Naive Psychologist

One bad thing: in typical Abu Dhabi style, the gym of which I am a member has just implemented some enormous changes without really thinking through the impact of those changes. They seem, for example, to have given reciprocal rights to members of the Ladies’ Club which means that now all of those women come over for classes. The result is that the numbers of people at the morning classes have increased to completely unsustainable levels. I think it would have been more sensible to run more classes over at the Ladies’ Club because there just isn’t room in the studio anymore and it’s getting very rough and tumble as people jostle for position. I’m enjoying the classes less and less, and every day I find myself less inclined to return. I’m not entirely sure what to do about this, as my mental wellbeing rests absolutely on my attendance at those classes, and I am not at all sporty or athletic, so don’t know what I could do in their place.

One good thing: flickr has just been unblocked. Can anyone send me the user name of my account? It’s been so long since I used it, I can’t remember who I am!

I was surprised to find my brain asking of itself, this 2010 morning, ‘Who shot JR?’, but shocked to find it answered quite uncertainly, ‘Was it Kristin?’

For a few years when it was started, I was still young enough that I was supposed to be in bed when Dallas was on, so I had to watch it through the crack of my bedroom door being careful not to shift my weight on the creaking floorboard or, without a word, my mother would push the loungeroom door closed just to the point that I could no longer see the television. In such cases, I would go back to bed, my radio under my pillow because, for some reason I never understood, our local television station, GTS BKN could also be heard on the radio.

Now of course, I can watch Dallas any old time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0Se8NaYlE&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I do know how those AFL players are feeling right now. In my first ever game of netball, the score was declared as forty nil, and for the rest of that week I believed that nil meant draw. Apparently oblivious to the fact that I had not witnessed our team shoot a single goal.

We were at Lips the other day after school (Lips is the one just on the right of the fountain after you’ve walked in the entrance of Marina Mall).

We had a long discussion about the merits of milkshakes versus smoothies versus juices. I know I’m kidding myself ever so slightly, but I feel that the smoothie is packed full of goodness – on account of using the real fruit – while the milkshake undermines itself with the use of that rubbish flavouring. In addition, in this part of the world, the milkshake or iced chocolate tends to arrive smothered in that dreadful fake cream. In short, apart from the milk, the milkshake is just a glass of fake food.

The conversation ended when I agreed that we would order milkshakes this time, smoothies the next time. Eldest child ordered strawberry rather than chocolate and tried to tell me that was healthy because it was strawberry. Yeah, not so much.

Anyway, we’d just finished the discussion and put in our order when a reporter from The National came and asked whether we could give our opinions about some new regulations (or rules or guidelines or legislation, not sure exactly which) governing foods in schools and interviewed my children about their school lunches.

After she had gone, I had to endure yet another conversation about how *everybody* else gets donuts and muffins from the store.

Youngest child’s current coveted foodstuff is ‘cheese dunks’ which is a packet, and you peel the top off and then you dunk your crackers in the cheese (and I’m sure that cheese is more ‘cheese’ than cheese).

‘No chance,’ I said. And then the milkshakes arrived.

(For the record, I ordered a drink called an Arabian Night which is fruit juice and I suspect a fair lashing of the grenadine syrup you often get with your lemon mint juice, a syrup to which I am more than a little partial).

PS The mister and I diverge even more wildly on the merits of fake cream than we do about Coke. The mister has something more than a soft spot for the kitchener bun and is outraged whenever a bakery gives him one that has real cream and not that other dreadful stuff. Myself, I am happy to dip my finger into the kitchener bun, remind myself about the fake cream and move on.

Being the penultimate footy weekend, we sat around most of the weekend watching it. It was well-timed for us, because being night games in Australia made them afternoon games in Abu Dhabi.

The mister dedicated himself fully to the watching-ness of it, but after the first quarter of the first day, I got a bit twitchy, so I worked on my Commemorative Election cross stitch which I’ve been meaning to get around to.

I like to have the footy and the cricket on in the background, it soothes me. I guess it takes me back to the safety of childhood or something. The mister is always shocked that I can have been apparently watching or listening to an entire football game and still say, ‘Oh, is it finished? Who won?’

The cross stitch will be hung in the boys’ room. There are people who let their children develop their own political beliefs. I am not such a person. I would be, but I’m so right about my politics, that they don’t need to develop their own thoughts.

A funny thing has happened, just as I’ve been putting this blog post together. I have realised that this is a lot less true than it used to be. Events of the last few years – living outside a democracy, the swearing in of our first woman Prime Minister, the fear of living with Tony Abbott as Prime Minister – have left me caring very much that they learn to be politically engaged, but less inclined to bludgeon them (cross stitch evidence notwithstanding). I have been noticing more and more lately, that in politics and political action, I am much more like my mother than my father. The personal is political rather than the explicit political action of joining parties and so on. And that’s not the person I expected to be, I always thought I’d be much more involved in a political party than I have ever been.

Actually, this isn’t the cross stitch I was planning. I wanted to take the opportunity to do my first person cross stitch. That is, cross stitch an outline of Julia, pearls and all, but I just haven’t organised it, and I knew I could get this finished before the next election.

Fittingly, I completed it during the Collingwood Sydney game, so I was working on something else when Julia’s team got whipped by the Saints.

So now, all that’s left is the grand final. We have to get up really early for that. If I recall correctly, it begins here at 8 am. Which is definitely an early time to be watching football.

From miscblogphotos

PS You’ll notice that I’m a bit of a sloppy cross stitcher, and I don’t go back and correct mistakes – like if I start a line too low, or do a run of stitches with the crosses reversed from all the others, I very often just leave it that way. Unless it’s a present. If it’s a present I do undo it.

Snippets from home tell me that Oprah is going to Australia. As John Stewart says, we’ll have to start calling it Ohstralia (how many ways do I love that man, and how much time do I spend plotting ways to sort of bump into him and possibly have his babies).

Anyhoo, as I was blogsurfing my way through lunch today, I discovered a campaign I think you should join.

Anita Heiss for Ohpera House
“Oprah is coming to Sydney and there could be no better guest or representative of modern Australia than Sydney’s own ANITA HEISS.”

There’s details of how to email the shOh’s producers and ask them to include Anita Heiss as a guest over on Anita’s blog and website. I’ve never written to Oprah before, but I’m going to do it right now.