Overindulgence achieved (warning: overuse of brackets ahead)

I've had Christmas.



Truly I have, but not in the 'I'm so over this capitalist pig-fest' sense; I've actually had my Christmas Day, done and dusted, and now I can just sit back and watch the rest of the western world go crazy for a week. It's a great feeling.

We went down to Colonel & Lady Duck's prickle farm and had our day on Saturday, since on Wednesday this week Bumblebee heads off for three weeks with his father (we take turns having Christmas access; the one who misses out gets the next Easter).

When we do this, the day is so authentic that the 'real' Christmas Day feels wrong. This year we waited until 3pm to start festivities, since my godmother auntie was driving down from Wollongong to join us. At the dot of 3, the bubbly was popped, the presents were doled out, and the yummies began, starting with a hug pile of prawns and oysters and lemon-cooked tuna (as in not cooked, but marinated in lemon juice all day). Scrabble was played, stomachs were rubbed gently in front of a late night screening of Tim Minchin (better than the Queen's speech) and a good time was had by all. Especially Bumblebee, who not only scored an iPod Touch out of us all collectively, but extra stuff as well because everyone secretly (and stoopidly) felt like their portion of a tiny appliance wasn't enough and bought him various other things. DOH.

My present pile included a ukulele (a Tanglewood tenor, for those who care), chocolates, a pair of shoes and some clothes, a Scrabble mug (heh), lots of books (including Best Poems of 2011) and a book voucher (Colonel Duck and I exchange vouchers for most occasions). I also got a beautiful carved wooden illuminated cap C that I should be able to use on my press. Lovely!

I overindulged so much that on the way home yesterday I had to stop at Nimitabel (the small hamlet at the top of Brown Mountain) to hurl my guts at the nearest clump of grass near the car door (I wanted to make it to the portaloo, but I just couldn't get there), much to the interest of a couple of dogs picnicking nearby. I haven't done that for YEARS, must have been the lunchtime bourbon & cola UDL (left over from the office xmas party: see below). :)

Ah yes, we also had Best Beloved's office Christmas party at our house (he told me three days before). I skulked in my studio for most of the time, until the real fun started: Mean Santa. It's a Kris Kringle type of affair, with everyone buying a random present for around $10, but then all the wrapped presents are put in the centre and all the participants pick a number out of a bowl. Number 1 gets to pick and unwrap a present. First choice! But no... number 2 gets to pick & unwrap, and then decide if they prefer their choice or the other opened present, and they can take it if they want. And so forth, with each person getting the choice of all the presents that have already been opened. So the best number to get is the last one, because you then have the full gamut of presents to choose from.

I enjoyed the deviousness of some of the presents, bought by people who have played before. One was an ARRRRRR bra (that's the noise we all made when we saw it) which made all the ladies laugh but the men were reluctant to even touch it. Another was a bunch of lottery scratchy tickets -- very smart, because it was indeed such a gamble. Did you take that over a $10 Koko Black chocolate voucher? Would you be left with a bunch of useless bits of paper and a longing for lost chocolate or would you be a millionaire who could buy all the chocolate you wanted? MWAH HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA...

They had a big BBQ (once we ran down to the shops to get a new gas bottle. So hard to tell how much gas is left in them!) and one of Best Beloved's authentic puddings. We had one on Saturday too, and there's one left for next Sunday, that we'll eat with the cats and a few human strays, which will be our only Xmas effort. Oh dear, that sentence makes me sound like a cannibal who has cats for entree. But you all know what I mean.

So hopefully the next week is going to be lovely and relaxed with some quality studio time and a lot of lolling, in the traditional, prone sense.

There's been a little bit of rushing around getting things together for another reason. Two years ago we flirted with the idea of sending Bumblebee to the local private high school and when he didn't get in (they had a bumper waiting list that year) he went happily to the local public school and we just got on with life. The private school is closer than the public school, which is really why we thought we'd apply, plus the fact that we'd been REALLY cranky with his half-arsed primary school (which HAD been one of the best primary schools in the area until the last 2 years of his time there).

Anyhoo, a week ago we were called by the school to say that there were vacancies in the year 9 intake, were we still interested, and if we were we had three days to accept. GAH! Emergency family meeting. As much as B enjoyed the social life at his current school, we've been less than happy with the school and its organisational skillz. Plus the fact that it's headlined the local news twice this year, once for a girl-bully knife fight in the middle of the school yard and once for a Hep-A outbreak in the school canteen that resulted in lots of people needing immediate vaccination.

Also, B had fallen in love with the private school's facilities when he did the tour a few years ago. They cater really well for both kinds of students, the academic sort and the vocational sort, with a full commercial kitchen, mechanics workshop, great library, and a school intranet that actually works (the one for his current school SUCKS, despite it being the 'new, improved' version). When we pointed out that he's not moving cities, that his friends will still live a short bike ride away and that he'll still see them on the bike path every day, Bumblebee became quite interested in giving this new school a chance. Plus we gave him a promise that if he gets to the end of the year and he's miserable and hates the school, he can go back to his old school. We mean it. The other option is he just does year 9 and 10 there, and goes to the public college which is even closer again to our house.

So we said yes, and that means big changes next year for all of us, including budgets and belt-tightening. We went in today to have another look at the school, and I was really pleased to see B bouncing out of the place enthusiastically, so I hope he does enjoy it. The uniform is in his favorite Sith colours: black and red, which sweetens the deal. The official list says 'in winter, you can wear a scarf, but it must be black': BUMMER!




So happy Christmas preparations to you, may it all be sweet and simple.
Don't forget to wrap your cat (thanks Elephant's Child!)

Chance and Choice

Being part of the over-educated, over-thinking the small things, under-thinking the big things, will-vote-for-Rudd-to-keep-Julia-in-power, no-junk-mail, anti-capitalism-but-buy-my-wares demographic, I find buying new things very frustrating.

Walking into a store full of multiples of bright shiny units, I don't feel excitement, and I don't get the 'poor thing, let me take you home and love you urge' as other seem to, especially when they are faced with large shiny appliances. I don't like trophies.

Mind you, I don't think I'm a hunter, either, like many of you who regularly go on expeditions to all the local op shops, sifting carefully through the racks in search of whatever your holy grail is.

I'm definitely a gatherer, but in a very soft and random way, no order or system or structure.

I prefer meandering past somewhere, popping in if I've got the headspace, looking vaguely over the shelves and rack and having something snag the edge of my vision. Sometimes it's just a lonely object calling for someone, anyone, to buy them a drink and remember the old days. If it's not something I can think of a use for, I'll reposition it on the display in a way that calls more attention to it, and wish it luck.

Other times, I'll be trying to remember what I came in for (do I need trousers that fit me? How's my stash of crap printing tops?) and I will find something that will totally transform my whole wardrobe with a single wave of its magic wand. Or a book that I've been wanting to read for ages, and now is just the right time to buy it. Or not, but it will take its place in the bedside queue, and maybe even jump the queue if it's really alluring. It's all about serendipity.

Or when I'm going shopping for something specific, I prefer the op shops, because they have dedicated racks to jumpers, jeans, dresses, all arranged in sizes, so that I can head to one particular spot and see if the thing I want is there. If not, I'll go without. If I really really need it, I'll reluctantly go to a retail shop and find it. I tend to go to the same (big, cheap) retail shops because little boutiques either don't stock my size or they do my head in with all their tricksy ways of laying out their wares.

Which is a long, roundabout introduction to the fact that last week my lovely auntie Lou gave me a Border's frequent buyer card with five of the boxes stamped, one more to go, and then you get a free book. She doesn't have a Borders where she lives, and she knew that I'd love the chance to buy some new books. Present! yay! We love gift cards and vouchers in my family. But the action of choosing is sometimes crippling.

When I got to Borders (I didn't waste any time, Lou!), I wandered around, thinking, two books. I have to pick two books. The problem is, I could have taken home at least fifty in my first glance. For some reason, in a secondhand book shop, the books whisper at you:

Psst, have you read me?

Hey, you, yeah, you: I bet your copy of me is all bath-bloated and dog-earred. Wouldn't I look good on your shelf instead?

Mmmm... did you know that I'm signed by the author?

The minute you walked in the door, I could see you were a...

But in a new-book store, they are shouting at you:

BEST SELLER!

PRIZE WINNER!

GLOWING REVIEWS!

LUCID! RIVETTING! UNPUTDOWNABLE!

And the colours are all fresh and bright and there's repetition everywhere, even though the covers are different. The neatness conflicts with the chaos, and the room smells like cleaning fluid, not paper; old books have an aroma that lures me in. A while ago one of my Mackay workshop participants sent me a cartoon from the Australian? the Age?: A booth for iPads with a long line of people waiting to look and touch one, and next to it a small table with a sign saying 'Book Sniffing & Fondling', with one person standing at it, their face in a book, joyously sniffing.

So, there I was, wandering around Borders, two books for the taking, with about twenty minutes to choose before my movie started (The White Ribbon, which was amazing). Thank goodness for the movie, because without a time limit, I would have been lost. I should have walked in with a plan, a shortlist, clipped reviews, or something. Instead, I had vague memories of recommendations, and a profound regret that I hadn't clipped out the list of post-apocalyptic novels listed by Colin Steele in the Canberra Times a few weeks ago, since I always forget sci-fi titles when I'm faced with the crap covers and endless sequels in the Sci-fi & Fantasy section. Why isn't there a Speculative Fiction section? Who decided Science Fiction and Fantasy belong together? They are nothing like each other, apart from the fact that no-one seems get published unless their manuscript can be divided into at least 12 volumes.

Time was ticking. Best Beloved was in JB HiFi, his favorite browsing shop, and the only place we bother to get gift cards for him, and he was due to come back and grasp my elbow to propel me towards Dendy at any moment. I'm a Libran, I can't make choices under pressure. I couldn't come back, I don't get moments like these in shops very often.

I would like to say that I chose offbeat, quirky titles that demonstrate my superior alternate demographic (see line one), but I didn't. I ended up standing in front of the New Release and Bestseller racks (next to each other at the front of the store) and chose Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and So Much for That by Lionel Schriver. Books that everyone has been telling me to read, and that I would normally wait to snap up at the Lifeline Book Fair because they will be there in force after everyone else has read them for their book clubs and disposed of them.

Still, two new books! Not to be sneezed at... because they won't be ready to sniff until they've experienced a bit of life.







(Thanks, Auntie Lou... you're a champion.)

Noise, and other things

A confession: I took the weekend off. I ran away. It was lovely.

I pulled the Bumblebee out of school at lunchtime, flung him out of the car at The Big Merino in Goulburn, then scooted to Sydney, where I started by exploring the delightful shop that is Artwise Amazing Paper (pretty much your best option for buying a variety of decent bookcloth in small amounts in Australia these days. If you know of any others, please tell me.) and then wandered down City Road to attend the new-look Meanjin launch at Gleebooks.

I had a lovely time, listening to some damn good writing, meeting poets, filmmakers and journalists, and ended up in a pub somewhere near Sydney Uni comparing fertility stories with amazing women and admiring Sophie Cunningham's intense sunburn.

My hostess, who lives in a stunning townhouse in Enmore, had been meanwhile attending a family funeral, and so I hadn't clapped eyes on her yet. She had assured me by text message that she'd left me a key and turned the alarm off, but unbeknownst to her, her partner had come home in the meantime and re-alarmed the house out of habit before he went away for the night. So I got back, well-lubricated, opened the door and got fully upstairs before I became aware of a high-pitched squeal that made me pause mid-step. Could it be? I started downstairs immediately, and only got halfway before the alarm started, a noise that assaulted every cell in my body, vibrated through my teeth and seemed to put a hot needle through my ears. Ay yay yay!

Luckily I'd been told the code last time I visited, and although I am numerically dyslexic and dreadful with names and dates, I rarely lose a pin or code (something to do with the body memory of the movements on the keypad). Within seconds I'd turned it off, and the silence that resulted was almost as loud as the alarm. Wow. If I'd really been an intruder that noise would have physically pushed me out of the building. Even earplugs wouldn't have helped. I guess it works as a security measure. And a sobering one. Heh.

Saturday, as anyone who lives in Sydney would know, was a scorcher. 33 degrees! It's Spring, that's crazy. This is why I would never live again in Sydney. G (my hostess) and I cruised Enmore and Newtown, eating breakfast and exploring shops. I found another good paper shop and an excellent button shop. Then we picked up Best Beloved from the airport (flying in from a air security conference at the Sunshine Coast in Qld -- tuh) and kept moving down towards Brighton le Sands.

Sophie seemed to have spent Friday lying on a beach, forgetting to turn with the sun (she had a very directional sunburn!). Our time at the beach was quite different. All of us pale and wimpy -- G especially so, since she favours the white Victoriana pseudo-goth look -- we preferred to sit in the shade and enjoy the sea-breeze and watch the weirdness that is the Eastern Sydney Jet-ski Gangs cavorting on the beach. It smacked of Puberty Blues, with jet-skis substituting for surf-boards, right down to the pairs of mismatched girlfriends in bikinis, sitting amongst but separate from the tanned, beefy, strutting blokes in groups flinging footballs around the girls for extra attention between bouts of jetskiing.

We stayed there for a while, eating fish & chips, fascinated. Or at least, I was. I love people watching. At one point I said 'What do you think these blokes do after a day on the beach -- do they stay in a pack & have a BBQ? Go to a pub? Go home to their mothers? What do you reckon?' And G and BB stared at me and couldn't believe that I bother thinking these things. But I do. One of my personal fascinations with life is that there is only 24 hours in a day for everyone, but we all make completely different choices about how to spend that time.

The other thing that struck me was the amount of noise. There we were, sitting beside a beach, and there were planes landing across the water from us, jet skis and boats churning around in between, cars and motorbikes roaring behind us, and yet I could still hear the waves coming in and out. But I couldn't hear much else...

That afternoon we went from the ridiculous to the sublime. We dropped G off at home, and then headed to the Southern Highlands to spend a night with Bernice Balconey. She lives on a humble piece of land owned by someone else, in a lovely little house surrounded by garden and bush. Apart from the trains that rumble past infrequently, it's serene. We did little but eat and read and talk. And go to a market where I found a vinyl copy of ABBA Arrival to replace the one I'd STUPIDLY sold when I was 16 to raise enough money to buy a packet of cigarettes. Talk about great regrets. I feel like a part of my soul is restored. Even if I never play it again (which is unlikely, I love my turntable), it is good to know I can look at it and remember things, like how dumb I was at 16.

Of course, when I got home on Sunday afternoon I had to jump straight on the computer and meet a couple of deadlines that were looming so close I could feel their hot breath on the back of my neck. But I still managed to watch Dr Who, on the edge of my chair. PFFWWORR. Can't wait for next week, even if I have qualms about the next Doctor (ok, I googled him. I'm a curious cat). I just have to have faith in Russell. He hasn't let us down yet.

And this morning I decided to catch up on the weekend edition of the Canberra Times and discovered a death notice for a nice old man I've known slightly for the last ten years. He's a classic WWII veteran, overlooked by the young, appreciated by his peers who, as he left the room, would say in hushed tones, 'He was interred, you know, by the Japanese. Never talks about it.' He was always dressed beautifully, with freshly bryl-creamed hair and ironed shirts. He had a great sense of humour, and even when diagnosed with demensia, wore it with dignity. The last time I saw him, I sat next to him in a doctor's surgery, and we had a wonderful conversation about life, the universe, etc and the Legacy Ladies he looked after. He won honours in the war, and is being given full Air Force Honours at his funeral, tomorrow. I don't know his family well enough to go to the funeral, but I wish them well. He was a lovely man.

Speaking of lovely people, did I mention that while I 'wasn't blogging', I lost another auntie? It's been a year for that sort of thing. She lost a battle with cancers and other lurgies. She was a lovely person, married to the uncle that flew over from Fiji when my brother died and consoled me with my first plate of Oysters Kilpatrick. Gawd, the things you remember. I would have like to get over to WA for the funeral, but it just wasn't possible. Colonel and Lady Duck went instead, and caught up with extended family (hello!).

I believe in the power of threes; you know, that bad things come in threes. I know it's a superstition, but it seems to work for me. I was worrying about this the other day, about the aunties, when a great-aunt of BB's died. I've relaxed now. That's enough aunties for the universe, methinks.

Time for work. I've decided to make book covers today. A nice, big batch of them.

And while the Force is with us...

... congratulations to George Lucas for an idea just so crazy, it has sustained itself for 30 years, made him a zillionaire fifty times over, and has taken over my son's brain. And probably millions of other people's children's brains over the years.

Mind you, it seems like a lot of people have jumped on the gravy speeder. All those comics, books, toys, costumes, tshirts... sheesh, the opportunities are endless. And the links! I just read of a man who does a one-man Star Wars show. God, I live with one of those, complete with all the sounds and effects.



When Bumblebee plays like this, he's thinking of being a Sith. I'm thinking of George, rolling in all that money. May the purse be with you. And also with you.

LAZY, peoples, LAZY

Time only for a brief list... I stayed up too late last night so I crave a bit of sleep tonight.

-- Mother's Day was memorable for a lovely breakfast in bed, a couple of cheesy DVDs as a present, and a choral rendition of the following lyrics, garnished with lots of hysterical giggles:

Diarrhoea... from Mum's re-ar,
It is cle-ar-
ly a dirty brown...

Diarrhoea... from Mum's re-ar,
It is cle-ar-
ly stinking up town...

Charming, don't you think? There were other verses but I couldn't distinguish them from the giggles. I think even the cats joined in. I must stress that the topic had nothing to do with me, my bowels are sound, it's just an attack of Mother's Day humour, which beats the hell out of saccharine sentiments.

-- We have spent an unhealthy chunk of our weekend looking for a new car. Apparently it is An Impossible Thing to find a manual station-wagon anymore. Automatic is the new black. LAZY, I cry. You're all bloody too LAZY to change gears anymore. We have resigned ourselves to driving a car like a dodgem car, but I won't go down silently. LAZY! And apparently many car manufacturers have abandoned their wagon lines in favour of all-wheel drives, because people think they are safer and they like being taller than the majority of cars. LAZY and SCARED. Phooey.

-- I've also decided that car colours are an indicator of how boring and bland Australian society has become under the Howard regime. Once upon a time we were all advised to have light-coloured cars for Road Safety, for Visibility. That's all gone to pot as a plague of black, grey and navy cars has taken over the roads. Shame, people, shame. We need a line of fresh oranges, greens, yellows, whatever gets people feeling ZINGY again.

-- And in the latest Public Service news, Best Beloved ordered a filing cabinet for his new office the other day. It arrived within a day or two, but securely locked. No-one had told him that you need to order the key separately. Classic.

I'm sure I wanted to type more, but I've lost the plot. Happy mother's day to all of you who aren't deliberately barren, and keep up the good work to all of you who are, especially if you're wearing the matching t-shirt.

Oh yeah! For the best literary fun in town, visit Ask the Bronte Sisters. My favorite is Emily. BB asked me the other day why Wuthering Heights hasn't been exploited the way all the Austen books have. My answer was that he obviously hasn't read the book, because it's not a romantic comedy or light-hearted drama. It has ISSUES, man, and big ones (not that Austen doesn't, she just gives them to you with a smile). He seemed quite intrigued by that answer, but sadly not enough to read the book.

I just finished Lionel Shriver's The Female of the Species (1987). Wow. Did anyone read that interview with her in The Weekend Australian? I haven't read Kevin yet, but I will very soon. She was GOOD.

Enough. Bedtime.