we're all making our own sense of things
‘You’re the first sensible person I’ve seen all day! Wearing a hat!’
‘Yes, well, I’m a sensible person I suppose.’ Small pause while I look at gorgeous, beautifully-made dress which I can’t afford. ‘And I like wearing hats.’
‘Oh, yes, so do I. I like a hat. Isn’t it a pity they never make a comeback? Hats!’
In Sydney on Sunday, there were a lot of pink shoulders and not enough hats.
On the subject of removing splinters from children, my dr has this to say:
If your splinter does not fit any of the descriptions above, it should be safe to try to remove it yourself using the following method.
With no mention of a child who has just shouted so loudly and for so long at the merest mention of you just having a look at his hand, that the neighbour from over the fence and down one has just called out is everything all right in a tone which suggests that she believes you should call an ambulance.
At the school photos, the boys are asked to say biscuit and the girls to say princess.
‘Look, I’ve been meaning to say, we should swap phone numbers, you know Jack talks about Jill all the time, and I said maybe we could have Jill over to play sometime, or get together at the park one day after kindy…?’
‘Yes, I suppose.’ Slight pause. ‘And I mean, the parents don’t have to become friends just because they’re children are.’ Slightly slighter pause. ‘Do they?’ What appears to be a genuine smile follows.
‘Erm, no. Of course not. No.’ Another pause. ‘Anyway, let me know. If Jill wants to come and play sometime.’
There were two cows standing in a paddock.
The first cow said: Moo
The second cow said: I was gonna say that
It is a headache which pulls instead of thumps. It begins in the night at the top of my neck – on the right – and pulls until it reaches the top of my eye.
The doctor has shown me the way it works on a plastic head she pulled from the shelf. She looked back through my notes, and asked me questions until I cried. They were the days of the lingering sad and I think she only asked two. But now, she could ask eight or ten or even twenty five. And the fifteen minutes would be up by then and she would not be recommending another appointment for next week.
The knot in my neck stirs my stomach and the pull on my eye leaves things blurred. It wakes me, sometimes, for three nights in a row. I wander around the house. I check the children, rubbing their foreheads, kissing their cheeks, wondering what they dream. If my head didn’t pull, I could work through the soft and quiet night. But if my head didn’t pull, I would sleep.
The headache will go. I start with yoga, then panadol, before I move to nurofen. But the only cure is time.
Sometimes, when it goes, I am drained and melancholy and if Damien Leith sings Hallelujah, I will cry. Sobs not tears.
But other times, I am light with the elation of release, and I sit on the couch chattering with the dreams which will come true. Tomorrow. When I’m not so tired.
I took that last post down, because I thought it was impolite linking. Not hostile. But impolite.
update: and now I wish I didn’t even put this post up, but it’s pointless taking it down because of bloglines.
Thinking that they were panadol, I took two of the super-strength antihistamines which were in a clearly-labelled packet on the dressingtable, to try and knock the edge off the excrutiating headache which kept me awake for most of the night. Which proves, I suppose that my rough throat and niggling sinus isn’t hayfever on account of the flowering native frangipani after all.
You would have thought that having begun the day finding a scorpion under the darks pile, all else in the day would have seemed simple, even bland.