Archive for the 'Beloved' Category

Boo-Hoo Bash

Published on September 9, 2010 in Beloved, Cranky/Dopey Bitch, Depression, Married Life and Queen Me. 2 Comments

For the sake of her ego, she wonders if she should be telling you this. The fact that if she were to go away he would be okay. Financially and emotionally because, really, what does she bring to the relationship? She doesn’t earn very good money, nor is she a nubile Stepford Wife.

It is not a total fiesta of self-flagellation she is attending. She has her redeeming features. But the problem is, her best qualities could easily be possessed by a younger, hotter model.

On the flip side of her dread is the idea that he may think that she only stays because of the stability he provides her. Which isn’t true of course. She thinks he is cute and cheeky and goofy, crazy intelligent and more than a little bit sexy.

Patting her hair nervously and smoothing down her dress she hopes that perhaps she got dressed up for this pity party all for nothing.

40 Hours of No Internet……

Published on August 23, 2010 in Beloved, Cranky/Dopey Bitch, Pop Culture and Queen Me. 16 Comments

Here in Australia we have a fund-raising even called the 40 Hour Famine. Traditionally you give up food for 40 hours and people sponsor you. But the beast has evolved and you can choose to give up anything. Some give up furniture or transport or technology or even shoes. I decided to give up the internet. A bit piss-weak I know, but I was gonna make the money whether I starved myself or not, which would have been very ugly for husband. So that is what I did this weekend. Of course my lil facebook addicted brain couldn’t let go of its status update habit.

If I was near the net, it might have gone something like:

Deep breaths, I can do this.
Wow! I have so much more time to get ready this morning!
Do you think I could make money out of a dog corral at polling places at election time?
I can’t believe how nervous I am just to go on a stupid course. ‘Writing for Young Adults’ at UWA with Deb Fitzpatrick, AJ Betts and Cate Sutherland.
Fuck I despise nodders. The chick in front of me looks like a bobble-head dog. One or two timely nods of agreement will suffice lady.

….this all took me till about lunch time on Saturday. And then I gave up, just enjoying lunch at the Left Bank with Nursey Chick then a lovely election dinner of Little Caesar’s pizza with MoFoKA and family. The company was sterling and Little Caesar’s is actually the best pizza in the world. Like they won an award for it. You haven’t lived till you have had the Greek Lamb pizza or the Eskimo Joe dessert pizza. (See why I couldn’t give up food for 40 hours?)

I know how much time I fart-arse around on the net and it really has to stop. Perhaps I need a 40 hour famine every weekend?

ps: Go listen to the latest song ‘Love’s the Reason’ by Jasmine. Tis awesome. Just like her.

100 Word Post: His Second Love

Published on August 13, 2010 in 100 Word Posts and Beloved. 6 Comments

I dare not write this unless he is ensconced somewhere safe.

I wish that I could forbid him to sit astride those two wheels ever again, but he loves how it frees him from the grind.

‘Ride safely!’ every day – an amulet.

‘I will!’ is the reply. Maybe it is his too.

When he is a little bit late, a thin blanket of unease gently tightens around me. If I hear a car door open and shut, twice, my heart stops as it listens for the creak of the front gate. When the doorbell doesn’t ring I can breathe again.

Sometimes I Just Wanna Tell You Stuff

Published on July 15, 2010 in Beloved, Books n Stuff, Pop Culture and Teaching. 10 Comments

It isn’t all literary sophistication around here you know. Well. Actually if you are a long-time reader/friend you probably definitely already know that, having been subjected to posts about pubic hair, haemorrhoids, and me dropping and dragging in Year 9 English classes.

That disclaimer out of the way, I just wanted to let you know how much I love Freaks and Geeks. How the doodlewhacker did I miss this show? I mean, I had heard about it vaguely around the traps and I knew that it was set in a school but that was it.

Love, love, love it. So poignant, funny, heart-breaking, cringe-inducing and lovely.

I am yet to procure the last 2 episodes but I will get my dirty hands on them, don’t you worry.

When I cornered Beloved into watching an episode or two he was all ‘Isn’t that chick from Juno?’ I thought that too, except that, was Ellen Page even born when it was made? Okay, so she probably was but she would have been, what? 5. Okay, I exaggerate. She was 12.

Watching this show I realised which role Linda Cardinelli was made for. If she wanted to be in films that have turned into the biggest pile of poo. Bella a la Twilight franchise. Tell me I am wrong. And yes, she is too old so that cannot be part of your argument. This is my fantasy re-casting, okay?

Have a nice day!

On a Cheery Note, I’m off to Karratha!

Published on July 6, 2010 in Babies, Beloved, Married Life, Nostalgia and Queen Me. 9 Comments

There is nothing like an impending flight to make you assess your life up until said trip in a flimsy metal contraption that is very, very high up in the sky.

It is not that I am scared of flying. It is more a fear of death/not being around. I am so freaking nosey – all the things I will miss out on if I am not here! Of course I would want my husband to move on. But not too soon. And she will not allowed to be hotter or smarter than me.

But as I mentioned above it causes me to look back on my 32 years. I have and have had a really nice life. My family is generally whole, my childhood was sunlight and dust mote filled, my love life wasn’t rent with any particular betrayals or scandals, I went to university, I traveled Europe after my beautiful wedding, my friends give me joy and fulfilment. I have written a book, that if anyone so desired, only (hopefully) needs a bit of tweaking before possible publication, if not for the fact it is any good, but for nostalgia’s sake.

If it was my turn to go, the only thing I would be sad about would be not having insects with my Beloved husband.

I don’t think that being in a plane crash would be an ideal way to meet my maker, but shit it’d be a story told in the family for generations. I have also heard that if compensation is sought by the relatives, they often get quite a lot because of the psychological trauma the deceased would have suffered knowing they were going down. That might just be in America though.

Anyway. If I am meant to go ‘young’ , if it is not in a blaze of glory, this way it will at least be in a blaze of some sort.

Grumpy Young Pussy; ‘Received’ Loud and Clear

Published on July 1, 2010 in Beloved, Cranky/Dopey Bitch and Queen Me. 23 Comments

‘Why do you want those mean fuckers to give you a review?’ Beloved asked.

‘I dunno, feedback?’ I replied feebly. ‘And I have to practise getting slammed if I want to be a writer.’

But of course it was more than feedback. I wanted validation, acceptance and a little more traffic. I knew that when the review happened I would probably cry like I was at my first day of primary school, not knowing where to put the tissue box we had to bring – scared, confused and out of my comfort zone.

I imagined that I would be told that my template is a terrible colour (regardless that I love it), I am shallow, anal-retentive, flippant, insecure, arrogant and take my husband and nice lifestyle for granted, have whiny-ass body issues and have no idea what the ‘real’ world is like. Well…at least that is what I think on a down day.

However, there was one thing that I wouldn’t be able to abide. MoFoKA, who reminded me of the delicious, nasty, hilarious, train-wreck viewing website back in January, and I were discussing when my review might happen after 5 months of waiting, and what the harsh, cold light of reality would have to say about Grumpy.

‘I don’t care what they say,’ I said with more than a quiver in my soul ‘just as long as they don’t tell me I can’t write. I would die if they said that.’

Did they say that? Opening my comment box at 5am, to find that curt message awaiting me – my breath caught and my legs jolted with adrenaline. Were all my dreams still intact?

Go and have a look for yourself.

The Scent of Adhesive on a Dressing….

Published on June 27, 2010 in Beloved, Nostalgia and Queen Me. 12 Comments

….for Beloved’s hernia surgery wound took me straight back to being no more than 4 years old, wearing an eye-patch for a lazy eye. However, the patch and glasses weren’t working so surgery it was. I imagine I was about 6 years old but I remember it like it was yesterday.

My parents dropped me off the night before the operation, staying quite late. I know they were far more worried about it than I was. And now that I am the age my mum was when it happened, albeit childless, I feel the fear too. I remember exactly where the bed was, I remember lying there in the gloom of the evening, after they had left, playing with the gift they gave me – a plastic tablet that you drew on and when you lifted the thin film of plastic the drawing would be erased. The plastic was pink and the drawings were neon orange. I drew my family, with the house and car and budgie called Drackie. I was comfortable and very much awake. The nurse had to come in and gently encourage me to go to sleep.

The next morning mum was back. I was given various medications to get me all doped up. Tablets? Nope, wide awake. Needle in the butt-cheek? Still perky. I got all the way into the operating theatre, mum by my side to the very last set of swinging doors. They laid me onto a padded rubber mat with 6 round indentation filled with a gooey gel. I am not sure how real or accurate that was, but it is what I recall. I was with them until I counted down from 10 with the big black mask over my face.

The anaesthetic didn’t agree with me when I woke up – I spent a lot of time throwing up into a kidney shaped dish. And the pain. You know how when you are getting the flu and it hurts to move your eyes? Times that by about 100. The only problem with that was that my parents had brought me another gift. A sparkly red tutu, that they had placed behind my bed. It doesn’t matter how sore a little girl’s eyes are, there is no force on earth that can stop her craning her head to get a peek at a tutu.

I am not sure how long I was in the hospital, but I had lots of visitors. When mum and dad came to pick me up, I was happily engaged in a burping competition with a boy in the bed diagonally opposite. I think his name was Daniel. Or Brad.

I don’t have many memories as clear as this one, except maybe my first day at school, or the time I had to have surgery on my other eye, perhaps not much than a year later.

And a Manky Crow has Tried to Pull the Rubber off my Left Windscreen Wiper

Published on June 23, 2010 in Beloved and Cranky/Dopey Bitch. 4 Comments

I was in lengthy anger mode: stomach clenched, brow creased and eyes dead. The stormy afternoon weather matched my mood perfectly. I had expected him to be perhaps 5 minutes late at the most. Instead I had to do a couple of laps around the block and use my credit card to buy a parking ticket. An hour later I was still scrunched in my seat, windows misted, reading ‘On the Road’, hungry and tired; the ceaselessness of the story making me feel worse.

When he finally called to be picked up the face slid in place. He jumped in the car, tried to poke me in the side, apologised for being late; there was a ‘disaster’. I spat scant words at him and resumed the drive in silence. Along the rain and brake-light speckled road we drove.

On Albany highway canola yellow industrial piping snaked in the long grass took me back 7 years to heart-broken country drives, where I longed to stop and wander in those electric fields.

Pulling in to the driveway I had to bring forth a saying, other than ‘Disaster my fucking arse – how hard is it to pick up a phone? Pretend you need to wee or something and call from the dunny.’ I told myself, ‘Come now Grumpy – on your death bed, will you wish you were angry at him more?’

Wipe This!

Published on June 15, 2010 in Beloved, Cranky/Dopey Bitch, Fighting the Fat and Queen Me. 8 Comments

Do you know what gives me the shits?

Windscreen wipers.

I was getting all cocky cos here in Perth it is winter and Sunday was balmy 23 degrees Celsius. (So what is that in Farhenwhatsit, about 74?) That meant that Monday and today it pissed down with rain and was bloody cold, relatively speaking.

Added to that is Beloved had a hernia operation and cannot ride his motorbike. So at 5am I was driving him to work before my 6am personal training session. (Yeah, what a hard life you whinging Stepford Wife)

5am.

Driving.

Raining.

Dark.

Monday, did I mention the Monday bit?

And bugger me if I couldn’t get the windscreen wiper rhythm right. You know what I am talking about. Too slow and the rain builds up, too fast and the wipers start making that highly irritating ‘Screeee screee’ sound. So what level do I put my wipers on – 1, 2 or 3? No – none of them are right. Then I start fiddling with the length between each wipe on the chosen level. Of course once you have gotten yourself into a good wipin’ groove the bloody rain changes.

“Light drizzle - no wait, big fat slow drops - nah, PSYCH! back to drizzle, woah – now we are going under a big tree that just got a good gust of wind through it – ploppity, plop, plop, plop – weeee this is fun! ”

It never ends people! If I am up, driving, in the dark on a Monday at 5am, the rain could have the effing decency to be consistent.

Heart Starter

Published on June 8, 2010 in Beloved and Cranky/Dopey Bitch. 17 Comments

I didn’t need to go to the gym today. I mean, not that I did.

All I needed to do was look in the mirror after taking a whiz in the manky staff-room toilets, to see that my very sentimental and not-cheap necklace was not around my neck. As opposed to how it was when I last saw it.

And there went my heart rate.

You know what is not good, besides losing a diamond necklace? Running around a school, head down, eyes searching the ground muttering ‘Fuckfuckfuckfuck!’

By the time I got back to my desk I was hyperventilating, but mid-pant I saw a glimmer under my chair.

’Oh thank FUCK!’ I cried, until I saw it was just the chain and not the pendant. On your hands and knees, under your desk going ‘No, no, no, bugger, bugger bollocks – oh – wait there it is!’ is also not a good look.

Beloved need not know of this, needn’t he?

I didn’t think so either.