Author: ThirdCat

Spring break

It’s taking quite some adjusting this being back, not just at work, but full time work. The lads had spring vacation last week, the spring in spring vacation being only slightly more laughable than the fall in fall vacation when the days are still close enough to 40 degrees to let’s just say they are.

Anyhoo, I have always loved the lads’ school holidays. It’s a reminder of a being a full-time-at-home preschool mother only with less intensity, and they can make their own toast.

These holidays, I worked every day. The lads went to art camp in the mornings (which they loved, because their art teacher is absolutely wonderful) and made the most amazing rolling sculpture. Together. ‘And we didn’t even feel like arguing,’ they said. Then, in the afternoons, they went to various lovely friends’ houses and got taken to the pool and movies and so on.

But that’s my job, I couldn’t stop myself thinking. I am supposed to be that person who says, Of course, we’d love to have them, we’ll go to the pool, do you want to go to the pool?

I’m not saying I don’t still love my job. I’m just saying I missed the school holidays. I missed them a lot.

Every cloud and so on

I’ve had an interesting realisation this afternoon. Another sign that I am moving on, that my life is no longer dominated by my grief.

A blergh thing happened today, and it’s left me a little blergh. But just now I realised that this will happen. Every now and then, for as long as I live, blergh things will happen, and I will feel a little bit blergh. Nothing to do with the death of my father, nothing to do with living somewhere I don’t want to live, nothing to do with homesickness. No need for intense inner reflection and pulling myself off the couch and reminding myself one foot in front of the other and better not open another bottle of wine.

A blergh thing happened, and now I feel blergh because that’s what life is like. Not all the time, but every now and then.

And I can’t tell you how good it feels to be feeling a little blergh.

No snappy title

After leaving work sick on Wednesday, I felt much better by Thursday, deteriorated Friday, and now, for the first time in my life have lost my voice. Like, actually, cannot make a recognisable audible sound.

We went to Al Ain for the day and night yesterday to catch up with some friends we made on a weekend away in Fujeirah. It was great and, despite my increasing, sick-induced sense of disengagement from the world, I just loved sitting around and chatting about lots and none at all.

Eldest boy is now running a sharp temperature which is his thing. His other thing is trying his very, very best to soldier on. He would much rather be well than sick. ‘I still feel fantastic,’ he said when woke up this morning, ‘it’s just that I usually feel more than fantastic.’ That’s the kind of lad he is.

I spent the night sharing the big bed with the lads while the mister got to sleep on the trundle bed. In this arrangement, we were both losers, and our buffet breakfast (included in the price of the hotel) was a rather more subdued affair than a buffet breakfast would normally be.

None of which is what I intended to tell you today, but honestly, I feel like rubbish, and I have lost my voice in every sense of the phrase.

Perhaps blue butterflies are luckier than orange ones

I saw a butterfly on Tuesday morning. An orange one. We were standing on a hotel rooftop, having a break from our training, sharing the poolside with the British and Russian tourists (no, I don’t know their nationalities, I’m assuming), basting themselves with oil and roasting themselves in the sun.

‘Look,’ I said to my newest friend. ‘A butterfly.’

‘We say that when you see a butterfly you’ll have good luck.’

Later that night, I thought my luck might have been that the cord I bought to connect my ithing to the television actually did the job and later that night we would be able to watch an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. What luck. But, no, my luck was even better than that. There, in my unchecked emails, an offer from the ABC to broadcast my short story ‘The Plumber’. Well, how nice is that?

But not content with what I had, I had to push my luck one step too far. Loading up the other ithing with the series of The Wire which I have been trying to view on a screen bigger than my thumbnail, we used the cord, the cord which just last night had worked. With the blue plug in the blue hole and the green plug in the green hole, nothing works at all, and with the blue plug in the green hole and the green plug in the blue hole, the picture works, but it’s washed in pink. Most disconcerting.

And that is how we got the saying: Butterfly’s luck.

The photo is just to help liven things up

From al ain

This photo has little to do with yesterday or today or even tomorrow. It’s not even a metaphor (at least not an intentional one). I took it about one year ago, from the top of Jebel Hafeet. Apparently, on a clear day, you can see forever.

Today I feel terrible. Quite unwell. Deep inside my glands and in my bones and whatever it is in my lower back which makes me feel this way when I do not feel well.

I made it safely to and from Dubai yesterday, and I parked at Ibn Battuta Mall. It was 50 dhms each way from there to the office and back, but it was worth it for a person like me.

The training was excellent, and the people I met were inspiring. But I didn’t stay for the dinner, because I felt gradually worse and worse all day until, by 4 oçlock, I couldn’t stand any more voices in my head.

I will make sure I’m up in time for a coffee before I leave

Prolly won’t have time to blog tomorrow, because I’m going to Dubai for a conference/training session with some highly skilled people.

I need to be at Jumeirah by 9 which, for most people, would mean leaving here by 7 at the earliest, because everyone except me drives at about 150 kms per hour.

I drive at the more sedate pace of around 120, partly because accidents do happen, and partly because our car beeps once it hits 120 (I’ve been told by other people that you just turn the radio up and you don’t even notice the beeping sound…erm…could not think of anything more hideous than driving at 150 km with a radio turned up to drown out the beeping…especially because the BBC world service in English doesn’t start until 9, and the classic radio cuts out about halfway between here and Dubai and the rest of the radio stations are just noise).

Now, if I drive myself all the way to the venue, it will mean negotiating the World Trade Centre roundabout. It all sounds very simple in the instructions I’ve been given. In my favour, I do have a good sense of direction, but working against that, I feel the fear in the traffic, and lose my nerve. Also, it’s very easy to miss a turn or make a wrong turn in Dubai, and then there’s nothing for it but to sit back and enjoy the ride to Sharjah.

So I think I will do what I always do, which is to stop the car at Ibn Battuta Mall or perhaps Dubai Mall, then catch a cab the rest of the way. The cab from Ibn Battuta Mall will cost a fair bit, but getting back onto Sheik Zayed Road out of Dubai Mall and pointing yourself in the direction of Abu Dhabi is extraordinarily difficult on account of the roadworks diversions. And it will be dark by the time I come home. I suspect Ibn Battuta Mall.

Do you know what I’m missing right now? I’m missing my house which is fifty steps to the tram if you turn left when you step out the gate, and one hundred steps to the bus if you turn right.

Day by day

I was thinking about my blog and how blogging used to be and what blogging has become, and I was thinking maybe it was time for my blog to be…I don’t know…what…and I know for a lot of people twitter has become the thing that blogging used to be, but it doesn’t quite work that way for me, because I’m in a different time zone, so I always miss the twitter party and then there’s never anyone at mine…

I knew three things: firstly, I wanted to keep blogging, because it’s fun, and I like the people I meet through having a blog; secondly, I was a bit sick of having a blog that was going into decline; thirdly, I knew what I didn’t want, but I didn’t know what I did.

So then I was thinking, maybe if I put a bit of an effort into the blog then I’ll discover what it is that I want it to be. I put some effort in, and I made an elaborate, intricate plan. Way back in January I made that plan, and nothing eventuated. Which is fairly typical of me. In my time, I’ve made a lot of plans, and on very few of them I’ve followed through.

Then, the other day I thought, instead of planning, why don’t I find out what it is that I want to do, just by doing. Write something every day for one month, and then, by the end, you’ll be able to see what it is that you like writing about.

And back on the first of April that seemed like a good idea. Now we’re at the fifth of April and this is the kind of post I’ve resorted to.

Look back on anger

The football being persisently unavailable on the television, the mister and I began discussing me. More particularly, we began discussing me and the progress of my manuscript.

On my part, I was trying to understand why I have so little to show for all that time when I had not much to do but write, and now, all of a sudden, when I have just an hour or so a day things are coming together.

On his part, he couldn’t suggest a better topic of conversation so had to run with mine.

I was sort of moaning about having to go back to work this morning (our weekend is Friday and Saturday and for obvious reasons, we don’t get an Easter long weekend). More precisely, I was moaning that my writing time was already at an end. Why did I not have this drive and momentum last year when the only thing I had to do with my time was write?

The mister was very good about not rolling his eyes, although he let it be known that the conversation was only allowed to take a limited amount of his remaining weekend.

The coincidence of my gaining a job and writing momentum at the same time is not wholly inexplicable. For one thing, having a job has given me a structure that I did not have before. The mister thinks I have created an environment of ‘urgency’. Knowing the time is limited means I do not waste the time (though it does not completely wipe away the question of whether I can possibly work full time and finish a manuscript – the answer to that question is still some time away). For another, having a job has made me feel better about myself and I’m less inclined to flop on the couch feeling directionless and otherwise woe-is-me.

And, on top of everything else, I think maybe I was just not ready to write. Last year, I did manage to get the wordcount on my manuscript up pretty high – very high indeed – but the moment, I am enjoying putting red lines through a great number of those words because my, there are some angry bitter words in there.

There is a greater sense of calm this year. Not only in my words, but in the act of writing itself. I am writing with focus and direction and a sense of purpose that has nothing to do with being right or wronged.

This is not to say that I will take all of the anger out, nor is to pretend that all was rosy in my fair land. Only that I am enjoying writing about being angry, knowing that I’m not.

Looking back on anger is a most lightening feeling indeed.

Getting things done

The mister and the lads got back from their Al Ain daytrip rather late last night, and because I still hadn’t finished my book, when the mister asked about my day, I said, somewhat despondently, ‘I must be the most unproductive person in the world,’ to which the mister replied, ‘but how do you know that everyone else is productive?’

It’s the kind of thing the mister says, and it sometimes cheers me up and sometimes gives me the screaming shits.

Anyway, the ensuing conversation reminded me of a lesson I have already learned, but seem to have forgotten. The lesson is: it’s no good having a to do list which reads ‘write book’. A list like that just leaves you feeling despondent and unproductive day after day after day.

So then, I spent an hour with a purple texta, making a list of the things I need to write in order to finish this draft. And today, I will work through one or two of those things and when the mister and the lads get back from the supermarket and their game of squash I will say, ‘I got a lot done today’.