Monthly Archive for February, 2010

And They Weren’t Even Drunk!

Published on February 25, 2010 in Teaching. 6 Comments

‘Love you’ said the Year 10 boy with the artfully mussed hair to his equally artfully mussed mate, as one peeled away heading to class after recess.

I smirked, waiting to hear ‘piss of you faggot’ or ‘you are SO gay’ in reply. When it wasn’t forthcoming my mouth may have dropped open as I stared at Mr Love-You.

‘Well THAT is one thing I have never heard a 15 year old boy say!’ I told him

‘What Miss?’ he asked all innocent-like ‘We have good friendships – ‘ he broke off his spiel, on the way to maths, to give another coiffed brethren a hearty hug.

I kept on walking to my home-room, shaking my head with bemusement and a strange sense of happiness. Are there really male teens out there who are really that enlightened – and by all accounts -straight?

Gives you a little bit of hope, you know?

Cycles

Published on February 22, 2010 in Beloved, Books n Stuff, Depression, Fur Baby, Married Life and Teaching. 10 Comments

Tired. So, so tired.

Just want to nap. Don’t want to go that place where I like my colleagues and love the kids but hate that 90% of the lil buggers couldn’t give a crap about learning anything.

I want to stay home with my puppy and have cups of tea and lemon curd on toast. I want a leisurely morning at the gym and an afternoon of fixing up my novel, with a nap thrown in for good measure. Then there would be a nice dinner with Beloved and in the cool of the evening we would take Theo for walkies where he would sniff and wee on everything and we would narrate his thoughts: ‘This is mine, and this is mine – ooh – and this too!’

Regardless, I will plod through the next five weeks, till 2 weeks of toast and naps and writing make me forget about the apathy of teenagers until we do it all again.

Is this really my 8th year of doing this?

Just a Story

Published on February 19, 2010 in Can't be bothered categorising, Depression and Fur Baby. 5 Comments

When Belinda hears Chloe sobbing into the phone, hundreds of kilometres away, she knows that unlike herself Chloe does not yet have the ability not to feel anymore. But then again, Belinda wasn’t the one to get the phone call.

‘She said – she said she is really going to do it this time’ Chloe cried. Pulling her emotional blinds down quickly, and only betrayed by a slight fluttering of her heart, Belinda listened. ‘She said she has driven somewhere, where we won’t be able to find her. She is in the car and she has a hose and she has taken pills – ‘ Chloe stops to take a shuddering breath.

They both know if she was really going to do it she wouldn’t make the call. She wants to be saved. But by being saved she wants to be looked after, cosseted, coddled and cocooned. She doesn’t want to learn, understand, look after herself.

She won’t call Belinda because she won’t cry, get distraught. Belinda will tell her off, call her out for her manipulation. Tell her to get proper help, call the police.

Belinda hangs up the phone, while Chloe calls their father. She wonders if maybe, really, this is finally it.

Not A Review

Published on February 17, 2010 in Books n Stuff. 5 Comments

I binged this weekend. I know I shouldn’t have and it stopped me from doing things that I needed to do. But once I get sucked in I can’t let go.

With all the words smeared tellingly in my head, I admit that I read three books. I know I haven’t posted about anything I have read in a while but that is not to say I haven’t been reading. That would be like not breathing. I just thought I would give you lot a break. However the books I read have forced me to resurface. Not because I need to review them but because they have wrinkled my brow and inflamed my loins in consternation.

This weekend I read Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick, Fallen by Lauren Kate (This week I also read Vulture’s Gate by Kirsty Murray. A great Aussie Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Dystopian novel, it doesn’t fall into the rant category I am about to inflict upon the other books…but I can’t guarantee this when the main characters come of age)

My rant comes from being a ‘bored’ and grumpy ol’ housewife (I know I am not really these things, but do play along). Look, I know there has to be a suspension of disbelief when you read a teen fantasy/romance novel. I get that. But I think it is harder to do this in books than films. Books to me are so much more intimate. They get into your head to create feelings and private pictures that films can’t. Therefore, when a writer creates an idea about love, romance, lust or whatever I think we are more vulnerable to it.

I fear that books such as the above are creating an unrealistic version of love for impressionable teens. I would understand if the books were aimed at lust starved old bats such as myself – it is all a bit escapist and sexy. But they aren’t. What are these girls learning from such stories? (Twilight don’t think you are getting away without a spanking either – bend over Meyer!)

Girls are learning that they can be sorta cute, sorta smart, have absent, crap or dead parents and then they are going to meet the most drop-dead gorgeous, mysterious and sexy guy who is going to treat them like dirt. Somewhere along the way there will be mountains of sexual tension, a ‘nice’ guy who gets left out in the cold and somehow this very average girl is literally the centre of the universe. And oh the lust! Perhaps it is jealousy but can we have a scene of Bella and Edward in however many hundreds of years it takes the horniness to fade please? It might go something like:

‘Can you stop fucking poking me in the back with that thing?’ seethed Bella

‘Aw come on honey’ wheedled Edward ‘It has been a while’ and in an eons old patented Edward move his hand clambered over Bella’s shoulder and grabbed a handful of boob.

‘Are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind? I go to work, take care of the house while you are out hunting all day and then you expect me to be in the mood?’

……anyway, where were we?

Meh. But why am I whinging about the lack of reality in a genre that is called ‘fantasy’? Idiot.

However I did read Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead as well, and I did enjoy it a bit more because the main character was strong, feisty, had a ’sexual’ self before setting her sights on the hot, unobtainable guy and while she was attending a vampire school – the bitchiness, machinations and rumours made it ‘realistic’.

It is my own fault really. If I spaced the girly books with other genres I probably wouldn’t get my knickers in such a bunch.

As you were. Rant over.

The Small Things

Published on February 14, 2010 in Beloved, Nostalgia and Teaching. 4 Comments

Beloved and I got back together for the 3rd (and final) time in early 2004. It was also around this time that he was severely betrayed in his work life by his once-revered cousin. So since he wasn’t working and we were ‘honeymooning’ again, he came to stay with me for a few days as I was teaching in the country.

It was so nice to have him there. My memories of that town and him, weren’t very happy so to be able to turn them around was lovely. We had a nice meal together on the Monday night and while I went off to work on Tuesday he got to sleep-in, watch TV, relax.

He did warn me that he had applied for a couple of jobs, so if he was called for an interview he might have to leave. Every time my phone beeped with an sms I dreaded it would be him, saying he was going.

That sms came and I couldn’t help but be bitterly disappointed. I couldn’t even say good-bye, being in the middle of teaching. And it was hard coming home to an empty house every day.

But all of that disappointment was gone in an instant when I arrived home that afternoon, morosely dragging myself into the small unit, with the yellow kitchen, brown bathroom, red carpets and paper thin walls. I looked around in wonder, tears of laughter and joy springing to my eyes as I peered around the house.

Everywhere I looked was a post-it note with a different message. In the toilet, laundry, in the bedroom, in the fridge, on the TV – everywhere. Smiley faces, kisses and proclamations of love abounded. When I spoke to him that evening I almost-jokingly told him it was worth him leaving to get the notes.

I kept the notes up till they lost their stickiness and fell off. I found more notes hidden on my wall calender – one for every month that I flipped over.

I still have those notes, stuck in my diary.

And I still have my Beloved, for which I am always grateful.

Beloved Is Still Napping At 7pm on a Friday Night

Published on February 12, 2010 in Beloved, Married Life, Queen Me and Teaching. 3 Comments

Two weeks into the school year and I am already weary and heartsick. People say it must be so nice to have Year 12s. Um, no it is not. They aren’t necessarily better behaved and there is more pressure on them (and me) to pass.

I was reading through my blog archives (I am waiting for a review from these guys, so I am trying to cast an objective eye on things) and found this old one which sums up my experiences and feelings. Except this week it was one kid who uses the death of his mother to randomly yell at the kid behind him and call him a ‘blonde c*nt’. When I ask him to step outside he yells ‘Yeah, well the stupid fucking c*nt is talking about my mum and she’s dead’ and of course the poor little blonde c*nt is looking more than slightly traumatised cos he hasn’t said a word.

Anyway, if you are bored on a friday night (noooo, not speaking from current experience) or would like to waste some time at work, check out my September 08 archives. I enjoyed going back through them – I got to get married again and go to Europe. On second thoughts, don’t do it. Might make you puke.

PS: On the ‘objective eye’ note, is it hard for you guys to tell where I have linked in a post?

Pervy Mangoes

Published on February 7, 2010 in Nostalgia. 13 Comments

When I was 13 we moved house. We moved from the three bedroom, 1 bathroom house that my dad built with his own hands, to a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house on 3/4’s of an acre with a pool and garden that back onto a tributary of the Canning River. Even though this new house was only a 15 minute drive away from our old one, the small tracts of agricultural land separating them made it feel like it was forever away.

For half a year Lil Sis and I refused to change schools, getting up early to catch 2 buses and walk quite a distance. Mum even shopped at the old shopping centre we used to frequent. We were excited to be in this lovely new place but we hadn’t counted on being homesick for our old life.

We met our new next door neighbours on the day a young man lost his life. 2 weeks in the new house and we were awoken by the crash and grind of metal. Mum’s bare feet padded quickly to the phone as she called an ambulance without even venturing outside to see what had happened. Mum and dad shooed us inside and asked us to get blankets. His name was Clint and he was only 16. There wasn’t a mark upon him, even though he had been thrown a clear from the car. What mum noticed was his clean white socks, exposed after his shoes had been knocked off. Dad noticed the gurgle in his throat as he left this life.

The neighbours gathered in our driveway that November day, trying to make sense of how the cool, crisp Eucalyptus smelling morning had heralded the death of a boy. One set of neighbours included the District Superintendent of Education in our area. He was quiet and unassuming and there was his raucous red-haired wife who would yell out to him when they were gardening and pull a finger sign if she felt it necessary. The neighbour next door was an older gentlemen with white hair and bushy beard. His name was Albert. They all seemed very nice.

The new garden was very big and in it Mum discovered an almost obsessive love of gardening. One day she was watering by the wooden fence. Albert too was by the fence. Except he had a hose out of a different kind. Mum calmly walked away. Dad calmly went next door and told him if he ever did anything like that again he would kill him.

So from then on, Albert was renamed. We already called him Alby Mangoes. This was a bastardisation of the Australian adventurer Alby Mangels; he was also a film-maker and conservationist who was never short of a busty vixen in Daisy Dukes and bikini top. My sister thought his surname was Mangoes. So next door neighbour Albert ‘Alby Mangoes’ was henceforth known as Pervy Mangoes.

When my sister left school at 15 I was left to walk there by myself, and wouldn’t you know it? Pervy would walk his dog at exactly the same time. He would tell dad ‘Bee is such a lovely little school-girl’ and my skin would crawl. However as we got older he seemed to lose interest. Being innocent my sister and I didn’t even question why – we just thought it was nice to be able to go for a walk without being not-so-surreptitiously followed, or go for a swim without having to see if he was loitering at a decent vantage point in his garden.

When he died some 10 years later, dad went to his funeral and I am not sure why. Perhaps out of respect for his long- suffering wife. When I moved to the country to teach she sold me their funky retro octagonal dining table.

I adored that table.

Something Something Something Dorkside

Published on February 4, 2010 in Beloved, Married Life, Over-sharers Anonymous, Pop Culture and Queen Me. 9 Comments

Bee has been practising her Darth farts.

Her Beloved tells her: ’Be careful or you will Sith yourself.’

She says she won’t because she doesn’t use enough Force.

In the Jungle: A Guilty ‘I need to post’ Blather on Trans-Indian Ocean Materialism

Published on February 1, 2010 in Can't be bothered categorising and Cranky/Dopey Bitch. 14 Comments

A significant proportion of my family are from Tanzania. That is in Africa. East Africa. I know many of my readers are supremely intelligent but you have no idea how many people ask dumb ass questions when I say my mum is from Tanzania.

‘Is that in South Africa?’ and ‘Oh. But you’re not black’

To say visiting there when I was 15 was a culture shock is an understatement. Not safe to pee at the airport? Huts on the side of the road? NO McDonald’s? To quote Crissy ‘What kind of bitchery was this?’ Sometimes we couldn’t have a shower because the water pressure wasn’t strong enough to get it up the hill, and you didn’t drink the water. Want a cup of tea? Get your milk straight out of the goat.

But the culture shock wasn’t just material. My cousin was going in a swimming competition at her school. I asked her if she was putting sunscreen on, since it was so hot and sunny. She didn’t know what the hell I was on about – and then cried herself to sleep under a wet sheet that night as the blisters formed.( Slip, slop, slap people – that is all Aussies hear as soon as they are old enough to see sunlight.) The general white populace was gun toting, my family included, those guns having been used on other people to murderous effect.

In Australia we were always told about Stranger Danger and how certain things are inappropriate and what you should do if someone does something to you that they shouldn’t. But when you are in a country when people are starving and a significant proportion of the population have HIV, there are other community service priorities. So amongst the white population, notwithstanding the African population, abuse was rife.

One of my Uncles went back home to Tanzania recently after visiting for my cousin’s wedding. He bemoaned the materialism in Australia. I would have had a go at him, but he is right. I keenly feel, but don’t do anything about, our consumerism. But on the other hand he hates how he can’t drink and drive here, he has to wear a seatbelt, he can’t smoke anywhere and that women are seen and heard. He has his materialism, employing Africans at a wage that takes them years to buy a bicycle. Just because it happens in a beautiful, undeveloped country doesn’t make it any less insidious.