Author: ThirdCat

Forty three

I turned 43 last weekend. It seems important somehow. It has seemed to be a coming of age in the way that no other time, not 18 or 21 or 30 or even 40 has ever been.

Perhaps it’s just that things are simple at the moment. Straightforward.

I suspect parenting is never so simple as when children are 9 and 11. Young enough that there is joy in their childishness (Mum, are you wearing eyelash polish), old enough that there is joy in the adults they are about to be (Mum, shall I make us some scrambled eggs, you seem very tired). I’m sure that helps to make life simple.

I’m still a fish out of water as far as my immediate surroundings are concerned, and there are clouds of unfulfilled dreams, but day to day, I know where I am going and I know what to expect.

It must be ten years since I felt this way and if I felt it before that, I did not know that certainty was a gift. I confused certainty with bordem and I did what I could to put surprises between myself and future days.

I don’t do that any more, and I think that is what I will most enjoy about being 43.

One evening

Last night, I was listening to Archie Roach while I wound some hanks of silk into balls. I don’t have a ball winder, so I have to use the backs of two of our upright chairs. I’m not a fan of this job and when I begin I’m in a slightly resentful frame of mind. It should be illegal, I think, to sell hanks that haven’t been wound into balls.

Still, it’s a peaceful kind of job. Rhythmic. And once you begin it soothes in the way that all such rhythmic jobs soon soothe.

Youngest was in bed and eldest was in the loungeroom reading. It’s a new system we’ve got. It’s supposed to stop the pre-sleep fartarsing that always leads to shouting. Youngest just wants to sleep, but eldest wants to fartarse, so one of us (an adult) goes in and tries to use reasonable words in a reasonable tone and that works for five minutes and then there’s more fartarsing, and youngest needs his sleep and because he wasn’t getting his sleep, the mornings were awful. And it was getting worse and worse and worse and every night would end in a shouting match. So now, youngest goes to bed at 8 or around and eldest comes into the lounge to read.

So that’s how it came to be, me in the lounge, listening to Archie Roach while I wound hanks into balls and eldest sitting on the lounge reading.

‘I like that rhyme of Paradise, with very nice,’ he said.

‘That’s funny, because that’s the bit Dad doesn’t like. He thinks the rhyme is too obvious.’ (The mister wasn’t there to speak for himself, because he was in Oman.)

‘Doesn’t Dad know that sometimes that what rhymes need?’

I kept winding. I was aiming for five hanks into balls before I went to bed.

Sometimes eldest was reading, sometimes he was looking over at the stereo.

‘One thing isn’t obvious. Are these songs about having love or not having love?’

I only had three balls, but I stopped my winding and went to sit and cuddle my lad on the lounge. He’s not as young as he used to be, is he?

Is it too late in the year to say, Happy New Year

I didn’t even think, until a lovely person left a comment this morning, that I had left things at an inappropriate pause.

The term finished at school, the mister decided to drain his annual leave, we went away and had a most excellent break, we came back, I had tonsillitis, the mister got sick, school went back, after school activities started, one lad forgot his saxophone, one his gym gear…my new year plans for world domination (which included paying more attention to my blog) got somewhat sidelined and have not quite got back on track.

I have lots of drafts behind the scenes of the blog. There’s one there about how surprising England is to an Australian whose first visit is in near middle-age. It’s surprising, because while we were so busy in Australia trying to be not English, the people in England kept being English so that now, if you’re an Australian and your visit to England is in near middle-age you can’t help but think, ‘Gosh! England is very English, isn’t it?’ That would be a not uninteresting blog post.

There’s another one about the lines at the Louvre which stretched for longer than any line I’ve seen, so we abandoned our plans to visit the Louvre and went instead to a bistrot for lunch and then, the following day, roused ourselves out of bed early so that we could be the first in line at the Musee Rodin. Only to find that the Musee Rodin had, that very day, closed for renovations until April, leaving the garden with a one euro entry fee as compensation.

There are several drafts about my re-entry to Abu Dhabi. Our three-year anniversary of landing here, the things I thought through the fog of tonsillitis, youngest’s current loveliness, in love, as he is, with the joys of life and being alive. There is even one about my follow-up to the dishy dermatologist and his surprise that I would share any of my health information on the internet.

I have no idea why I began those drafts and didn’t finish them. It’s part of my new year plans. To finish things.

A full stop, but a comma too

I have moved and am now blogging over here. I took all my old posts with me, because I couldn’t bear to leave them behind. You can still find the old posts here, but the cobwebs are growing and it’s starting to get dusty.

Thank you for visiting, and hope to see you at the new place.

On the virtual move

Look! Over there! I have a new website.

Isn’t it beautiful? Viv made it. Most of you probably know Viv. She blogs at hoyden about town, and you can ask her if want to make your website more vivid. She didn’t just make me a beautiful site, she was great to work with, and if she ever rolled her eyes at me through all my tweaks and twitches and ‘yes, that’s almost it, but can we just try…’, I never once knew it.

So, that’s where I’ll be blogging from now on. I’m taking everything with me, but we’ve designed the site differently, and I’m going to work in a more ordered and structured way now. I’m looking forward to it.

Here’s my first post. See you there.

Dear brain, please explain

I’m not going to bore you with the details of it, but walking up the stairs and back to my desk just now, I remembered that last night I had a dream, the upshot of which was that I made a commitment not only to myself, but to a strange David Brent type person, that I would write a symphony. According to this David Brent type person (and I promise this is the only detail with which I will regale you), anyone who is anyone has written one by the time they’re forty.

In my dream, I seemed to believe not only that I should add ‘write a symphony’ to my list of things to do, but that I had the skills to follow through.

Goodness.

I can’t think of a suitable title

I have just been reacquainting myself with some research and statistics, during which time I have reading the Facts and Stats factsheet on the White Ribbon Foundation‘s website. The report says, amongst other things:

Australian women’s experience of violence in the last 12 months
The Personal Safety Survey also provides data on Australian women’s experiences of violence over the last year. In the last 12 months:
Over one in 20 women (6%, or close to half a million women) were the victims of violence;

That is half a million reasons it is not okay to call a woman a bitch. If you read the report, Tony, you will find that sadly, there are many, many more.

I keep telling myself it won’t get worse, and then it does

Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

We were all sitting around the table just now, the mister, the lads and the I, eating our lunch and the conversation was civilised, but stilted, because we all had our heads in books or screens. Some of us were reading Asterix, some were clicking through their blackberry, and I was flicking through news from home, and I was all, ‘Listen to this’ and ‘Can you believe?’ and then I saw that photo.

Seriously, Tony Abbott, how dare you take democracy and do that to it? Especially now, while so many people in so many places are sacrificing so very much for democracy. How dare you? We go to school every day with families whose hearts are heavy with fear and uncertainty, but also burning with hope. I check my email constantly for messages from friends in places I’d rather they weren’t. And while they are doing these things, showing courage beyond imagination, this is your contribution.

‘Look at this,’ I said to the mister when I first saw that photo, and I turned the screen his way.

‘Can I see?’ Eldest lad asked, but I said, ‘No,’ and turned it around before he could see. I don’t actually shield my children from much of the news. We don’t watch graphic images on the television, but we talk to them about most things.

But not that, I’m not letting them see that, because I come from a time and a place where such attitudes need not be explained. I come from a time and a place where our leaders respect women, respect people, respect democracy and take the responsibilities of freedom of speech seriously.

Eldest said, ‘Mum! Don’t cry! Think of a happy thing.’

Right now I can’t.