Nettles

umm, I started writing this on the 8th of september, but then the postman came over & I went to play uno with him instead..

I'm sitting on my bed beside the big front windows.  I LOVE this spot.

I have a view of the Sydney city skyline and the noise of the buses and 5pm cars avoiding Parramatta* Rd floating through them.  It is sunny and balmy and the light is bright in that pre daylight saving way.

On Friday the Real Estate wrote and said that we have to move out in 90 days.
I am excited, I have probably lived here to long.. (It will have been 5 years!)
It will be good to shed this skin.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to write -  I was just sitting here and reading The Design Files fantastic new feature 'Tasty Tuesday' which happens to be a recipe for Nettle Pappardelle.

In 1992 our parents took sisterS and I for a trip back to the UK for a month, we traipsed round relatives and friend relatives houses and walked by the house we used to live in - in Edinburgh and past the house we lived in - in Blairlogie and we visited the village where my parents lived in the 70's in Sussex when they first moved to the UK.

In this village is the church where I was christened.

We visited it.

While visiting it I really needed to wee.

sisterS being elder and suppsedly caring and realsing I was embarrassed and in a predicament, took me round the back of the church to the slightly overgrown back path and told me it was fine, pull my pants down and wee.

I on tiptoes balancing in my awesome white LA Gear hi-top sneakers I pulled down my awesome grey-marle leggings, lifted my over sized turquoise tshirt and knelt down to begin weeing.
I began, shifted slightly so the resulting stream would not run onto my awesome white LA Gear hi-tops and a nettle stung my inner thigh.

It hurt and I cried and sisterS was doing that thing where you laugh but try to be concerned but laugh and then just only laugh and I was still weeing but now I was mad at her and it was horrible and wee was going on my hi-tops and I started to cry hot angry tears and the nettle wasn't even the bad thing my sister was and aaaahhhh.

Now I look back ,maybe there is a god and he doesn't like you weeing in the grounds of churches where you are christened.  But if that is true why would he not make my bladder a bit bigger so wouldn't have to wee there and could wait till back at AuntyJ's where we where staying.
Yeah, see is no God after all.

And I don't really want to eat nettles.

And I have been a very nervous alfresco wee-er. (You know, more nervous then you normally are which is probably a bit.)

*My spell check wants to change Parramatta to Taramasalata.

Things I have lost

My umbrella
My quiche tin
My heart and head - uh, cliche much?
My dignity - countlessbloodytimes; most recently when I ...... (that story is nsfw)
My rent money, this will age me slightly; back in the days when we used to pay cash direct to the real estate; I think I dropped it on the floor of a video shop on Enmore rd.
My friends - various at different stages for different reasons.
My motivation - as above
The tiny picture of my Mama that was in a rose gold locket that she gave me.  She said it was one of the only pictures of her as a baby.  I still have the locket but the picture has fallen out and I still - over 12 years later have never told her that.

Hmm, this is a bit sad.

I have found more things then I have lost.  But I am writing this to procrastinate having to bake a quiche in a cheesecake pan so it is focussed on loss.

Use / Object

I served my dinner tonight with a big silver spoon that hangs from a rack overfilled with other (mostly silver coloured) utensils.

I bought that spoon from Target over 10 years ago.

Also hanging from that rack is a cheese slicer that I somehow inherited from our family home - it has to be about 21 years old.  It is a good cheese slicer.

The only time I think I have been truly upset when someone else has broken something of mine (apart from my ankle) was when an old flatmate broke a potato masher that had an enamel handle with little 70's style flowers painted on it.  A potato masher that, yes, I had inherited from the family home.

I have a basket on my dresser that I corral all my most used bottles of hair taming stuff/moisturiser/deodorant - this basket used to have part of my mother's stamp collection in it and sit on a table in the sitting room.  Then I think sisterI__ had ribbon or something in it..

The drawers I use to keep my craft stuff in used to be in my parent's cottage kitchen in Blairlogie.  Then when they redid the kitchen they ended up in the shed, in Edinburgh they lived in the laundry room, in Canberra in the lean-to with spiders and tools inside.  When I left home in year 12 my Dad cleaned them out and gave them to me to use in my bedroom.

Somehow they ended up being with sisterI__ in Sydney, then I got them left at my house when she went to London one time. I modpodged some wallpaper to the side of them but there are still stickers on the front of the draws, labels written in my Dad's hand writing saying what they contain.  The stickers are waxy and too yellowed to read.

I own a kidney shaped table that I scored when K__ N__'s parents had a garage sale and I took it home to I__'s where I was staying, having just fled my parent's house as a 17 year old.  I moved that table to Sydney with me and it was my dresser, a phone table, a TV table and then I left it with A__ & R__ when I fled back to Canberra.  A year after I moved back to Sydney A__ returned it to me.  She'd painted it and stored tea towels on the shelf and used the surface for extra kitchen bench space while at her house in Newtown.

I used it as a TV table, the S__ had it as a dresser.  She still had it in her room in the house in Marion street when she left to go to South America in 2011..  She also had sisterI__'s old wardrobe too..

I don't know where either pieces are now.

Words and Pictures - Warm

Inner West Rooftop   (Reusing my own picture!)

warm gesture - warm drinks - warm weather  -  warm colours  -  warm greeting  -  warm feelings -  warm memories ...

• When I lived on Station st my room was the one that should have been the lounge room.  It was big and the ceilings were high, floor boards and a window out to the backyard that the sun seemed completely unable to wind past the neighbouring terraces and reach through.  It was a cold room.  One of those landlord-will-not-let-you-light fireplaces mocked me as I lay in bed under two doonas with a beanie and gloves on reading the brand new Harry Potter

• It was one of those summer days that wasn't really hot, maybe only 25 degrees or so.  That would have been ok but the solar heater for our pool was ancient and didn't work.  There was about 9 of us there for a bbq and a swim and finally round 3pm we gave up, all 5 of us girls ran inside to the downstairs bathroom and somehow squashed in the shower (suits on! this isn't that kind of story!)  We were clutched in a circle, turning so we had equal hot water spray over our goosebumped skin. 

• Mama and I had a fractious relationship for a long while, we were not very good at talking to each other.  I always felt a bit jealous of the way she was with sisterI__ and sisterB__.  One day when I was back visiting from Uni we were walking into the Canberra Centre and she held my hand.  Her hand is kinda cool feeling, smooth from her hand creams, but calloused from four children who all wore cloth nappies and zeal for hand scrubbing socks that I could never have inherited even if I was her genetic daughter. 

Thanks to wrapped up woolly warm Pip for hosting this dear old favourite meme.

Fucking Grateful

One day in July 1980 my Mum got in a car with S__ my elder sister, drove to a place, (I forget where at the moment) and picked me up from a foster carer, I had been born to a 17 year old six weeks earlier.  They often tell me that I cried all the way home.  Mummy realised when she changed my nappy that I had horrid untreated nappy rash.

When I was 23 I had an abortion.  We had gone and got a sandwich afterwards because I was ridiculously hungry - I was given some vitawheats when I woke up but they were covered in Vegemite & I hate Vegemite - By the time we were driving home I felt sick.  N__ waited till I was wrapped up in bed and then went back to work.

When I watched Given or Taken? last week so much of it reminded me of the stories told in Jo Wainer's Book Lost - Illegal Abortion Stories. The lack of choice, the bewildering lack of control that the women who were sharing their stories had over their own tales.

If I was to tell a story of my abortion it would be one of sorrow and guilt and heartbreak, but also one of support and education and knowledge and empowerment and of decision making; and certainly not one of exploitation, extreme fear, hidden agenda's, and physical endangerment.

The stories that the women in Given or Taken? told were ones of confusion, lack of support and of an experience where empowerment was completely taken away from them. 

I cannot help but feel so frustrated and heart broken hearing about all these women who society cast condemnation on.  There was no social security available for decades, there was no education about sex and how to avoid pregnancy.  Abortions could only be obtained illegally and that was part of a completely corrupt process.

Gloria Steinham's slightly flippant but true If Men Had Period's essay is often corrupted to just one line - If men had periods tampon's would be free; take that one step further as her contemporary Florynce Kennedy did and you have "If men got pregnant abortion would be sacrament."

Please note, I never did Women's Studies, and I am not at all a good essayist - this is a tumble of words and reactions.  I used to buck under the concept of describing myself as a feminist - had big fights with Mama and Sister S__ about that word - but I'm fucking grateful I am not going to let anything that has been fought for before my time slip at least on my watch..

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

held together with six million rivets

Some stuff I might do..  I think I will try at least.

• Get a slightly more interesting new new job
• Be a good flatmate
• Get up and live a normal day - fufil my responsibilites and act in a way that does not mean I have to lie about what I have done (ie gone to work/done exercise/not stayed up all night watching cat videos)
• Participate in my own 2012writeathon
• Be accountable, honest and practical - and be forgiving

bbq lessons.

Yesterday M__ and I went on the bus to Broadway and we bought some prawns, we got cooked ones as they looked the best, and some lamb.

When we came home Mama (who is staying as always for Christmas et al) and M__ shelled them and I made a buttery garlicy dilly lemoney kinda sauce and we marinated them it  Then we stuck them on skewers, Mama said that she didn't know that you should soak wooden skewers to stop them burning on the bbq - and M__ cooked them on the tiny ball bbq that I bought from kmart for $25 a few months ago.

They were yummy.

M__ had wanted to buy a pre-marinated lamb but I showed him that it had MSG in it, which he said he was surprised to learn about, and he let me marinate it at home.  I marinated it in 2 types of mustard and rosemary and garlic and honey.  We cooked it really slowly - in part because we fell into a rather long nap while it was cooking and the charcoal died down a bit to much - and the lamb was so tender and yummy.  To go with it I made a potato salad.

M__ didn't like the punch I made 'cos it had pineapple juice in it, I knew he didn't like pineapple on pizza, I didn't realise it was such a bigger hatred.

So we all learnt something.

Boo

I just looked at a picture of Flux and I miss him still so much.  I wish I could smell him, feel him pulling on the lead, tell him to get down.
Just be with him.
I know it is 'for the best' but that doesn't mean that I will ever stop wanting him to be MY special rascal.

Ok.  Vent over.

Representative of a Tree.

So, I love Christmas(so unique I know..) 

I have lots of good intentions, lots of dreamy inspirational pins.. I always want to do pretty things and often it all ends up as a mish-mash and created at the last moment, however it all ends up nice - see 2010 & 2009.

But despite the 'nice' the last moment is bad, mainly 'cos I don't get to enjoy the glitter for that long..

This year I have made my 'tree' in good time!  Hurrah!

So not so much a tree, but, as I explained to my bemused flatmate when I first began; a pile of lose wool pompoms, tissue paper pompoms,  lots of cheap kmart baubles and more crepe paper then she had seen outside of primary school laying all over the couch - it is a representation of a tree.

It is stuck to the ceiling with a coat-hanger and 3m cord hangers so can't take heaps of weight.  

I was going to try hanging lights down, but as the battery packs where a bit heavy - and the ceiling is pretty high up for turning them on and off, I decided to put them in some jars to act  as little Christmas light lamps.

So I get to enjoy the glittery-ness a bit longer this year, which is nice and um, sparkly.

Ouch

I am still trotting round.  A few rough months with an unexpected job change and a heart wrenching choice to find Flux somewhere more suitable to live.

Flux the night before he left, giving me a look that says - no photos, just give me the liver treat woman

He has moved to a farm right on the Hawkesbury where he has a kelpie sister called Scout and 4 human kids to play with.  Much better then a courtyard and a flat for a very energetic terrier..  I chose where he would go very carefully - and it broke my heart, it still does.  He left 4 weeks ago and I have not slept properly since then.  He was my rascal and I love him so much.

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done*"

I got a letter the other day and they have changed his name to Ranger..

*Please note my use of this quote is not from the Dickens's classic, but from that other slightly lesser known classic teen romance Drive Me Crazy.