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An Inheritance

I don't really consider myself overly sentimental, but I always thought I would inherit a sewing kit from a grandmother or from my mum. I felt a bit sad when I realised that if I wanted one I'd have to create my own.

But then something happened. As I mentioned last week, the lovely Steph very kindly made me one of her softies that I turned into a pin cushion.

And then something else happened. Leonie from Raglan Guld, read the post where I talked about starting my own sewing kit, then she very generously sent me a package stuffed full of sewing goodies and beautiful fabric to start me off on my way.

I have had to rethink my definition of inheritance. Because I have inherited my kit, just not in the way I thought it would come.

So thank you again, Steph and thank you Leonie. And thank you to you too, Chunky Chooky Cath, for my lovely bag that also arrived in today's post that I tore at in the post office like a pre-schooler on her birthday.

And So

I posted this photo on Flickr four years ago. (Since then, we three have met up only twice.) Now we are heading into t-shirt weather and my arms are free to air, I am reminded of such friendships and the way they come and go like the seasons.

Here's the explanation that accompanies the image:

We three Aussies got these tats done a few years ago in Melbourne before all heading off to different parts of the globe.

Kerryn loves Kurt Vonnegut and decided to get "And so it goes" (a recurring line from Slaughterhouse Five) tattooed on her shoulder.

Finally on the other side of three decades worth of bad shit, Gil decided to get "And so it was" tattooed on her back representing the past that she has moved on from but that made her who she is.

And Meg, the eternal optimist decided to get "And so it will be" on her right arm as a symbol of the charm of the unknown.

We reunited this afternoon for a few brief hours before we were once again claimed by different time zones.

From here.

You Don't Say

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The Best Thing

This is our friend Jeff. I have blogged about him before and he has blogged for us before. One of the best part of our Sundays is seeing him at our local market and buying a loaf of Redbeard organic sourdough from him, as we did this morning. Buying bread is always a special occasion.

And so is eating it. Which is why, when something really terrific happens, PJ often says: "That's the best thing since the return to unsliced bread."

Bad Decisions Make Good Stories

It used to be that when people forwarded me humourous emails I would usually find them funny enough to forward on to other people. That's a rarity these days. But. The other day my friend The Dooch forwarded me these in an email that I think are worth sharing with all of you.

From ruminations.com:

• What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

• Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

• Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realise you're wrong.

• I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

• Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the "people you may know" feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?

• Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQs. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.

• There is a great need for sarcasm font.

• Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realise I had no idea what the fuck was going on when I first saw it.

• How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

• I would rather try to carry 10 grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

• I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

• LOL has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".

• I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

• Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using 'as in' examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss's last name to an attorney and said "Yes that's G as in...(10 second lapse)..ummm...Goonies".

• I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

• I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

• Bad decisions make good stories.

• Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a problem …

• You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

• Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.

• I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

• "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this. Ever.

• I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dammit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?

• I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

• I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

• I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

• Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, hitting the G-spot, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time...

• I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.

• I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

• My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day "Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?" How the hell do I respond to that?

The Half-Parent

Firstly, a big thank you to the lovely Julia for seeing this book in an op-shop and buying it for me. The fact that Julia is a close friend of Z's mum makes the gesture feel particularly thoughtful.

In my quest to read as much as I can about stepparenting I thought I would give this book a go, though my hopes were not too high. This book was first published in 1975, when I was just a year old. I thought it would be dated and boring and have cobwebs between the paragraphs.

Boy oh boy was I mistaken! Maddox was a journalist before she became a stepmother, so her research is empirical and her writing style is a perfect balance of objective editorial and engaged parental enquiry.

One of the many interesting things I learned (from page 35):

In English and American usage for about four hundred years, from 1440 until at least mid-nineteenth century, the term "mother-in-law" was often used to refer to a stepmother. Although such a meaning is now regarded as incorrect, it made literal sense. A stepmother was a mother "in law", that is, in canon law, by the fact of her marriage to a child's father.

Do I feel like I am half a parent to Z? No. Even though he lives with us for half the week, I still feel like his parent for all seven days, just as I'm sure his mum does.

Recently while we were in an op-shop, PJ found another copy of Maddox's book. I bought it to lend out to people, which I have already started doing, and so I could take this photo.

A half + a half = a whole, right?

Perspectives

From BaseMotion:

While interviews traditionally present what people say, in Perspectives the interviewees don’t actually say anything. With the spoken portion of the footage edited out, Perspectives leaves only body language, pauses for thought, and interjections to do the communicating.

More interviews here.

E's for Eternity

Happy birthday to my sister Eddie!

Eddie's not her real name. Her real name's Emily. But somewhere in the early pages of our childhood, my three sisters and I all decided to call each other Eddie. It made sense at the time, despite the occasional confusion.

The Hot Club of Cowtown have a song called Emily. My favourite lines are:

E's for eternity, M that she's mine,
I love you Emily, that's I-L-Y.

Because of the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, March 21 is considered the first day of the Zodiac year, which means March 20, today, is the last. So those who celebrate their birthday today are supposed to have the oldest souls of all.

In her wisdom I have learnt so much from her, but my favourite thing ensues from her name. Her initials are EAU, which is how I still to this day remember how to spell beautiful.

Ns and Zs

I miss Z today. I usually do on Saturdays. We pick him up from his mum on Sunday mornings so usually by Saturday we start to ache for him.

He made this card for us at the end of last year. It sits atop my bookshelves just across from where I'm sitting. I often think how hard it must be for him to have two homes. I guess I only think that because I grew up in one, but if I had had two, then I would have got used to having two and having to make a card for each of my homes, just as Z has.

Inside the card, he has drawn these Ns and Zs in a circle. It's him referencing PJ referencing him. Last year or maybe it was the year before when Z was learning the alphabet, he said to PJ, "Ns and Zs come from the sky, Daddy." His allusion to the way lightning looks when it flashes from the clouds.

And here's this, PJ's poem about Z's language discovery in the sky:

Modern Proverbs

More here.

Solastalgia

I first heard our friend Geraldine mention the word solastalgia, which, according to TreeHugger means: 

"a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home," according to Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht; in essence, it's pining for a lost environment. It's the mashup of the roots solacium (comfort) and algia (pain), which, when combined, forms a term (and an idea) reminiscent of nostalgia.

Coined from responses from interviews Albrecht conducted over the past few years, the word describes Australians' deep (and growing) sense of loss as they watch the landscape around them change. "They no longer feel like they know the place they've lived for decades," he says.

Guest Blogger: JS

Our lovely friend Jeff has just returned from visiting his partner Cath in China. Here is a snapshot from his time away:

This morning, walking in Lu Xun Park, I slowed, and then stopped, to watch a man writing traditional characters on the footpath using a large calligraphy brush dipped in water from a plastic drink container. By the time he had completed a line of text his first characters had already begun to evaporate.

Further along, sitting on the edge of the path practicing characters was an older man with a beard. At his feet was a puddle of unintelligible words. Buying breakfast from a stall in Tina ai Lú I silently held out a handful of coins for the young girl selling baozi. Having just arrived in Shanghai, and my only Chinese being nihao, I could only point and hope she understood.

A small child smiling on the back of a pushbike repeated phrases her mother sang as she peddled passed one of the street’s corner fruit and vegetable stalls. Language I realized was something I had taken for granted; now words were unfamiliar, and I felt more infantile than the child on the back of a pushbike repeating her mother’s song.

But I also experienced something other than a sense of alienation as I held out my handful of coins at the baozi stall. There was something more. The characters written in water evaporating on the warm concrete footpath, and being stepped over by passing pedestrians may have been unintelligible to me; however the gentleman’s practice, his gestures were not. The young girl, with a prod from her father, selected the correct coins from my palm and handed me my meal.

The Opposite of Hope

Last night PJ and I went to Z's end of year school concert even though Z had a fever and stayed home with his mum. I'm so glad we decided to go anyway as it was a great night: a colour-filled, hodge-podge programme followed by supper made by the parents.

Last year when we were considering what kind of school to send Z to, this is exactly the kind of school we hoped for. Sitting in the hall last night I was very aware of how, as parents, we have such high hopes for our kids. I was also very conscious of my usage of the word hope and how many times it was spoken or sung during the night.

I hope you enjoy tonight's performance. I hope you have a great Xmas. I hope my muffins turned out OK.

I like PJ's definition of hope. That to say I hope is to negate accountability and presume that things will change by external means.

When we say I hope, we are really saying that we are powerless, that we have already given up. Hoping that things turn out a certain way is like believing in God or like being superstitious. It is rejecting responsibility. It is a passive aspiration.

And of course I don't feel passively about Z or about any of the other kids at his school or about any of the other things in my life that I feel hopeful for.

In Eastern philosophy they say embrace hopelessness; that we need to smell the shit, know the shit, and stop deluding ourselves.

Am I deluding myself? Am I ready to live without hope? Is the opposite of hope really despair?

Happy Thursday Part 10

The Conquerer

A few nights ago I was one of 17. We car convoyed to a big gaudy Greek restaurant on the petticoated outskirt of Newcastle: families, feta, folk dancing.

I asked those seated around me what words they know in Greek.

PM, who's on the home straight of his PhD said that he has been hibernating, working. When he leaves the house, the light reaches him from different angles; sounds and encounters are as daydreams.

Recently on a milk errand he found himself a pedestrian behind a man, and a woman in a dress cut low at the back.

Sideways up the centre of her spine she had some letters inked that PM had to sneak closer to read.

The tattoo comprised 6 letters that spelt a Greek word that PM made sure he memorised to look up later.

Hello .edith

Yesterday, the organisation that oversees the Internet, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), unanimously approved the move to introduce domain names other than .com, .org, .net and 21 other suffixes we have come to be familiar with.

Some people are predicting a goldrush mentality to develop.

.countries, .cities, .brands and .names will in early 2009, be available to the highest bidder.

Just as we now can't imagine life without the Internet, I bet soon we'll be wondering the same thing about the multiplicity of domain names, whether for good or bad, or just plain confusing reasons. 

But what I think will definitely have a positive impact, is ICANN's decision to allow extensions in languages other than English, with characters other than the 37 Roman ones currently available.

It really makes me wonder if the virtual world will become the last bastion of diversity.