Knowledge November - Day 25 - Forgiving and Forgetting

I've received an email from no less than fourteen people in the past month, either written by an old lady whose name escapes me (Joyce Butterwell or somesuch) or Reg Brett, who both seem to be 90 years old and authors of 'The Plain Dealer' column from Cleveland, Ohio. I'll leave it to them to take each other to court and claim rightful ownership of the published and emailed wisdom.

Whoever the hell it was, they once wrote a list of 45 life lessons; most of which I've already seen on coffee mugs, bumper bars and t-shirts but this one rang a few bells:

Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

I know that Joyce or Reg or whomever has my best interests at heart, because there's no point in dwelling on bad situations that happened in the past or things I can't change or understand.

But what I hate - yes, hate - apart from people saying 'Don't take it personally' are people who automatically assume that because you can't forgive or forget something, you haven't moved on in your life.

Bulldog Craplock was my last 'office-based' boss and treated me despicably. She actively bullied me at work and then used her power and privelege to have me forcibly transferred from her office despite admitting in front of me that I was an excellent at my job.

My husband, LC, was a witness to my despair and powerlessness every night for a month. Unbeknownst to me, he tried to get her on the phone at a time when he knew I was out of the office to see if he could find out what the real problem was and how it could be resolved more reasonably. She then hung up and said to a fellow colleague, H, "Well well well.... why don't I get my husband to do my crying for me?"

H was appalled but kept silent. Bulldog was her boss too.

Three days later, Bulldog was informed by the HR department (her willing helpers in moving me on via the Enterprise Agreement) that I'd finally broken down and been admitted to hospital. Her eyes were dry until she read an email that LC had sent her, describing what she'd done to me. He threatened to send it on to everyone that she and I worked with: then the tears started to flow.

H heard her crying and assumed that it was due to her disappointment at being knocked back for an ARC grant because she'd put her name on as co-researcher on too many projects to be feasible.

She rushed in to see what the problem was.

"You know, don't you? You know what I did," bleated Bulldog.
H nodded, a bit afraid. "Yeah, I got the email too."
"Oh no, what have I done? Who else knows?"
H started to think that Bulldog was overreacting a tad. "Don't worry Bulldog, it's just me and the two PhD students who wrote the application who got the ARC response. Besides, there'll be other grants and we've got enough funding to cover the next few years."

As Bulldog wiped away her tears and visibly brightened in seconds, H realised that she hadn't been weeping over lost grant money at all. "Oh thank god, H! Um, right, of course you're right, there's plenty more cash in the sea...."

With the help of NTEU, I received a small pay out and my fellow staff with other job options (not easy when you're an academic researcher in a narrow subject field) soon left Bulldog's employ as a sign of solidarity and disgust. I used the money to work from home as a wannabe writer, pretending I was on a half salary for a few months.

Then, of course, the book was published, and I scored a few interviews and articles. I blogged more often and was invited to chat on radio. The chocolate gigs got bigger and better, and I loved the semi-regular segment on the commercial airwaves and the seat-soaking exuberance of not knowing who was calling on the other end of the (live to air!) line.

Moving to Melbourne saw a couple of TV spots, a weekly radio gig with Beautiful Bernadette and freelance work for the Age. A fitter, faster body, happily-settled-in child, fulfilled husband and a life that feels like it's full of interesting options instead of dull obligation.

My spies tell me that Bulldog has since endured a few well-earned dollops of Karma, and that's good enough for me - I'm not burning for revenge or thinking about her incessantly. Every now and then the pain of what she did comes back (you don't forget a stay in a psych ward too easily), but I then look around me and it disappears. What the experience has taught me is to fight hard (thanks NTEU), keep good notes of what happened-and-when and never, ever put up with being treated unfairly or badly.

So please don't say, "If Bulldog hadn't have done what she did, you wouldn't be a writer now, would you?" because that is simply not true. It has been me who actively sought out new areas to explore and tried (and will continue to do so) my best to get in there, grab at them and do 'em. My good fortune will never excuse her evil, egotistical and destructive behaviour and I will never, ever forgive her for what she did (not that she's apologised or asked for forgiveness). Why should I?

Knowledge November - Day 24 - Old Bag Aspirations



















I was talking with Sapphire's best friend Juliet's mother, Tracy, about the challenges and joys of living in a small, densely-populated inner city suburb and the resultant layers of cultures, litter, noise, fun, friendliness, drunkenness and planning problems it entails.

She shared with me her recent bravery in telling off an insolent seventeen year old boy for stealing mail and littering. As she was walking home from the shops she spied a young dropkick yank out a letter that was sticking out of a mailbox, rip it up and scatter it along the street to the general mocking laughter of the five other dropkicks with him.

Tracy did what - as we've both since recognised later - a few of us 'forty something' women are starting to do: she went all Angry Old Bag on him. She bolted across the road, jabbed her finger at his chest and told him to pick up the mail and put it in the bin or she'd report him for mail fraud and littering.

He of course said, "Make me" and folded his arms insolently across his chest as his buddies looked on, but he severely underestimated the power of the Angry Old Bag. Tracy had undergone some training with the FBI in the US some three children, a PhD and two countries ago and was able to rattle off enough legal gobbledegook to convince the Acne-ed Arse that she could arrest him on the spot and perhaps even whip a taser out of her Green Enviro Shopping Bag to press home her point. He sullenly snatched up the papers, put them in the bin and stalked off, with his mates laughing at him instead of Tracy.

"I'm too old for them to be interested in ogling, yet young enough to take them on," she said.

Fiona, another mother at the party drop off, nodded and said, "Yeah, I want to be an Angry Old Bag too," and recounted her 84 year old neighbour giving the auctioneer across the road a real mouthful when he refused to take bids in one-thousand-dollar increments, preventing a young couple from joining the buyers.

"Soon, she had the crowd giving the auctioneer a slow clap and he backed down," she said admiringly.

Regular readers of Blurb from the Burbs will know that I've already recognised the Angry Old Bag emerging from inside me and am starting to actively cultivate her. After all, once you find that first chin hair......










In the past month alone, I've:

* Told off five teenagers for throwing Red Rooster cartoons on the footpath. They put them in the bin when Milly the dog trotted over insisting on making friends and receiving some pats. The kids have sat in the same spot each lunch time and not littered again since.

* Said, 'Could those jeans be any lower on you?' to a boy on the way to school. He ignored me, but seeing as I walk past him every day I have noticed that he's not worn those particular trousers since then.

* Butted in a conversation on public transport. Three people were talking about their housing commission flat in Footscray. "Of course, it's 'Spot the Aussie' where we are, with all the African refugees and that." I leaned in and said, "And that's a good thing, isn't it?" and shocked them into nodding. Glumly of course, but at least it wasn't telling me to enjoy sex elsewhere or starting an racist punch-up on the number 57 tram...

* Snobbed off 'Schnauzer Woman' who decided that she did know me after all, especially when she'd just overheard our local councillor (a fellow parent at the school) talking about a grant I'd won for a litter project

* Helped a lady in a motorised scooter fill up her plastic bags in the fruit and veg section of Safeway (those green capsicums are a bugger to reach); and

* Discussed with other budding Angry Old Bags just how cool we think it is that 82 year old Peter Cundall, recently of 'Gardening Australia' fame and regard had been arrested outside Tasmania's Parliament House for refusing police instructions to move away from the steps as he joined protesters in calling for Royal Commission in the approval of Gunns Ltd's proposed Bell Bay pulp mill in the state's north.



















I hope at 82 that I'm still able to get fired up enough about something to slip on my homeypeds and tracksuit and bound out of the house to join in the fight.

Knowledge November - Day 23 - Five Years' Time

During our lowest, most stressed, anxious, grief-stricken or most humiliating moments, we've often thought, read or even said, "Think about it: in five years' time, will this matter?"

I've learned that five years - in the past or ahead in time - is an eternity.

Five years ago, I was a manager of fourteen busy staff for an unpopular-but-very-necessary government agency. Eighty million dollars of expenditure per year was under my watchful eye and having to drop everything and respond to an urgent query from the Minister's office by midday was a constant part of working life.

My salary was very good for someone of my skills and age at the time in fairly small Adelaide. My boneheaded-but-blessed boss, Mal Function, was on the magical six-figure salary that was almost within my grasp. He was of the earlier generation that moved up the ladder of pay rises and job titles by birthright; by the time I arrived it was either wait for someone to die and/or have to re-apply for your own position (with seventeen pages of selection criteria that had to be addressed and supported) every six months. I wanted that salary: no, I deserved it. How else was I show to everyone that I was successful?

It was four years of waiting with Sapphire in the car for the Childcare Centre to open its doors at 7:00am so that I could be at my desk by 7:30am reading emails, writing reports and eating chocolate from the vending machine for breakfast. After ten hours of this each day, I'd head home and switch the laptop on at 8.30pm for more work after Sapphire went to bed. Sometimes on the weekends, I'd say to Sapph, "Would you like to go on a bus ride with Mummy into town and draw on her whiteboard" so that I could do even more work.

Strangely enough, I started to find that my physical body was starting to protest about my never-ending lunge for the big bucks and promotion.

The dentist made me a mouthguard to stop my teeth from wearing away due to nocturnal grinding, but I bit through it. He doubled the thickness and I cracked it - not from grinding this time, but clenching. Six of my teeth then had to be capped and crowned to protect the spongy and painful layer of dentine that my grinding had exposed, with a new protective cover lacquered over the top that could withstand a fiery car accident. Bedtimes had me smiling at Love Chunks like Hannibal Lecter with a lisp.

Soon, however, night time grinding wasn't an issue because sleep just wasn't happening. My first prescribed sleeping pill - temazepam - was a gift from God. To be knocked out for five straight hours was so blissful. No tossing and turning, or crazy thoughts or worries about work I'd forgotten to do..... I rationed them carefully; worried about addiction and lack of effectiveness, but lived for Wednesday and Sunday nights when I got to pop a tiny pink pellet onto my tongue.

Irritable Bowel became Pretty Pharkin' ANGRY Bowel and nights were spent shivering on the toilet at 3am, huddled in pain, producing nothing. Day times it was diarrhoea, carefully hidden in between meetings and from other visitors in the staff toilets. My face started to smell permanently of the fizzy splatter of lime-flavoured heartburn tablets.

My strategy to cope with the 'bit of stress' was to increase the exercise I was doing. Six and twelve kilometre runs weren't enough to tire me out and improve my energy levels; it was time to get into half-marathon training. And hey, if it was vital to be at the Childcare Centre by 7am, then I'd have to be up at 4.30am in order to get a decent run and shower in before drop off.....

And thus my physical, mental, social, emotional and aspirational breakdown was pretty well covered from all angles and I remember being half-walked, half-carried by LC into an ambulance before waking up in a hospital bed the following day.

Five years later, I can look back at the (thankfully) distant past and quite clearly see that the money, job title, staff, corporate credit card, cab-charge vouchers and home laptop docking station wasn't worth the split fingernails, blurred vision, churning stomach and night-time sobbings. Nor did it signify to anyone that I was a success story in any way.

Five years later I manage no-one, catch public transport, live in jeans and my job title certainly emphasises the 'free' in freelance. Sleep sometimes eludes me, but it mostly provides me with the rest I need. Irritable Bowel rarely progresses beyond 'vaguely miffed' and the migraines that visit me now are not due to clenched jaws, scrunched shoulders or fear.

Five years later Sapphire is my daughter, friend, angel, nanna and nagger. She's no longer on my 'Quality Time - Must do' list, but is a genuine part of my day, my life. Her spirit reverberates throughout our house and my heart. We laugh, talk and wear clean clothes. I am a success now.

Five years later LC and I are stronger, better, lighter. As the rain poured down yesterday and we huddled in the shelter waiting for our tram to arrive, he touched my cheek and said, "I know I'm not a demonstrative guy, but do I show you often enough how much I love you? How much I need you?"

This, the question from the man who carried me into the psychiatric ward on two occasions, sat by my bedside through it all, took me home and hugged me into accepting and realising that I did deserve safety, comfort, security and forgiveness.

The man who empties my migraine sick buckets, pays all the scary bills, allows me to wander the streets with our little orange dog seeking inspiration and beauty and who teaches our daughter to think more deeply, care more selflessly and play more joyously.

The man who, in spite of all I've done, still wants to hold my hand, lay beside me at night and laugh with me over our first morning coffees.

YES!

Knowledge November - Day 22 - Reading will make you (want to) go blind

I am an automatic reader. Cereal boxes, graffiti, traffic signs, upside-down articles being read by other people; it all goes in via the eyes and is unconsciously deciphered by my brain.




















A trip to the doctors' is a visual feast of reading matter, and that's without even considering the out of date magazines on the coffee table: 'Brad and Jen - pregnant at last' or information pamphlets on the counter: 'STDs and You.'

My bladder was starting to squeak every time I crossed my legs, so I tentatively snuck into the toilet adjoining the waiting room. Hindsight is a regretful and pointless exercise, but I've discovered that it's not fun being an automatic reader when using the toilet facilities in a medical centre. Besides, you're at a medical centre - aren't you already worried enough about your health to have made the effort to go there in the first place?

Blue-tacked on the wall directly in front of me and expertly aligned at eye level was a cobalt blue poster screaming: DO YOU SUFFER FROM BLADDER WEAKNESS?

Um, well 'yes' for right at that moment, because that's why I was in there, reading the bladder blurb. But then the infernal poster asked, HAVE YOU EVER...? and the Wound-up WorryWart barely repressed within me took over. 'Do you plan your day around where toilets are located? Do you avoid exercise in case of urine leakage? Laughing? Do you choose to miss the bus instead of running to catch it?' Oh dear....

I dragged my eyes away and looked above the basin instead. GET TO KNOW HERPES, the red brochure stuck on the mirror commanded.















After a few moments, my knowledge of the condition had considerably increased. For example, did you know that one of the first signs of genital herpes might in fact be flu-like symptoms, as in sore muscles, headache, fever or chills? Apparently the herpes microbe creature germ thingies prefer 'soft skin' such as lips, genitals and the anus and it's cheering to know that approximately one-in-eight Aussies have the condition. Who cares about what we spend on health as part of our GDP when we have a statistic like that to be proud of. Mention that during the lull in your next dinner party conversation.....

Back on the bog things were not improving, reading matter-wise, because next to the loo roll holder a nurse had tactfully placed a sticker, advising that BOWEL CANCER IS A MALIGNANT GROWTH THAT STARTS IN THE LARGE BOWEL (COLON) OR RECTUM.

That seemed correct and yet was surely very bad luck for the poor bastards who had it. But
wait, there was more sobering news for any of us automatic-readerbathroom butt-heads who couldn't help but read further: 'A faecal occult blood test is used to effectively and efficiently screen for cancer.'

Well you'd certainly hope it was effective for the stress of having to back out a big one, catch it without spillage or splashing and then carry it into the doctor's office in a hopefully non-transparent tupperware container. And yet: 'These are not diagnostic tests - they cannot tell if you have cancer. They are used to identify people who need further testing.' That didn't sound at all comforting and I started to wonder what the diagnostic testing stage would be like - a three kilogram sample that is required to be crapped out into a four litre icecream carton and refrigerated at home for a week before delivery?

Understandably, I wasn't expecting too much positive news when my eyes then unwillingly alighted upon the sticker on the liquid soap dispenser. 'Crohn's disease and ulcerative collitis (IBD) can cause diarrhoea, rectal bleeding, abdominal pain and can adversely affect the eyes, skin and joints.' It was all fabulous, really. Still, at least, typed in bold, was the hopeful question we all yearned for: 'How can this be treated?' After mentioning a few drugs, the brochure sadly concluded, 'Unfortunately, despite much research, the exact cause of IBD is still unknown.' Marvellous.

After an exaggerated eternity it was finally time to flush, re-dress the southernmost parts of my body, wash my hands, dry off and get the hell out of the scary little room. And yet my urge to read the rest of the material overtook my sense of foreboding. 'Skin Spots to Watch' sported some truly gorgeous colour photographs of basal cell carcinomas, squamos cells, melanomas and Seborrhoeic Keratoses to look forward to the next time I dared ask the doctor to connect the dots on my back; heaps of blah about a new contraceptive implant that admitted in tiny print 'this, like other contraceptive devices, is not 100% effective'; and the eye-wateringly witty 'Managing Menopause and Osteoporosis.'

As my now-shaky hands reached for the door handle to escape into hopefully more positively-decorated waiting room, the smallest poster caught my eye. Ah, the irony of it - 'Come see us at the Anxiety Disorders Clinic - we will help you stop having those panic attacks.'

What I really needed was to be more like my brothers, who choose to read, bless 'em.

Knowledge November - Day 21 - Using my ears

"Please don't sit at the front," said Love Chunks as we walked into the stuffy classroom that still smelled of post-soccer sandals, arm-pits and old sandwiches three hours after the ring of the home time bell.

But I insisted and pretended I hadn't heard him. I knew that by surging ahead, he'd probably follow and sit next to me, even if it wasn't his ideal place.

"I hate sitting at the front - what if there are some little tackers who are brothers and sisters of other kids at the concert and they can't see over our big heads?"

"Stuff 'em," my hand flicked up as if shooing them and LC's issue point away. "We got here first and our kid is in the concert too."

Amidst the squawks of toddlers, the flap-flap-flap of paper programmes being used as fans and the fidgeting of excited performers waiting their turn sitting cross-legged on the carpet, a seven year old playing 'Hot Cross Buns' kick-started the show.

"Ssssh", Love Chunks mimed and tapped my arm, as the loud 'ZZZZZZzzzzzzip' of the camera carry-bag was opened.

Ohferpharksakes how the hell am I supposed to get my camera out quietly? Isn't it like a packet of chips at the cinema or a band aid on a hairy leg: rip it open and get it over and done with? Pompous Old Git.

"Sit Down" he hissed again a short time later, just as quietly but with more urgent menace in his eyes.

Again, I ignored him. POG.

I had made us sit at the very front so that I could get a photo of our little darling playing her viola. She's very good at it damnit and has diligently practised her musical pieces and taken particularly gentle care of her beautiful instrument.

Her piece was the standout of the night. Played not just accurately but with attention to timing and holding out some notes, lingering on others for emphasis and skipping along to build up the rhythm. It may have merely been titled 'Study' but my eyes were moist.

Love Chunks was right, of course. I couldn't stand up and distract her and being right up the front meant that this was the photo we ended up with:

I'll listen to him next time.

Knowledge November - Day 20 - Sufferin' Shufflin'

I'll come right out and say it - I'm in love with my iPod.

It's right up there with my other favourite electrical appliance the dishwasher except that Big Burly Borry's a lot quieter and pleases the entire family, not just me.

Trouble is, I've got the iPod Mega Giga-Byte-a-Thon Super Schlong model (the official name has escaped me) and Love Chunks and I decided to upload our entire CD collection onto it.

That's a lot of CDs - roughly 400 - and they range from 1960s classics to today. Yes, admittedly most of them reside firmly in the 1980s and contain songs that are commonly played far too often on Fuddy Duddy FM which is why we never listen to them anymore.

Despite this, before we shifted states and houses and jobs and schools I spent a couple of weeks sitting with the poota on my lap in front of the telly in the evenings loading on every single damn album we owned, even the dud ones that only had the one song worth listening to (The Pursuit of Happiness' 'I'm an adult now'), or the choices that were made during more easily impressionable times (yes, 'Metallica' really fits into my music collection. No, it's not because of a bloke, why do you ask?) or those for specific purposes ('Look, the pan pipes sounded awesome when that Peruvian band played them live at the markets and it'll be great for tonight's dinner party, honestly').

So, even with over 4,000 songs to choose from, it's no real surprise that my playlists only number 12 and ten of these are to keep me running.

Today however, I decided to live on the edge. I was going to press 'Shuffle' and run my strength-sapping, energy-draining, heart-hurting, soul-straining eight kilometres to whatever song turned up. No jumping to the edge to twist the bum bag around to the front, have my sweaty mitts clumsily grapple the slippery silver box and fast forward to the next song, no. I'd put up, shut up and run up to the very end.

Well, what I've learned from that decision is that iPod Shuffle is for idiots.

Shuffle just means that the evil little device picks out songs that Love Chunks must have bought in his pre-Kath, pre-clear-thinking and pre-taste days and that Apple wanted to dust them off and see what they sounded like in my head phones.

I present you with the RUNNING list. Note that I usually need loud, fast, energetic, inspirational and/or angsty rock songs that keep to the rhythm of my legs, the pound of my heart and the gasp of my breathing....

Play me - Neil Diamond

Grasslands Chant - The Lion King original Broadway cast recording

Move Closer - Phyllis Nelson

Save a Prayer - Duran Duran

I've been waiting for you - Abba***

Don't know why - Norah Jones

Fantasy Impromptu in C Sharp - Roger Woodward

Buachail An Eirne - Clannad

Between the Shadows - Loreena McKennit

There's no one - The Whitlams

Vienna - Ultravox

It was, without a doubt, the hardest run I have ever done in my life, including the half marathon where I threw up on the bank of the Torrens River at the 15km mark and the 23km run when my left big toe nail came loose in my shoe.

*** Yes, dear Abba are my most favouritest band, but this is. not. a. song. to. run. to. EVER.

Knowledge November - Day 19 - Egotistical expectations

Yesterday I was in the city meeting up with some friends who I used to work with in the dark days of Amanda Vanstone taking over the Department of Employment, Education and Training and scuttling the existence of the CES offices. Bill and Sue survived and in fact thrived and were keen to see what a stay-at-homer like me was up to (and, no doubt, looked like these days).

It was a fantastic lunch and we had over a decade to catch up on with genuine promises to stay in touch more regularly next time. As I waited for my ride home at the Elizabeth Street tram stop, my head starting pounding ominously (please Mr Migraine, at least wait until I get home), so I let a tram pass so that I could breathe in a bit more fresh air instead of stale commuters' BO.

The air on one of the city's busiest thoroughfares wasn't much fresher, unless you consider truck fumes, old prawn heads in bins and clowds of secondhand cigarette smoke from office workers to be particularly aromatic. As I slurped from my water bottle, one of the saddest sounds in nature reached my ears. Yes, that of a trapped butterfly, smacking its tiny little forehead over and over on the windowpane of the tram shelter, desperately trying to get to freedom outside.

This black and orange beauty needed saving, brother. As gently as my man-hands and long, ET-phone-home fingers could, they slowly closed around the distressed insect, trapping it. "Don't worry little one," I cooed, knowing I sounded like a loony but who cared: I was surrounded by deaf iPod-wearing travellers who regarded jeans hanging lower than their buttocks as sensible clothing.

I opened my hands in an exaggerated, 'The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Music' gesture, and the butterfly buggered off as quickly as it could. I sat back down on the bench, mentally patting myself on the back for being such a caring environmentalist willing to put my money where my mouth was. No, make that my hands where my mouth was, or was it my brain where my hands were, or...

Anyhow, my ego was stoked and fit to burst. As was my bladder I then realised. There were no loos immediately apparent other than the techno-toilet across the street which I've always been afraid to use. Time was of the essence though, so I snuck into the foyer of a large office building nearby and dashed into the disabled toilet.

Creak.... "Ooops, sorry!"
"JESUS, I'm in HERE!"
Oh. My. God. Someone had opened the toilet door and I was directly in their full view - as well as most of reception - with pants around my knees and blowing my nose loudly into some scrunched up toilet paper. What the hell happened to the concept of one good turn deserves at least three minutes of alone-time in the bog?

Thankfully, the door opener had disappeared, no doubt shocked to the core at seeing me in there, fat fluoro arse-cheeks and white cottage-cheese thighs on dazzling display. Eschewing the blow hand dryer, I dashed out into the sunshine again, hands dripping, cheeks blazing and making a fairly good job of being intently focussed on rummaging through my backpack looking for the apple I'd flung in there that morning.

I bit into it decisively, trying to crunch away the lingering odour of embarassment. Patoooey! I took one look into my apple and saw the healthy snacker's nightmare - a brown hole and only half the worm.

Where was the good turn I was due for saving the boodiful butterfly? Maybe I'd check my lotto ticket at the newsagent or see if I could slip down a Chunky King-Sized Caramel KitKat without my metabolism noticing.

Several minutes later, I was strolling down Racecourse Road, smiling again, loving the ease of travel to and from the city centre and the quirkiness of my neighbourhood. I grinned at the local wino coven under the bridge, feeling friendly and magnanimous. I was a broad-minded, supportive and non-judgmental person who ---

--- just swallowed a fly. No point in spitting it out, it was too far gone for that.

Oh well that was probably my reward. A tiny bit of protein and one less blowie around to annoy me.

Knowledge November - Day 18 - Patience















Patience has never been my strong point.

Whereas my brothers could set up the wooden blocks, Meccano or Lego and create intricate little cities in our pool room (yes, we had a pool room that Darryl from The Castle would have loved), for days on end, I’d have a go for a while and then once all the fun of setting it up had ended would wander off, already bored.

Dad would teach the boys how to play Crib and Chess on our caravan holidays, look over at me hunched on the bunk with my nose in a Gnid Blyton and say, “Would you like to play?” knowing that my answer would always be a muttered, “No way Dad.”

It’s always amused my father that my ability (and therefore interest) in completing crosswords or those hellish cryptic versions is akin to that of a squashed snail's and I don’t want to expend any valuable time on trying to improve those skills. Same goes for Sudoku, Edward DeBono’s ‘Mind Pack’ (still unwrapped after 12 years), inscrutable word puzzles and Christmas games of Scrabble with my mother or brother Rob where mathematics and careful placement of tiles in order to earn a higher score is required on top of merely formulating a word.

Boggle, on the other hand, is MY game. Two minutes of sand and a mad scribble on paper. Perfect. Not unlike the way I make an omelette – a quick beat with a fork then into a cereal bowl and nuked in the microwave for 45 seconds; the same time it would take to come up with at least 10 words of six letters or less.















And yet, once a child arrives, the quantities and qualities of patience undergoes a huge change.

I still don’t eagerly flick to the puzzles section of the newspaper or want to know what the hell kind of Nintendo pip-pip-pip game Sapphire is engrossed in or trade fish or farm animals for pearls or hay bales or some kind of online flim flummery on Facebook but I can sit at a kitchen table for SEVEN hours rolling tiny strips of paper onto satay sticks.

Sapphire was keen to spend a day with me doing arts and crafts and stood at my side as I tapped away on the keyboard, brandishing her large ‘You Can Do It’ activity book in front of my face. “Mum, Dad’s not here, we’ve got all day and you said you wanted to do something with me today and THIS is what I want to do.”

She had me at ‘Dad’s not here’, and the associated guilt involved in having an only child, a free Sunday and heaps of spare coloured paper and glue sticks. Alrighty then.

We cut, rolled and glued until our bellies rumbled and fingers ached. We broke for lunch, then resumed our painstaking task, with Sapphire wisely noting that “this is something that they probably do overseas for us to buy at the Oxfam shop” and that no, she didn’t want to be as famous as Lady Gaga or Britney Spears “because then people would only love me for my money, not for me, and you’ve said that love is hard to find and precious to keep, so I’d rather be unknown and liked even though my hair goes BOING on one side and I can’t breathe out of my nose.”

Colours were carefully selected and discussions held on what kinds of jewellery we’d make for the important women in our lives. (“If I made a bracelet for Dad, he’d say ‘thanks love’ and then hang it on his handlebars so that he could lose it”) and why those women were important. “My Auntie WC is interested in exactly the same things as me and is my best friend on Facebook,” “Auntie S is very beautiful and never loses her temper,” and “Grandma always finds the right thing for me to play with or wear or do and has lots of friends at church called Rhonda or Helen.”

My neck today is sore, not so much from the constant bending over our beadwork, but from slyly turning leftways to sneak some views of my daughter as she worked. Her slim neck, cobweb-fine hair, soft skin, rose-bud lips busily chattering and long fingers nimbly rolling the paper. How did we make such a beautiful creature?

This patience has given me the privilege of spending time with her, laughing at our silly songs and our made-up swear words. At 5pm, I push my chair back and say, “It’s time for you to feed Skipper and for me to rustle up something for our tea.”

She stretches back languidly and nods. “Mum, you know that Taylor Swift album you got me last year?”
“Mmmm?”
“She has a song on it I like. It’s about her being with her Mum and it’s her best day.”
I put the onion on the chopping board, pausing to listen.
“Today is like that.”

Patience makes me cry.

Knowledge November - Day 17 - Well, is it?

Is life better after turning forty one?

I remember when my mother turned forty one, way back in 1981. To my almost-thirteen-year-old self, the actual number sounded old, but she looked young, beautiful and was full of energy.

She had a high school teacher and all-round handyman and cricketing-fanatic husband, two boys aged 14 and 10, myself, a friendly cat called Sox, a house completely paid-off, two cars and skin that made all the girls in my class rush out to buy Nivea because that's what I told them she used everyday.















Mum could feed a family on a shoestring budget, make her own clothes, encourage plants to produce fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers in a climate best suited to camels and sun-bleaching bones and abhorred the expense and the laziness of take away meals. She completed her matriculation four years earlier by attending evening classes at the local TAFE (then called the 'Community College'), studying when us kids were at school and typing out her assignments at night when she'd put us all to bed and came out second in the state for her results.

Pauline Florence also read newspapers to the blind, did more than her share of stints in the school canteen, covered books for the library, had a Meals-on-Wheels run, starred in several musicals, made costumes, sang in the choir and umpired netball matches.

She was a hard act to follow. What the hell have I learned at the same age?

Not much it seems. Instead, it's more a case of what I should know by now but still keep doing. Ridiculous things like:

- Eating an orange straight after I've cleaned my teeth.

- Forgetting - every single time, every single day of my life - which direction to turn the key in order to open our front door, back door, car door, parents' house door, brothers' house doors; having a guess and getting it wrong. Every single time.

- Drinking coffee after 3pm. This has only proved wise if I choose to be lying in bed at 3am, singing 'You're hot and you're cold, You're yes and you're no, You're in and you're out, You're up and you're down' over and over in my head whilst on a lumpy, hot pillow, scratching my legs with toenails that need cutting so urgently I get out of bed, give them a trim, hop on the computer to check out LOL-dogs and start re-naming every snap in our digital photo album from 2005 to 2007.....

- Scoffing spoonfuls of Milo straight from the tin. Being desperate enough for a chocolate fix to have to resort to a powdered malted milk flavouring is sad enough for a kid, but as an adult? One older than twenty who is no longer living on Austudy allowance? Naturally, when there's no-one around when I start digging that spoon in someone still walks in and catches me. It's some kind of Kath Law of Stupidity and Immaturity that isn't entirely undeserved.

- Eating drinking cocoa from the tin, which is even more shameful. I've found out the painful and embarrassing way that this low behaviour leads to coughing fits if you inhale instead of swallow the powdery dust.

- Scrubbing the base of the shower/bath when I'm in there doing my own, erm, scrubbing - one day that Jif creme cleanser is going to splash up into a painful place where the sun don't shine.....

- Making nervous and inappropriate remarks to people I don't (yet) know very well. Such as "Hey, do you want to feel really handsome? Go do some shopping at our local Safeway," before a meeting starts and then finding out that his wife is the property manager for the retail site there. True story.....

- Changing hairstyles. At forty-one, my hair knows what it wants to do. Like a reality show contestant, it just wants to sit there, doing nothing. As such, trying anything new just doesn't work. I don't have the elegance or confidence to carry off a new look. A few weeks ago my hair lightened and cut in a shaggy style that allowed me to roughly tousle it forward and give it a bit of height instead of brushing it back, Lady Di circa 1981 style. Love Chunks' reaction? "You look like the Love Child of Strauchanie and Margaret Pomeranz!"

- Poking Love Chunks in his precious bits which perhaps isn't the best way to commence a discussion on why his throw-away remarks might be misinterpreted by me during my PMT week.

I remain, therefore, a work in progress.

Knowledge November - Day 16 - Mindless Modesty



















After dropping my towel on the bench, yanking off my shorts and t-shirt and subtlely picking out the lycra that insists on travelling northwards I fling myself over the tiled edge to quickly hide myself under the sparkling blue water.

Pathetic, isn't it? As if the entire population in the local pool at that time has any interest in stopping their laps and staring at me and my wobbly bits as we enter lane four. I know that I don't do it to anybody else (too busy in my own gasping personal agony ploughing ever so slowly up and back in the water), so why do I continue to think that I'm so fascinating that other swimmers want to see what this 41 year old is about to do - gosh, in her bathers, at, gasp, the pool?

Whilst the tiny dot that is my intelligent mind understands this, I still feel very self conscious and my attempt at a confident walk from the bench to the edge of the pool always degenerates into a recognisable imitation of Mr Bean's nervous little flappy-handed run.

After my swim, however, things are different. I've done sixty laps without stopping, possess the body of a Grecian goddess combined with the strength of a sleek leopard and the hopeless halibuts around me will be gazing at me with awe as I emerge, dripping and golden, from the water.

Nah. Not one pair of adoring goggles is directed anywhere near me but are instead looking down through the floating bandaids and pubes at the painted black line on the bottom of the pool in their own physical hell. This rebuttal is also reflected in the glass wall leading to the change rooms which remind me that my body is still the same as it ever was - chunky, white, decorated in party-popper spider veins and the sort that looks a thousand percent better with clothes on; especially winter clothes.














When I was pregnant there was no room for modesty. Being a minor medical freak, much of my time was spent with my hands under my bum and knees touching the far sides of a gurney as several students were invited to a) see me, b) have a look 'up' me, and c) very occasionally have a feel inside as well.

"Ah get over it, you prude," my mates would say. "Wait until the actual childbirth; you won't care what you show or to who as long as you can back that baby out with the least possible pain."

Alas, none of the above was true. Sapphire took 29 hours to emerge and Love Chunks and I pushed and grunted through three shifts of midwives, obstetricians and interested students. Throughout it all I still wore a long t-shirt with a sheet over my knees so that from my vantage point I could at least feel as though everything was covered even though my birth canal was directly in line with the door which was located at the end of a very long corridor. What a charming view that must have been for other nervous fathers or lost catering staff wanting to find the geriatric wing instead.

When we returned home triumphant and then terrified at the thought of just how we were going to look after a tiny baby, the local nurse popped in to have a look at my stitches. I blushed redder than the blood that was still oozing out of me every time I moved. I lay on the bed and struggled into my frog leg mode.

It didn't help things when she blurted out "Jesus!" at the sight.

"What? WHAT??" Love Chunks and I said in unison.
"Oh, um..." she struggled to retain her composure. "Oh, it's er n-n-nothing, it's just that you've got a fair old cut down there and it's, um, well, let's just say it's great that you're home and ----"

She turned away and took a deep breath before continuing with, "---Oh stuff it. I've never seen a bigger cut than that one - you're lucky they didn't slice you an extra butt crack!"

Definitely not what a nervous new mother wanted to hear when all hopes of a cursory glance, an affirmative, "Yes, it all looks good," and being fully clothed again within a ten second timeframe were dashed.

Nearly eleven years later, a recent pap test was a real barrel of laughs as well. My usual female doctor was selfishly off sick, so would I mind if Dr Checks did it? What was I meant to say, right there in a crowded waiting room - no way? And why should I refuse - was he, a doctor for several millennia - going to be so carried away with desire during the scraping that I'd be in moral danger? Or, worse - would he laugh? "Oh no, that's fine", I said weakly, "After all, I've had a baby, so there's nothing to be modest about any more," wishing like hell I actually believed it.

Dr Checks merely gave me a cursory "Good morning" before getting right down to work. It was patently obvious that pap smears for him were about as appealing as they were to me. Five minutes into it, my cheeky side emerged through the embarassment: "So, Doctor, what's the thing you hate doing to patients the most in your job?"

He paused to think and looked me in the eye instead of the tampon tube. "Anal exams without a doubt. All men hate them and I hate doing them - especially at the end of a day when they're - shall we say - a bit ripe."

My modesty issues evaporated for a moment. "Fair enough, but what about well, this?" I replied, gesturing at me, him, his gloves and that scary metal springy salad tong thing.
"Nah, this is OK. Women tend to be more relaxed and, to be honest...." he trailed off.

I wanted to hear him finish the sentence. "Yeah, to be honest....?"
"Well - and please don't take this the wrong way - but, up on the table here, you're all just slabs of meat that we have to do things with, that's all."
"Oh, right."

That sounded rather deflating - a slab of meat. Yet, it might be a good way to view things so that I could finally rid myself of this ridiculous girly modesty...

Later, in the changing room after swimming I tried to remind myself that I was merely a slab of meat and should therefore have the psychological cojones to have a shower and wander proudly out in the nuddy and get changed in the main area. Sadly, I couldn't do it. Despite pap smears and babies, I realised that I am still not prepared to stand there in my birthday suit in front of a dozen strangers, and instead got dressed in the confines of the soggy-floored shower before emerging like a self-conscious thirteen year old in her first bra.

Unfortunately this shy behaviour got me more stares from the change-room chicks than if I'd just been relaxed enough to get dressed in front of them. One old gal with boobs swinging freely below her navel raised an eyebrow at her equally gravity-challenged friend as if to say, "Now there goes a strange one....."

Perhaps she's right. Still, if only I could manage the lap swimming in my board shorts and rashie vest......

Knowledge November - Day 15 - The Age of Awkward














Boys tend to be rather clumsy and clueless from about thirteen to seventeen years of age.

It is a time of cruel contradiction: puberty starts and so does an interest in (mostly) girls yet they themselves are physically and emotionally at their most unattractive.

Their butt-ugly faces are spotty which only serves to highlight their big noses; they have fuzzy chin hairs that can only seen against bright sunlight and overly-pointy Adam's apples that work overtime to produce embarrassing yelps and squeaks in the middle of sentences.

My friend Di, a battle-weary mother of two grown up sons, once sat down next to me, rearranged her pearls and said bluntly, "At fifteen they're tripping over their feet and using their hands to grab every bit of food they can see. Their willies grow far larger than their brain power or common sense can ever hope to catch up with." Yes, she adores her sons and would do anything for them, but even she could see that they were about as graceful as a truckload of plucked emus and about as pretty.














Teenage boys, like teenage girls, tend to congregate in packs, albeit ganglier ones. There's lots of self conscious hooting laughter, pushing, shoving and slouching. Armpit farts, spit balls out of bic pens and ear lobe flicking are their most natural habits when socialising together. They somehow manage to effectively communicate with each other, yet I've never seen a boy in this age-range sit up straight or raise his eyes further than crotch-level when he's speaking, mumbling or grunting a response.

Posh Spice has a lot in common with these fellas, believe it or not. Both breeds have skinny little pencil necks with huge soccer ball heads and concave (real) chests. Both tend to have legs the width of pipe cleaners and the fashion sense of retarded blind men. It is obvious that neither listens to the wise fashion advice of their mothers, nor pays attention to what other more sensible people around them are wearing.

Teenage boys’ hands, too, seem to be huge, way out of proportion to even their noses, heads, willies and feet. My theory is that God designed it so that they had the best gathering tools for food. Having two brothers, I can vouch for this - Mum had barely put the groceries away and they had already smelled it, scooped it, and eaten it. She got so desperate that she ended up storing the TimTams in the vegetable crisper, but even that didn't work: they ate their way through the meat tray, dairy case, plastic trays and cabbage in order to find the rewarding chocolate biscuit base.

Their massive mitts had amazing dexterity in terms of delicately buttering and spreading a dozen SAO biscuits without them so much as shedding a grain of salt let alone cracking; plus they could make up a cup of Milo Mud (half milk, half Milo) without spilling a drop on the counter. They could both reach the magical top 999 score on my palm-sized Donkey Kong II game, yet seemed to be physically incapable of being able to aim their jocks within a 50m radius of the dirty-clothes hamper or ascertain that the 5ml in the bottom of the orange juice carton might not be worth putting back in the fridge.

Shamefully, at the ages of 12, 13 and 14, I had yearned for men similar to these. Young, idiotic males who could barely open their lunch boxes, let alone pick up the vibe that bookishly quiet Katherine Read, two rows behind them, was desperately in love with their intelligent, sporty, funny, hunky side. Plus their ability to expertly throw chunks of chalk down Daniel Panizzi's unenviable bum cleavage during geography. 'Oh if only Anthony would notice me, he's the only guy in the class taller than my shoulder....'

The luxury of reminiscing about these painful crushes over two decades later has shown that I should be grateful that they were clueless. My husband tells me that, at that age, a girl would have to strip naked and write 'Take me NOW Stud' on her chest in liquid paper for a bloke to get the general idea that she might be interested in pashing him behind the agriculture wing after cricket practice. A shy prude like me would have died: my - admittedly unsuccessful - method of courtship was to ignore the object of my affection entirely.

Despite this, I now see these Pubescent Doofuses walking past our house on the way to the local high school, at Red Rooster and outside 'Game Zone' and want to reassure them. I want to clunk their shaggy heads together (to get their attention: otherwise they think I'm someone's mother about to embarrass them or lecture them) and say: "Look love, you're butt ugly now, but wait until you're eighteen. The girls (or boys) will be falling over you. In the meantime, eat well; don't pick your zits and PULL YOUR DAMN PANTS UP!"

Has there been a more ridiculous male fashion than to have your jeans so low that your boxer shorts are completely on show, and the bum pockets reside just above the knee? All this does is make the wearer look completely arseless, and not in a good way.














All is not doom and gloom for this teenage testosterone tribe however. Somehow, their bodies stretch up and they cease the self-conscious hunching of shoulders, their skin clears and their faces reassemble themselves into something worth gazing at. It's a mysterious process but nonetheless an amazing one. If they'd only outgrow the farting.... but that's a completely different story.

Knowledge November - Day 14 – The Cheap Seats

I was chatting to a father of a friend of Sapphire’s. We might live in the same neighbourhood, but it’s a small triangular-shaped pocket that consists of four towering blocks of Housing Commission flats and several million dollar-plus heritage listed mansions.

As such, we can see the Mysterious Monolith atop tower four from our place, but David is a throw of a tennis ball away from Cashed Up Crescent.

I mentioned that I had been invited to Ladies/Oaks Day at Flemington racecourse and was looking forward to going.

“What marquee will be you be in?” he asked.

I laughed and said, “Huh, that’ll be the day – nope, I’m in general admission, hoping for a patch of grass to lay down the picnic blanket.”

As I walked home with Sapphire, it dawned on me that I’m never going to be the girl (okay, woman) who’ll get to see the grand final in a corporate box, wear the coveted wrist band ID for entry into the Melbourne Cup birdcage extravaganza or be listed as a VIP on any guest list.

Growing up in a country town with a school teacher father and home-based and later-administrator mother gave us limited opportunities for anything other than sport, BBQs and school fund raising events. Mum recalls that the town had a social pecking order that featured doctors’ wives and parents whose children were packed off to boarding school but even they only got free note pads and syringe covers as gifts in the seventies.

I’ve never travelled business class let alone first and still feel a bit of a thrill when we’re on holiday as a family and Love Chunks uses his Qantas Club card (so that they don’t have to pay for a business class ticket when he flies overseas for work) and we get to go in and snack away to our hearts’ content.

My two years in London may have given me loads of opportunities to see many West End shows but all were paid for through the half-price ticket booth bought the same afternoon in Leicester Square or only cost five quid. All seats were situated so far up my knees quivered uncertainly if I leaned too far forward over the rail to see more than the top of the backdrop.

There have been freebie movies and comedy shows but the payment required has been the necessity to produce a reasonably eloquent written account of it afterwards. Books too have been enjoyed without any damage to my wallet but they tend to be an ‘Uncorrected Proof Copy For Promotional Use Only’ with a thin cover that creases easily and doesn’t add any colour or sophistication to my cheap pine bookshelves.

I was never a hot young chick that the bouncers waved through ahead of the line or dated anyone with access to a corporate box. Love Chunks can get slightly discounted weather bureau calendars but that’s about as far as his access to freebies and glitz extends.

So, on Oaks Day we dressed up, took along our nibbly things, had sensible shoes on to replace our heels when needed and set a ten dollar betting budget for the afternoon.

My shoulder wasn’t tapped to enter Myer’s Fashions on the Field; Rebecca Twigley didn’t rush over to interview me as I sashayed past with my blastic bottle of Yellowglen to enquire about the brand of my dress ($69 from Rockman’s as it happens) and none of my horses paid off the mortgage or required a return visit to the TAB.

In General Admission I instead met Ruprecht's Australian cousin, two women with hats taller than their own bodies, a bloke with the exact same hat as mine (my Mum's actually) that he snaffled from his sister, applauded a trilby-wearing bloke in pointy white shoes as he was shuffled off to the divvy van (the only one we saw for the entire day), had a chat with the winner of Best Shoes of the Oaks (yes, it's a separate category) in her $2900 Dolce and Gabbanas, photographed a young hopeful wearing a dress made out of pig face and turf grass and enjoyed Carmel's home made chicken wings with only the rose bushes separating us from the horsies.

I hope that I made my mother proud, who when she loaned me her hat and earrings said smiling, "Now I don't want to see photos of you getting drunk in the car park and being splashed all over the news and in those nasty My Face Web pages, you hear?"

Yep. I returned home sober, non-sunburned, un-arrested and ten bucks poorer and in time to meet up with Sapphire for the 3.30pm after school pick up. It was great fun.