82 posts tagged “family”
I'm sure if Daz had of tried just a little bit harder he could have bought a more difficult wedding present for me to wrap.
Not much harder mind you.
There was a gift registry, he was going to the big smoke, so I said - go and spend about $100.00. And he came home with this weird mish mash of items. He was super impressed with himself because there had been 30% off everything and he was able to get a lot of totally random unrelated items.
I said - couldn't you have just bought one item?
He said - well I could've got the ironing board.
Easier to wrap no doubt, but not as easy to fit in the car.
So I've ignored it for two weeks but the wedding is tomorrow so I had to face up to it today. A lot of sticky tape was used. And I'm not sure a piece of curly silver ribbon is going to make it look better either.
But at least its crap they want.
So this is Emjays son who is getting married. My nephew. It is going to be a huge, long and hot day, that will start with a three hour drive for us to even get there. I'm planning on taking my swimmers to have a splash around in the motel pool between the service and the reception. That will hopefully be followed by a nap. And we have to fit lunch in sometime before the service and all stay clean. Lol, we have to get dressed at 7.30 in the morning, drive three hours in Lloyds old smashed up Magna, eat lunch, go to the service, fill in a few hours, then turn up at the reception still looking clean and fresh.
Don't know what that chances of that are. But it should be a good day and night. Big.
Emjay tells me I should wish for my children to elope.
Sometimes, when its late at night, and I'm lying in bed trying to sleep, I feel like walking up to Lizzie's room and saying to her
what the fuck are you actually doing?
Because it sounds to me like she's moving a large herd of cattle through a small obstacle course.
Or sometimes its like hospital noises. You know, random things crashing about, television blasting, phones ringing, laughing. At any moment I expect her to crank up the vacuum cleaner.
And I'm beginning to think she's retarded in some way. Because no matter how many times I ask her to try and be quiet after 10.30pm, she persists in being exactly the opposite.
It seems that she lives in the filth and squalor that only a teenager can live in for months, then suddenly decides she must clean her room at 11.30pm.
This also requires a loud thumping up the hallway past my bedroom to the bathroom, where she deposits an extremely large pile of dirty washing which she is always surprised to find hasn't been washed ready for her by the next morning. It also means a large pile of towels to be washed, some of which feel suspiciously like they have never been used, just left on the floor for a while.
Now here it is, 11am and she's still in bed. Meanwhile I had to be up at 5.30am to fit a 30km bike ride in before my day even began and she'll be up soon wondering why I need an afternoon nap.
I wonder if you can have morning tea naps.
I have come to the conclusion that no matter how far I run, how many lunges I do, how many upward dogs and downward dogs, three legged dogs or pigeon fuckers I do, I will always have my mothers legs.
It has been a disappointing realisation.
By the way, there is no yoga position called a pigeon fucker.
Its just pigeon. But I used to work with a guy and his nickname was The Pigeon Fucker.
Not that he did mind you. Well, not that I know of.
He was french. Its a long story. And I think you had to be there.
Anyway the point is genetics suck.
Its a constant battle fighting them.
After looking through old photos of myself and my sibs when we were kids, I have come to the conclusion that we must have worn the most ridiculous, daggy swimmers you could ever hope (not) to see.
Now I myself only saw my mother sew once, when she sewed my bridesmaid doll a dress and cape. But these definitely have a home sewn look to them. And we seemed to wear them for years.
Take me here for instance. Determined to get to the beach. And nothin', not even those baggy daggy swimmers is going to stop me. I mean mother, you could've taken in the legs a little. I bet if I keep looking I'll see one of my sisters wearing these before I got them. Probably both of them.
And one of my favourite photos. Emjay, the oldest, with our brother and sister. Sporting a very unfashionable blue suit with a matching home done fringe trim.
And here she is again, what maybe a couple of years later, still wearing it.
Move forward another couple of years and my other sister is now wearing it and Emjay has a much nicer, yet still loose fitting pair of swimmers on. As you can see I'm still wearing the same pair I had on in the beginning. Because I had penty of room to grow into.
OMFG. And I was right. Even though I was only half joking. Here is Min, wearing my baggy pink swimmers. I wonder if I ever owned a new pair.
I have this vision of my mother, searching through her wardrobe every year the day before we went on our summer holidays, pulling out a bag full of atrocious old faded swimmers and handing us each a pair. Mind you it wouldn't have been a very full bag. We seemed to last through our childhoods with three of four pairs between us.
I've found America.
In the slide box that is.
I'm feeling a bit emotional actually.
This is a photo of my Papa. And that little contraption by his side is the camera he used to take all these photos we look at while he was on his world trip.
Amazing really. I often think of him and wonder what he would have made of the digital photography era. He developed his own photos, and when he died we cleared out his dark room. We took trailer loads of photos to the tip. Thousands. My father told me once that Papa asked him once if he wanted to go for a drive with him. He said they were gone for hours and hours because Frank (Papa) kept stopping to take photos. Dad said he took hundreds of photos.
After he had died, and Nan moved into a retirement home we cleared out the house. The sun room was full of National Geographic magazines. Thousands of them. He and Nan went on two world trips. One in 1957 and one in 1964. He must have had a real facination with the world.
He died one morning making toast. Nan said she heard the bang when he hit the ground. As you can see, he wasn't a small man. It was the way for someone like him to go.
Not so good for my Nan of course. She was very lonely after that.
I've never thought of them as being dead. I always imagine that they went off on another world trip and are having such a good time that they never came back.
My hilariousness knows no bounds.
At least I always think so.
See Kimba gave me this brilliant idea for a birthday present for her good friend Nat.
She told me that Nat was in love with Sam from Supernatural. And she wanted to make a scrapbook page with Nat and Sam getting married.
So I stole the idea and made it into a magnet for her.
Here they are on the happy day
You know it was hard to find a picture of him smiling, those Supernatural guys don't smile much do they.
But then I thought - she has to get rid of her boyfriend first so the nuptuals could go ahead. They need to have a fight.
And by then I was totally out of control.
And I got sidetracked from the wedding theme and went with the fighting theme. Because I thought I may as well add Lloyd, Kimba and Chicken Little and then they'd have the whole household to play with. Except Sam of course, because he doesn't really live there you know.
Anyway they looked pretty cool even though they were bastards to cut out. And now I've given them away my fridge looks very bare.
I can feel another set coming on.
If you could have personally witnessed one event in history, which one would you want to have seen?
I would want to have seen the one I witnessed today!!
The day we won the AFL Black Diamond Grand Final.
Not me personally, but Lloyd played in it, and if your children participate in a sporting event, it feels as if you've played the game yourself.
This morning I had the sick tummy. When we got there and sat down, I couldn't take a photo because my hands were shaking.
I did manage to get a shot of the bar though. Because it was pretty cool. And rowdy by the end of the day. Daz wants to hire it for a party. That top level was packed by 2pm.
And it was hot. 30 degrees. So the boys were running around for almost two hours in that heat.
So they ran out and had the pre game huddle like they always do.
The ball sat waiting for kickoff
And the mascot did... whatever mascots do. Which seemed to be run around and get chased by small children. Nice socks.
Half time came and it looked grim. We were losing 59 to 24. The coach would have been yelling, because he tends to go ballistic in that situation.
There was a brief moment of panic when I saw one of our guys fall down and I said - OH NO, HIS LEGS GONE. And poor Daz jumped up and started running off because he thought I was talking about Lloyd. Thats because Lloyd has something called myositis ossificans. That means that he has torn his thigh muscle almost in half and now it has a bone growing in it. Thats why he shouldn't have played. But they strapped him up and he did. Even though he wasn't supposed to play for three months. But as I said, he's a 19 year old young man who must make his own decisions about these things.
So when I saw this happening I was a little concerned
But it was all good. And it was pretty cool how they had that physiotherapist come and rub them all down.
And can you believe that just when the final bell went, the other team were leading by 5, and our man had just caught the ball and he had to kick the goal to win the game. No pressure on him. And he kicked it.
And they were joyous
And they recieved medals
And they sang loudly
And it was a good day.
And I had my first dose of sunburn for the summer.
And I just found this on top of my washing machine.
When I was a kid, and through my teenage years I did a lot of running. Sprinting. And my mother used to drive me around to these carnivals and when it was getting close to race time she'd start on about me going to the toilet. She'd ask me about ten times - do you have to go to the toilet? And I'd always say, no. Then right when we were in the marshalling area I'd say - I have to go to the toilet and she'd say, in an exasperated voice, well its too late now!
We did that for years.
And today I have the same nervous tummy, but its on behalf of my son. Today he is playing in the AFL grand final. And he's playing against doctors orders and against mothers orders because he has had a badly torn thigh muscle. But when I told him he was being ridiculous to risk it by playing he told me he was being a 19 year old boy who wanted to play in his grand final.
So I said I wasn't going to go and watch because I didn't want to see him get hurt or disappointed or carried off on a stretcher. And I said that if I went that would mean I condoned what he was doing. And Daz said that was ok because Hazim el Mazri's mum only ever went to two of his games because she didn't want to see him get hurt.
But when I woke up this morning I knew I just have to go. I can't sit here and not know whats going on there. I'd be ringing Daz every five minutes. So fingers crossed that it all goes well, the muscle hangs in there, he plays brilliantly and they win the comp.
Bloody kids.
I think I have to do a nervous poo.
I am disappointed with the world.
Again.
It never fails to disappoint me in disappointing me.
Every day I hope I move closer to my goal of escaping the world and becoming a recluse.
I've mentioned before that I live in a violent sort of town. 20,000 people, mining, army, farming, lots of testosterone, lots of bars, lots of beer, nothing to do. It doesn't lead anywhere good.
Last time I wrote about it a young man was bashed to within an inch of his life. Just down the road. And in the next few months, some other young men will go to jail for doing that to him.
Many lives ruined over what, five minutes of "fun".
No winners there.
A couple of nights ago another young man here was bashed and kicked to within an inch of his life. He's on life support with a fractured skull.
And I feel broken hearted about the whole affair.
Because everyone talks about it. And everyone says - oh, that was awful, oh poor guy, oh, they need their arses kicked.
But they don't really care.
People are so desensitised to violence that they say all the right words, but don't really feel anything.
You know what I thought about when I heard this had happened? I thought about his mother getting a phone call at 3am in the morning. I thought about her ringing the airline, booking a flight, making the trip to a shitty country town in NSW where her son was working, so she could stand beside his bed and watch him fight for his life, because twelve drunken idiots had decided his life wasn't worth anything.
Her beautiful boy.
Her beautiful boy come to this.
And if he dies, all he'll be to anyone is three or four lines in a newspaper.
A few years ago it used to be our teenage girls we had to worry about. And god, I still do, every time they leave the house. But now it seems to be our boys we have to worry about more. So much senseless random violence out there.
Kickings, bashings, glassings, stabbings.
Someones son, brother, father, boyfriend, husband.
Spare a thought for this young man. Wrong place, wrong time people say. Is that meant to be some sort of comfort.
5.30 am was a long time ago. Twelve hours ago actually.
That was when I was up and getting dressed ready to hit the road to Sydney for a christening.
Daz, Lizzie and I left at day break
We travelled about half way then picked up Kimba and Lloyd. I always think of that ad Not So Squeezy when I see them all in the back of the car. Poor old girl hasn't had the whole family in it for years. I think we were carrying about 360 kilos.
Lizzie has always had to sit in the middle and always complains about it, so on the way home I sat in the back and she sat in the front. Ahhh memories. When I was a kid we sat four across the back seat. Being the youngest I was always pushed forward. I don't think my back rested on a car seat my entire childhood.
The roads in NSW are some of the worst you will find anywhere in the world. At school holiday times they show a programme on tv called How To Survive the Pacific Highway. Which always makes me laugh. Nervously. Hey I know how to do it. How about the government gives us some money and we fix the roads!!
But I quite like these parts on the way to Sydney. I just imagine them going - right, well we want to get to Sydney so lets just cut straight through the mountain here. But there are always signs up saying - Caution, Falling Rocks. And I don't know what you're supposed to do about it. Not like you can go anywhere.
But we survived. And arrived. At a strange sort of christening. Where we got to watch a Sigur Ros video clip and were then asked to pray not only for the people suffering gastro in the nursing home, but also for the Iranian army.
But I was glad I went because I saw someone I hadn't seen for twenty years. And when I did know her back then, I really liked her.
And I got to pass on my buzzy buzzy bee.
The other day I was at the chemist and I saw this little guy and I loved him and bought him. And he was only $4.00.
And I've had him hanging around with me and he's made me smile every time I looked at him. So today I gave him to the baby having the christening and I hope he gets a smile out of him as well.
And I really hope God is keeping an eye on that gastro.
