Author: ThirdCat

Friday afternoon

Some things:

* I was going to tell you the story of the flowers (see below), but as it turns out, it is not at all what I thought it would be, and so it requires more work.

* I wrote you the excellent story of an encounter I had in the playground earlier today, but wordpress lost it – suffice to say it ended with me thinking ‘well, I hope my children teach your children to say f**k’

* This weekend, I will not be reading Philip Adams’ column in The Australian magazine thingo. No, really, I’m not. I hadn’t read it for months, and then I read the one he wrote about John Button. Doesn’t he bore himself with his constant ‘anyway getting back to me’s? And yes, I get the irony of a blogger accusing a journalist of being a narcissit. But, like, at least I let other people get a word in.

* Facebook has pretty much weirded me out. But what will I miss out on if I leave?

* I’m not going in the ABR reviewing competition. You can still do it if you like, but since I’m not in it, it means you might come second. Second seems to be the reserved spot for me. Actually, I’m not feeling too down on myself about it, I’m just marvelling at my consistency (of which I have been reminded twice in this week alone).

* I do not have to go and scrub the laundry or the kitchen floor or the bathroom this weekend. The house is on the market (I am not some kind of landed gentry, I’ve just been co-ordinating a real estate ‘project’ – not my specialty if you know what I mean).

* We went to Target to buy socks and undies for my boys. Have I ever told you how much I hate shopping. No? That’s because words fail me. Shops suck. Especially shops which drip synthetic onto your skin as soon as you walk in the door and which always seem to have all their stock strewn across the floor. Why is that? If I wanted to sort through shit strewn across the floor I’d stay at home.

* I considered applying for a job. A really interesting job being the Arts in Health co-ordinator at a hospital. I’m sort of qualified for it. Sort of. But it’s three days. I just can’t fit it in. What with one thing and another. Plus, I do have to spread my opportunities for rejection around carefully (see point about coming second).

* There is more, but it gets progressively more boring after this…

do have a good weekend, won’t youse?

Feathers everywhere

So I was in my garrett, writing a new story that begins like this:

“If  he asks, she will tell him she grew the flowers. In the garden bed behind the shed. She’d planted them in May, forgotten she’d even put them in.”

But it turns out the daylight robber I thought I could hear in the kitchen (below me) was a pigeon. And it turns out beagles are good at catching pigeons.

And the story is unlikely to be what I thought it would be when I began.

The post to explain the post that isn’t a post

I would like to write a little about the relationship (or the contrasts or the comparisons between or whatever word you would use) between Helen Garner’s decision to use the name ‘Helen’ as the narrator of The Spare Room and the way bloggers decide to use their own names or synonyms or some combination of the two or sometimes change their minds (and what happens after that).

It is potentially very interesting, I think, to talk about such things. For example, I feel myself blogging very differently now that I am merely pseudonymous and no longer anonymous.

However, I can’t write about such things, because I have not read the book. It’s all a bit too close to home right now all of that about death and anger and so forth. I’ve picked the book up three or four times now – I almost know the first page by heart – but it’s not going to work. I won’t be reading for it a while.

Have you read Dorothy Porter’s El Dorado? You should. Let me know when you’ve read it, and I will tell you a little about how reading El Dorado kept making me thing about blogging.

And if you’ve got nothing to do, do feel free to come and help me conquer this Mountain of Washing.

not quite full moon reflected on a not quite still sea


This evening, I am watching Look Both Ways and drinking exactly the right amount of red.

It’s that kind of night, don’t you think?

Do you know why it’s one of my favourite films? Because of the train driver and his son. One of the most beautiful depictions of the fragility of it all. Ever.

PS This is the view from my the verandah at Kangaroo Island. I found it on my camera the other day.

PPS (sorry, Drew, I can’t remember what you said it was supposed to be the second time) I do not lust after William McInnes in the way that you probably expect me to – as previously discussed.

In which I can’t make even one more decision

Because of reasons*, we stop on the way home so that I can buy a new toothbrush. We agree that I will collect a bottle of milk as well. The promised showers are much in evidence and it is getting late. So, it is definitely dark, but not exactly stormy. The mister sits in the car with the boys. I go in.

I have been to this supermarket many times before and so I find the aisle with the toothbrushes easily.

I stand, and I look at the array. I close my eyes for a moment and then I turn away.

I return to the car, open my door, poke my head in, which leaves my bottom in the rain.

I say: ‘which toothbrush do I want?’.

The mister says, after he has rubbed at his balding head and I have wondered to myself ‘when will balding no longer be a process, and become a state of being bald’: ‘you’re serious, aren’t you?’ and I reply.

‘Yes.’

He says ‘stop wasting my time’ in the tone he very rarely applies to his words. I say ‘will you go and choose it for me?’

His silence – momentary though it is – is that particular parental silence which asks ‘what kind of precedent is this’.

‘All right,’ he says. He is gone longer than I expect him to be.

When he returns – with a toothbrush, milk and a packet of lollies which he shoves between his seat and his door before the children can see them – I say ‘you see, it was hard’ and he says ‘the toothbrush was easy, the lollies were hard’ and I say ‘why, they’re just all variations on a theme of compressed sugar’ and he says ‘oh, why didn’t I think of lolly bananas, that’s what I should have got’.

We are at the railway line by then. We are not stopped.

I say ‘time was, there was only soft, medium, hard, and the colours were only primary and maybe orange. Do you remember? They were all Tek. In the old days, choosing a toothbrush wasn’t hard.’

The mister says ‘next time, just go and pick the first one you see that says medium. There’s no difference after that.’

I say ‘yes there is’ he says ‘no, there’s not’ and by then we are home and all that is left to do is put the children to bed, eat the lollies and clean our teeth.

*oh, yes, every moment of my life is loaded with significance

Is it me? Do I smell?

Last night, I realised that it has now been several weeks (at least) since I sent ‘be my friend’ messages to the three or four people on facebook who share my name.

And not one of them seems to have accepted!

Why on earth not? Isn’t that what it’s all about? Obviously, I have misunderstood this social networking getup.

Seaweed cliffs




seaweed cliffs

Originally uploaded by adelaide writer

Amongst the seaweed cliffs, your feet are in the water, the wind is in your soul.

All that is hard is behind you.

Ahead, endless hope.

You are alone and on the edge because you want to be.

Why did you let yourself forget that you can feel like this?

Turn around again, you can do anything, be anyone.

Don’t forget the whispers.

Bring them home.

It’s still Sunday night




monopoly

Originally uploaded by adelaide writer

There’s lots of things I’ll miss about the holidays, but this isn’t one of them.

What was I thinking?

Also, as you may remember, I’ve been spending time cleaning up my computer so that it stops stopping and so that I can get some more photos on. But the wordpress photo uploader really isn’t working that well. Are there things I should know?