[Miscellany]

Labels: sick, still sick, tonsils

posted by M at 11:20 am 3 comments links to this post

You know what I did last week?  I had a Tonsillectomy/Septoplasty!  What a fun time for me.  Let me give you a (quite rare these days) insight to my life over the past 7 days.

Operation day
The bastard very nearly didn't happen.  It turned out my temperature was a couple of degrees elevated.  Looking back I now realise this was a direct message from The Gods to pack it the fuck up and get out of there while I still had my wits about me.  Doctors (surgeons in particular) have a God complex, of course and went ahead with it anyway.  Mistake?  You decide.



Coming out of the Anesthetic I thought, “gee, I’m going to hurl”. Little did I know this would be the single most coherent and insightful thought I’d have for the next 7 days…  I'm going to hurl said it all.  I wasn’t breathing well and they put me on O2 – which was not great for the dry throat thing one usually tries to avoid when dealing with an open wound at the back of your throat. I had a septoplasty/turbs done at the same time so all my airways were compromised. I kept seeing the nurses kept giving me and each other worried looks. This is not a good side from where I was laying.

My mother, bless her, was like a champion by my side literally feeding ice chips into my mouth.  A regular Florence Nightingale (or was it Henderson...maybe both).  As predicted about 5 hours later I hurled my guts out. Ate zero. Drank a little. I was just so dizzy. The only medication I could take was panadol and anti-nausea through IV. I barely slept a wink.

Labels: essay, sick, still sick

posted by M at 11:00 pm 8 comments links to this post

I have a question.  Now I understand questions on the Internet rarely get answered seriously, particularly those on a journal that is only semi-functional at best, but I'll give it a go anyway.  What have I got to lose?  If you happen to read this over the next couple of years just humour me, okay?

There are a lot of changes happening in the Education industry that unfortunately reflect the times we now live in.  Schools are regarded as businesses, students as clients and teachers as the sweat shop workers.  This means that when changes occur it usually goes that like this:

Labels: school, stressed teachers, teacher dramas, teaching, work

posted by M at 12:17 am 4 comments links to this post

My friend, B collected me and took me to the local Ashram in a last ditch effort to get me to partake in either spiritual enlightenment (for the regulars), codswallop (for the uninitiated) or utter confusion (me).  My last dalliance with Eastern dogma was in 1994 when my cousin was active in the Hari Krishnas.  Personally I didn't think they were as cute, cuddly or as dance-y as they made out but perhaps I was being narrow minded.  My cousin eventually came to the same conclusion and left the HKs and became a nun.  Now she isn't even that... anyway, that's another story for another time.

I can't say the Ashram is a place of dogma or religion per se but people were extra nice to me, which is something that always puts me on guard in that "special way" that religion usually does.  In my experience, people who don't know you aren't really that nice unless they really want something from you.   In any case - the greeter did his job and I was suitably charmed as hopeless, depressed people who have been in the dark for a long time often are by surprising acts of kindness from strangers.

The chanting started and I initially if not unconsciously resisted the pull into the vortex of swimming words and dancing sounds.  My default is to resist and I do this without thinking.  It's a protective mechanism that has both worked wonders and made me incredibly unhappy.  I made a conscious decision right then, as I did a couple of weeks ago coming out of the worst birthday I've ever had that it was time to rebirth and forget the past.  My answer, for my own survival, needed to be a yes.

So I dove right into the swirling melody and let go the wandering, wondering mind and the disbelief and became at one with the mass of people from all walks - business men in suits, teenagers, yogis, wannabees, stoners and crones.  I felt the noise envelope me in a spiritual hug and felt myself lift as if pulled by pure vibration humming upwards and inwards and all around at once.  I felt the room swim and felt myself swim with it.  With energy abound and heat exploding everywhere around me I understood for a brief second what it was to be part and whole at the same time... and then like a light switching off, it was gone and I was back in the hall with mere mortals again as if it never happened.

I may or may not go back but all I know is that at 17 days old, for a second and a half, I finally connected.

posted by M at 9:30 pm 2 comments links to this post

 It's all relative that to the rusty old Tin Man encumbered with metal joints that squeal and groan, walking a block is the same as a healthy fit man running a marathon. As to me, readers of this dusty journal, I have spent the last two years silently congratulating myself whenever I make it out of bed. I am a marvel. I am strong. I breathe. I live. One such event which caused me to think of the humble old Tin Man and his creaking joints was my venture into the ocean tonight. It was the first time in as long as I can remember that I took the plunge and did something that connected me to an action worthy of old me. Although the step came in the form of an easy decision, like a switch turned on, it was years in the making.

There was the year of sitting on the beach in my clothes feeling strangely agoraphobic. Then the year I sat on the beach in my clothes with my bathers underneath, not ever touching the water. Then a tentative step inside, just up to the ankles... then the shins.. And finally, years after the desire first appeared a walk into the deep that kept going, past the hips, past the ribs and up to the chin. I kept the panic attack and fear at bay but only just. Then the hands went out and my feet lifted, and I wondered for a moment if I remembered how to swim.

I didn't at first, if I am being completely honest. I sank, stumbling over my steps like a toddler learning to walk, but again like a toddler I caught myself and went again.

Then I did remember.

I remembered being young and free (as the cliche goes) and diving deep under the waves and spending all day in the water staring at the gulls soaring above. I felt a part of the Earth and the Earth a part of me, which is a step so important that I can't begin to describe the emotion that erupted in my heart with that realisation and connection. I wanted to write it down even though I knew my brain couldn't quite remember how to turn my thoughts into words, as required here. I floated for a while and watched the clouds swirl above me peacefully and concentrated on the sounds of the gleeful children and laughing adults and took the time to feel the gentle, warmth of the salt water all around me like a comforting hug. Thus I emerged unto the shore, birthed by the Earth and Baptized by the sea and made my way back to my towel and just sat for a long time, stunned at myself and marveling at how the enormity of my actions went unnoticed by anyone else around me.

Tomorrow I go back to being a worthless excuse but tonight I am truly amazing. Trust me, I am.

Labels: beach, God, self help

posted by M at 11:30 pm 3 comments links to this post

I have a lottery ticket in my purse which was drawn last week but which I haven't yet checked. I could be sitting on a million for all I know and then again I might not be. The chances of it not being a winner are almost 100% but it's the .0009% that I'm most interested in. It's like a flash of excitement. A clock ticking. bell chiming. That .0009% is a morsel of hope, something which exists, even at my lowest point.

Perhaps hope is instinctual - like breathing or coughing. I imagine if someone decides to drown themselves, their mind is made up but the body has other ideas. At some point the human instinct kicks in and the body tries with all its might to get to the surface and breathe in some oxygen. The body tries to live, even if the mind wants to die.

Perhaps that's what happens when hope kicks in too. One may be at the end, the edge, so to speak - with no loveliness and no kindness and no joy but then there it is - like a kiss on the cheek; hope. Hope stops you from jumping. It stops you from dying. You grab onto it and clutch at it and somehow pull yourself up and out of the doldrums. While it is yours, hope is your best friend and your only chance of survival. Hope is a smile in a sea of frowns and a laugh in a serious boardroom meeting. She is impossible not to love.

I like having hope but I don't like living with it. She is beguiling and yet deceitful. She draws you in, makes you feel comfortable and then, if you are me - is then crushed, dashed, falsified. Crushed hopes are worse than no hope at all it seems. And yet, instinctively I find some more hope, even where you would think that hope would be lost. It's infuriating. I am constantly fielding the battle between having hope and picking myself up after losing it.

Somehow this ticket in my purse has grown to symbolise every morsel of hope I have left in the world and yet I am destined to never check it for fear of losing it, once again.

Labels: crazy people, hope, MVOR, random, rant, wonderings

posted by M at 12:17 am 6 comments links to this post

I've gotten to that stage where the one stable and fulfilling thing in my life is work. Mind you, that's not to say that work is good but it's just better than what else is on offer in my life, which isn't a lot. There, I'm still facing working way too hard for no recognition and dealing with, what has been described as a 'hornet's nest' by more than one outsider. I won't tell you what the insiders say. I need to leave, but I can't because it's the best thing that I've got going. Them's the breaks.

My family, that old chestnut, is fraying and unravelling like an old knitted sweater with a loose thread. Bro is absent and has been for a couple of years leaving me to deal with a mum who is stressed and heartbroken with a situation that is beyond my means of coping with. I put in more than a full day of work at my job and then make up the rest of the week helping to run a business for my mother and trying so very hard to be both daughter and son to a Mother who has lost a husband and who is by nature very high maintenance. I am an only child, in so many ways.

Somehow money has become an issue, with bills creeping up in such a way that have crippled me financially. I can't quite put my finger on how it disappears but it does. I don't spend excessively and I haven't been on a holiday in years, not even a weekender. I'm currently deciding whether to fuck it all and put a holiday on the credit card and deal with it later...but who knows if that's the right decision either?

Even MVOR isn't able to really help. With the money situation being typical for a teacher (bad) and the medicare situation not being good at subsidizing what they see as an option extra, like head shrinkers. I've had to drop back to once a month, which is really just enough to reiterate what I already know: Things are quite shit thanks.

Needless to say my health has felt the effects of this. I am tired all the time. I could sleep standing up if time allowed and have even, at times fallen asleep in the middle of a meal with my head resting on the plate. But sleep is a beautiful respite and I welcome it, whenever and however it chooses to find me. My humour, doesn't quite reach deep down far enough to cleanse what it used to so I trigger it with endless re-runs of funny, sweet happenings on my ipod, computer or television - trying to medicate the hole that was once filled with true emotion and real laughter with scripted stories that help me lose myself for a moment. It is the next best thing and thankfully they are readily available to me. I do lose myself frequently and it's glorious when I do.

What's left of my mind is really just hanging on by a thread. Every day I make it out of bed is an achievement that deserves a gold star right now and I've been good at hiding that fact from others who think that things are difficult but not yet desperate. I passed the sign post to desperate miles ago and I'm heading straight for ... well, who knows what comes next?

A festering knot of pulsating stress gnawing away at my insides doesn't even come close to describing what is going on inside me right now.

Soo... how are you?

Labels: melancholy, sad sack, truth time

posted by M at 11:14 pm 8 comments links to this post

I have come to realise that these (now) monthly visits with MVOR, the genteel lady with whom I share my innermost thoughts, are not going to fix me. There is no fixing this state of mind I carry around with me.
There's no cancer to isolate.
There's no lump to remove.
There's no ...waiting it out with bed rest until it goes away.

This half nutty, soul destroying melancholic anti-heroine didn't just happen when I awoke one morning. She was created from conception to survive the Big Bang of my life. She was created, like some kind of terminator to keep living and keep doing its job at all costs, eventually acting on its own accord at its own pace.

I've done a thorough job on her, yes I have and she, in turn has repaid the favor and done a thorough job on me.

She is in the bone and the mind and the blood - coursing like traffic on the Eastern Fwy in peak hour. There is very little that keeps me from surrendering completely to her and that is the tiny glittering hope, like a mirage in the driest desert that things will turn around.

I hate that hope. It's a tormenter and a tease and yet
...it's there. Blinking away in my peripheral vision.
I guess I left a light on somewhere.
I guess.

Labels: melancholy, MVOR, wonderings

posted by M at 7:03 am 2 comments links to this post

When I was a little kid and morning television was filled with re-runs of old shows from the 50s an everyday run of the mill family looked like this:


There you have the quintessential respectable family. No messing around with mum and and dad here. No siree. These folks would ground you faster than you could say 'awww shucks', just for sassing your mother! Watch out.

Then by the time I was in Primary School in the mid to late 80s the modern family looked a little like this:


Again, perfectly normal looking family (even if there are a few tragic fashion mistakes). Can't mistake dad here! There he is in the middle growing enough facial hair to make a coat. Where's mum? Oh there she is, looking mum-ish. These are the folks you want to go see when your boyfriend breaks up with you and you don't know what to do or when you need help with your calculus final.


By the time I was a teen "mom and pops" looked more like this:



or this:


or this:

Yep, no mistaking in any way shape or form who mum and dad are in any of these families. Kinda weary. Kinda tired with a bit of grey creeping in. Looking like they've been around the block a time or two... as it should be. I mean, their kids are TEENAGERS! How fresh faced can you be?

Lately I've noticed that either I'm getting really fucking old or TV mums and dads are pretty much the same age as their kids!

We've got this from The Secret Circle:

and this:

They are apparently parents of 17 year old kids. What's that you say? How can these man-children have produced enough sperm to father anyone above the age of 7? I'm wondering the same thing folks. It's clearly a Christmas miracle...like Jesus!


Then we have the parent group from Life Unexpected:

this:

and THIS:

LIFE Unexpected? Parents unexpected more like it. But... but isn't that the guy from Dawson's Creek? The same Dawson's Creek that had Katie Holmes in it... the same Katie Holmes who now has a 3 year old daughter with a crazy man? Yes, 3 years old, not 17 years old! The mind boggles.

And what about these two knuckleheads from Awkward?:

They have a 16 year old daughter you say? Seriously? SERIOUSLY?

And when I saw this recently I literally spit my coffee out at the screen;

Yes, that's right. That's the guy from Clueless - the one who left his Cranberries CD in the quad and wanted to go get it before somebody 'snagged' it.

...Yeah, I remember the Cranberries. They were around when I was in high school. I also remember watching Clueless when I was a teen. Funnily enough, in Clueless the dad looked like this:

...which looks NOTHING like

and yet they are both supposed to father 16 year old girls. I'm sure it could biologically happen but that doesn't mean that it's NORMAL.

What is going on in TV land? Am I crazy or do modern day TV parents look completely unfit to be doing anything except navigating a hard day of doing beer bongs in the backyard while sitting on their outdoor sofa couch donated from grandma who also happens to slip them a $50 every now and again to 'tide them over'?

I really can't wait until Dakota Fanning's younger sister turns up as the mother of a 34 year old in next season's premiere of "Just a Normal Family".

I may have to stick to re-runs of The Beave..

Labels: family, old, rant, TV, wonderings

posted by M at 12:16 am 7 comments links to this post

I will always associate Crunchie chocolate bars with my Uncle R. He would bring them with him every single time he came to visit. When you are 8 years old and you are given Crunchie every time a particular person comes to visit - you very quickly develop a Pavlovian response to that person. Beat up old Holden in the driveway = saliva. Never fails.

If everyone has a crazy Uncle, then mine is R. He would refer to Christmas at Easter time, make stupid jokes at the wrong moment and do the Mexican party cry YOW YOWYOWYOW in the middle of an otherwise sedate family dinner. Definitely not for the fainthearted - or for the sensitive of hearing either.

He died today.

I don't know what else to say about that - except that it wasn't really a party at the end, nor was there a Crunchie in sight. Eventually he went peacefully, but it was a struggle for years and years.

I wish I knew how to deal with this in a normal way. I've not cried or blubbered once. I'm just dazed and feeling kind of worried, with a bit of dread settling deep somewhere in my belly - though I can't tell you why or what for. I want for nothing else than to be a blubbering, snotty mess and unable to cope. At least I know that reaction isn't forever - it's a truck stop on the way to a better place. Instead, I don't know what to do with with what I've got but I have a feeling I'm going to be stuck with it for a while.

Labels: change the colour of your day, family, feel like crap, nostalgia

posted by M at 11:13 pm 7 comments links to this post