we're all making our own sense of things
I was thinking of giving womadelaide a miss this year. It’s expensive. Especially with kids, because you don’t really get to appreciate the music as much as you should.
But then someone told me the fire sculptures are back again this year.
So maybe I will go after all. The fire sculptures rock. And – bonus – the fire sculptors are French. Watching French fire sculptors sculpt fire.
If only all our days could end like this.
Because of reasons, I couldn’t get in to Elder Park, but the mister took the boys in to see the sorry broadcast. I was very pleased that when we talked about the apology last night, they already knew about it because their teachers had been talking with them at school.
I listened on the radio in the car with my grandfather in the seat next to me, and I was thinking that in his 91 years, he has been part of some momentous days. And now, so have I.
What a day.
Sorry.
The dog’s had a successful day what with the block of the cheese, the two tomatoes, and the half-bowl of rice bubbles siphoned up around the shards of broken bowl from when he knocked said bowl off the table.
Unlike my own day which, despite hours with a rhyming dictionary, a thesaurus, a dictionary, a whiteboard, a packet of textas, and some A2 paper conveniently packaged in a flip chart type arrangement, has resulted in just one funny sentence. And I think funny is a generous descriptor. Mildly amusing. Witty perhaps. But funny? Anyway, that sentence takes my total amount of funnies up to about three minutes. I need twenty. Minutes. In only another four weeks.
I am out of my depth, unable to breathe, because I’ve got a mouth full of whatever it is of which I bit too much off of. I hope Pavlov’s Cat looked away before she read that sentence. The shock of it would of killed her.
The Audreys’ version of Don’t Change is gorgeous. In my opinion. Makes me love Michael Hutchence all over again. Don’t act all surprised and ‘but you seem so sophisticated, how could you have liked the band that everyone else liked’. I already told you my music tastes were pretty standard. And anyway, I only like their early stuff. You know, before they sold out.
Youngest Boy just came out to get a band aid and saw the plums. ‘Why did you melt them?’ ‘Because they were about to go rotten, so I put them in the oven with sugar on them, and you can have them with ice cream tomorrow’.
Stares wide-eyed from me back to the melted plums.
‘Good job, Mum, now that’s just what a Mum would do’.
What the fuck does that mean?
The day could best be summed up thus:
everyone in this house is giving me the shits,
yes, including I, but especially everyone else.
Also: does anyone know what it is that the dog is crunching on? I can’t bear to look.
At the supermarket (the one in the shopping centre with the toy shop where we were picking up something for a birthday party because somehow or other my brain remembered that the party is tomorrow morning at ten am so last minute shopping would involve getting up extra early), I was standing slightly bamboozled about what to buy for tea, because I do most of my shopping at the Central Market, so rarely shop at supermarkets anymore, when I hit upon an idea.
“Let’s have fish fingers!” I said.
And my boy said “what are they?”
And right in front of a woman who was very well dressed and hadn’t had to say, not even once, ‘pleeeeease stand still, I’m trying to think’ to her little girl.
Bless.
So when we got out of the supermarket I said to my boy “do you want an ice cream?”.
And he looked at me sideways, before he said “yes”.
A propos of nothing in particular, except that suse is right and I hardly ever show pictures and I do believe that blogs with pictures are best, this is what an apple looks like when you find it one year and a bit after you unknowingly left it in a bag which was accidentally shoved into the back of cupboard and later hidden by a row of empty jars which were being kept, as they were emptied one by one, in the hope that they would one day be (re)filled by the mister’s mother’s chutney, vintage 2008.
Amazing, innit? I do wish I’d been able to take a better photograph of it. Its folds and wrinkles were something to behold. They reminded me of that kelp you find on the rocks of the southern coasts. I think I find the sticker the most intriguing thing of all.
One of the emails that has arrived, is about the gazillionith reminder that my crikey subscription is about to expire.
I dunno. I think I’ll let it lapse.
I think I started the subscription when that beautiful little magazine that used to do the wrap up of the week’s media (what was that called I can’t for the life of me remember right now, though I’m sure there’d still be one stuffed under the lounge if I could be bothered going to look) folded, and one of the options for the remainder of my subscription was the crikey deal. Then, I think I renewed it, because there was a heap of free stuff offered, including a book which I thought I could give my dad for Christmas (ahem, sorry Dad). But now…I seem only to ever read the letters down the bottom, and sometimes the media section.
But if I don’t get my news from there, where will I get it? But then I think ‘well, I already know so little, could it really matter if I knew a little less?’.
I’ve spent the last week trying to enrol in a university course (ethics) using the wonders of modern technology. It should not be this hard, but it is. The only time anyone ever responds to my emails or phonecalls is to give me the phone number or email address of someone else. This is shitting me off. To put it mildly.
Given that: time is precious; I am about to start a new and useful job; I have actual writing projects to which I, and others, am committed: and that I have more qualifications than any one person needs, I think I shall save my money, spend it on books and educate myself.
Take that university.
If you need me, I’m just here. Pretending to work, but checking my email every fifteen seconds. Just in case a particular piece of news comes through. Even though I know that that particular piece of news, should it come, will not arrive today and email is not the form it will take.
Should it come.
Third invitation to a 40th birthday party just arrived (since the beginning of the year). Fourth if you count the mister’s (forthcoming).
It’s gonna cost us a fortune in babysitters. But it’s gonna be fun.
Things had been a bit scratchy, and…what’s that…oh yes, the stench of burning martyr was most definitely in the air when I said…
“but I said I didn’t want to go out for breakfast…I told you, after that first place you rang was full…I said ‘no, don’t worry about it, I don’t want to go after all'”.
I sat on the lounge, then swung around, lifted my legs and reclined.
To which he said:
“yes, I know what you said, but I did what you meant”. His hands clasped the back of his chair, but the whites of his knuckles never show.
To which I replied, “no, I meant I didn’t want to go out for breakfast after all. If I’d still wanted to go out for breakfast, I would have said ‘yes, that’s a good idea, let’s try King William Road instead”.
I cleared my throat and thought to myself I really need a shower.
And do you know what he said? Can you believe it? He said:
“You can’t start changing the rules of engagement now”.
To be continued I suppose.
