And on Fridays we shall dance

We lived in New Zealand for several years in the early and mid nineties, and I saw more music there than I ever have or ever will. Something about New Zealand music and the New Zealand sense of humour that I just loved. Also, views of volcanoes. I never got sick of seeing volcanoes. I have lots of happy music memories. This is one of my favourites. (embedding disabled)

PS Also, can you remind the mister I want this somewhere, sometime at my funeral…he’s sure to forget.

Update: lads to me, ‘okay, one more time, and then that’s enough, all right?’

Day twenty two, and I’m running out of titles, can’t you tell

New circuit class last night. I dunno, I don’t think it’s that hard. When the dude calls time, move one station to the right, next time he calls time, go into the middle, next time one station to the right, into the middle, one station to the right. And so on.

I can confidently say that in a class of maybe thirty, I was the only one who went station to station without skipping any, without choosing randomly.

I suspect, right now, somewhere in Abu Dhabi, there’s a woman thinking to herself, ‘Sheesh, does she need to be so grumpy…what does it matter if people go to the wrong station. So what if I did two rounds of lateral lifts and none of tricep dips…she needs to get a life…’

Well, no. I’m from Adelaide, when things do not proceed in an orderly fashion, my world, she falls apart. I like to live my life, station by station, waiting for the dude to call time.

Computer says no

One of the resolves* I have made in an effort to be slightly less of a misery guts and slightly less self-absorbed and slightly more fun to be around is to slightly less often blame Abu Dhabi for my problems.

I think (though this is pure self-absorbed speculation) that it has been far too easy to blame everything on Abu Dhabi (and, by extension, the mister, though we won’t go into that right now, suffice to say, if you think your relationship needs a test, I can recommend a stint in Abu Dhabi…ahem…and moving on and so forth and etceteragh).

Sure, this is not my ideal location. Certainly, I am not well-suited to the Abu Dhabi life. Definitely, there are zillions of other places I would rather be. But that’s not Abu Dhabi’s problem. I do have a choice. I could leave. For sure, that choice, the choice to leave, would have its own limits and implications, but it is a choice I could make. I have more choices than ninety percent of the world’s population.

So, having decided that I will stay, I need to accept certain things. And I need to stop blaming Abu Dhabi for everything. Like tonight when I couldn’t remember the administrator password for the computer? A password so cunning, so mixed between capitals here, lower case letters here and numbers there that between the three of us – two sharp-minded lads and me – we could not remember exactly what went where. As I sat, fantasising again about a life lived elsewhere, as I sat, ready to cry with homesickness once again, I had one of those moments when you realise something.

I realised, that not living here would not solve this particular problem.

And the night got better from that point on.

*You know, I’m really not sure, are resolutions the same as resolves? Because what I mean here is that I am resolved to act in a certain way which seems to me is not entirely the same thing as making a resolution. Do you see what I mean?

Twenty days

It was extremely polite of youse not to say, ‘erm, Tracy, thought you were being grateful and there you are whingeing again’. Some of youse might have spelt whingeing without the ‘e’.* I think I should have written, ‘I am grateful for the hour each morning I get to spend alone’. I cracked myself up when I realised what I’d done, following my gratitude post with another whinge like that about ruined days. So I might suck at gratitude, but I do know how to laugh at myself. I think being able to laugh at myself makes my other flaws more manageable.

*by which I mean not to cast nasturtiums on your seplling, only that I don’t know how to spell it and I could go and check, but because of reasons, right now, I’m not going to.

A matter unexpected

One of the consequences of returning to work is that I never have the house to myself. It is no longer mine to roam around unhindered, moving from my desk to the sink, trailing and trialing my thoughts uninterrupted.

I have taken to getting up early. Earlier and earlier every day, greedy for every moment that I can spend alone. Knowing how deeply I love to sleep will give you some idea of just how much I value silence and solitude.

I sit at my desk, pen in hand, computer screen dimmed. I barely dare to write so fragile is the silence, so scared am I to lose it, so badly do I want the time to stop.

Even though I’m already awake, the sound of the first alarm still ruins my day.

That’s that then

I said to the mister the other day, ‘You know, I’m sick of taking up so much of this family’s oxygen. It’s too much, I’m tired of my tiredness dominating everything.’ It’s time, it really is, to move on, to be grateful for what life gives me instead of mad becuase of what it takes away. I know that. And I’m trying, I really am. If I knew a counsellor here, I would have gone to one, and I’m sure they’re out there, but honestly, I wouldn’t know where to look, and I don’t know the right questions to ask, and so I’m relying on books and the internet and lessons I’ve learned.

Now, all sorts of books and websites and people say you should keep a gratitude journal. Every day you should write down, three or four or ten of the things in your life that you feel grateful for. Honestly, that’s a bit…well, let’s just say, you couldn’t grow up with my mother and take such a thing seriously. Cynicism? We haz it. In bucketloads.

Don’t get me wrong. Lots of my favourite bloggers have done it, and I’ve always loved reading them, and I’ve sometimes thought, Maybe I should. But then, the blogger moves on and so have I. However, I’ve been lurking at Anita Heiss’s blog for a long time now, and she keeps posting post after post after post of the things she is grateful for. It is such a gloriously warm and generous blog…I challenge you to read it for a couple of days and not feel good about life, the universe and everything. So the idea of a gratitude journal has been growing on me.

And then, last night, I found myself with a random half an hour of nothingness and I thought, I shall sit and watch television and knit another few rows of this beautiful but mistake-prone silk, the first skein of silk I’ve ever bought.

And anyhoo, and moving on, it came to pass that what I watched was Scrubs, and I thought, What would I do without this show? And then I thought, There’s my Answer.

So here it is. My gratitude diaries. It’ll be a bit half-arsed, because I am my mother’s daughter and that’s something about myself I don’t want to change. Something considerably less than a gratitude diary then. A series of occasional posts about things in my life that rock.

Things that rock #1
ScrubsThe day after my father’s funeral, I lay on the lounge, a pillow, a quilt, cups of tea, glasses of wine, toast and cheese, and I watched an entire series of Scrubs. I chose it because it was simple, easy to watch and would help to pass the day. But it was more than that. There was something perfect about Scrubs.

Scrubs is funny. Hilarious. It always makes me laugh. To do that, it relies on silliness and character quirks. Now, myself, I’m not much into a quirk for the sake of a quirk. Quirks, in the wrong hands, can encourage lazy writing, readership and viewing. I blamed the late-nineties, when the quirk became everything. But Scrubs takes quirks and uses them to give the characters depth. I have tried to write ‘my favourite character is…’ but I can’t. Perry of course, because he has the best lines and because of his humanity. Carla because she’s sassy and I like the way she twirls her hair. Janitor, though I wish they’d kept him imaginary. Elliot. JD. Turk. Kelso. Whoever I’m watching at the time, that’s my favourite character. These characters are flawed and they make mistakes (in my mind these are two separate things). Their lives do not go smoothly. But they keep on keeping on. With humour and empathy and humanity and grace.

Scrubs was the perfect choice for a day when, despite it all, life goes on.

And that is why I say, Scrubs rocks.

(PS And I know I should be grateful for skeins of silk, but I dropped a stitch and had to spend half an hour finding it, so I will have to write that another day or it will defeat the porpoise somewhat)

And tomorrow, back to work

We have no idea what the people upstairs are doing. We can only surmise that they have a lot of things to hang. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

Today, we went to Marina Mall for the 2.30 3d showing of How to Train Your Dragon. We met some friends, the lads had cheese popcorn the bag of which they gave back to the mister at the end of the film more or less uneaten. Cheese popcorn is not ace, but our friends are. It’s one of those combinations that just work, for adults and children alike, with all of the children giggling and getting along, and the adults building a friendship you know will last through the years. We sat together afterwards, coffee, banana splits and magical mango drinks at Lips Cafe.

Me and the mister got lost on the way out of course, because I let myself be led by the mister when it is I who have the sense of which course we should take. Still, if we hadn’t got lost we never would have seen the grand glass piano which was playing itself.