Author: ThirdCat

Statistics

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So I finished the undergraduate portion of my studies and then I took a bit of a break because the university I was studying with didn’t offer honours by distance, only on campus. I had thought they might offer it last year, but they didn’t so I sort of more or less moved on from the idea of doing much more study. I could have gone to another university but that involves getting your pieces of paper stamped by an official of some kind which involves first getting your pieces of paper and I don’t know, everything that’s already complicated gets a bit more complicated when you’re living overseas and although I’m mentally pretty strong these days there’s nothing like running around (in real life and virtually) trying to get the right pieces of paper signed by the right people to put that strength to the test (and find it lacking).

Then they shifted to online delivery this year and I thought I may as well enrol because I still had my original goals plus a few others in mind and because it seemed a bit of a waste to have come this far and not go any further.

What it was that made me think I could study full-time and work full-time I do not know, but there was a pretty miserable month there at the beginning of the year until I did the sensible thing and withdrew from a couple of units leaving myself with the thesis (because I’d done so much work on it by then it was silly to withdraw from that) and the statistics unit because hahahahahahahahahahahaha I may as well get it over with.

Holy moly. That unit pushed me to the brink of insanity like few other things have done. The world of numbers, it’s not my natural habitat, but I’d pushed my way through the earlier stats units to do not too badly and had, in a strange way, enjoyed pushing my brain to places it hadn’t previously been. But something had changed. First it was a few years since I’d done the first stats units so I had to go back and remember everything I’d forgotten (which wasn’t quite everything I’d learned, but close enough). Second because I was at work from 7.30 – 4.30 every day plus driving time I had to get up early and stay up late to do things like listening to lectures and working through tutorial questions. Now, I do like getting up in the morning and padding about in the silence, but it’s hard to set your alarm with enthusiasm for simple regression and the analysis of covariance. And not to mention trying to load SPSS and sorry you don’t have the right operating system and etcetera etcetera etcereraagghhhh.

With every spare moment spent working on statistics – something I don’t like and get neither enrichment nor enjoyment from – I felt like my life was completely off-track. And this at a time when I had thought I really had got my shit together. Instead of striding with efficient speed from one task to the next as I had imagined I would do, I was back to standing in the middle of the kitchen, sobbing. I felt so stupid – not just because I couldn’t do the statistics, but also for being a grown-up, middle-aged woman, sitting at her desk with a hangover (easily come by when you’re living on six hours’ sleep) and working on an overdue assignment. All of the decisions which had once seemed sensible and focused now seemed as unfocused and as scattered as ever. I’m supposed to be in control of my life by now! I would rage at the mister. Everyone else knows what they’re doing and where they’re going and look at me. I’ve still got no idea.

I logged in to the enrolment page every day telling myself to quit, just quit. But I was past the withdraw without penalty date and I can’t quit, because when I was in first year university I withdrew from French after the withdraw without penalty date. I told my parents I was withdrawing, but I didn’t mention ‘past the without penalty’ bit. My mother was a beautiful, elegant woman. She was whip-smart and wise. But my goodness she was fierce and this is the conversation that followed when she saw my results for that year:

‘What’s with that French result?’
‘I told you I was withdrawing.’
‘You didn’t tell me it meant that you would fail.’
Silence from me (because I could see the fierceness rising) until my mother said: ‘This family will fail, but we will fail with dignity and with pride.’
You see? There’s no way I could really withdraw. I mean, she’s been dead for more than twenty years but those words still live.

So I kept plugging away. In truth, I couldn’t really work out what was the problem. I’d studied before. I knew that it would come to an end. The mister reminded me that I had said it was going to be hard in May and June. I didn’t know why I was getting quite so worked up. But worked up I was and when I rang the exam venue to confirm the exam time my voice was shaking and I burst into tears when I got off the phone. It seemed to be something of an over-reaction even for my over-thinking mind.

It wasn’t until I got to the exam venue and the frigid air of its air-conditioner, and the cloying lemon scent of the open bathroom door hit me that I got it. The last time I was sitting in this room it had been only an hour since I’d discharged myself from hospital where I’d ended up after a straightforward miscarriage went a teensy bit pear-shaped so if you added everything up, multiplied it by a sandstorm and divided it by completely-exhausted-because-of-getting-up-at-four-am you’ve got…well, you’ve got tears in the exam room. But there’s the thing. Once you realise there’s a reason and it’s not random insanity, everything looks a bit less foggy and feels a bit less muddy.

So I went into the exam room and goodness knows how but I did extraordinarily well in the exam which, in combination with the okay result I got for my assignment gave me a not bad distinction in the end. Which isn’t the high distinction I’m aiming for, but it was much closer to a high distinction than it was to a credit so I’ll be able to make those couple of marks up with the other units. And now I’m back working on my thesis which is a qualitative methodology and words and that’s much more solid ground for me and I’m not sobbing in the kitchen anymore, and actually I feel like I’ve got my shit together and I know where I’m going and how to get there. Plus dignity and pride.

Resigned

I finished my job last week. Like, you know, not going back kind of finished. I’ve been working in libraries again, this time at a school. The end of the school year came and I decided that I would, well, ‘resign’ makes it sound much more dramatic than it really is, but I suppose that’s what I did. Anyway, the upshot is that I don’t have a job.

I think I might have retired from libraries. I’m not sure, but it feels that way at the moment. (future employers, please don’t read that last sentence, okay? Obviously when I tell you yours is the job of my dreams I mean it. Okay?).

There were all sorts of reasons that I decided to leave the job, but in the end they all boiled down to the same thing: my heart wasn’t in it. I mean, I liked it – much of it I loved – and I did a good job and I put myself into it and I was sad to be leaving it.

But at the same time there were other things I wanted to be doing that weren’t getting done. My novel for one thing. And other writing things I want to do. I can’t write them until I finish the novel manuscript. My study. I’ve got a thesis due at the end of October and I don’t see the point of going back to study at my stage if I’m not going to do it properly. There was all of the stuff about being the kind of parent I want to be. The Floppy Adolescent will be leaving home soon and I want to spend more time with him because it’s true that adolescents are unpredictable beasts, but they are also spontaneous and fun and make jokes that only adolescents make. Friends. I like to be a good friend. I like to spend time with my friends and I like them to be able to ask me for things if they need them. And then in this strange limbo-life that all expats lead to a greater or lesser extent the house as a whole was missing the flexibility of my freelancing life, and that’s going to become more and more of a thing as the Floppy Adolescent moves ever-closer to Young Adulthood.

It was odd, because for so long I’d been convinced that going back to work in a traditional work-way – with a desk and colleagues and a daily start and end time and a regular salary – was going to help me find my equilibrium. That being able to answer that question, ‘What do you do?’ with a definite answer rather than, ‘Oh, well, I don’t know, I don’t do anything much’ would help me to feel that I had a place in the world. Somewhere to go and someone to be when I got there.

For a while having a job did do that. It was good to be part of something bigger than myself and to spend less time in my own head. Plus, matching kids with books is a pretty nice way to spend a day. But I could tell that if I’d stayed it would start being counterproductive to my (constant) search for equilibrium. That I would start to hate getting up in the morning and would be consumed by all of the things that I couldn’t do while I was going to work. And I wouldn’t be doing a good job then. I wouldn’t do a bad job – I’m an earnest, eldest child and I’m nothing if not conscientious. But I’d always have half a mind on something else. It would be a churn.

I do know how fortunate I am to be able to make this decision. I’m fortunate that my partner earns enough for the four of us not only to live on, but also to be able to make choices like this. More fortunate still, I married a man who means it when he says he values me and that he believes writing a novel that may or may not be published is a good way for a person to spend her time. I know how lucky I am.

For a few days it seemed like maybe I’d made the right decision in that ‘this was meant to be’ kind of way because it looked like I might have one of my best freelancing clients back. One door closes another one opens. I don’t know why I still let myself believe that kind of stuff because that door closed almost as soon as it opened and for one reason and another it didn’t work out. So I’m freaking out a bit about no income in the immediate future. As much as I reconciled myself to the financial disparities in our incomes a long time ago, I’m bothered that I’m making no financial contribution at all, plus however much I tell myself not to be worried by it, the lack of financial autonomy plagues me.

But overall I know that I’m on the right path. Somehow or other the strands of everything will be woven together. Oh, look, a cheesy life’s big tapestry metaphor to end.

Food

If I tell you that I have a personal trainer who comes to my house twice a week, it will sound extremely expat lady I’m sure. But since last September I’ve been working full time, studying full time (which became part time during the semester) and trying to finish my novel, and the personal training route became the only way I was going to get any exercise done. I couldn’t get to classes, and as my gym routines became old and stale I could feel my trips to the gym becoming less and less strenuous as my self-discipline and motivation dwindled. And that’s it’s own self-feeding spiral, isn’t it?

I need to exercise. It’s not only that I live a reasonably sedentary working life and the car culture I live in doesn’t promote much incidental exercise. It’s also that ever since we arrived, exercise has been one of the cornerstones of maintaining my mental health.

So I got a trainer, planning to revamp my strength training routines, get some new ideas and hopefully get myself back on the self-training track.

One of the things he tried to do was assess my food and nutrition. Okay, I thought, this will be good. I will lose those five kilos I put on my ‘to do’ list every single year. I downloaded the fitness app that everyone uses (I’ve forgotten what it’s called, and if that’s not foreshadowing I don’t know what is). And I started logging my food. Not right away, but after a week or so I started. And it was fun, like any of those things are. Looking at the pretty pie charts and bar graphs. But I never really got into it.

‘How’s your diet been?’ he would ask each time he came to the house.
‘Okay,’ I’d say and shrug.
‘You haven’t been filling it in, have you?’
‘Mostly.’
‘Have you stopped having the school lunches yet?’
‘Not really. They’re kind of delicious.’

After a few weeks of this he said to me one day, ‘Right, if you haven’t got on top of it by next week, I’ll put you on the paleo diet.’
‘Okay, but I won’t do it.’
‘You’ve got one week.’
‘But I’m telling you quite honestly that I won’t do it.’

And so I went on. I still ate the school lunches. Partly because they were kind of delicious and partly because it was a way of spending time with the children – the year twos love it when the librarian comes to the dining hall and they love to bring me a glass of water and to help me find the perfect banana. And although I tried to change my less-than-nutritious breakfast of two slices of toast with vegemite, a thirty-year habit is hard to change. Plus, I love it. I did stop drinking wine every night, but apart from that not much changed.

After more and more sessions of my increasingly apparent lack of interest he’s stopped asking and I’d tell you how long since I last filled in my fitness tracker but I really couldn’t be bothered going to find it. And now we just concentrate on the weights on the bar and he’s also trying to convince me I should do more sprints which yeah, nah, gah!

The other morning, when I was in the shower, I realised what a very big deal this actually is. I must be happy with my diet (used in the broadest sense of the word to mean what I actually eat rather than what I am limiting myself to eat) and possibly even with my body just the way they are. I do have a tendency to procrastinate, but if I really want to do something I usually find a way of getting it done. Like, if I wanted to care about my food that way I would have tracked it.

I have always wanted to be happy with these things. And I actually did stop going to a particular person’s classes because he kept insisting that the primary reason people exercise is so that they look better naked. I argued that no I didn’t, but I did assume that I was arguing more out of principle than out of an actual belief I actually held. But this is the first time I realised that I really am exercising simply because it’s good for my heart and for my brain. And if I think about it, I don’t remember the last time I stood in front of the mirror and thought, ‘oh, god, my legs.’ My legs haven’t changed – they’ve been more or less this shape and size and for twenty years – so it must be my mind. Pretty pleased with that.

fancy dinner without the lads

We are going out for dinner, the mister and I because the lads are not here and because we both start late at work because the country is on Ramadan hours. We choose a place that’s in the hotel that’s over the bridge and around the corner from where we live.

The Ramadan cannon to mark the end of the fast has sounded. We aren’t fasting, but I always wait for the cannon before I begin my evening meal. It seems the right thing to do.

There is one taxi at the taxi stand. It was a risk to walk the humid walk to the stand and not order one to the door because at this time of the night many taxi drivers are at the mosque to pray and to break their fast for the day. Our driver is eating when we knock on the window of his car. Something wrapped in paper, he has a plastic bag on his lap which he is leaning in to. He slugs down a drink before he pushes it all back into his bag and we drive.

His taxi is air-conditioner cold.

The streets are quiet. I have been driving out on the highway at Iftar time and been all alone. You could, as they say, fire a cannon and not hit anyone.

The hotel, usually alive with locals and tourists and expats alike, is subdued. The cafes are restaurants are curtained and the stalls of the souq are all closed, covered in cloths and boards. Only the Starbucks has taken down its partition.

The Japanese restaurant looks closed, but there is a woman at the podium outside and she opens the door and takes us inside. Last time we were here, the lights were blue, the music was loud, the tables were full. Tonight, the lights are bright, there is no music and when we arrive the restaurant’s custom doubles.

We choose a table by the window. The curtains, which hide the food from fasting Muslims during the day, are still closed.

‘Can we open the curtains now?’ We ask the waiter.
‘No, sir, because we are serving alcohol, that’s why.’

A group of young (very young) men come in and sit at the table in the middle of the restaurant. Attracted by the Sunday night buffet, but apart from that I wonder who they are. They aren’t teachers. And at this time of year they surely aren’t a visiting rugby team. Oil and gas? They have the upper body for it. They eat sushi and drink beer.

The young couple at the table next to us begin to smoke.

I order a martini and the mister orders mojito. The martini is pink, the mojito is weak. More people arrive and we feel less alone but still we order, we eat, we leave.

As we walk out of the air conditioned hotel and into the humid air, my glasses fog and I have to stand for a moment so that I don’t fall down the stairs.

Unaccompanied

We tootled up to Dubai at 10 pm on Saturday night to drop the lads off at the airport. They’re catching the plane back to Adelaide for a stay with their granny before I join them later in August. They’re flying as unaccompanied minors. I wanted to take a photograph but The Floppy Teen was stroppy and wouldn’t let me. So here’s one I prepared earlier.

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That’s last year’s. So that’s two years in a row they’ve been packed off to Australia on their own and in this life, anything you do for two years feels like the foundation for a routine.

I felt enormously proud of them last year. I mean, it’s sort of no big deal. You take them to the Unaccompanied Minors Lounge, the people behind the counter put the minors’ passports and documentation in plastic folders and then, when the time comes to leave, they take them through the fast track lanes of immigration. The minors make the long, boring trip, get off at the other end and get taken through the fast track lanes of immigration and customs before they’re deposited with the people we’ve authorised to collect them.

The lads took it all in their stride this year, just as they did last. I guess I would have preferred it if they’d looked back – even a glance – to give one final wave to those of us standing behind the rope at the ‘Passengers Only Beyond This Point’ point. But more I was struck by the idea that I’d made children who could do this thing. Travel half way around the world with just each other. It’s so very far from the life that the mister and I had as children. And yet, it’s exactly the same. Visiting your granny at school holiday time, thinking not even one bit of the parents you’ve left behind.

I wanted to tell you more about it, but the time has flown and I need to get off to work. And pressing publish, that’s how blogs stay alive.

A piece of string

I’m trying to finish my novel. By which I more specifically mean I’m trying to find the point where I say, ‘It’s finished.’

It’s taken me a long time, hasn’t it? Six years, nearly seven, since my first was published and not much done between then and now. I need to finish writing something sometime soon. Something that gets published. Something that people read. Otherwise I’m not really a writer anymore, more someone who has written.

I’ve done a lot of things to try to make sure this manuscript gets finished. I stayed in Abu Dhabi for two weeks at Christmas time while the mister and the lads went back to Australia. I got a lot done then, but I didn’t get it finished. I get up at 4.30 a couple of mornings each week to squeeze some time in before I go to work. I get a lot done that way too, but it doesn’t get it finished.

I keep thinking, ‘Two weeks. If I give it two good weeks I will get it finished.’ And I do that and then I realise that there are two more weeks to get it to the next stage and the next and then the next. I know the onion analogy gets a lot of airplay when people are talking about writing. But it’s not peeling an onion, it’s making one, like adding the layers one by one.

This time I think there really are only two more weeks. The framework is strong now and I can’t move any of it. I look through this draft now and I see the places where I need to put in more of this sub-plot, make that storyline stronger, strengthen this paragraph with a bit of detail.

It’s closer than it’s ever been. Two more weeks and it will be there.

But I remember back when the mister and I still thought that we would finish the boat we had started building. ‘Tell everyone six months,’ our boatbuilding teacher told us. ‘It’s close and far away at the same time.’

I wonder what tricks that piece of advice is playing with my subconscious because all my two weeks turn into another six months. And I need to finish. If I keep doing this two weeks thing my thoughts will start getting stale. I’ll never start anything new. And this will never get published.

So I’m drawing a line. I’m going to do a proofread, then I’m sending it off to my agent. It’s time for the next stage to begin.

I went walking

So my beloved and I were out walking and while we were walking we were chatting about this and that and mostly our chat was my list, ordered alphabetically, of Things That Could Go Wrong as I venture into unknown waters this week. And I was particularly keen to seek his opinion on one of those items as it is something about which he knows more than I, so I detailed my fear, ending with, ‘…but I’m being silly, aren’t I, that won’t happen will it?’

To which he replied, ‘It could, and in fact…’

At which point I stopped walking and said, ‘Yeah, nah, here’s the part where you snort and say, goodness no, what, how did you even manage to think that. No way, I know this is Abu Dhabi, but nah, you’ll be right.’

And he said, ‘Well, I just want to prepare you for the worst that could happen.’

There is a silence.

And then I’m like, ‘WTF BELOVED SINCE WHEN DID I NEED YOUR HELP PREPARING FOR THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN MY GOD IF WE ARE TALKING WORST CASE SCENARIOS YOUR IMAGINATION CAN GET FROM THE FRONT DOOR TO THE CAR WHEREAS MINE…HOW LONG HAVE YOU KNOWN ME LET’S START THIS CONVERSATION AGAIN, SHALL WE, AND GO BACK TO OUR CLEARLY DEFINED MARITAL ROLES.’
And he’s like, ‘Yes, let’s go home and I’ll pour you a glass of wine.’

(disclosure, this is just lifted from my facebook updates, but I’m desperate to get my blog going again, and it’s silly to give facebook everything)

The mornings

I like to get up early in the morning and potter about the house before everyone else comes and starts the day. It’s lovely. I make myself a coffee, get out my writing – a diary, a printout of a work in progress, a letter to a friend – and I start to think.

I treasure the time to the point that if the mister gets up early too I am nothing short of rude. What are you doing here? It’s his house too, but his presence seems such an invasion. I tell him it isn’t personal but he says, It feels like it. There must be a way to make it work that doesn’t involve two houses, one of which is only used for a couple of hours in the morning.

The Tour de France in Belgium

From Bruges we are going to Ieper (Ypres). I do a quick google from our room in Bruges just to see if there’s any last minute things I need to know about. This is when I discover that the Tour de France will be starting its fifth leg from Bruges. The Tour de France? But this is Belgium. What?

I know people who would think this a fantastic coincidence. I know some people who might even plan for this. I’m not one of them, but what’s to be done? I’ve paid for the hotel room now. Tour de France it is.

We have no idea what to do in Ieper, but we follow the crowd and stand for some time on the barrier from the cyclists’ village up to the square. Felix starts to take selfies. The Skoda mascot walks by and stops. ‘I’m gonna get heaps of likes for this,’ Felix says. Then he adds, ‘I’m hungry.’

We find a Panos and order a scant meal of the closest thing to sausage rolls and a donut. I have been trying to explain the imperative of keeping costs down. We are nearly one week into our trip and I am starting to panic about spiralling costs, especially as they pertain to the food. So far we have not stayed in any self-catering accommodation and the lads won’t get it through their heads that I won’t just be paying for meal after meal after meal. Anticipating that Felix won’t like the food anyway I don’t order myself anything.

I notice that people are walking down a side street and we follow the signs to the outside course. The crowd is thinner here, but there is still no space against the fence. We keep walking until finally we find a space. Behind us is a frites shop and a fibreglass cone of frites with enormous goggling eyes. Felix takes a selfie.

We wait. We have no real idea of how long we will be waiting or what we are waiting for but it seems the right thing to do. Around us people wait. The sense of camaraderie builds as it always does in waiting crowds. And as the rain shifts from a drizzle to light rain, people join their umbrellas to form a makeshift canopy. Then it gets a little heavier still, and when I hear the announcement for the merchandise I go to the nearby truck and ask how much for the rain poncho. Ten euros. Okay I think I’ll leave that.

Back at the barrier, the rain falls more heavily and the breeze grows a little stronger, a little colder.

‘I’m freezing,’ Felix says. We have invested enough time and energy that it seems pointless to leave now, and besides we can’t check into our bed and breakfast until four.‘Here you are.’ I give him ten euros and he goes to buy a poncho returning with an enormous yellow sheet of plastic that it is nothing more than a series of plastic bags sewn together. Ten euros.

We wait.

Cars begin to drive past us, some with television crews inside, others with racks of bikes on top. One cyclist who has skipped the barricade rides past to cheers. He is stopped by a pair of police officers. And still we stand. We wait. Behind us the crowd grows thicker. The lads are standing at the barrier, but I am behind them. And then a man taps me on the shoulder, points down at his child.

‘Bien sur,’ I say and we make way for him, ensuring I can see nothing really and probably the child can see not much more but almost as soon as the last child is jammed into place, the crowd begins to cheer. I have been waiting for the sound of the bikes, but I can’t hear them through the crowd. The colours flash. I see a blue helmet, bright splashes of lycra. There is an intensity about them and they travel, a self-contained bubble through the waiting crowd. There is no indication that they notice us or care that we are there.

And then they have passed us. The bikes have gone. The crowd loosens. The rain begins to fall, it feels as if it is heavier now, but perhaps it is just because the canopy of umbrellas has broken up as people walk away.

‘Ca, c’est tous?’ I say.

The man next to me shrugs, and says, ’Oui.’ He smiles and I smile back at him.

‘What did you say?’ Felix asks.

‘I just said, Is that it?’

Felix shrugs. ‘I guess so.’

‘I didn’t really see anything,’ I say.

‘Don’t worry. You can look at my photos. Can we get some chips?’