Here’s to friends

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And on Fridays we shall dance

We lived in New Zealand for several years in the early and mid nineties, and I saw more music there than I ever have or ever will. Something about New Zealand music and the New Zealand sense of humour that I just loved. Also, views of volcanoes. I never got sick of seeing volcanoes. I have lots of happy music memories. This is one of my favourites. (embedding disabled)

PS Also, can you remind the mister I want this somewhere, sometime at my funeral…he’s sure to forget.

Update: lads to me, ‘okay, one more time, and then that’s enough, all right?’

That’s that then

I said to the mister the other day, ‘You know, I’m sick of taking up so much of this family’s oxygen. It’s too much, I’m tired of my tiredness dominating everything.’ It’s time, it really is, to move on, to be grateful for what life gives me instead of mad becuase of what it takes away. I know that. And I’m trying, I really am. If I knew a counsellor here, I would have gone to one, and I’m sure they’re out there, but honestly, I wouldn’t know where to look, and I don’t know the right questions to ask, and so I’m relying on books and the internet and lessons I’ve learned.

Now, all sorts of books and websites and people say you should keep a gratitude journal. Every day you should write down, three or four or ten of the things in your life that you feel grateful for. Honestly, that’s a bit…well, let’s just say, you couldn’t grow up with my mother and take such a thing seriously. Cynicism? We haz it. In bucketloads.

Don’t get me wrong. Lots of my favourite bloggers have done it, and I’ve always loved reading them, and I’ve sometimes thought, Maybe I should. But then, the blogger moves on and so have I. However, I’ve been lurking at Anita Heiss’s blog for a long time now, and she keeps posting post after post after post of the things she is grateful for. It is such a gloriously warm and generous blog…I challenge you to read it for a couple of days and not feel good about life, the universe and everything. So the idea of a gratitude journal has been growing on me.

And then, last night, I found myself with a random half an hour of nothingness and I thought, I shall sit and watch television and knit another few rows of this beautiful but mistake-prone silk, the first skein of silk I’ve ever bought.

And anyhoo, and moving on, it came to pass that what I watched was Scrubs, and I thought, What would I do without this show? And then I thought, There’s my Answer.

So here it is. My gratitude diaries. It’ll be a bit half-arsed, because I am my mother’s daughter and that’s something about myself I don’t want to change. Something considerably less than a gratitude diary then. A series of occasional posts about things in my life that rock.

Things that rock #1
ScrubsThe day after my father’s funeral, I lay on the lounge, a pillow, a quilt, cups of tea, glasses of wine, toast and cheese, and I watched an entire series of Scrubs. I chose it because it was simple, easy to watch and would help to pass the day. But it was more than that. There was something perfect about Scrubs.

Scrubs is funny. Hilarious. It always makes me laugh. To do that, it relies on silliness and character quirks. Now, myself, I’m not much into a quirk for the sake of a quirk. Quirks, in the wrong hands, can encourage lazy writing, readership and viewing. I blamed the late-nineties, when the quirk became everything. But Scrubs takes quirks and uses them to give the characters depth. I have tried to write ‘my favourite character is…’ but I can’t. Perry of course, because he has the best lines and because of his humanity. Carla because she’s sassy and I like the way she twirls her hair. Janitor, though I wish they’d kept him imaginary. Elliot. JD. Turk. Kelso. Whoever I’m watching at the time, that’s my favourite character. These characters are flawed and they make mistakes (in my mind these are two separate things). Their lives do not go smoothly. But they keep on keeping on. With humour and empathy and humanity and grace.

Scrubs was the perfect choice for a day when, despite it all, life goes on.

And that is why I say, Scrubs rocks.

(PS And I know I should be grateful for skeins of silk, but I dropped a stitch and had to spend half an hour finding it, so I will have to write that another day or it will defeat the porpoise somewhat)

Not bad thanks, yourself?

So.
Collected the author copies of my novel hot off the press on Friday. Author copies. Heh.

Boys acted putridly, running around and shouting and showing off and not letting me think.
Chucked the shits at boys.
They cried.
Went home.
Burst into tears.
Rang the mister.
Cried some more. Not a lot he could do given he’s half a world away and I’d miscalculated the time zone and woken him up.
Why didn’t I let my Dad read it even if it wasn’t finished? And not to mention my performance the night before was awful, I don’t know if I’ve ever been that nervous before, what was I thinking I’ve only been on stage six times since this time last year, my script is crap, my voice skipped, my legs shook.
Expensive phone call.

Just at the right moment, my mother-in-law came home, grabbed an author copy from my hand, then sat at the kitchen table and started to read. Every single word from the title page on.

And then when I said thank you to her, I started to cry again, but I didn’t have to explain why, and after she’d held me for a while she started reading again.

I started to find my feet on Friday night and didn’t feel half so nervous, and then met gorgeously lovely friend, drank riesling, talked and laughed and cried.

And maybe my performance wasn’t totally awful because here is our review.

And really, what more could a girl ask?

Friday night, 9pm

I have eaten too much curry and drinken too much wine.

I used to be an excellent mother

At the supermarket (the one in the shopping centre with the toy shop where we were picking up something for a birthday party because somehow or other my brain remembered that the party is tomorrow morning at ten am so last minute shopping would involve getting up extra early), I was standing slightly bamboozled about what to buy for tea, because I do most of my shopping at the Central Market, so rarely shop at supermarkets anymore, when I hit upon an idea.

“Let’s have fish fingers!” I said.

And my boy said “what are they?”

And right in front of a woman who was very well dressed and hadn’t had to say, not even once, ‘pleeeeease stand still, I’m trying to think’ to her little girl.

Bless.

So when we got out of the supermarket I said to my boy “do you want an ice cream?”.

And he looked at me sideways, before he said “yes”.

Today…

…amongst a range of other things, some of which were stressful, some of which were not, we went to see The Bee Movie. It was Ace. Which is unusual for a movie made for children. Really, I have been quite shocked at the poor standard of movies available for children. Eldest Boy did bury his nose in his Garfield book a few times (he always takes a book for when it gets sad or frightening, which, for him, it very often does, such as in the trailer for Horton Hears a Who, during which time he had to wipe his eyes several times, and I can’t tell you what that does to a watching Mum) but by and large we all three of us had a Mighty Fine Time.