As indicated in a previous post, whenever I get to the end of my tether, the first person I talk to is Anthony – always.
I think it is remarkable that when I am the needy one, he becomes incredibly supportive and completely forgets his own neediness.
This is Malay, our only remaining rooster. He has Anthony’s tenacity!
These two guys have a lot in common.
They both like to show off.
They both like to dance on the roof.
They are both gorgeous.
However, the second prince, despite all appearances to the contrary, is much more interesting!
Last night I rang Anthony and, instead of the usual commiserative, areyouokay? conversation, I blathered on about a whole bunch of farm/child/other problems I was having. My blah blah blah went a bit like this:
Can you believe it? The peacock man hasn’t come, I can’t find three of the girls so they’re probably nesting in a paddock or killed by the fox or maybe the neighbour has shot them and I am at my wit’s end!
Ming is fighting with me again; I think we should send him to bootcamp – what do you think? I can’t stand it!
Oh bloody hell now this other thing has happened and I don’t know if I can see you tomorrow because I have to …. argh!
You know that old lawnmower – is it worth fixing? What if it blows up? How am I supposed to figure all of this out? What! Are you crazy? How can you possibily help when you can’t walk – oh sorry, sorry!
Well of course I’m stressed – why are you chuckling? How dare you chuckle!
Yes, yes, yes, I know you love me. I love you too. Can we develop a new repertoire – this is getting boring!
Oh, all right, are you sure? Okay. Yes, I feel calmer now – thanks, Ants! G’night.
I miss the patriarch.
Oh, I have been so so excited about Anthony’s, and my, idea for a Christmas present for Ming this year. Ants and I have been discussing it for some time but have finally made the decision to do this (I can’t say what the Christmas present is in case Ming reads the blog; he hasn’t for some time, but you never know).
This will undoubtedly be the last time Ants and I collaborate on this kind of thing, for two reasons: 1. Ants’ dementia is getting worse; and 2. Ming is nearly 19.
I guess it is these two factors that punched me in the face this morning when I drove Ming into music school. I mentioned Christmas Day and said Ants would be coming home for the day and Ming’s reaction to this was so horrible that we ended up having our first row for weeks.
We made up for lost time.
While Ming and I were yelling at each other, I thought of Ming’s Christmas present – the only thing that has elicited a bit of enthusiasm from Ants for ages.
Since this morning’s row, Ming and I have had another, followed by a tentative truce in which he said, “We only have each other, Mum”, and I said, “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Dad.”
And now he is in his room and I am in mine and Anthony’s phone isn’t working.
Ming asked me today what I wanted for Christmas and I said, “Wings”.
After Anthony’s hospital adventure yesterday, the hospital doctor rang me and said that the CT scan didn’t show anything and that she surmises he is having TIAs (mini-strokes) and this makes a lot of sense to me because I have seen him have these strange ‘turns’ a lot over the last few years. When I did a bit of research, all descriptions of TIAs were an exact match so, even though a TIA can’t be picked up on a scan, this does seem to explain these episodes. The trouble is – like yesterday – he just looks as if he is asleep and it’s only when I try to rouse him that it becomes obvious that something is wrong.
The nursing lodge staff want to watch him carefully for a week and I’ve been advised not to take him out, so that’s fine. I mean, I haven’t been taking him out lately anyway, because it is so difficult to lift him and all that. I rang and spoke to him and he said, “Maybe I should just step in front of a truck!” and I reprimanded him but of course who can blame him for feeling like this.
Oh I just can’t stop laughing – I keep bursting into guffaws because of three things:
1. My BFF emailed me twice today to complain that he was getting bombarded with email notifications of my work-in-progress romance novel. His emails are shrill with angst and outrage to have such tripe enter his inbox. I have, of course, apologized and tried to eradicate him from the ‘list’ to no avail. We are having lunch in a couple of weeks so hopefully we can fix this but, in the meantime, I’m quite enjoying torturing him – ha!
2. In the romance novel that I’m editing and revising on the other blog, I thought it best to change Matt’s name to Bob. That’s because, when writing the first draft of this novel last century, I didn’t know a Matt. So now that I do know a real Matt, I thought it best to use that editorial ‘replace’ thing to get Bob into the story. The trouble is that every single time the word ‘matter’ comes up in the novel (with surprising frequency) it gets altered automatically to ‘Bober’ – do you see what I mean?
3. Then, tonight, around an hour ago, I rang and spoke to Anthony and he said, “When am I going to see you?” Argh!
That’s okay. It is fine and he is fine enough now and will probably sleep really well tonight after today’s ordeal.
Me – I am going to laugh myself to sleep!
I am, once again, subscribing to too many blogs but I don’t want to unsubscribe (like I had to do once before when it all got too much and there was a software glitch) because I really enjoy those blogs and I’ve even found a few new ones.
This presents a dilemma that will be familiar to most bloggers: How do I keep up with all the reading, liking and commenting as well as write my own daily post(s)?
Well you can’t, can you, so don’t even try. Read, ‘like’ and/or comment on the blogposts that interest you on any given day and leave it at that. You don’t have to read everything! Check out the title of the post and if it appeals to you, read it; if not, it’s no big deal. It isn’t a crime to not read everybody’s blog posts (especially those daily people like me!) Take the day off and delete all of your email notifications because there will be more tomorrow. – that is guaranteed!
I lost a few ‘followers’ when my bird blog evolved into something more personal and that is fine. As a novice blogger I was initially a bit sad not to hear from a couple of people anymore but, as a more seasoned blogger, I completely understand. After all, why would someone interested in birds also be interested in Parkinson’s disease?
Blogging is a strange and beautifully unpredictable world. You make friends, find commonalities, offer support, receive support and you are allowed to say anything you want to say. I find this exhilarating, but, yes, risky and even a bit frightening. When I tiptoed into this blogging world a little over a year ago I had no way of anticipating that I would become so emotionally gripped by various bloggers/people. I had no idea that I would discover friendships that would alter my own little status quo and give perspective to my little life.
Who cares about the stupid statistics? That is the one thing I have begun to loathe about blogging – this constant, daily reminder of how many ‘hits’ you’ve received. Why does that matter to us so much – are we that desperate for acknowledgement that we exist? Why are we competing?
Give me a hug, virtual or otherwise, any day!
PS. If I have lost touch with your blog it has not been intentional….
In just a few hours, December will be arriving and I have to admit I am a little nervous. Last time December visited, it outstayed its welcome and ruined Christmas and made us all wish it would go away. This time, I’ve decided to welcome December by asking it to be more supportive and I was quite blunt in this request this morning. Thankfully, December wasn’t at all offended and had no idea how badly it behaved last year and has even apologized! Nevertheless I am on my guard because December has a reputation for being unreliable, and rather arrogant about its ownership of Christmas. And, during a further discussion with December tonight, I’m almost certain I detected a little smirk. I hope not because I really want us to be friends or, at the very least, to establish a working relationship. I have been trying to contact December for a couple of hours now but there is no answer so I guess I will have to wait until it arrives to reiterate that if it becomes overbearing again I will have to take action and possibly kick it back to November using Ming’s old football shoes and Anthony’s walking stick.
But perhaps it is my own attitude to December that is the problem? Maybe I should just embrace December like a long lost friend? Yes!
In my earlier post today I mentioned ‘potplants’. This is an Australianism for a potted plant, not marijuana.
Thanks to those commenters who alerted to me to this possible misunderstanding.
I can’t stop laughing!
By the time I was around 10, all the girls in my class started developing breasts. One by one those breasts blossomed, and wearing a bra became a status symbol. And, one by one, those girls stopped trampolining with me.
I was a tomboy, tall and gangly. So, when the bra phase started, I suffered two contradictory kinds of dread. The first was the fear of it being discovered that I didn’t have any, and the second was of getting them – breasts, I mean. This latter fear took precedence.
It was two years after every other girl in the class had proudly made the singlet-to-bra transition that my mother insisted on purchasing my first bra. On the way to the shop, I was distraught: “Isn’t there some way of stopping this?” and “What if they get in the way when I’m climbing trees?” and “Are you sure there’s a God?”
Six months later, I caught up with the other girls and, to my dismay, rapidly overtook them. Those who had temporarily abandoned me now envied me. After all, I had the biggest breasts in the class. It was horrible!
But of course I got over it and, to my surprise, I grew up.
….
Years later Anthony proposed, we got married and I immediately became pregnant with Ming. It was, to say the least, a rather quick succession of events. But the thing that happened most quickly was the growth of my breasts.
So it was with an all-too-familiar anxiety that I found my breasts transmogrifying from a size 12C – to an (eventual) 18E.
By the time I was three months pregnant, Anthony and I still hadn’t told anyone except family so we were both disconcerted to be confronted with sudden, effusive congratulations from everyone – the postmistress, the local shop owner, even the lawn-mowing man. When we tried to be evasive, various subtle and not-so-subtle allusions to the size of my breasts were made. I would cringe, feeling exposed.
On every social occasion, family get-together and even at work, I was bombarded by comments about my breasts. These varied from the hilarious to the complimentary to the lewd. But it wasn’t until a friend of my mother’s visited and exclaimed, “My God! Your mum’s right – they’re gigantic!” that I decided I’d had enough.
I glared at her, then made one of those dramatic exits that pregnant people are often forced to do, due to the insensitivity of non-pregnant people. I rushed tearfully out of the house and over to the dairy, and watched the cows being milked. (The irony of this only hit me later!)
But the dramatic exit strategy worked. I had to repeat it a few times over the remaining months, but eventually my breasts were allowed to grow in peace. Strangely, my belly hardly grew at all.
….
I thought, and hoped, that after Ming was weaned (which only took about two seconds because he wasn’t interested) I would go back to my normal size but it never happened. One of my worst memories was of Ming walking in on me in the bathroom after my shower and running away screaming “Argh – the breasticles – the horror!”
Note: For obvious reasons there is no photo to accompany this post.
jmgoyder 