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Seasons that don’t do what they’re told

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When you live in Melbourne, you can’t help but be overly concerned with the weather.

You can’t escape it. It’s not just another casual ice-breaker topic like in other, normal-climate parts of the world. The highs and the lows can be so drastic, so contrasting, often from one hour to the next, that us as Melburnians, cannot help but talk so much about our damn weather.

“Beautiful day today.”

“It’s so cold today.”

These aren’t just simple conversation starters with work colleagues. These are real, bonafide issues of debate my non-Melbournian friends. Weather is always, a serious surprise. You can never really know what is going to happen the following day – even the weather presenters guess half the time.

This is true ALL through the year.

One current theme running rampant has been this remark:

“Some summer we’ve had.”

You can’t hear my sarcasm, but we haven’t had much of a summer. Sure, there were hot days; but no real hot, long, drawn-out summer spells usually so characteristic of our humid state. No, we got a couple, at best, really hot days in a row, before a rainy, slightly humid low 20-something degree day came along. And then stayed. For like forever.

I was in denial all the way through. All through summer I kept saying “we’ll get a late summer, we’ll get a stinking hot spell late Feb right into March as usual” (observe my true climate guide for an accurate representation of Melbourne weather seasons).

We are now in March. For those of you who haven’t noticed, we’re actually on the cusp of April. And sadly, we’ve already had the heater on in our house more times than I’d like to count.

I’m a summer gal. I love the sunshine, the warmth, the socialising and the out and about. I love the ease, the mildness that allows you to dress so comfortably, the warm nights that let you dream and gaze at the stars outside, and I love the long, light-filled days. I got caught in the rain a month back, and it was actually fun, and pleasurable, because it was still warm. Summer is just so easy.

I HATE being cold. I hate shivering in the morning as I get dressed, fighting against the coastal wind as I charge my way through the doors at work, and I hate never being able to get the house, and keep it warm, for long enough. It’s always crisp, fresh, and biting.

However, something’s changed.

I constantly remind myself, that winter is always so much worse as we’re in anticipation of it, and that once it’s here, it’s actually not too bad. This concept has helped. But it’s more than that. Summer is easy, but summer means busy too, and finding time to catch up on stuff, to read, to write, has just been so challenging and trying in the last several months. I love to go out, yes. I love to socialise, yes. I love having things to do, places to go and people to see, yes, yes, yes.

But I’m kind of looking forward to chilling at home and hibernating through the cold.

I don’t know what it is that’s made me think this way, this year, and not every other year previously. Is it the fact that I have more on now? The fact that I’m a Mum? Do I need more time for myself and my stuff, because life is just busier now? Perhaps. I’ve always said that winter is only fun when you don’t have to go out, you don’t have to work, in fact you don’t have to do anything at all. Basically, if you’re a bear, winter is awesome. If you can just stay at home snuggled up on the couch with your favourite blankie drinking hot chocolate, reading to your heart’s content and watching all your guilty-pleasure trashy shows, well winter looks kind of rocking in a mellow sorta way.

I am actually looking forward to winter… a little bit. Staying in and lounging in your trakkies ALL day because you can, and the weather doesn’t make you feel bad for doing so. Watching the rain and feeling infinitely inspired to write, and write, and write. (I know I shouldn’t wait for the rain, in order to write, but you know, this shit helps). Using the cold as an excuse to not go anywhere and just basically, be a bear.

Don’t get me wrong, I was still reflecting today, on this gorgeously hot Melbourne day, the (lack of) summer that had just passed, feeling quite depressed that I only got two days at the beach. Just two. I bought new bikinis for this. Baby girl has 3 sets of bathers. 3. She is 19 months old, and she has 3 sets of bathers.

But never mind. It’s something we’ve come to expect, something that is a natural part of life for Melburnians. My most accurate representation of this comes in an early memory, of being a teenager lying on my parents’ bench out on the verandah in the midday hot sun, and then coming inside to green-vision thinking ‘am I going to be burnt?’ to then sitting in front of the heater that night, shivering from the cold.

That’s our city for you. Beautiful one day… screwed if I know what’s next.

O Come, All Ye Thickened Cream

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I came home from work yesterday, to the beautiful smile of baby girl and the expectant and relieved glances of my parents. They love their bonding times with her when they babysit, but after entertaining baby girl for 11 hours, I know they need to just go home and relax.

I quickly went into the kitchen to drop off my stuff and organise a few things, to find a container of thickened cream sitting on the bench. I touched it, and it was still cold.

I asked my parents about it, and Mum said she’d been walking up and down the street with baby girl when an older woman caught up to her carrying her groceries. She told my Mum she’d bought an extra lot of thickened cream, and offered it to my Mum. In my Mum’s humorous words, she just wanted “to be rid of the woman,” looking after baby girl and all, so she took it.

I could see it definitely hadn’t been opened: it still had that ring part fastened underneath the lid. But still, I said to them “don’t use it.”

My Mum had wanted to see if I in fact wanted it, even though she was going to advise me of the same thing – not to use it. We had a brief to-and-fro about how it’s best to not take things from strangers, and how it’s better not to risk your health than save $2 before I promptly threw the entire thing in the bin.

This however, made me sad. Maybe 20, 30 years ago, you would have trusted the woman walking down the street who offered you an extra item from her grocery bag. You wouldn’t have questioned its authenticity, or her motive. It would have been a thoughtful and kind gesture from a neighbour, a generous and impromptu token absent of any ill intentions or malice.

Instead. Instead we’re living in a world where you could go into a coffee shop to buy your daily caffeine fix in between work, and suddenly be in the middle of a hostage situation, with the eyes of the world fixed intently on the café you are in waiting to see if you’re going to come out alive.

That was the terrible reality of yesterday. A man, a lone wolf, using God’s name to justify his unearthly and inhumane actions to hold many people hostage in a cafe on a beautiful Monday morning in Sydney. I, as many others, was glued to the screen, watching the rolling coverage unfolding in Martin Place live on TV. I kept it on up until midnight, in the meantime thinking of how fortunate I was to be safe and warm, in my home, with Hubbie and baby girl sleeping peacefully upstairs. I knew where they were and they, in their dreams, knew where I was.

I thought of the poor hostages. They were not safe. They were not in their homes. While I was getting ready for bed, they were experiencing anxiety and terror like never before. They were wondering if they were going to ever see their families again. I put myself in their shoes for a moment, and felt the stark horror of their situation. I thought briefly, of how horrible it would be, to wonder if I were ever going to see my husband or daughter again. It made me feel so, so sad, and also so sick. I hoped there was not a Mother being held hostage. Not to say that a Mother was any more worthy than another individual, more underserving of being a hostage, but I could only think that, because I could relate. Someone to separate a Mother from her children… it just breaks my heart.

I went to bed, praying that when I woke up, they would have captured the selfish bastard keeping these innocent people hostage.

As soon as I got up this morning, I got baby girl, and I carried her downstairs. I turned on the TV immediately. I gasped at the headline I saw: “Three dead as siege ends.”

I almost cried. I did, when I heard one of the victims was a Mother, of three young children. The other victim was the café manager, and the third was not a victim. He had brought it all on himself, so that was expected.

How was this incident, any different to any other that had befallen innocent victims? Why was I hurting so much? Why did the thought of going out and doing my weekly grocery shop with baby girl make me feel sick? Why did the thought of finishing up my Christmas shopping this week suddenly seem so insignificant?

There had been fear and terror in other parts of the world. People being held hostage, acts of terrorism, and I can’t believe this word is even in existence in our day and age, but, beheadings. I had felt sadness, and anger, and bewilderment when these things had happened, but not like I experienced today. Was it because it was happening on our front door? Our neighbour, Sydney, being rocked by such tragic events? Was it the simple act of going into a café that threw me? A simple task so known to me, so familiar, a part of my routine while out and about and at work… to think, something you do so, so often, could become the last thing you do. Was it all of these things? The patriotism I felt ran deep. I think to live in Australia, being of such easy-going and friendly nature, all of this just didn’t feel right. This wasn’t meant to happen. It was never meant to happen, anywhere, but here in Aus it felt truly out of place.

I went and I did my grocery shopping. And at the beginning of my trip, I went past the Santa photo set-up where kids line-up excitedly to tell Santa what presents they want this year before smiling happily before the camera.

Instead, I found a primary school choir setting up, their teacher coaching them while Santa ran around passing gifts out to the children watching on the sidelines with their parents. I did my usual bit with baby girl, exclaiming excitedly “look, there’s Santa! Can you see who that is? Wave!” Santa spotted us and a few others as newbies to the scene and came and gave us a gift. I was so happy, watching baby girl receive the present and smile shyly at Santa. Meanwhile the choir started up their rendition of “O Come All Ye Faithful” to photo flashes going off in front of them, Santa continuing her trek through the crowd,
spreading joy with her generosity and also by posing for photos and chatting to people.

I watched the scene, and listened to the school kids (their correct pronouncement of “Sing in Exultation”), getting very teary eyed. While Sydney mourned, here we all were getting into the festive spirit. Santa was in full swing attending to every single child and baby there, carols were in the air, and everyone was smiling and laughing. It was a beautiful sight that I had unexpectedly walked into.

We soon walked off, and I had to pull over to the side and gather myself. I felt like crying my eyes out, sobbing in fact. I was overwhelmed. I was so touched by the display I had come across, and yet was sad for the victims and their grieving families in Sydney. More than anything, I was happy that my faith and hope, though not absent had been wavering, was now fully restored. Australians are a beautiful people, and we have an unwavering, fighting spirit. Terror may try to come here, but anything that tries to shake us will only make us stronger.

I am so proud to live in this lucky country. I am so, so inspired by the genuine reaching out of humanity I have witnessed recently. Yes, there is bad in this world. But there will always be more good. The willingness to keep going and keep up, keeping positive and helping out your fellow human, will always win out.

I hope, that one day soon, we can accept some thickened cream from our neighbours. Just because.

R.I.P. Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson.

Scared to go Asleep

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S.J. WATSON – Before I Go To Sleep

“I would have a day of grief and pain, would remember what I miss, but it would not last. Before long I would sleep and, quietly, forget. How easy that would be (…) So much easier than this.”

That is one of the terrifying concepts explored in this exceptional thriller. What do you do when every morning you wake up, and can’t remember how you got there, what is going on, and who that man is in your bed?

Christine Lucas is a 47 year-old woman who deals with this extraordinary scenario, every single day. Having had an ‘accident’ that eventually developed into amnesia, she is unable to form new memories, as well as remember ones that have occurred in the last couple of decades. Her memory is wiped clean when she falls asleep, and on many days not only wakes thinking she is still a teenager, but also a child.

The horror of not remembering the last 20-30 years of your life I just find unimaginable. But the terrors don’t stop there. Oh no. Watson in his first novel, delivers a fine range of mind-f^&king shocks that make you truly feel sick, and lonely.

*What do you do when you can’t remember anything? How can you trust your mind, any memories that do come to you, when your mind has already failed you?
*How do you blindingly trust someone that you can’t remember?
*How do you deal when sudden and faint memories don’t match up with what you’re being told?
*And like the above opening line, what happens when you do remember something, but the pain is so harsh and frightening, that you’d rather forget it all ever happened?

The events that start to set things in motion for Christine is the presence of Dr. Nash, a neuropsychologist she’s started seeing in secret, and a journal she begins to keep in order to help her remember who she is, when she wakes each day. Her meetings with him are a series of tests to help strengthen and test her mind, to see whether there are any remainders of memory left in there, while her journal serves as a great narrative tool, not only propelling the story forward with its presence during most of the book, but it assists Christine by helping her to discover and compare what she is told day by day. Is an amnesiac a good person to take advantage of, when you know their memory fails them every morning? Hell yeah.

I learnt of this book a couple of years ago, from a work friend, who told me his mate in the UK had had his debut novel picked up and was going to be turned into a movie. Yep, a friend of a friend. Pretty cool. I didn’t get to pick up a copy at the time, but having returned from maternity leave and my work colleague asked if I’d gotten to it, I decided now was as good a time as any, buying it within a few days. It is, or recently was out in cinemas, with actors like Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth starring… you may have heard of those names. 🙂 The casting of certain actors actually made me change my opinions of some of those in the book, as it is quite common that actors have a certain reputation, and usually fit in quite nicely into the role of good-guy, bad-guy, avenger, or the romantic lead, to name a few. The casting of Colin Firth as Ben, Christine’s husband, threw me off what I was reading, but that’s all I will say. No I won’t. I’ll go as far as to say that I accidentally read the last line of the novel, and was spewing because I was only half-way through the book. But even that, although very clear, wasn’t what ended up happening as I expected, to some degree, even though the last line, and who says it, is fairly telling – BUT DON’T READ IT!

(How do you accidentally read the last line of a book? I do this thing whenever I start reading a book and get right into it, where I want to know how many pages there are and how far I’ve come in comparison… further to the look-at-the-book-from-the-top-and-see-how-far-the-bookmark-travels-through-the-spine thing I continuously do as I’m reading, I flick to the last page, and try to find the page number while trying to keep my absurdly insane and curious but don’t-wanna-know-any-spoilers contradictory eyes AWAY from the contents in the middle of the page. This time I failed. Hard when the page number was just below the last line. Damn)

It’s a fantastic premise, with real life amnesiacs having been the inspiration behind Watson’s idea. The twists and turns keep coming, and the hooks arrive quickly keeping you glued to the pages, as you’re just waiting, hoping that Christine discovers what she needs to know about her past, the broken pieces that will help her piece it all together. The last 80 or so pages I read in one go, as I just had to know how the book ended and couldn’t go to sleep until I did.

I’ve always thought of my parents and the older generation, and how it must feel for them, to know the things they know, and want to do some others, but be unable to because of their age. A young mind in an old body. This is Christine’s realisation when she wakes every day, and she sets about her day coming-to-terms with what she learns, reading her diary, and making decisions… only for it all to be reset the next day.

That’s tough. I did find it amusing how every day Christine had to read what she wrote previously, as well as write in her journal. It would take forever I thought, but it was something Watson thought of with mentions of her just skimming through certain sections. Lucky. He covered himself there.

It’s a scary thought though. There is one deliberate mention, where Christine comes back to her journal after writing of her intention to go out with Ben. She writes:

“I cannot say. I didn’t write it down and do not remember, despite it being only a few hours ago. Unless I ask Ben it is lost completely. I feel like I am going mad.”

Having to rely on others, who can be unreliable, or your journal, which if lost or you fail to write in it you have nothing to rely on, is a very lonely and scary concept. You are truly alone, with only yourself, yet no memories to back you up.

I loved his metaphorical mentions, external descriptions that expressed the real undertones happening below the surface, reminding me of what I try to do in my novels. Christine has just discovered a shocking secret and is looking at the TV:

“A remote-controlled submersible craft was exploring an underwater trench with jerky twitches.”

There is sadness too, not just with Christine wanting to forget some things she’s learnt, but with the thought: how does your family deal with you? How difficult would it be for your loved ones, if you were scared of them every day, and they had to talk you through your history, every single morning? A very sad thought emerges when Christine is having dinner out with Ben one night, and when he says he loves her, she doesn’t respond. He says “I know you don’t love me,” and Christine later thinks:

“He is a stranger. Love doesn’t happen in the space of twenty-four hours, no matter how much I might once have liked to believe that it does.”

Christine’s point-of-view is written in a very spell-it-out fashion, but I believe this is so due to the case at point – amnesia making her want to record everything, and not miss a thing. Watson’s ability to write on some very telling matters, in specific scenes, like a woman, is impressive. It makes me think he had a real good go-to girl for those points. Either that or he’s a superb transporter.

The one thing that wasn’t explored, also the one thing my cousin asked after I told her about the book, was the thought of trying to stay awake. One thought I intermittently had was why doesn’t she try to stay awake? I guess there was nothing too pressing to stay awake for, but wouldn’t it be something you’d want to test? If your memory was wiped clean every morning, would you perhaps consider only letting yourself sleep a couple of hours, to see how your memory responded then, and then only have short bursts of sleep to get through the day? I try to stay awake when I have a million jobs to do, let alone if I knew my memories would be gone the next morning!

The surprises and shocks keep-a-coming, way after you think they’ve stopped… so beware. My notes all over the second half of the book reveal how many radical theories I had, and I started to very subtly guess at what ended up eventuating, with one other main thought/hope coming true. Even so, I was on the edge of my bed every step of the way.

One line towards the end of the book, one question… it equals Terror. Pure Terror. I remember the hairs on my body standing.

Must read thriller!

Please let me know your thoughts on Before I Go To Sleep in the comments below, I would love to discuss with you 🙂

Mortality at 5

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Finite Creatures

I’ve always wanted to do one of these Daily Post prompts, but no one idea suggested there has ever spoken to me like this one. I may be a couple days late, but I don’t really care. I like the topic. Well, I don’t like it, but it speaks to me.

Hubbie and I were talking about this very thing the other day: death.

It’s not something unfamiliar in our house, especially with the fairly recent loss of a loved one.

I was telling Hubbie about one of my earlier memories. I was about 4 or 5, and had just gone to bed, with my lamp light shining softly beside me. My parents were still up and about, doing those night time things that parents do, that I now do at the end of the day: cleaning, tidying up, preparing for tomorrow. Amidst all this, I started to cry, really heavily.

My Dad came in. And when he asked me what was wrong, I said “I don’t want to die.”

I don’t remember what prompted this sudden outburst of sadness, of desperation to cling to life forever. I was crying, sad that one day I was gonna die, sad that one day my parents were gonna die. I don’t know if I’d just seen something in a movie, whether my parents had been to a funeral that day, or what. What I remember quite clearly though, despite the many years between then and now, was the sinking, agonising feeling, the realisation that one day it would all be over. My Dad tried to comfort me, and eventually I fell asleep, feeling helpless.

Imagining life without your loved ones is heartbreaking. Imagining life, where you’re not in it… is mind-boggling. Death is something we don’t understand, and many people don’t want to. Yet it’s something we will all experience, as we witness loved ones leave, and then eventually, we will be the star that ends our own show.

My take on it has always been the same. Glass half-full gal here now, but I’ve always believed there is another side. Life after death, where our soul continues, our body having been left behind on earth. In earth. You can say it’s a coping mechanism, you can say I have no proof, you can say it’s a load of bull.

And you may be right. But it’s what I believe. And it helps me to turn off my lamp light at night.

Get Outta My Dreams

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…But definitely, please, do NOT get into my car.

Dreams are a fascinating thing. From a very young age, I’ve spent a good portion of my life analysing them and trying to work out what they are telling me. Being of European descent, my childhood was surrounded by dream meanings and metaphors, examples being “teeth are bad” “flying is good” dream assessments. After all of this time, I am of the belief that dreams are not only an expression of our deepest fears and wishes, but an indicator of things that might, and in some cases, WILL come.

Not all dreams are so ‘meaningful’ though. There are those that leave me wondering “is it a full moon?” or “did I eat spicy food last night?”

Like the dreams where you’ve dreamt about someone, you don’t even THINK about, in that way.

I had that such dream the night before, and awoke going ‘what the?!’

It concerned a person at my work, someone I very rarely see, let alone speak to. Something had to do with me, and my parents, trying to get into work amidst traffic delay and car troubles at night. Then once I was there, this person was still there in the company of me and my parents. And for some strange reason, there was this escalating sexual tension between me and this person… to the point that when my parents temporarily left the room, this person came up from behind and grabbed me in a backwards thrust/hug.

Fortunately I still had my smarts on in this dream, and got this person to let me go because my parents were literally seconds from coming back into the room (even though in the dream I didn’t want him to let go).

I had to get up quickly that morning because of work so I didn’t have the normal luxury of staying in bed and trying to work out the dream for a bit longer; therefore I’ve probably forgotten little details about it. But most vivid, was the feeling I got. That didn’t go away so quickly.

Has that ever happened to you? You’ve had a dream so vivid, that the feelings of happiness/sadness/fear/excitement/lust remain long after your eyes have opened? Usually dreams are just moving pictures in your mind, I guess a form of entertainment while you’re asleep, giving you something to ponder during the day if you’re fortunate enough to remember them. But when your frontal lobe gets involved, and has you feeling the way you might in your everyday life, during your dream, well then it just goes to a whole new level.

It messes with your mind, and makes you question things. Now, don’t get me wrong here, I’m a very, very, VERY happily married woman. I’ve spoken to this guy a handful of times since I’ve worked here, and I came across a sex scene in the book I’m reading “Before I go to Sleep” last night, so I’m thinking that might have had something to do with it. But still, wow. Weird.

I’m so glad I haven’t seen him since. That would be utterly awkward. Looking at him with a guilty expression on my face, all for my mind playing out something I didn’t ask it to. I can’t look at him in the same way now. My emotions have now messed with me, and although I am NOT interested, that thing has happened in my mind, in absence of my will… so it’s still a memory, though a dream one at that.

I wonder if a dream-universe exists out there, that is tangible but only on a spiritual level when we are subconscious. It exists in our minds, and when we dream of others, they also dream about us, and it all plays out in this dream-world that ceases to be once we open our eyes in the morning.

I wonder, who has every dreamed about me like that?

Ew. No thanks, I don’t want to know.

However there is also the other side of the coin… for some there is no number of dreams that could make you think differently, or that way inclined about them, in real, or dream life.

You just wake up feeling icky.

Happiness Is… #5

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Hubbie’s well-timed jokes.

Similar thread from another ‘Happiness Is,’ but I just had to share regardless.

I was so shitty yesterday morning (not actually my fault because this time it was hormones), and because I had vented onto my parents that morning of course I had guilt, and that guilt turned to anger and frustration, and that just made me more shitty well into the afternoon.

Hubbie came home from work, and with his car still running in the garage, came inside to get some paper towel. “Bird shit on my car.” Again. Hubbie’s car is this orange-gold colour (fusion is the name, if that helps to paint more of a picture) and for some insane reason birds are always crapping on his car. He’s coming home from work, unfortunately usually when it’s been a beautiful day out, and fuming that the birds targeted his car, again. He’s tried parking a few metres front and back from his usual spot to see if it makes a difference, but gets the same result every time.

Winter has kept the birds at bay, however with some awesome sunny days occurring lately (remember my excitement about the 20 degrees?) the birdshit has returned. Hubbie is a big car enthusiast, but I think the shit would be annoying even if you didn’t care much for cars. It’s shit, after all.

Funnily enough, maybe because he hasn’t had to deal with it lately, he wasn’t too shitty (pardon the pun) about it. He came back from cleaning it up, and I tried to kindly inform him of my mood: “Just warning you, I’m really sensitive, and really cranky today.”

He was ok with that, and we kept kind of small-chatting. And THEN –

“I saw all that bird shit on my car, and it made me think – ” (Here I foresaw something funny about to occur) ” – I felt like I should take a dump on it too.”

OMG. Thank you Hubbie for breaking my cranky spell.

I had one of those great laughs where you do the ugly face laugh, and then you can’t breathe. “Haw haw haw.” It was great.

Sometimes we forget to laugh. Which makes it all the more important to surround ourselves with the best people, who hold our best interests at heart, and who make us laugh, the best.

Things that shit me… #1

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First in the line of a LONG series.

You know what happened today? There I was, sitting down for a coffee at my local shopping centre with baby girl and my parents. I positioned the pram fairly close to our table, making sure I wasn’t encroaching on any mini passageways around the several tables and chairs around us.

And these two women arrived, squeezing past the space between my pram and another table, and they look over, expecting me to move the pram over some more.

Firstly ladies:

– move it to where, my lap?
– there is sufficient room where you’re walking
– one of you is on the elderly side, and the other is on the heavy side, so wouldn’t it be smarter to walk on the other side of our table, where the pram isn’t?
– and lastly, the path you chose was in no way more advantageous over any others, as all you were doing was selecting a table. Seriously. You just tortured yourself and pissed me off en route.

You can say what you will, but honestly, if it is going to be difficult for you in any reason to move around, why do you already choose a path half-inhabitated by a pram?! This has been happening so often lately, people will just gravitate towards my parked pram, and then want to squeeze by.

Why are there so many stupid people? Why don’t they think?

Argh!!!