You see a poo floating sullenly in the bottom of the toilet and your first thought is “aw, look at the little guy..”.

So I haven’t blogged in nearly a decade, mainly because I went partially mental during end of year assignments time and then my laptop and I needed some time apart. It has been a learning time for both of us, we’ve really found ourselves again and I just think we’re both better people.

I am going to blog your socks off very soon, internet. Just you wait.

x

When do you stop feeling like an imposter? A 22 year old, still figuring out how to be herself, hiding in the skin of a near 30. Geez age is weird.

I still think they should make you take a test. I can barely make the decision to dress myself in the morning. I still giggle at Aladdin, man. I hardly think I’m an appropriate candidate for age.

I will now put together my first  “look at the day I had” post. Inspired by my mate Soph’, who seems to plan and carry out adventures so readily it would make Tom Sawyer say “Geez. Calm down. Don’t you just want to watch some Desperate Housewives?”.

As documented in my most gloatie blerg ever, I threw together a last minute dinner party for my house mate and friend Kate for her birthday. It was great. AND I remembered to take many photos. Aren’t you lucky?

I baked! From scratch! Ok. It was a packet mix.  I can’t lie to you internet.

And made a mess. Please to ignore the spray cleaner sitting quite close to food.

Cooked haloumi! For the salad!

The rest of the scrummy salad.

Cupcakes worked, despite sabotage efforts from our mental oven.

Iced and written on..

Kate is Great!

Dips and bread, teeny little sandwiches, teddy bear biscuits, lentil and haloumi salad and chocolate cupcakes. Mmmm, hmmmm. And of course a couple of hats.

And Rhi-Rhi cooked lamb. Huhmazing..

We wait patiently for Kate to come.. Gareth totally rocking my lavender cowboy hat.

waiting and drinking..

waiting and smiling..

Yay! The reason for that hats is here!

Yeah.

indeed, olive tree. Indeed.

Well that’s the end of that memory crafting, but hopefully there’ll be many more to come. Thanks for being born Katie!

I was chucking together the fun little entry about the dinner party we had on Sunday, but truthfully, what I want to write is this:

My friend Brook just died. He was my supervisor at my old job, but he was also my friend, as I’m sure most people who worked with him would say. I hadn’t seen him in over a year, but still I look over at the books he lent to me that I was never able to return, or I think of a man so full of life and so ready to laugh being sick, and suffering, and dying and I feel just, confusion beyond words and also full up of sadness.

Brook was one of the better men I’ve ever had the joy of knowing. He made anyone that met him feel at home, and not only that but they felt cared for. He loved people and he loved women particularly. But the respect within this man. He talked to any woman like she was the loveliest, most interesting woman he’d ever met. He told me he felt it was his calling in life to make women feel like they were the only person in the room. Like they were loved. And he did it well.

He made work not just bearable, but fun. Funny, hilarious dude. He dug music, I’m fairly certain he was kind of a big deal in the Oz music scene once upon a time. He had the speaking voice of a radio god and he will certainly be missed, and I just feel sad because a great man’s life has ended and that makes my life a little less shiny right now and the world a little bit less wonderful.

Brook, you were lovely and loved, and I thank you for everything. My prayers are with your family.

Please if you’ve never read it, do yourself a favour and pay tribute to Brook by reading I heard the Owl Call my Name. He told me I should read it and he was right.

Also, cancer is totally shit and it took another man of dignity and grace so another way to pay tribute to Brook and to those who I’m sure you know have come into contact with it, would be to donate, if you can.

Peace.

I had an idea.

I think it’s a good one. I think it’s one I want to actually…do.

This is the post where I tell you about it.

I’m struggling with a name though..

The Idea

no.

Shit I want to do.

no

Anyway, the idea. I want to make a list,

The List!

no.

a list, inspired by my 29th year (approaching with velociraptor like speed) and by stuff I think I should pull off before the big 3 0 arrives.

Soon I will be a Grown Up these are things that Grown Ups do and I’m going to do them so they let me in

no.

This inspires a great deal of thought.

Who gives a toss? Is one such thought.

Does 30 actually matter? Is another.

The facts are these:

1. I am aging

2. This frequently scares the crap out of me and inspires vacuums of self doubt

3. I need tangible reasons to write regularly or this blog will go the way of my knitting spat

So this is what will happen. I will make a list, to be finalised closer to my birthday. I will consult people older and younger than me as to what I should put on the list as well as about their views on aging. I will blog about each item on the list and I will blog weekly for the length of a year, starting at 29, ending at 30. I will, of course, have a neat and well timed epiphany to close the year with about the nature of age and maturity etc.

The list as it stands currently:

Start dancing lessons

Catch a Barrumundi

Bake a Pie

Start learning French

Save money

Read all my books

Watch less tv

Take more chances

Give one night a week to writing

Walk daily

Adjust to who I am

Be comfortable around new people

Sing more frequently

Take more photos

Judge less

Do not use cynicism as a crutch

Throw out one thing a month

Buy clothing and footwear only from vintage/recycled shops where possible

Understand what it means to grow up

Eat at this allegedly fantastic Japanese place my mate Brad went mental over

Make my blog look a bit nicer

Knit something

…

Suggestions?

I hang out with the salvos a little, mainly just once a week when I go out with the outreach team. We give people pies and coffee and conversation.

I’ve been doing this for about two years, and mostly I love it. I have met a lot of great people and I think it’s important, what we do. Even if it is pies and coffee in answer to the problems of homelessness, loneliness, desperation and hurt.

I went out last night, and the team was great and we had a good night, except then there were these boys and they were loud and angry and full up of bravado and fear that spilled out of them and onto anyone that walked past and the street and the world. And I could see people forming these opinions, the kind of opinions that stay in minds and pollute them and help women and men decide to cross the street when they see kids in large groups and believe the news when it tell us we’re all going to die from knife wounds.

Just young boys, who joked with us and who I’m guessing don’t have mums at home that are looking at clock faces and wondering when they’ll know their children are safe.

Afterwards we met a man who was playing the guitar on the street. And he was so incapacitated that when he needed to go to the bathroom he crab walked around a corner, rolled over and just went. He got urine all over himself and across half of the street.

And as I walked home from the tram later I cried because what has happened there? Because I want that man to be in a house and holding his grandkids, and because I want those boys to be laughing with their friends and heading home to their family and being unafraid and joyful at the prospect of their future.

I wish I had a neat little way to sum this up, but this is what I’ve got: I saw things that are broken, and I will sleep comfortably tonight.

Even typing this I feel like a jerk, sitting on my lounge surrounded by my walls and my certainty and my comfort, having had my peace of mind disrupted for a half hour. Mostly I don’t let things stick, you see. There’s no point. I do what I can (I guess) and I get on with it.

But every now and then, something gets through. I laugh with a man who, in another life, I would have had a drink with at the pub, and he’s sleeping in a doorway. I see a woman, pulled behind a couple of bins that the man who wants to have sex with her has grudgingly moved so that they’ll have some privacy and as I leave I hear her ask him his name. I see those boys, who have nothing better to do and no one who has told them its ok, that they don’t need to pretend. I walk away from a man who has just pissed on himself and who only wants another beer.

Generally I believe that life is like, smeared with shit, and sprinkled with bits of beauty. And it’s our job to find the beauty in the shit. It is difficult. And it hurts.

But I guess we keep going, because what else can we do?

Thanks for listening. Here’s to beauty.