we're all making our own sense of things
After a few good days, I’ve had the blahs today.
They are to be expected, the blahs.
On the one hand, I feel the relief that everyone says you feel. I have time to myself again, the stress of the uncertainty has gone, and I feel like I can start making decisions again. I feel freedom. On the other hand, that freedom has come at the highest price a little girl can pay.
And so, in a way, I’m rather relieved that the blahs are back. The good days were starting to be a little disconcerting.
There was this one time when my big toe got stuck in the handle of a coffee cup.
It was a brown ceramic cup, with, if I remember correctly and I’m not sure that I do, a blue cornflower glazed on each side. It was, you can see, the kind of cup that found its currency in the seventies but kind of bled into the eighties. Unlike macrame which simply bled.
I have never been able to shake the feeling that if I ringed my index finger and thumb around my big toe, I would be able to dislocate it. My toe, I mean. I fear that one day, it – again, I mean my toe – will get stuck in the drain of the bath. I certainly do not find the thought of a foot massage sensual. No. Not in any way.
I’m hanging out over here for a while. At times like this, fiction seems a bit easier than real life.
I knew there was something I forgot to do. Put this uncensor China information on my website. I think we were supposed to do this the other day when the 10 day countdown to the olympics started. Apologies for lateness.
I can’t get the script to work, so I give you this:
<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” height=”248″ width=”180″ data=”http://action.uncensor.com.au/media/swf/cici_index.swf”></object>
It will all make much more sense if you got Amnesty’s uncensor website.
On a not unrelated note, I see my eldest boy’s name is on the whiteboard in the list of people who haven’t done their homework yet. He is the kind of person who likes to do the right thing and also doesn’t like to draw attention to himself.
But homework was to find five things made in China. I explained to him that I try not to buy too many things made in China unless I know they’re fair trade by which I mean people should not just be paid fairly, but also treated with respect. But then I had to explain to him that I don’t generally support blanket boycotts as such, because they fail to take account of the complexities of situations. Poor kid. No wonder he gave up on it.
Do you know, I am so unfit, that my right thigh is a still a teensy bit sore from that afternoon last week when I had to chase the dog down the road, across the road and down the tram track, after the florist left the front door open just a chink and I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to unchink the door.
Still, today, I got off the couch, and tomorrow: back to the gym.
PC has been talking about signs which talk about children which reminded me of something a little odd that I wanted to share with you.
Obviously, the last few weeks have been a bit awful, but during the school holidays, I did try to do a few things with my boys apart from putting them in front of televisions, computers and DS screens. One such thing was a visit to the Old Adelaide Gaol, a trip which I intend to blog about at some length. I was actually trying to teach my boys about the complexity of prisons and imprisonment. They play all these games with guns (pretend ones, obvs, because ‘we don’t have guns in this house’) and constant phrases such as ‘I’ll lock you in jail’. My friends seem to be divided on my approach to this form of education, but it was an interesting day nonetheless and had some of the desired impact.
Anyway, I’ll tell you all about it another day. In the meantime, I thought you might be interested to know that one of the first things we saw was this:
It says a lot, no?
>>>
I also wanted to say thanks so much for your comments and emails and messages of support. I’m going okay. Sad, but okay.
We went through one of those new self-serve checkouts today.
I must admit, I appreciated the opportunity to not interact.
On the other hand, checkout chick was my first job. In the Grote St Coles. Pay came in your actual packets. Pay packets. Yellow envelopes they were.
We had 1 and 2 cent pieces back in those days and everyone paid for their groceries in cash. If anyone gave us a fifty dollar note, we had to ring the bell, hold the note in the air and say to the girl next door: ‘check fifty’. We used officious tones for that, and we didn’t have to say ‘please’.
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*I am not at all sure how to use parentheses correctly, and right now I know I should go and double check, but I just don’t feel like it. I’ll put it on my to do list for next week.
“And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night
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And of all the gifts my father gave me, the final one was to let me be there to hold his hand. And he waited for a moment when I held no rage. Only love. Thanks Dad.
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PS You can listen to Dylan Thomas (I’m pretty sure it’s him) read the poem here. It’s gorgeous.
So, I was planning to be here:
doing some more of this:
it’s really not the weather for this:
I’m not there, because there’s other things that need to be done.
Sitting mostly. Knitting. Cooking soup and casserole. And that thing you do at the stop lights on the late drive home.
I had something like a dream last night. I’ve had it before and I’ve been waiting for it this last week or so. It’s not a dream exactly. But a sense and a feeling. And it’s been following me around. It’s to tell me that everything will be okay. It’ll be hard. But it will be okay.
You’re right, mum.