like that!
Glad to hear it is all working so well for you.I had a similiar experience with natural therapies when I had a god-awful case of strep throat.I tried everything to make it better-antibiotics,novocain etc etc when in desperation I was googling a remedy and came across uropathy.I was in that much pain I gave it a go,gargling every .5 hr and by the next day I was cured.This was after not even being able to swallow hrs earlier because of the pain and swelling caused by the humungous ulcers covering my throat.
Haven't done it since but it was stunning to think there are natural cures surrounding us that have no side effects and are free or really cheap.
- July 23, 2012 at 9:36 am
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Wow, I had no idea, not even about epsom salts. I had to smile at the hot water bottle filling, I do this every night for 3 of my boys. I have had many close calls, but have so far been lucky.
- July 23, 2012 at 8:42 am
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I am quite impressed. Information about what it is and what to do with it, is lost on me. My mum on the other hand, looked at the "weeds" in my back yard and pointed out all the plants that were edible – and for the life of me, i can't recognise them anymore…
you have a gift – keep nurturing that gift…. and i have to ask – which notebook.
XX
Previous post: Liar, Liar…
Next post: Naked
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Jeans and Stuff.
Internet Dating v2.1- My Last Duchess. – RRSAHM
Internet Dating v2.1- My Last Duchess.
Romance is a glorious thing.
As we’ve discussed and dissected before, I am a hopeless romantic. I love flowers. I love massages and surprises and nights out. I love romantic crap that makes me go “Awwwww!”
Tony, bless him, wasn’t good at the romance. He tried, sometimes, but he just didn’t seem to be able to pull it off without looking– and feeling– like a great big boofhead.
Since he died, the romance in my life has been sadly lacking. I vaguely remember the last time a guy took me out for dinner– it was my best mate Bunny, about six weeks after Tony passed away.
I occasionally buy myself flowers for the kitchen table, especially this time of year when there is nothing blooming in my garden; and it makes me sad, buying them for myself. But that’s offset by the simple happiness that comes from seeing fresh living color in my peripheral vision every time I open my front door.
There was some vague hope of some kind of excitement recently, as reported on Twitter, when I met a guy– online, of course– who seemed close to perfect. Great job in the vicinity of Paradise, gorgeous, intelligent, and– wait for it– spoke fluent French and owned an apartment in Paris.
All together now– *sigh*.
Complete the picture with a first date that included a perfect, warm autumn day and a picnic by a lake; and how does some kind of romantic interlude following that not seem possible?
Being stood up once, complete with dog–eating–homework excuse, should have been enough to kick that thought right out of my cerebellum. It wasn’t. It took him standing me up twice, as well as a rather fierce phone call from Woogs telling me to grow a spine; to make me see the light (douche).
In the meantime, we did have a few rather lovely dates, and a couple of long, giggling phone conversations. It was during one of those that I happened to mention Tony.
It makes me feel self–conscious, speaking of a man I once loved very much in front of one who I’ve just kissed; I can hear the plain fondness for my husband echo through my voice and I apologise to this perfect man, ask him not to mind, please, if I say Tony’s name or speak of things he did once… I can’t help it. He was my whole life for such a long time.
“It’s fine”, Mr Perfect says, “that’s OK. In fact, it reminds me of this poem..
| Browning’s ‘Last Duchess’ |
There’s a wealthy man, years back, who is describing to a painter his last wife, his last duchess; all her details and strengths and weaknesses– “she was this, she was that…” It’s only toward the end of the poem you realize that the painter is not a painter, that he is there to find the man a new duchess; and he’s listening patiently to all her faults and charms so he may replicate those charms and find someone without those flaws.”
Again, all together… *sigh*. How freaking romantic is that? Be still my beating, swooning, eager–to–get–laid heart.
Or, as the educated amongst you may have already picked… not so much.
A little time with the Google God tells me that Robert Browning’s poem ‘My Last Duchess‘ is the story of a man recounting a murder. He killed his last wife, buried her, and, if I have the jist of things right, is now intimidating a possible future father-in-law with the details.
Holy what the f…. run away. Now.
I’m actually fairly sure this guy is not an axe murderer (or if he is, I’m slightly offended that I evidently wasn’t to his taste). It was just a matter of smart–arsery gone wrong.
I’m not sure I can say the same about the other guy who I happened to be chatting to… who revealed he was heavily into bondage. That’s all fine with me, but, you know, I have this thing with rope.
Then he tells me that, actually, he’d love to find a woman to play out a hostage fantasy with him.
And if that’s not terrifying enough, he works at an abattoir.
Cue– block, change profile name and picture. Fumble for that optimism you dropped, possibly in someone’s basement (“It rubs the lotion on its skin!”); smile and try again.
Because romance isn’t dead, surely. It’s just… terrified. Or at the very least, lost somewhere in translation.
Leave a Comment
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
- May 13, 2012 at 4:25 pm
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My goodness you ARE funny!!
If it gives you any hope, there are decent men out there on the internet. I married one of them
xx
- May 12, 2012 at 7:52 am
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After my husband left me for his girlfriend, it took me 3 years before I could even accept a date. Lucky for me I did, and over 5 years later, we are still together… don't despair, you will find that romance you are looking for… just don't give up! But do be careful!!
- May 12, 2012 at 2:44 am
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You know, I think I would just tell the guy I'm not into bondage, you know, at all. And that I have trauma related to rope and constraint, and just leave it at that. No need to change your profile, unless he actually IS a stalker, but he's probably not. Stalkers aren't really all that common.
- May 12, 2012 at 2:29 am
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..just a couple of Frogs on the way to the Prince… I liked the post, and am sorry it's not fiction.
Xx rah rah in melbs
- May 11, 2012 at 9:40 pm
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I…just…OMG.
The dating pool appears quite shallow.
Like…horribly scary shallow. - May 11, 2012 at 8:47 pm
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oh…just gotta love online dating- or any dating for that matter…
I think he kinda knew the basic high school interpretation of the poem….his actions mirror it.
and standing you up is unacceptable- end of story – for anyone you would consider sharing yourself with. Unacceptable.
Lori- everyone is deserving of basic respect….
you can,and will, do so much better than fake, charming, cashing in on being french, guy.
much love , Jane - May 11, 2012 at 8:44 pm
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*Understand-ING*
dangit! hate typos. - May 11, 2012 at 8:43 pm
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HOLY COW! You have met some crazy weirdos, sister! At least it makes for excellent blog fodder. Keep looking though, Lori – I know Mr. Romantic, Understand, and Handsome is out there. I just know it.
- May 11, 2012 at 8:34 pm
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If it wasn't too creepy to ask for your address, I'd send you flowers.
Hope you're holding up ok. - May 11, 2012 at 8:32 pm
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This made me laugh but seriously babe, no one should get the opportunity to stand you up twice. And remember the only way to survive in the world of Internet dating is to have an absolute zero tolerance policy for fuckwits, assholes, liars and losers.
Love ya babe, your optimism is shining through <3
xoxoxo Pix - May 11, 2012 at 11:20 am
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Oh dear… I'm sure there will be a nice normal man ready to come and sweep you off your feet when the time is right – Hey my brother has only just met someone at age 42 and she is so lovely I breifly wondered if he had paid her to say she was his date
Axe murder guy wasn't called Trevor by any chance? - May 11, 2012 at 11:06 am
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Holy shit! Well….if anything Lori you are going to have some very interesting and funny stories to share when you do find this guy you're looking for. And you will. I know you will.
Agreeing with Woogs, it's a one strike and you're out policy. They won't strike out if they're worth your time. They won't let you apologise for speaking of Tony. You will be perfectly imperfect as you are. x - May 11, 2012 at 10:18 am
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I'm guessing internet guy just didn't understand the poem (in which case, he should be kicked out of Paris tout suite). But standing you up twice…unacceptable. I gave up on internet dating. Too many freaks.
- May 11, 2012 at 9:58 am
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while it may not feel like it, the best part about all of this, is that you are exploring YOU, and making discoveries about yourself that you didn't realise needed to be discovered.
If you haven't already, look up a book called Fearless Loving: Eight Simple Truths That Will Change the Way You Date, Mate, and Relate Rhonda Britten. You may think its naff. but it helped me figure out a whole lot of stuff about ME.
xoxo
- May 11, 2012 at 1:14 pm
Previous post: Change The Rules, Change The Game…
Next post: Promiscuity
Page not found
You 404’d it. Gnarly, dude.
Surfin’ ain’t easy, and right now, you’re lost at sea. But don’t worry; simply pick an option from the list below, and you’ll be back out riding the waves of the Internet in no time.
- Hit the “back” button on your browser. It’s perfect for situations like this!
- Head on over to the home page.
- Punt.
The Biology of Teens – RRSAHM
The Biology of Teens
Following on from Biology (part one), by special request.
Teenagers are, by all psychological laws and principles, insane.
Studying at university, my tutor for mental health subjects was a woman named Dr Meg, and she was all shades of sparkling awesome. She had bipolar disorder. Having been in and out of the mental health system for the past twenty years, she spoke with passion and objective honesty in regards to mental health. She was one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. When she was manic, she had delusions that she was the Virgin Mary, and told us she actually saw herself shrouded in blue when she looked at her own image in the mirror.
One particular day, another student asked a question about small children and their tendency to create imaginary friends. The answer from Dr Meg was succinct and perfect– “Oh yes. Young children, teenagers as well… they’re quite mad.”
The teenage years are as intense in brain growth and developing synapses and neural pathways as the early childhood stage. It’s a bloodbath of hormones, impulses, and core life lessons; and it’s one of those two times in your life where you are malleable and so easily influenced, because you’re finding a sense of self. As a child, you need to develop some independence, some sense of being a separate entity from those around you– that inherent clinginess babies develop at about nine months is simply their brain beginning to realize that they are, in fact, a separate person from their mother.
From the ages of about thirteen to eighteen (depending on who you ask– the definition of ‘teenage years’ is varied and continues to start at a younger and younger age. It’s sadly logical, if you look at it– by the time a child of this modern time is ten years old, they will have absorbed more information that someone who live to eighty in the 1900’s), the brain becomes a very hectic place, biologically and psychologically. Most of your social identity is formed during these years. It’s as teens that we find out who we really are– how you like to dress, what makes you laugh, what music you enjoy. Is there any music you prefer to the songs of your teendom? Of course not… It’s part of your soul now.
While finding out who you are is fabulous, it’s also painful and difficult and fraught with the potential for heartache and insecurity. I’ve said before– being a teenage girl is torture. The push to fit in, to be a part of something, to belong… it’s overwhelming. It’s natural. Think primal again for a bit– cave man style, a sixteen year old was actually half way through their life span, fertile, and ready to start a family.
Ready to move on, move in, and assimilate with a tribe of their own.
A quick study of any random group of kids at your local shopping centre will confirm this… they dress, act, and talk alike; and that is important at that age. Remember arguing with your mum over why you desperately needed to go somewhere with your friends, or how badly you needed that particular bag or haircut or pair of shoes to be accepted? I know, looking back now, you wonder what the hell was going on in your head. It wasn’t your fault, and, if you are the parent of teens now (may God have mercy on us all…) it’s not your fault. (Another lecture, sociology this time, speaking of this very thing, and referring to own sixteen year old daughter, who had found her identity as a goth, back before emo’s existed– “She has very long, blond hair,” he smiled, resigned and sad but somehow proud of his girl, finding who she is in a big wide world, “I think she may have to dye it black soon, which will be very sad for her.” He seemed to understand that she had no choice in the matter, that the primal push to belong to a tribe was deeper even than the vanity of a sixteen year old girl.)
It’s simple biology, pushing into social interactions in a way no one really gets. Part of becoming an adult is, I guess, learning to curb and control it.
On top of all that, there’s the simple fact that, again sometime between the ages of thirteen and eighteen– right up to twenty one for the males of the species– your neurological structure is changing and reforming. Hormones are pumping through your body, your glands, your neural pathways in spiking levels that you haven’t experienced since birth. There’s a tribal instinct that calls you to feed, to dance, to mate, to strengthen those social bonds– hence that midnight escape route through the bedroom window. (My mum was so onto me… a few weeks after I snuck out for the first time, she layed a carpet of pebbles, gravel and broken tiles up the side of our house, all innocence and murmuring things about bad drainage. It took me years to click… clever woman. I underestimated my mum, as my kids will, no doubt, underestimate me.)
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| Image via Pinterest |
I’m fairly sure that’s where the ’mad’ comes into things– that hormonal rewiring of the brain can leave massive gaps in social processes and thought patterns. They’re filled, eventually, of course– for most people, there are some that just never grow up– but it’s in those spaces that small children grow imaginary friends. It’s that lapse of logic that causes so man young men to die on our roads.
I’m not sure about countries other than Australia, but I’m imagining most western societies share the same horrifying road toll statistics when it comes to young male drivers and high speed crashes. If you really push it, you can almost make the decorated, highly plumed cars of young men as another one of those leftovers from tribal life… think peacocks, and you might be onto something.
Even without stretching things that far, it’s psychologically accepted that one of the main chunks missing from the brain of young adults is the ability to link actions to consequences. While most reasonably intelligent kids know that driving at 140 kms on a windy road in the dark is a very bad idea, on principle, the actual consequences of their actions don’t mesh with what they’re doing. They’re aware of what could happen… but it will not happen to them. That’s not so much willful ignorance or arrogance speaking, it is the simple fact that the wiring between those two parts of the brain– consequence to action– is either MIA, off at the pub or still growing and developing, cell by cell.
I’m not giving excuses here– I’m continually distressed by the road toll amongst young people, especially in semi–rural areas such as the one I’m living in now. And I’m certainly not saying “That’s the way it is, boys will be boys, la dee da, no hum”. It’s our job, as the relative elders of this modern society, to find ways to teach kids about rights and responsibilities, to show th
em the potential consequences of their actions in a way that will enable those pathways in the brain to develop at a younger age, in a stronger fashion. Or raise the legal driving age to twenty one.
Let’s not even start on the bitchiness of teenage girls and bullying… the psychology behind that is another post, for another day.
We’re all crazy, maybe. It just teens and really little kids, they’re slightly more so.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
- May 1, 2012 at 1:20 am
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Before someone is diagnosed with any sort of disorder there are signs that are well observed depending on what kind of disorder it is. I have here 5 warning signs that your teen might be suffering from dipolar disorder.
- April 29, 2012 at 2:15 pm
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Lori, spot on fab post, we seem toforget as adults the highly strung emotions a teenagers faces. I'm off to share this now Nx
- April 27, 2012 at 9:07 am
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Lori, Thank You! I've been having a horrible couple of days with my independent, indestructible, know-it-all 18 year old son. I was seriously considering trying to find him a new home.
JUST KIDDING….maybe.Your post reminded me that he can't help that he's crazy and has no logical thought in his mind. It's not that he WILL not consider consequences, it's that he CAN not. I knew this, I just needed to be reminded.
The teenage years are horrible. I would never want to go back and repeat them, however, some days living with him and my 16-year old daughter is like reliving those God awful years.
I'm holding on for dear life and will see them through this. (From my lips to God's ears!)
- April 26, 2012 at 8:21 pm
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Sometimes being a parent is terrifying. Teenagers! Gah!
- April 26, 2012 at 5:14 pm
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Hmm, I don't know. Sometimes I wonder if not for my children I would be more insane than I was in my teen years. Which is pretty scary.
I was talking to Bluey just yesterday telling him how afriad I am of the teen years. It sends me into a panic even now, and I've got at LEAST five more years until it hits. I am petrified of being a mum to teenage boys. I don't have any brothers, only mates I grew up with, and, well, stories from Mr Black. If my kids turn out like him I think I may shoot us all! - April 26, 2012 at 11:07 am
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Well said! As the mother of two teen boys (god help me!) and a 21 year old daughter who thankfully has come out the other side of those horrid attitude filled teen years, I am able to say thank god they do settle down & it does end!! It's a nightmare to live through & it's such a shame our gorgeous happy children have to morph into these angry hostile nasty teens but sadly they do and all we can do is be there & love them & wait it out! Oh the joys of being a parent!
- April 26, 2012 at 10:47 am
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Im sitting here crying my eyes out.I have been going through hell with my teenage daughter and yes have all those feelings of where did I go wrong.
We have always been there for her and had a very special bond.Would sit and talk for hours after school and share her life with me.She has gone from a loving mature sensible nice girl to a selfish mean spirited nasty girl from hell.
I understand its the hormones and the new stress of working and uni etc but it doesnt stop the hurt of my heart breaking with every mean word she says.
Thankyou for making me more aware and maybe a bit stronger with me being reminded its a natural process I just have to ride out. - April 26, 2012 at 9:13 am
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Terrific post, Lori. x
- April 26, 2012 at 8:44 am
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Wow, that was a very interesting post. Everything you say seems to make sense. My teenager also has bipolar which makes everything doubly complicated. Boys really do think they are indestructible which makes us fear even more for their safety and some of the decisions they make.
Once again, thank you xT - April 26, 2012 at 8:42 am
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That really resonates with me, having lived through the teenage years with 3 kids (the youngest is about to hit 21). The eldest (boy) was our wild child and to be honest, there were stages when I seriously doubted that he would live to see 21. For my own sanity and the mental health of the whole family, I decided that I would only worry when the police arrived to tell me that he was in hospital, in jail or dead. Having said that, he has now completed a trade, is working in WA and reaches 26 in a couple of weeks, whew!
I've followed your blog for quite a while now and appreciate your insights. Thank you.
Anne
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Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Brunching With a Tweet of Bloggers.
Cat. – RRSAHM
Cat.
“Our cat has got no name,
We simply call him Cat.
He doesn’t seem to blame
anyone for that.”
A verse from a half-remembered poem I read as a child that still goes round and round in my mind sometimes.
Mr Tree the wonder cat has been missing for about a month now. Still presumably squashed, but without a visible carcass. My kids have noticed he’s missing- they’re not stupid. The whereabouts of Mr Tree has become a regular topic of conversation as my kids get dressed, with my constant assistance, by the gas heater on chilly mornings.
“He’s dead”, says my son blaisely, and returns to playing with his matchbox cars.
Big icy shards form crystals on the inside of me, cold and stark against a cosy, sunny morning. Good grief- the child is four.
“Hmmm…” I fumble for words, prepared for this but not. “Maybe he went for a wander and found himself another family to live with? Someone with a big backyard. And… ummm… maybe they had no cats, and we have one as well as the cats next door who come and visit. So Mr Tree decided to stay for a bit.”
I wait, feeling my explanation weighed and seared in the heat of my four year old’s judgment. His sister will happily concede with whatever her brother, her idol now her father is gone, decides.
The Chop’s smile is warm, leg shaking relief and I find myself with a few days to catch my breath, my children both happy to repeat the ‘Mr Tree’s New Family’ story to just about everybody.
We’re in the car one day when the speculation begins. Maybe Mr Tree is somewhere in TinyTrainTown, the Chop suggests. Perhaps, I reply, concentrating more on reversing out of our driveway than any missions for finding cats missing, presumed very dead.
“So, Mum, I have a good idea…” rambles my little man, “we should go knock on all the doors until we find him!”
His expression is so hopeful.
“Oh hunny… there’s a lot of houses here. And he could have gone a very long way, it might have been a big walk…”
“But Mumma”, my baby girl lisps from the backseat, “Mr Twee is family!”
Ahhhh. Nice work, kid. Twist the knife of guilt a little deeper. My girl, she is going to be such a charmer.
***
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“Kittens!! FREE!! to good home” says the sign… and that’s about as clear as signs get, when I first noticed it a week ago and it’s still there now. A week ago, I hadn’t given the thought of bringing another kitten into the TinyTrainHouse much thought. It wasn’t until my shrink suggests that it might be a good idea that I realise why I don’t want to.
It’s pop psychology 101. I am just terrified it would die. Desperately afraid of hearing that sad resolution in my son’s voice again. The five year old girl who lives inside my mind and keeps lights burning at night and squeezes herself into a ball under her blanket is screaming again, horrified that I might give her something small and soft and vulnerable again, how dare I?!
And knowing that, owning it, that’s enough. A very good reason, on top of many many others, to replace at least one of the missing members of our family.
I will not live in fear…. even when it’s rational, sensible fear. I won’t let that dictate my actions, and I won’t let it obstruct what my kids are allowed to enjoy in their childhood.
The sign is outside a local vets and the staff are ecstatic that someone has come to take home one of these three tiny, silver and grey and white striped male kittens and take them home. Bought in as a litter of tiny newborn dumpee’s, they’d be waiting for a family for over a week. Not only are the kitten’s free, their first vaccination is free as well.
I visit them by myself first. They are so tiny and delicate, all huge eyes and itty bitty mews. One climbs my arm to snuggle softly into my neck and that sense of tiny breathing on my skin is so much like a newborn it almost stings my eyes with tears.
I bring my children back that evening and we watch the three brothers skitter around and chase one another. My daughter is almost in tears herself, unable to stop her fully belly laughs that increase every time one of the kittens rolls, spills or tumbles. My son is suspended, as he so often seems to be- a child laughing throatily at a silly, clumsy litter of kittens; a big boy explaining to the vet that his cat Mr Tree has gone missing, and is living with another family now. (“He looked like a tiger”, my boy explains softly, and my heart throws up another fracture, another crack from it’s fault line… my poor baby, my poor little man.)
“Which one…?” I ask, knowing it’s the Chop who will answer for himself and his sister.
“That one!”, he points. It’s the same cat- no white socks- who climbed my arm this morning.
On the drive home, I ask the Chop to shoose a name for our new pet. He thinks solemnly for a moment.
“George.” He replies.
“Umm… OK then. Why George?”
He shrugs. “Dunno.”
Which is, really, as good enough reason as any.
So. Introducing- George the cat. A new life seems to bring new air, and this kitten, younger and tinier than Mr Tree, is a cuddly cat. I watch in delight as he snuggles into my son’s neck, while the Chop tries to contain his hysterical laughter, a mixture of tickly cat’s hair and the sheer overwhelming cuteness of this cat.
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| George, with iPad for scale. iGeorge. |
As for me, I think I can be officially c
lassed as paranoid. It’s an odd sensation to have no real attachment to something as yet, beyond the obvious “Awwwwww!!” factor; and yet care deeply, to the point of physical anxiety, whether it lives or dies. This cat is staying inside, quite possibly for the rest of it’s blessed life.
George and I, we’ve made a deal. I’ll give him food, cuddles and not let the Bump get too close with her doll’s dresses. If he promises to stick around for the next few years at least. (And, altogether now…. *touching wood*. Cheers.)
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
- August 31, 2012 at 11:39 pm
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May George live a long, uneventful life – and not use up any of his lives! He is adorable and looks like he can bring some healing and laughter into your family. George is a very suitable name for a cat, quite distinguished, yet quirky xx
- August 25, 2012 at 9:35 pm
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iGeorge. I like that.
i think you got away very easily. our cats were cheesecake and neopolitan icecream.x
- August 25, 2012 at 7:43 am
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He is precious, and I'm glad you'll be able to keep him inside. I lost my Hellcat to kidney disease earlier this year – I always knew letting him be an outside/inside cat might shorten his life, but he was just absolutely miserable being kept inside. George won't miss what he never knew.
- August 24, 2012 at 10:05 pm
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George, you are CUTE! Keeping a cat as an inside cat is a VERY good idea – for them and for the wildlife. If you do it from a kitten, they know no different…and you can teach them to wear a harness to go out for little walks!
- August 24, 2012 at 9:28 pm
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He's so cute. And George is a fantastic name for a cat.
I love the way Chop told me that "he isn't a dog. He's a cat. And I can't pull his tail, he's only 1." - August 24, 2012 at 8:50 pm
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AWWWWWWWWW! George is too cute. Good job, mama!
- August 24, 2012 at 5:50 pm
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Looney Tunes…/sigh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JlVqfC8-UI
It was Daffy dressed up as a rabbit. You Tube is handy.
- August 24, 2012 at 5:46 pm
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Looney Toons – there's one where a character gets a new pet (possibly the 'pet' was Bugs Bunny) and "I will pet him, and love him and call him George". I have no clue if that's where your son got the idea, but I have a habit of defaulting to George for things that need a name because of that cartoon.
- August 24, 2012 at 5:29 pm
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Good luck iGeorge
You've landed on your feet mate. - August 24, 2012 at 1:24 pm
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iGeorge. Love it!
I am allergic to cats so that has been a fantastic excuse to not get one. I am not a cat person, mainly because of our old scary neighbour when I was growing up. He was a crazy cat man, he had 20-30 cats and they used to breed and roam free all over our yard. I often woke at night to the relaxing sound of the almost feral cats fighting under my bedroom.
- August 24, 2012 at 12:54 pm
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I am so glad you brought a new family member home! I hope George enjoys many, many long years growing up with you and your children.
- August 24, 2012 at 9:40 am
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He's darling. Hi, George.
- August 24, 2012 at 9:34 am
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He's darling
My older son named our first cat "Daniel" and thus the animals-with-human-names trend has followed: Emily-the-Cat, Bob-the-Cat, Teddy-the-Dog……it was weird at first, but it works
- August 24, 2012 at 4:46 pm
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awww, I love it! George is a sweetie, you can tell. I'm so happy for you guys
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The Thing With Cats… Again. – RRSAHM
The Thing With Cats… Again.
I am sick of death, fed up with up with things dying.
It feels like the rain that just won’t stop falling in TinyTrainTown right now; as though it leaves a sad, restrictively dull lens-flare over the whole world.
Enough is enough. It’s time for it to stop.
***
The night of the day I write this post, there’s a knock at the door. My tiny house is full– the kidlets are still up, my brother and my friend Kristabelle are here.
My brother opens the door and it’s my neighbour. He asks me for me, and in a melt of time Kristabelle has distracted my kids, taken them into the back lounge-room so they don’t have to hear this, whatever it is, in real-time. My neighbour is saying something about about a black, fluffy cat; and I’m out in the darkness, my brother following. There are two people standing by the road, the headlights of their cars and the glow of the street lamp illuminating my fluffy black cat, stretched out the gravel. My neighbours jacket is covering him.
“Oh mate”, I say, leaning down beside my DimSum, who’s been my friend for almost thirteen years now. I stroke his silky black face and he’s still warm. I gently push his eyes closed. Ask my brother to get towels from inside the house. Ask him if he’ll bury my cat.
The woman who stopped, who knocked on my neighbours door, wasn’t the person who hit DimSum on that long, lonely black stretch of road I’ve now lost three cats and a dog to. It was the person in front of her who hit him, and they just kept going. The woman behind him considered how very difficult it would be for us, coming out in the morning to the cat splattered all over the road.
I didn’t thank her enough for that, I don’t think. It was only the next morning that it hit me how absolutely horrible that would have been.
My brother returns and wraps my big lump of a cat up in a few old bathroom towels. He takes him to the backyard, to dig him a hole. That’s when I make a snap decision that I’m still not entirely sure about.
This time, perhaps, it was only fair to let my kids say goodbye to their pet.
I find them inside, playing with Kristabelle, blissfully oblivious to any of the drama that’s unfolded.
“Guys”, I say, “I’m afraid I have some very bad, very sad news…” They both freeze, their game forgotten, and stare at me. Two identical sets of blue eyes, filled with the kind of trepidation that only children who have heard that phrase many times before could project.
“It’s Mr DimSum…” I don’t hesitate, not much– this is like ripping off a band-aid, best to do it quickly and stoically. “He got hit by a car. I’m so sorry, babies… He died.”
The Bump drops her cherubic bottom lip and it quivers. “But… Mr DimSum is my friend!”
And all I can do is hug her. It feels as though I say that so often, in regards to my kids… I guess I do.
But the Chop, his reaction is different and again it sends icy, warning fingers into my belly. “Oh.” He says, and turns away from me. “It’s okay. I’m not sad.”
“It’s alright to be sad…” I tell him. “I’m sad.”
The Chop nods, and again, he looks away.
I take a deep breath. “Would you like to see DimSum? Uncle Grog has him out the back. He looks okay… Just like he’s sleeping. You don’t have to see him. But if you would like to say goodbye, you can.”
This has never been an option before– my kids have been too young or too asleep, or the pets simply in too much of a mess, for any physical goodbyes to be experienced. I’m not sure if this is right. But it feels like the thing that should be done, and that’s all I’ve got to go on right now.
Neither of them hesitate in saying yes. I ask if they’re sure, and again, they don’t hesitate. I remind them gently on our way outside that the cat is dead, he won’t be moving and he can’t wake up.
DimSum is laid out on the concrete, a light blue towel covering most of him. There doesn’t seem to be much damage to him, physically, but I spot a few bright red spots of blood on the corner of the towel and pray my kids don’t notice. I think all kids freak out at the sight of blood. Mine do. My son especially.
Neither of them appear to see it. “Poor Mr DimSum”, says the Chop, and we murmur in agreeance. I give my mate one last caress on his face– he is colder now, and doesn’t feel quite like himself– and ask the kids if they’d like to do the same. The Chop says no, and that’s fine. The Bump wants to, and I sit with her while she does.
“Bye, Mr DimSum” says my Bumpy girl as we return back inside.
The house feels weighted down with what we’ve lost.
***
My daughter is devastated by the loss of her ‘special friend’. Almost a week later and she’s still telling me, six times a day, that she misses DimSum and wishes he hadn’t died. She sleeps with a picture of the two of them next to her bed, and carries it around with her during the day.
My son, though, says nothing. It’s a wall of silence that’s deceptively easy to miss completely. Any silent grief he carries is veined with the shiny golden sunshine of his personality.
***
Losing a pet is a funny thing. It’s so distressing, yet its compounded effects are few. The implications of the deaths of even much-adored pets rarely spread further than the house in which they resided.
It’s just so damn sad. I add it up, count it on my fingers…. A father. A grandmother. A dog, three cats, and two chickens.
This is the experience my children have had, at five and almost four years old, with death.
It’s too much, and it’s not fair.
I just want it to stop.
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
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July 3, 2013 at 1:57 pm -
The day I read this, I cried for you and your kiddies, for your beautiful cat, then I got up and went outside….
I found my precious silvey cat, 16 years old,my best friend of almost 17 years, hunched over and vomiting up green and bloody frothy stuff…
I took her to the vets and returned 45 mins later with her lifeless body after making the absolutely gut wrenching, heart breaking decision to end her pain…
Hug and love, xxx-
July 3, 2013 at 9:42 pm -
Oh Rebecca- I’m so, so sorry to hear that. Huge hugs xxx
Lori Dwyer recently posted…Normal and Boring.
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June 30, 2013 at 1:08 am -
Oh. Brave. xxxx
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June 27, 2013 at 2:18 pm -
So terribly sorry for your loss Lori. Sending lots of love filled fairy wishes and butterfly kisses to you and the kids.
Oh and I think that I probably would have offered my kids a look as well. xx
Rhianna recently posted…I must confess and blog on Tuesday all at once.
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June 27, 2013 at 5:27 am -
Lori, you and your family are lovely – i say this from a place of love without judgement, and simply to prevent any future experience of horror and loss for you and the kiddos (And if your cats were actually indoor cats who accidentally escaped, please disregard this, but on the chance you let your cats roam outdoors) Please read this article:
Having outside cats is simply extraordinarily risky – the animal is set up to get lost, sick, or killed.
I volunteer with aninal rescue efforts, and have seen it happen so so so many times. If you adopt another cat please consider keeping it indoors as much as humanly possible.Keeping you guys in my thoughts <3
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June 26, 2013 at 8:57 pm -
I’m sorry.
xx -
June 26, 2013 at 8:39 pm -
I am so sorry to hear about your cat. Please if you get another cat consider making it an indoor cat. So much safer. Not only being safe from car fatalities, also protected from dog or even cat attacks. No risk of feline aids etc.
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June 26, 2013 at 6:43 pm -
I am so so sorry about the loss of Mr Dim Sum. They leave big holes in our hearts and our houses. one of my senior kitties passed on in January and it still grieves me terribly.
boodie recently posted…Not “just a cat” -
June 26, 2013 at 6:05 pm -
Oh, crap, that sucks – I am so sorry that you’re having to deal with this again. R.I.P. Mr DimSum.
Lisa recently posted…World War….What? -
June 26, 2013 at 2:34 pm -
This is so fucking cruel. The three of you deserve a break…is that so much to ask, universe?!
I’m so sorry for your and your family’s loss, Lori
RIP, lovely DimSum.
<3 xxx
Karen recently posted…Still Alive; Doing Well -
June 26, 2013 at 2:07 pm -
It’s just bullshit.
Bullshit that your kids know too much of death so little.
Bullshit that you have to deliver the news over and over.
Bullshit that you have to lose again and again, like someone keeps picking at a freshly scabbed wound.
Miss Pink recently posted…The Art Of Being… -
June 26, 2013 at 2:03 pm -
Fuck, I am so sorry, it just isn’t fair. I’m glad your brother was there and that the lady stopped and brough him to you, but fuck I am really really sorry for you. Sending you hugs, tears and blessing which dont really mean much, but I’m sending them with a prayer that this shit stops right here for you guys, xxx
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June 26, 2013 at 1:46 pm -
Ah, Lori, I’m so sorry to hear this! I’ve had my own kittycat for 12 years now, and I don’t know what I’d do if I lost her.
Hope you and the kids are doing okay. Poor DimSum.
Whoa, Molly recently posted…Oh, that endless brain-noise
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Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Washed Away.
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Crowning.
The Muse Wars- Writing Challenge Two. – RRSAHM
The Muse Wars- Writing Challenge Two.
Welcome back,
It’s Writing Challenge Number Two of the aptly named Muse Wars. This time MadMother has set the challenge. And here’s my entry. Enjoy!
His name, at night, was Amanda.
It was a cathartic process, becoming her, and Amanda was one gorgeous, gutsy chick. She was confident in a way he never could be, outrageous in a way he always wanted to be. She took no prisoners, listened to no bullshit.
Daytime, he was Peter. Peter was a quiet, unremarkable kid who worked stacking shelves at the local Woolies. Peter lived a quiet, unremarkable life. Peter was the kid who, at school, had only been noticed when he was wedgied or flushed. Peter never had girlfriends, and his few friends were as unremarkable as he.
But on Friday nights, Peter sat and waited quietly. He never did much on a Friday night. Friday nights were when Amanda came. She pressed on the long, red nails. She applied the heavy make up, the stocking cap, the wig that had cost a whole week of Peter’s wages. It was Amanda who rolled on the stockings, fixed the garters in place, stuffed the lacy black bra.
And later tonight, it would be Amanda who would be drinking. Amanda who would flirt, laugh, talk loudly and sing karaoke. Amanda who would tease, and provoke, and pull back just in time, just before she got them both into trouble. Amanda, who would sashay the streets on the city, cigarette in hand, eyes under dark lashes flicking from faces to footpath.
The night air was calling. Amanda stood, stretched, inches taller in her heels. And as she leaves, she pauses, just for a moment. She is sure she can see a shadow of Peter, sitting on the bed. Waiting for her return.
Amanda walks away.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
- March 12, 2010 at 11:31 am
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Wow! absolutely love it! so different.
- March 9, 2010 at 9:35 pm
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Loved it, like MM I too love all the twists and turns these stories are taking.
- March 9, 2010 at 12:33 pm
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Wow. This was really good!
- March 9, 2010 at 7:27 pm
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I love the twists that are coming out of the woodwork!
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Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Falling Into Place
2013 – RRSAHM
2013
I tell people I’m not well right now, and it tastes like a lie.
If this was a physical illness (and maybe it should be called just that), I’d tell myself not to push too hard. To be kind to myself. To fill myself up with nourishment, to rest and allow myself time to just sit and be still and heal. For fear of becoming sicker.
There’s a nagging voice that tells me this is mind over matter, this is all in my head.
Both those things are true, but not true. The depressive’s paradox.
From the Robot Hugs blog.
***
I remember Charlie the shrink asking me why I kept it all in, why I pretended I had this all under control, when clearly there was so much still to deal with.
Because I don’t want to do it alone, I told him. Because I want someone there to break my fall. Someone to fill in the pieces of my self esteem that I couldn’t resurrect myself.
And now I’m here. The Most Amazing Man is a constant. He holds me when I cry, makes me laugh when I hate myself. And he doesn’t stop loving me. Never once threatens to take himself away because the emotional fire of this onslaught is too hot and it burns.
It sucks for him. To have me, but not have me the way I was. The person he met is not the person I am now. The essence of me is still there. It’s just that all the strength has left me. I am a wasted wreck of the person I once was. I’ve found my safe space and I wallow in it, confident that when I breach the surface for air, he will still be there.
And he is. Every time. He supports the threads of our life, so I don’t have to. It’s not what he signed up for, we both know that. But he never complains, never resents me or the kidlets for it.
I trust him. I believe him when he says I will get better, and that he will still be here, no matter what.
***
One day at a time. Small things. Tiny goals. Touchstones with which to connect to reality. I shower. I take my meds. Today’s goal is writing this blog post. I try to keep myself busy. I pay attention to my thoughts, put up big red Stop signs in my head. Attempt to pinch off horrible thoughts before they spin themselves into a vortex I cannot push back out of.
I try to take control of my mind, one minute at a time.
***
If nothing else, I can do Christmas. The kidlets are so little. They deserve Christmas and all the good fun things that come with it.
It’s relatively uncomplicated and the process of buying, wrapping, listing, and caroling has very few horrible memories attached to it.
I mix things up. Occasionally I forget the little white lies that exist to keep Santa a real, believable concept. But the excitement of it, the magical element of the season… that allows me to fool my children with my shoddy, hard-won enthusiasm.
Our Christmas tree is a metaphor for my life right now. It’s lopsided, the decorations thrown on haphazardly. But it’s there, in all it’s symbolic glory.
It’s the best I can do right now.
It’s enough.
***
Thanks to everyone who left me a comment, or sent me an email. It reminds me that even when I can’t bring myself to care very much about me… there are other people who do.
{ 18 comments }
I’m still here. I’m just not… really.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Or, worse… I know exactly what’s wrong with me. I’m so depressed I don’t even want to cry. There’s not enough feel left in me for those kind of emotions.
I’m losing whole days and I’m not even sure what’s happening to them. I feel a bit like I’m walking through weightless, opaque fog. The world is a movie set. One tiny push of my finger will disturb it and the world around me will shimmer and crumble and suck itself down into a whirlpool of black nothingness. I wonder what that would be like.
Not much different to this, really. Existing in a black vacuum, where nothing echoes because nothing is real.
Some days it’s hard to follow conversations. Reality confuses me. I say things that aren’t quite right. I trip over my words, my tongue is useless and too big in my mouth.
I stop writing anything at all. I don’t want to sit and pull great big gloops of myself out of my head and onto the screen because that might hurt.
I sit in the office of my newly-found shrink, Luke, and I cry. I curl into myself and pour out pain and despair and desolateness. He tells me I have severe post traumatic stress disorder, severe anxiety, severe depression.
I knew all that. I just don’t understand why it’s so bad now. Why I’ve been able to be so strong for so long. Why I’ve been relatively functional the last few years and now everything’s a mess.
I don’t know how to fix myself. I’m just waiting it out. I make myself do things, little things. Luke the Shrink calls it ‘behavioural activation’. I think that means that I’m trying to trick myself into not being so stagnant. Remind my brain of the physiological benefits of activity.
So I wash my face. I clean my teeth. Some days I’m incapable of even doing that.
But I’m here. Still. Just. Kind of.
This too shall pass.
It has to.
{ 29 comments }
After leaving the lush decadence of the TinyTrainHouse’s backyard, it’s very lovely to have a garden again.
In the midst of all this blackness, it’s the Most Amazing Man who begins to build a veggie patch in the urban backyard of The New House. The very back edge of the block we live on was once a laneway. A ten foot stretch of land that runs along our back fence is raised by a foot or two, and was overrun with thick kikuyu grass and an ugly, greedy cactus when we first moved in.
The Most Amazing Man puts old rugs over the bright green grass to kill it, starving it of a sunlight for a few weeks. Then he attacks it with a pickaxe, turning up lumps of yellowed weeds until the soil is revealed, rich and dark and moist-smelling; filled with fat, happy worms.
We plant veggies. Tomatoes bought as saplings from Bunnings. Tiny chilli and basil seedlings. We rescue a small parsley plant from the corner of the raised section, making us think it’s not this patch of ground’s first incarnation as a vegetable bed.
We plant seeds to sprout- calendula, sugar snap peas, star and moon watermelons. The tiny chubby hands of the kidlets pushing dirt across freshly planted seeds carries whispers of everything that’s good in the world.
Gardening makes me miss my gran so badly. But there’s therapy in it too. Something about dirt under your fingernails, pulling stubborn grass from the ground as it re-grows and makes a mess of the garden bed… it’s therapeutic. It’s soul food.
It’s satisfaction. We weed and water and tend to it daily, the Most Amazing Man and I. We watch the slowly unfurling leaves,the flowers that bud and bloom. We watch in wonderment at what we’re creating here.
{ 3 comments }
Search: label/stupid things lori does
Search: label/stupid things lori does
Hotel rooms are perfect for suspending reality.
I stayed in the Palais Royale hotel at Katoomba last weekend, thanks to hotels.com and their Welcome Rewards program- it’s like a coffee card, but for accommodation, and the records are held electronically so you can’t just invest in your own novelty hole punch and get free coffee (not that I would do that, of course… really, who does that?). For those out of touch with their Australian geography, Katoomba sits at the top of the New South Wales Blue Mountains, a two hour drive from Sydney. You pass by Katoomba en route to Orange (and Ophir).
It’s a strange place, Katoomba, in a way you can’t quite put your finger on. It’s large, but it seems small. It’s exquisitely isolated– the Mountains roll and spread for countless miles around where the city sits on top a peak. Katoomba is connected by a string of smaller town with names like Wentworth Falls, Leura, Lawson and Lapstone; and they make small black map-dots all the way up and down the single highway linking the Mountains back to the Sydney suburbs via Penrith. These tiny hamlets are no more than ten or fifteen kilometers apart, twenty k’s at the most; each with a tiny train station, a general store, and each seemingly with their own unique draw card, their own tiny tourist attractions to lure travelers, cars loaded with kids and bags, to stop and rest, enjoy the local flavour as they go.
The Mountains were, a hundred years ago when they were first settled, a daunting, long and potentially dangerous journey; a trek that took days, not hours, clumping over cleared dirt rocks rather than eating up fresh, smooth bitumen at a hundred kilometers an hour.
But worth it, I imagine. As much then as it is now.
Katoomba boomed in the early 1900′s, an opulent township for the holidaying wealth of Sydney. It seems the majority of structures here where built at about that time, and very little has been changed since. While everything modern you need is here, somewhere, and it’s home to world-famous tourist attractions such as the Three Sisters and the terrifyingly ancient Scenic Railway (a train carriage does a sheer vertical drop down a rock cliff face); it’s as if time itself has simply meandered by most of Katoomba, not bothering to poke or prod on it’s way. Cafes with names like the Paragon, the Carington and the Niagra reamin in business and in their original art-deco decor. Buildings and brickwork are crusted with slow–growing lichen from the damp, chilled air; and its actually impossible to walk the Main Street without a good dose of daily exercise– the entire town is tiny hills, rolling footpaths and houses on built-up uneven slabs.
And the shopping is freaking awesome. There’s tiny hippy shops, a piercer and, to my delight, one shop that sells nothing but juggling supplies. I count a dozen funky cafes, all which smell divine, and there’s street buskers and a craft market early on the crisp Sunday morning. Op shops and recycled fashion outlets sell genuine vintage clothes and bags and shoes, all reasonably priced and all in gorgeous condition. It’s that isolation again. As in Paradise, material things seem to stick in this place the way people do…. it’s such a long way, back down the Mountain.
The Palais Royale, where I find myself in the king deluxe room 315, is just five hundred metres from the plethora of shops on Main Street, and, truly, just as old as most of them. It was built in the late 1890′s and it feels like old fashioned glamor and warmth, with chandeliers and big soft arm chairs in the lobby. My room’s big and old, and the bed is huge.
I find myself struggling to stay awake mid-afternoon both nights of my stay– I’m just so relaxed, it feels like an impossibility to keep my eyes open. I think the only reason I’m wide awake most of the time is that I’m running on anxious, nervous energy at a rate that I can only sustain for so long. I’m like a rug on Valium, once the pressure’s off.
I’m sprawled on the hotel’s massive bed, reading longform articles on my phone, belly full of chocolate, with bad TV (Antiques Roadshow, for those playing along at home) making comfort-noise in the background, chatting with the peeps on Twitter (as you do) and mulling over my tired relaxation when KateSaysStuff Keep Cate Busy said… well… stuff. This, in fact…
… then this…
And I felt her pain. Because there, ladybugs and jellybeans, lies the crux of it. The reason, I think, that just about every person I know who is the proud owner of one or more small children (and a lot of people without small children) are so freaking tired all the time.
Because there’s always, always, always, something else to be done. Dishes or folding or blogging or email or washing or phone calls or paying bills or more washing or feeding cats or whatever. How do you find a sense of peace, relaxation and accomplishment when your inbox is always near overflowing, when there are always at least three more things you should have done today…?
Evidently, this weekend, I found the answer.
You go to hotels.com, and join the Welcome Rewards program. You check into your hotel. And, out of the 40 hours you send in the hotel, you sleep like a petrified log for 24 of them.
Then you come home, and kid-wrangle until you are on the very verge of some kind of breakdown (again). And lather, rinse, and repeat.
***
Thanks again to hotels.com. In the interest of disclosure, I
was not paid for this post, but I was more than happy to take a few free nights accommodation off their hands.
was not paid for this post, but I was more than happy to take a few free nights accommodation off their hands.
Naturally, being somewhere old and kinda creepy like Katoomba… I went urban exploring. Details, photos and tripping security alarms– coming soon.
***
I dare you to tell me these are not the absolute cutest pair of elves you’ve ever seen. Introducing- Santa Chop and Bumpy Claus.
The kidlets and I- all three of us, family style- are doing the Variety Santa Fun Run this Sunday on behalf of RocketMan Media. All three of us will be dressed as Santa Claus’ (Santa Clau, perhaps? What’s the plural, anyone…?) and the Bumpy thing will probably be wearing her fairy wings.
If you could sponsor us here, I’d very much appreciate it. I cannot promise you we will complete the fun run. And I’m certainly not promising any running. I do promise to record every second of our sweating, tantrum-throwing humiliation on a video blog for you next week. So, if nothing else, you should really donate just for that…
Cheers, jellybeans. See you Monday.
***
ETA- I can’t believe this post was up for 30 hoursbefore someone pointed out I’d used the wrong person’s name. Despite having an image of their name embedded beneath it.
It’s OK… I promise. I won’t hate you, nor will I cry (for long!) if you point out when I do stupid things.
{ 4 comments }
As we know, I’m a big fan of online shopping; for it’s convenience, thriftiness and minimal–effort–requiredness.
But, like most things in life, it doesn’t always work out as planned.
And if it seems to be good to be true, it probably is.
Allow me to explain. Two months ago- just as temperatures were starting to drop in Australia– I got online and purchased, extremely cheaply, two small fan heaters from a country in the Northern hemisphere, where– and hence the total genius of my plan– it is currently summer; and, naturally, heaters are cheap.
Brilliant! Right…?
Wrong.
After the first shipment of heaters didn’t arrive at all, the next shipment took another two weeks, so it was eight full weeks– one whole month into winter– before fore–mentioned electrical appliances finally showed up.
Finally. TinyTrainTown temperatures were already dropping below zero at night, and the heaters were specifically to take the edge of cold off the kids rooms or my ’study’ (the outdoor laundry where I write blog posts on my iPad and smoke copious amounts of cigarettes. If only the wifi reached down here I’d be set.).
Have you already spotted the major fail? Clever you. Don’t rub it in.
Why yes, electrical appliances from the Northern hemisphere do have Northern hemisphere power plugs.
Which don’t fit in Australian outlets.
It’s also extremely difficult to find adapters to go INTO Australian plugs, unless you happen to be in a country that’s not Australia.
So… in the end, two small fan heaters, plus their adapters, cost me $75. Had I have just bought the from Woolies with my weekly shop, it would have been more like $40.
To add insult to potential frostbite, safety standards in the country of manufacture of these over–priced, energy–sucking fan heaters differ greatly from those here in Aus and that the concept of a cut of switch so the whole house doesn’t catch fire should they tip over, I think it safe to call this…..
Major. Fail.
Obviously, if I’d been shopping with an Aussie site- say, an online coupons site- this never would have happened. Like them on FaceBook here. And don’t let this turn you off online shopping– one person’s stupidity is not the e–commerce’s fault.
* This edition of “Stupid Things Lori Does” is sponsored, obviously- I’m imagining you picked that already.
***
You may have seen on Twitter… my chickens, Ethel and Lucy, who I was unreasonably emotionally attached to, had a run in with the neighbor’s dog yesterday and definitely came off losers- they’re both dead, and I’m heartbroken.
I know, I know- just a pair of stupid chooks. But I loved them and I wanted to keep them and the universe should have at least given me that- two stupid chooks. It’s not a lot to ask for, really.
More on the Chook Tragedy, next week.
{ 12 comments }
Happy Flogging Friday!
And welcome Blog Floggers. If you don’t know what I’m waffling on about, get thee butt to Brenda’s blog, grab her cute button, and get McLinked. It’s worth your while. Promise.
And in honor of this, the ninth ever FYBF, I’m quite chuffed to bring you the following. The title says it all, really.
My top 27 signs that you are totally, completely, mercilessly addicted to blog.
- Your two year old points to the computer and calls it “Mummy”.
- Your husband is threatening to divorce you if you don’t get off that bloody Internet RIGHT NOW.
- And he means it.
- Really.
- Forget bookmarks. Your blog and your Dashboard are both top of your ‘Most Visited’ drop down.
- In fact, never mind either of those- your blog is set as your home page.
- You see two cows in a playground and your first thought is to pull out your phone and take pictures… for your blog.
- This leads you, once again, to the conclusion you really need an iPhone.
- Or, at the very least, a compact digital camera for the nappy bag.
- Until then, you’re tempted to carry round the big camera with the long len-sy thing in it’s padded bad doovie, everywhere you go. Just in case. But given I live in south west Sydney, this is probably not a good idea.
- You find yourself wondering “I wondering how many details of this story I can change, to protect anonymity, and still blog about it…?”
- You also find yourself waiting to do something stupid. So you can blog about it.
- You dream about blogging.
- And have nightmares about blogger’s block and connection interruptions.
- You have Follower-related anxiety.
- And a slight obsession with your Follower numbers.
- You have been known to slump into a drunken depression upon losing a Follower.
- And spend the next week staring at your Follow box, trying to figure out who it was.
- So you can stalk them.
- The thought of socially or personally awkward situations no longer bothers you. It will be worth it if you can get a blog post out of it.
- None of your friends ring you anymore. They don’t need to. They read your blog.
- You’ve signed up to Twitter. For blog purposes only.
- Traffic turns you on. And not the kind with wheels.
- Comments are your crack.
- Each new Follow requires a full blown bum-slapping Happy Dance.
- A little part of you thinks you may have a problem with how much you blog.
- And another little part of you says “I think you’re right. Let’s blog about it!”
*Herumph*. Problem? Who says I have a problem? I can stop anytime I want to. Right? Right.
{ 16 comments }
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: The Crappest GiveAway Ever (really, this time)
The Secret Garden- Australian Gothic, Part One. – RRSAHM
The Secret Garden- Australian Gothic, Part One.
“She spread herself wide open to let the insects in
She leaves a trail of honey to show me where she’s been
She has the blood of reptile just underneath her skin
Seeds from a thousand others drip down from within”
Reptile, Nine Inch Nails
Occasionally I witness my soul grow restless.
It’s comfort to know that it happens less frequently than it once did; and that when it does happen I can, if I choose, harness it safely. I’ve give the rampant promiscuity a wide berth until I can be bothered putting in that kind of concentrated effort again.
And I haven’t been exploring for a while now.
I don’t really mean to be exploring, the afternoon I find this bizarrely eerie property not far from TinyTrainTown. There is maybe two hours of start–of–spring sunshine still to be enjoyed, and a solid hour before I am due to lug and tangle my children home from their daycare. And I am restless… my feet are itchy to wander and walk, to pick unevenly over unfamiliar ground.
I’m driving aimlessly along rural back roads that should be promising and provide nothing. There’s a abundance of newly built houses worth four times as much mine with smooth oceans of manicured lawns that leave a tangy distaste in my mouth when I’m looking for the exact opposite. Rust and termites and decay and age… it feels like reality, unfiltered, compared to houses huge and cold.
Knowing my own tendency to procrastinate and lose track of time, I’ve developed a system of discipline for when I’m exploring. Three more minutes, the sensible side of myself tells the wide eyed five year old who’s just about doing cartwheels with freedom. Three more minutes along this road and if we find nothing thing, we three-point turn and head back home.
I miss the main building with it’s overgrown garden nursery the first time I pass it. It’s only after I turn around to head back that’s see it. It’s the overgrowth of the carpark and the sprawling graffiti across the front doors that show me the universe is, once again, giggling gently with me– it seems I’ve found just what I was looking for.
Only not exactly.
At first inspection, still behind the wheel of my car mouthing the lyrics as basslines pump the windows in the way only a white chick’s can, this place doesn’t seem abandoned… just empty. It’s not old enough to count, traditionally, as an ‘abandoned’ anything, surely. This building is relatively new…
Expect the grass has grown in five foot snarls across the footpath, reaching rude impertinent green fingers to the doorway of this main building marked ‘Administration.’ The expensive looking floodlights are sagging and weather beaten, gigantic heavy headed daisies in a garden mulched with car park gravel.
And screw it, I still have an hour, at least. Maybe a bit more.
A lesson I’ve learnt while urban exploring… just because a door appears locked never means it is. Even when, from a distance, you can clearly see the splintered end of a gum tree stick some bright spark has snapped off in the front door,trying to jimmy the lock open… it may have been left there for show, so anyone with other things on their mind would think just that. And there may be a few heavy chunks of bush rock pushed up against that same front door to stop it swinging open again, bearing it’s secrets to any occasional passerby who happened that glance that way.
My conscience plays tag with my curiosity. Just because someone else has already been here doesn’t mean you should too, it intones solemnly.
But Curiosity is already scuffing away the rocks and opening the front door. I have my eye on a blue cherry security light fixed to the awning– Conscience is waiting for a pealing, squealing sound of electronic indignation to start bleating as a pulsing blue light paints us with guilt. Curiosity takes this concept, examines it… then rolls her eyes, blows a bubble with her gum, pulls open the front door and stomps on through in her knee high lace up Doc Martens anyway.
This place was a wedding reception centre, once upon a time… or maybe just the beginning of one. This first building appears to actually be a newly constructed, modern barn. It’s open and airy, a roof of high exposed beams that still smell faintly of pine and wood sap. The back door leading out into the grounds and garden no longer existed as such, being a shatter of glass shards and splintered wooden frames laying over the threshold. Through that non-door was, so far as I could tell, the only entrance to the grounds. A black iron fence topped with ferocious looking spikes clung tight to either side of the barn and stretched off into the scrubland in one direction while courting the dilapidated building to the left of the barn whose still intact sign declared it the ‘Garden Shed’ in the other.
I pick over the shattered glass, tiny sightless eyes reflecting a sky gloaming with no real colour at all, my eyes sweeping my surroundings for things that might be interesting, feet pumping to the rhythm of ‘havetopickmykidsupsoon, havetopickmykidsupsoon’. The paths are covered in leaf litter. The plants here are vivid, wild and vibrant. Ornamental lilies appear jurassic, fluffy yellow wattle loads the air with a cloying scent like butter about to turn. Trails of ornamental ivy so exquisitely perfect they almost appear fake have taken heady run of their freedom and lay lazily as they please, snaking and sleazing onto pathways set of modern brick.
Slabs of sandstone bush rock line the walkways and fill the gardens and giant tablets of bush granite lay skewed against one another. The thick black pipes that are visible between them startle me for a moment, Conscience tutting ‘Yu’uh, that’s what we get…’ while Curiosity blusters something about surely it still being too cold for snakes at this time of the year?! It’s not a snake, coiled and shiny and black amongst the rocks… it’s the remains of a dried up, desiccated rock waterfall; black pipes probably so sun damaged they would be finger-sticky to the touch with rot.
I’m not sure what I’m expecting to find… maybe nothing. A picnic area perhaps, a large grassy clearing in amongst the winding paths and lush, ferocious gardens.
The path winding itself into a clearing set with an aisle and wedding altar was a bit of a shock. Certainly unexpected.
Fucking creepy, actually, in that gloaming-Australian-gully-gothic-romantic kind of way.
And truly, some of the best urbexing photos I think I’m ever going to get. Or at least they would have been, had I actually had a real camera with me… instead of just my iPhone.
Whatever. The view from the pergola is breathtaking, especially on sunset. The land drops away grade by grade, sandstone and lichen and gum tree greens and slated grey-brown barks rolling into each other to create a giant, craggy fold in the ground– earth and growth and mineral sloping and bowing to the tiniest trickle of a river that runs past all them, indifferent, at the very bottom of the gully. There’s that to be said for rural living, at the very least… you don’t generally just stumble across these kinds of million-year-old, I-am-a-tiny-speck-of-nothing-in-the-grand-universe views in suburbia.
But this set up, rows of solid wooden bench seats and a table and chairs in the pergola… it wouldn’t have lasted long in the suburbs, either. It’s only that it’s out here, tucked away very close to the dead centre of nowhere, that anything remains at all. People have been here, obviously, people other than me; but the damage and vandalism they’ve left behind is surprisingly minimal. This garden is so out of the way, to get here you would need to come by car– and simply having access to a vehicle makes you less likely to wantonly destruct property. You have other, more interesting things to do.
And so things have been left intact and untouched. As if it’s waiting for some kind of finality, some absolution, some ceremonious event… something that may never even happen at all.
To be continued….
Leave a Comment
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
- November 4, 2012 at 1:27 am
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This was a good suggestion that you put up here…dude…..hope that it benefits all the ones who land up here.
- September 19, 2012 at 11:27 am
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I always love your exploration posts – you are braver than me! I am always struck by some deep-buried fear of getting in trouble for doing something I shouldn't be doing.
Also, Lori, you have excellent taste in music.
- September 19, 2012 at 9:03 am
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I remember this place. We had a lot of birthday parties here, and it's where my cousin got married.
Previous post: Fly With Me.
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You 404’d it. Gnarly, dude.
Surfin’ ain’t easy, and right now, you’re lost at sea. But don’t worry; simply pick an option from the list below, and you’ll be back out riding the waves of the Internet in no time.
- Hit the “back” button on your browser. It’s perfect for situations like this!
- Head on over to the home page.
- Punt.
July 2014 – RRSAHM
July 2014
This post is sponsored by Nuffnang.
***
When I was very, very little, I had no front teeth.
My first set- my baby teeth- came through on time. But they weren’t great. In fact, as legend would have it, they had almost no enamel on them at all. My six top, front-most teeth were chalky and spongy, and near guaranteed to rot and be painful.
So they just ripped them all out. Because, really, who needs teeth when you’re learning to eat and speak and whatnot?
***
I don’t remember ever being self conscious about my missing teeth, though my mum says I was, a little. The photo evidence tells me same.
In pictures where I’m really young- about two years old, I think, twelve months or so after my teeth had been pulled- I’m still smiling, gaps and all.
By the time I hit three, maybe four years old- the age my daughter is now- I’m smiling differently. I was too young to be teased about it (surely…?) but I’m guessing that enough well-meant comments had come my way to make me a little shy about smiling properly. I stayed that way for the first few years of primary school, too.
I think I was about nine or ten years old when I actually started to smile properly again.
I must have found I liked smiling because, really, I started doing a lot of it.
And I’ve been doing a lot of it ever since.
***
Naturally, having such crap teeth as a child led to having crap teeth as an adult. My teeth are horribly sensitive, especially to cold foods. Or cold days. I can’t smile and breath in at the same time, or it hurts.
I’m awful at remembering to brush my teeth, and at making sure my kids brush their teeth. Night times are better- teeth brushing fits in perfectly with baths and books and bed. But in the morning, while we’re rushing to have breakfast, get dressed, pack lunches, gather school bags… teeth brushing sometimes gets forgotten.
So, in line with moving and being happier and attempting to develop some healthy new habits, I’ve given myself a bit of a teeth brushing challenge. I need a star-chart or something.
Perfect timing, because Sensodyne just sent me some of their toothpaste to try. They
tell me it’s not just for sensitive teeth, but also for stronger enamel and maintaining what’s left of my teeth’s natural whiteness. And it puts a layer on top of your teeth to protect them from the cold, cold Melbourne wind. I’ve just started using it and I have to say, it’s certainly pleasant- more silky than gritty, with no chalky after-taste.
But it’s early days yet. I’ll let you know how we get on.
***
This is sponsored post by Sensodyne. For the relief of sensitive teeth. Always read the label. Use
only as directed. If symptoms persist see your dentist.
SENSODYNE is a registered trade mark of the GSK group of companies. For more
information on the Sensodyne range, or to report an Adverse Event, please contact the GSK
product information line on 1800 028 533.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
This post bought to you by Nuffnang and Uncle Tobys.
***
It doesn’t matter how much ‘better’ I feel about the world, how settled and happy I am feeling with this new life, this Melbourne life… mornings suck. Mornings always have sucked. I am not a morning person.
I was asked to write this post and describe my dream morning. Lots of examples were given- breakfast in bed. Waking up on the beach. Showering under a waterfall.
All of those sound lovely. But if I was honest, my dream morning wouldn’t be a morning at all. It would involve sleeping until at least noon, snuggled up in bed next to the Amazing Man. No children screaming at me to get out of bed and make them breakfast at 6am.
Anyway. That’s a highly unrealistic expectation. Let’s pull this back into the realm of real life, where mornings start early and are, currently, freezing cold.
I don’t function properly until at least 10am. And half the important stuff happens before that. Getting kid dressed and fed, lunches made, the school drop-off completed. Some days all my energy has evaporated by 9am, used up simply by the act of getting myself and the kidlets out of the house.
In an ideal world, I’d start my day with 10 minutes of yoga. Instead, I spend the first half an hour curled up on the lounge, two small-ish bodies curled around me in improbable ways, kicking their icy cold feet in my back.
Ideally, the Bump and the Chop would get themselves dressed, brush their own teeth and put their shoes on, all without being asked six thousand times. They would not fight, or roll their eyes at their unreasonable mother who is just trying to get them to school on time. They would not screech at me, or at each other. There would never be a morning where I stand in the kitchen cursing because there is no fruit for school today, after forgetting to buy it the night before.
In the real world, there’s arguing and grumpiness. There are school clothes thrown on five minute before we leave the house. Some days, lunches are haphazard and less than nutritionally perfect.
Most mornings are laced with a hefty dose of parental guilt.
I hate mornings.
***
Uncle Tobys sent me some of their Oats Quick Sachets for the kidlets and myself to try. I think they’re attempting to make mornings more bearable. It actually kind of works. The kidlets still screech at each other- and me- but a lot of the time it’s screeching over who gets to choose their Oats flavour first. Which I understand. There are Creamy Honey, Apple and Berry; and they are all quite yummy. Nom nom. There’s something therapeutic about a warm, creamy bowl of oats on a Melbourne winter morning.
The Oats have this thing where you can use the empty sachets to add your milk to the dry mix. The sachets even have a line marked on them to show you where to fill them to, in order to have the perfect amount to pour in. The novelty of that has not worn off on the kids. Or me. And it means less washing up for us. Which is awesome because I still have not dealt with the fact that we don’t have a dishwasher.
And, let’s face it, it’s oats we’re talking about here. They are creamy and good and nutritionally sound. I can’t imagine a better winter breakfast. Take that, mummy guilt.
Happy kids. Guilt-free me. Easier mornings. It’s a win, win, win situation, really.
***
One lucky RRSAHM reader will win $50 in Uncle Tobys product and a $200 Red Balloon voucher towards your own ‘dream morning’ experience. Just leave a comment answering the question – How would Uncle Tobys Quick Sachets help you achieve your dream morning?
Giveaway ends 11 July, 5:00 AEDST. T’s&C’s can be found here. Happy comping!!
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Hello.
I am having issues with the page not progressing further than the “add to basket” I have tried a couple of times since your original post and I am aware that I am running out of time to donate… I was wondering if I called the number would the donation be reflected in YOUR totals?
XX rah rah
Spagsy, let me know if you still have problems with donations? If you’d like to donate via phone, just grab the receipt number and email it to me and I’ll get it added to our total. Thanks mate
xx
Hey Lori, I’m trying to make a donation, but the page is having some issues (hovering over the donate button brings up an ‘error on page’ notice – I’ve tested it in Firefox and IE (Ugh) and I can’t get it to work.) Is it just me? Helpsies? Fixies?
I am seething with jealousy, cough, sorry, I mean so totally excited for you for this! It’s no so far away now! You must promise to snuzzle some baby orangs for me.
Hey Molly! It should be fixed- if you try again and have a problem, could you grab a screenshot for me? Thanks mate
xx