Author: ThirdCat

not so much a community service announcement as me waking up from a very bad dream and feeling just a touch fragile

Look, this is none of my business, but something I have learned from the last few years is that you absolutely must have all of your worst case scenario documents in place. Wills, powers of attorney, guardianship orders. You need them – or, more precisely, the people around you need them. Getting them together sucks. No doubt about it. It’s expensive, emotionally draining and forces you to think about things, both real and imagined, that you’d rather not think about. But you need to do it. Also, if there’s anyone in your life for whom you are going to need to take on such responsibilities, talk to them about it and ask them whether it’s all done. This might be hard, it might be very bloody hard, but however hard it is now, it will be a whole lot harder later on when you wish you’d done it now.

I’ve been lucky that in everything we’ve been through over the last little while we’ve had the bits of paper to wave about, and even with them, it’s really frigging hard.

You might think that you don’t need professional help with this, and indeed, I think you can do a lot of things with those do-it-yourself packages from the newsagent, but if you find a professional you can trust they will ask you questions you might not have thought of and it will be money well spent. However you got about it, get it done.

Oh, and when you’ve finished the documents, give copies of them to everyone who needs them, tell them where the originals are and then, write notes to yourself reminding yourself where you have stored the originals and put said notes in every place that you might go looking for said originals at the time that you might need them.

Right, I’ll stop being bossy and righteous and now.
(but your vaccinations are up to date, aren’t they?)

further update

Second night with no alcohol. I managed this by arranging to have dinner a little earlier than usual (made possible by the fact that the mister was home sick) and telling myself that I couldn’t drink because I *had* to get over to the treadmill after dinner because I haven’t been to the gym for so long and I can feel myself beginning my (re)descent onto the lounge which will lead to even more drinking and so on…

By the time I got back from the treadmill (there’s a small room in the middle of the compound which houses a treadmill and two bike-looking things no idea what they are) I was on a post-exercise high which made it easier to tell myself to go to my desk and fit in some bonus work. I was able to do said bonus work because I hadn’t had a drink so wasn’t drowsy.

All of this meant that when it was time for bed I felt that I had lived the last few hours in a most fulfilling manner and I went to bed satisfied.

Unfortunately, I was so satisfied with myself that my brain kept telling itself over and over just how satisfied it was with itself and I couldn’t get to sleep.

Final verdict? Unconvinced.

update

Last night, I did not take a drink. At 5.18, I almost wavered and then again at 5.42, 6.34, 6.38…you get the picture.

I know that when you are trying to change one behaviour you are supposed to change the other behaviours which in any way ‘support’ that original behaviour. In my case, this is cooking the tea. I do like to have a glass of wine while I cook.

I cook every night. Okay, not every night, but say 5 out of 7 nights, probably 6.

This is going to take some thought. Or else, I just give the whole idea away. I mean, spending a bit of time without alcohol was just an idea. It wasn’t supposed to lead to a radical shake up of my day.

Ponderous

Some thoughts from my life:

– why do publications such as The New Yorker continue to write the Internet with a capital I? Shouldn’t it just be the internet?

– boarding the plane in Athens, our family was behind another family of similar composition, that is, one man, one woman and two children. All the members of our family made our way down to economy while the family in front of us separated. The man and one child stayed in business class while the woman and one child kept moving down to economy. The dynamics of our family would never allow such a thing. Srsly, after such an incident we would never recover.

– one day I would like to live in a place simply because said place is a beautiful place to live. This is all I have ever really wanted. There are many beautiful places, so why is it so hard for me to organise this?

– I have added Tilda Swinton to the list of people I am sure I would like to be although I am rather undecided about I am Love and sometimes think it is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen and other times think it is not.

– I am thinking of giving up alcohol for a month or so. I think it would be good for me. I don’t know, I am undecided about this as well.

– I have only just found out about the royal wedding (I’ve been on holidays). I am a republican (should that be with a capital R?), but every time I see Wills I worry for him I really do. I think it’s because of the whole mother killed in a car crash affinity. I felt desperately sorry for him at the time and I still do. I suppose this is transferance, but I don’t know that for sure. Also, there should be more discussion about the similarities between Kate and Our Mary, the one what married that Prince. They are similar and the papers and magazines should be full of this observation.

– I am at that stage where I am convinced that I will never have anything published ever again. Do not indulge me in this as I know all of the things that I need to do to lift myself out of this mood and wallowing around in it is not one of those things.

– if you wanted to opt out of the December madness that grips Australia, you could move here. It is brilliant. There is absolutely none of that ‘by Christmas or bust’ mentality.

– I really do like the curtains in our bedroom. Everytime I look at them I feel happy.

I’d best be off. We just got back from a week away so for some reason there’s an entire year’s worth of laundry to be done.

Thunder bolts and snow

I got out of bed twice to adjust the curtains, thinking that the flashes of light into the bedroom must be coming from the roof of the Al Wahda building. The building is two or three kilometres from here and this flashing has never happened before, but it is an enormous building, its towers now being finished one by one and its apartments helping to ease the city’s accommodation shortage. Who knows what light show they might one night start projecting into our bedroom.

‘What is that?’ I said to the mister after the fourth flash. He hadn’t noticed.

A thunderclap clapped, loud and close.

‘It was lightning.’

A dog started to bark, something started to hit against our bedroom window. I got out of bed and held the curtain a little way back. It was rain. Hitting our window and falling onto our lawn.

As the rain and the temperature fall (only thirty degrees forecast for today), life in Abu Dhabi becomes much simpler. Sitting in the playground after school or in our courtyard after tea, the breeze weaves the evocative magic that all breezes weave. I made a descriptive list once of all of my happiest memories, and you know, the greater percentage of those descriptions included a breeze.

It had rained the night before, 120 kilometres down the road in Dubai. I heard about it on facebook and rang the mister who was staying the night in his apartment there to avoid a mid-week commute.

‘Is it raining?’ I asked him. ‘I heard it’s raining.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m in the Mall of the Emirates. All I can see is snow.’

DSC01162
Lads at Ski Dubai, Mall of the Emirates

Nostalgia

These last few days I’ve been writing about homesickness and the different types of homesickness and its potency at certain times, and the way that homesickness can change or come upon you even when you’re sitting in your own well-loved loungeroom.

I don’t think it is any coincidence that I caught myself singing this song to myself.

I’ve always loved these lines, especially:

‘Somebody come with me and see the pleasure in the wind
Somebody see the time is getting late to begin’

By the time I had my children, Australia had a lot more of its own television and anyway, I pretty much limited their television exposure to PlaySchool, so my children don’t really know Sesame Street. I think that’s a pity.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOxe8u8Y9R8&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

the morning after the night before

good morning my loves

pinch and a punch for the first of the month

do you want leftovers in your lunch

bowl out to the sink please

I can’t find my shin pads

clean your teeth

here’s a bag for your soccer gear

please don’t leave your pyjamas there

shoes on now or you’ll all be late

kiss goodbye

see you later

i love you mum

have a great day

good luck at soccer

fill up your water before the game

i will, don’t worry

goodbye

see you after school

footsteps leaving the house, then footsteps returning

oh…and Mum…if you’re stealing any of my candy today, don’t take the doritos

Mwa ha ha ha ha

Last year when the note came around I said to the lads and the mister, ‘No, no we will not be part of the Halloween trick or treating the Norte Americanos are organising in our apartment complex’. I was all American Imperialism this and culturally inappropriate that*, but in the end, they joined the rounds because it’s pretty hard not to let your kids be part of a candy-fest when they can see it all happening outside their window, and not to mention the other parents sort of insisted that our children joined in and I ended up feeling bad because we were all take-take-take and nothing to give.

So when the mister went off to the do the shopping on Friday, I said, ‘Can you get some boxes of sultanas and some muesli bars that we can give out for trick or treating?’ and the lads are like, ‘What? Sultanas?’ and I was like, ‘You’re always saying, “Why can’t we have the little boxes of sultanas, why do we always have to buy the big bags?”‘ and they were like, ‘Yeah, but it’s supposed to be candy,’ and I was like, ‘Last year, you came back with FIVE KILOGRAMS** of compressed sugar between you, so this year I am saying you can go trick or treating, but I am giving out sultanas,’ and they were like, ‘mutter, mutter, mutter,’ but what can they do because me and the mister were agreed and you don’t want to argue too much with Mum when she gets like this because who knows what she’ll say next and obvs they aren’t going to be spending their allowance on candy that they have to give away and anyway they aren’t allowed to spend their allowance on candy.

Then we’re sitting at tea last night, and I said, ‘Can’t wait til trick or treating tomorrow night when we give out all those boxes of sultanas,’ and the lads said, ‘Muuu-uuum’ (except youngest lad had a bit more of the Mom to it, and in that explanation I was going to write Moooo-ooom except it made it look like he was imitating a cow, which he wasn’t) and I said, ‘Do you know the best thing about giving out sultanas? The best thing is that everyone is going to say to you, “Your Mom is hopeless and she only gives out sultanas” and I am not going to care because I am 41 years old and no longer care what others think about me, whereas you are 8 and 9 years old so you still care a lot about what your friends think.’ I sounded a lot like my own mother when I said that.

There was a tiny moment of silence and they looked at me with the look I particularly love which is all ‘fark, she really knows her shit’, and then they laughed as much as the mister and I were laughing, and one of them (but I don’t remember who) said, ‘Mum, you’re hilarious.’

And sometimes, not often, but every now and then, I’m exactly the mother I wanted to be.

*I just want to qualify, that I’ve been to Halloween parties in Australia and even organised one myself when I was young, and I’m not really into the ‘we’ll all be rooned’ carry on about whether or not we should have it in Australia, because why not, it’s just that it felt a bit wrong doing it here…I know, consistency, I’m totally on top of it
**yes, I weighed it, which just goes to show that sometimes instead of being the mother I wanted to be I’m just the mother I was always destined to be.

ah, John Howard, you’ve done it again

Following a missive from home, I decided to go in search of John Howard’s appearance on qanda last night. I had to go to youtube because stoopid ABC won’t let me watch iview from here. Anyway, good to know John Howard hasn’t lost his ability to make me so angry I can’t see straight.

Mr Howard, let me be clear…when I was part of the campaign for David Hicks to be given a fair trial, I never once claimed, nor even thought, that he was ‘a hero’. To say that I did is to be tricky at best and deceptive at worst. I was speaking out about his right to a trial, to a fair trial. I was arguing that he should be charged, that he should not be held without charge. And I said that he should not be subjected to torture while imprisoned.

I did not once say that he was a hero.

I know a lot of people who were campaigning on behalf of David Hicks and I don’t remember any of them describing David Hicks as a hero. I did, and do, think that his father was a hero, and perhaps I expressed that thought in a public way. So maybe you misheard me. Maybe when I said Terry, you heard me say David. Fair enough, you had a lot on your plate at the time, mistakes happen. If this is the case, please advise, and I will accept your apology unreservedly.

Otherwise, please stop saying, or even implying, that I have ever said David Hicks is a hero. It is not cool to misrepresent people and their opinions in this way.

While we’re at it, I’ll just remind Mike Rann that I still haven’t forgiven him when he did a similar thing . I never said that van Nguyen, a young man facing the death penalty in Singapore, should be compared to Florence Nightingale. I said that he should not face the death penalty because I believe that the death penalty is wrong in all circumstances and I do not qualify my opposition to the death penalty. I’m still extraordinarily mad with Mike Rann for saying the things that he did – it was completely unnecessary for him to say those things, and if he really was against the death penalty then he wouldn’t be undermining other people’s efforts to have it abolished.

Goodness, but I’m cross about those things.