Ooooh Baby.....

They tell me that getting old is only relevant to how old you feel. Pffft whatever. I currently feel about 75 but that could be because I stayed up most of the night binge watching Netflix. I'm definitely old enough to know better than that. Getting old has it's perks though. I can now apply for over 50's insurance and I can now move into an over 50's gated community where board games and pureed meats feature heavily in the available daily choices and there is always any number of groups I can join for social interaction etc. (Unfortunately "Those against ironing" and "sarcastic, smart asses anonymous" groups are not on offer. Sigh.) With the perks, comes the lurks. Everyting hurts. I mean - EVERYTHING. And if it doesn't hurt when you wake up, you can be damn sure it will hurt by the time you drag your carcass into bed. It's just a given. So yesterday morning when I was sitting down, in a chair, with my feet flat on the floor and the whole house seemed to sway violently and I rocked in my chair - I thought "what new torture is this? Is my blood sugar low and I'm about to faint? Is this vertigo? Maybe I'm just hallucinating or having an outer body experience? All seemed reasonably plausible options so I just carried on with my cuppa and "candy crush". And then I looked at the pendant light above my head - it was still swaying. So then I looked at Nev. He seemed quite calm and ordinary but was looking at me with a small, undecided kind of smile. He's here in the same room. He can validate me - either he felt it too and I'm not mad, or he didn't and I am. Hmmm. How do I test this? "You rock my world Nev" I said He stood up in a hurry and planted a big kiss on my forehead - "Oh, thank goodness I thought I was going mad, or that my heart had stopped or I had a dose of vertigo or some such old person's thing but if you felt it too, it can't be just me. Unless we're sharing a vertigo moment or we've eaten something that didn't agree with us....(This is a whole other thing - you really do STOP eating some things - too spicy and leaves you gassy - and START doing some others like not eating after 6 as it will keep you awake etc etc) Shoot me now... Turns out it was an earthquake. 6.0 on the old richter. Big enough to shake the foundations. Big enough for the nanna rug to fall off my lap. Thank goodness it doesn't need to be ironed though.

Mysteriouser and mysteriouser...........

For a long time, I wanted to write a book. Some people told me I should (even after reading my blog!) But as you can obviously tell - procrastination and I are best friends. Even the idea of writing became a sort of torture. It was fraught with so much indecision. What kind of book would I write and indeed, did I actually have anything to say? At first it was going to be a spy novel - the main character was called Hector Black and he was fabulously handsome and incredibly sarcastic. I loved him. But what did I really know about the spy game? I knew I would feature in Hector's life as his sidekick (this is where I get to wear the leather catsuit and high kick the bad guy in the face without even getting sweaty or ruining my high ponytail), but why was I wearing a leather catsuit and why did the bad guy need to be kicked in the face? So many plot irregularities and loop holes... My next choice was to write a book about people. Real people. Aussies who had battled and overcome something and were an inspiration to others. Just your average Joe and the funny twists and turns of life. I love these sorts of people and felt like there were so many amazing untold stories out there just waiting for me to uncover them. Friends of mine would feature as the first story and even inspired the title of the book - "Chicken skin on a safety pin". Their story is about two Bible college students who were very poor but madly in love who got married but had no food in the fridge. They had just enough money for a loaf of bread and one of those delicious supermarket BBQ chickens. They ate chicken sandwiches for a few days and then when there was nothing left but the skin, they found a safety pin and some fishing line and went fishing. The fish found the chicken skin absolutely delicious and they pulled in eneough fish to make dinner for themselves and drop around to their neighbours. Their neighbours had just pulled a whole lot of fresh vegies from their garden which they shared in return for the fish and there were too many vegies for just one couple, so they took them to the neighbour on the other side, who just happened to have baked fresh bread and applie pies.....and so it went that this neighbourhood all shared with each other in good times and bad and created a food co-op that touched many, many lives over the years. Sigh. Fantastic right!!!! But would I really do anybody elses' story justice? Could I capture their personalities properly? Maybe I should just stick to what I know. My own weird, but very wonderful life. I mean, there's quite a lot to catch up on. It's been years since I last wrote here and quite a bit has happened. But a lot of that is old news, so maybe I should just write about the here and now, the daily events that make up my small world. You know - the insightful, heartwarming anecdotes, the wisdom I have gathered from my 51 years on this planet, the DIY masterpeices etc etc. (I know, I laughed at those ideas too!) Maybe I should start with this: why did I find iceblocks in my bathroom sink this morning?............

It's "Straya Day" Mate, and it has the smell of freedom all over it.......

This morning started like so many others start. The dog sticks her wet, beardy face in mine and says "I'm up, so you should be up". Seriously. Authentic, legit. That's what she says.

I then drag my decaying carcass out of bed, taking note of all the new aches and pains,  fumbling about (and sometimes falling over) as I try to get dressed quietly without waking the other inhabitants of the house (while still showing the correct amount of enthusiasm towards the slobbery tennis ball brought to me repeatedly by a very energetic Schnauzer named Schnitzel).

We then hop in the car and head to Victoria Park where there is an off-lead dog area where all sorts of various dogs with tennis ball of varying states of destruction, roam around and do their "doggy thing".

I suffer a mild state of naughtiness each morning on this three-block drive to the park, as I merely do not feel it necessary to place my licence on my person for such a short drive from home. If I get pulled over by the coppers, I can just say "oh, I left it at home. It's not far. Do you want to come in for a cuppa?"

Pffft. Waddayamean illegal. She'll be right mate.

 This "driving with no licence thing" made me think back to the days when Nev was out with his mate learning to drive, by doing just that. Driving. Illegally. Him in the drivers seat, underage with no experience, and his mate napping in the back seat. When they saw a cop car they just swapped positions. It worked for them and probably, if we looked into it, many other Aussie kids from that era.

My sister and I learned to drive slightly differently. We lived on a hobby farm and we had an old tractor. We used this tractor for many things but our favourite was pulling out the gorse bushes. Gorse is a vicious bastard of a weed that grows quite big and is covered with nasty prickles. We tied a thick rope around the bottom of the bush, attached the other end to the tractor and literally pulled those suckers right out of the ground.

It was messy and painful but it appealed to our sense of achievement and destruction all at  the same time. Good times.

Anyway, I digress. This morning at the dog park.

I walked along behind my mad, slobbering, ball-chasing companion and noted the smell of the gum trees, the mildly sad warble of the magpie family, the harsh "cark" of the crows, the golden grass and the rays of early sunlight bouncing off the leaves of the silver birch trees around the lake. It was all a bit peaceful and very, very beautiful.

Schnitzel had her tail up and wagging so I could tell she was happy. My family were all still tucked in bed asleep (half their luck) so I knew they were happy, and I was overcome with a sense of all the good in my little world.

"Straya" I love you! I love the freedom of living here and the freedom of living our lives to the best of our capabilities. Yes, as a country we have a bit of a dark, murky past that most people feel some degree of shame over, but this here and now is what we should be celebrating.

Life. Freedom. Naughty Licenceless Driving.

Things are not the same......

I've noticed this. Stuff changes.

Of course, the old adage "some things never change" also remains true, but on the whole, I'd have to say........well, it's all very confusing.

This thing called life. Not sure I'm up to it.

This musing has all come about because of another one of my dreams. Just this morning in my half awake/half desperately clinging to those last morsels of sleep while the dog is nudging me wanting a walk/breakfast/play time.

I was in a room - I think it was one of those removable cabins at a caravan park - and I had just cleared up all the children's suitcases and pushed them against the wall so we could all have tea together.

There were a lot of children running in and out as well as a dog called "Rusty" that I had apparently rescued from somewhere.

All my old friends seemed to be there and they were all sharing stories about how many things they had accomplished recently - one family had excelled at learning guitar and were now teaching small children to become guitar virtuosos. Another family had been travelling all over the place with their children in a bus together.

And what did I do? I got up and did the dishes and started telling people that I wasn't sure where I fit in anymore. Wasn't sure if I even like myself, whether I was worth liking and was sure as anything that God didn't like me anymore.

Sigh.

I don't think I like the part where my dreams bring out what's going on inside of me and I have to acknowledge it and do something about it.

Mind you, there's one easy thing to change in all of that. I'm getting a dishwasher installed in that cabin so I can sit down and eat cheese and drink red wine and talk to my friends.

A Haiku kind of day.....

Placed on the table
a pretty cup in sunlight;
steams and smells lovely.

Sigh.

And then everyone woke up and wanted breakfast.

And here's Harri's effort.

Running towards me,
a giant black cloud of fluff,
sits and smiles, wagging.

Oh Schnitzel. You bring so much joy to our lives.

And hair. And poo. And bad smells. And things to roll in.

Good thing you're cute.

Falling

When you think about it, we use the term "falling" to describe a lot of what goes on in life.

We "fall" in love, we "fall" out of love. We "fall" over ourselves to get to something or to achieve something. We "fall" pregnant, and we "fall" into debt. We "fall" about laughing when something is incredibly funny, and we "fall" in a heap when we are tired or unbelievably sad. Cities "fall" in times of war, and good people who have gone bad, "fall" from grace.

I have actually done a lot of "falling" in my life - from childhood, right through to the present.

Children fall over all the time, but my Dad sometimes likes to refer to me as "the girl who could fall over while standing still." He is generally referring to an age in my life where I could not stay still. I was full of beans and constantly on the go. One particular day, I was in the kitchen and Mum was telling me off for not staying still and paying attention to whatever it was she was trying to tell me.

I tried. Oh, how I tried. And then I fell over. And then everyone fell about laughing.

Admittedly, I have only "fallen" in love once, and I hope I never "fall" out of love and thanks to that love, I have "fallen" pregnant twice. I have "fallen" in a complete heap 15 months ago when my sister died, and still do every now and again. I quite often "fall" over myself to make a cup of tea (my last true vice) and I hope that for many years to come, I shall continue to "fall" about laughing at hilarious things that happen.

The other morning, I "fell" over in a new and different way. I am an early riser most days - if I don't wake up under my own steam, Schnitzel is a very helpful alarm clock. Her paw in my face.

So I had dragged myself out of bed feeling fairly bleary eyed from lack of sleep, and I was trying to keep quiet as everyone else was still sleeping. I leaned over to put my pj pants on (I had kicked them off during the night) and promptly put both feet into the same leg hole.

I lost my balance completely and was falling hard. I put my hand out to the chair in the loungeroom to break my fall, and my hand went straight through the chair and got caught up in the cushion. My head connected with the chair frame and then the floor.

I tried to right myself, but the strength had completely gone from my arms. Schnitzel, showing great concern for me, began to bark and run around thinking that this was a marvellous new game and she wanted to play too.

The only way to sort this out was to remove the pj pants, and begin again. I wiggled out of them, stood up, and put them on the right legs. I stood there shaking my head at myself.

Harri appeared from his bedroom enquiring as to all the noise, and as I explained what happened, he said "hmmm, how the mighty have fallen"......

Needless to say, I fell about laughing.

A family that laughs together, stays together.......

"There's one in every family".

Let's face it, we have all said that about someone in our husbands' family, or even the next door neighbours' family, but I would like to say it whole-heartedly about someone I have actually given birth to.

Our Ellie is an absolute treasure. Sweet, loving, kind, generous, thoughtful, a real encourager and generally quite smart, but Ellie is also the sort of person who can fall over while standing still.  And some days, when she opens her mouth, I'm all like - "what the....."

For instance, we were in the car and talking about the Indian meal we were going to make for dinner. We'd just go onto the subject of Naan bread, when Ellie piped up with " We don't have any bananas at home".

The silence was deafening, and then Harri and I fell about laughing. It could very well have been a "didn't really hear what you were talking about moment", but we all laughed until we cried.

Another instance of Ellie's mouth open without too much thought, was when we were talking about the backyard and what we would do with it if we had enough money for a re-design. A pool was high on the list and Harri said "we'd probably have to cut down the trees to make room for it", when Ellie looked at him, puzzled, and said "we don't have any trees in the back yard'.

We have at least two big one just outside and five others on the boundary. Every year when they drop their leaves, Ellie goes outside and kicks them around, last year we built a bird house and hung it from one of the bigger trees' low branches.

The other thing is, Ellie's brother is one of the biggest stirrers that I know - not in a mean way - but just to get some laughs. Not an opportunity passes him by. If he can give you a hard time about something dumb you've done or said, he will grab the moment with both hands. and with Ellie's natural gifts, he has plenty of material.

Generally, I try to discourage this from happening too often - I don't want Ellie's self confidence to suffer too much at the hands of her brother -  but it occurred to me the other day that she actually enjoys this attention - she gets as much of a laugh out of it as Harri does.

As families do, we tend to bring these things up every now and again and we all get a good old fashioned laugh over them. Harri firmly believes that these things should be written down for future enjoyment and I tend to agree with him.

Anything that gets us laughing together is a good thing. There's never enough laughter in the world. Keep laughing and it keeps the tears at bay.