Perhaps this outfit was for Samhain. Certainly the dark colours and bat wings suggests so. The bright sunshine? Well, anything’s possible in Melbourne.
This is at the Esoteric Bookshop in 2008, at their Murrumbeena premises. A lovely shop, with a small courtyard out the back that was always gloriously decorated for the eight Sabbats.
Anyway, I’m rocking that goth look, except for the wide smile, and brilliantly blondish red hair. I understand there are redhead goths in the world, but they tend to go for dark red or blood red, rather than this shining orangey mop.
I’ve gone back and looked at the file. Summer Solstice. What on earth am I doing being all dark? The longest day, the shortest night. Maybe I’m encouraging everyone to embrace the coming dark. Or maybe I was the Earth quarter and celebrating caves, bats, and deep, dark earth.
Anyway, for someone who, ten months before, had suffered a major nervous breakdown, I’m looking damned good, and am bloody pleased with myself.
Oh, why did I stop costuming for Sabbats?
Samhain is coming up very soon. The veneration of the ancestors. The thinning of the veil between the worlds. That bat costume would have been perfect, would that I could still fit into it.
You know, I think it might be time to break out the sewing machine and learn to costume. It’s been on my bucket list forever. How hard could a stretchy black dress be?
On my bucket list is it’sm #70: ride on an electric scooter.
Right place, right time. I’m visiting my daughter and grandkids in Queensland. My son-in-law, CarMan, is home this week from his FIFO(Fly In Fly Out) job as a mechanic and truck driver at the mines in Mackay. He has an electric scooter. Last night he plugged it in.
This afternoon I donned my granddaughter’s bike helmet and CarMan showed how to put it on the lowest gear. Button on the left, press, do a bit of scoot to kick off, and I wobbled down the street.
After a couple of goes up and down the street, including an “OMG, I’m in the bushes!”, I got brave enough to ride around the block. Then CarMan turned it up to second gear, and I zapped around the block again.
My hair actually streamed back a little, and my dress hem flapped. I felt so speedy and smart, and…well…scooty.
I was a bit wobbly the whole way, but I did it.
The urge to go faster was on me, and took me right back to my first ever solo drive in a car. I dared, on a quiet Sunday afternoon, press the accelerator up to 70kmph, just for a few hundred metres. I felt wild and scared then. And now.
I knew if I fell, I’d abraid badly. I have enough problems with my 60 year old arm skin thinning. One scratch and it inflames and starts to tears. So while I had the need for speed, I hopped off, and let my grandson have a ride.
I couldn’t stop smiling. I did it. I rode on a scooter.
Even though it wasn’t on my bucket list, I ticked off a bucket list item, yesterday. (And yes, I know it’s not a daily blog if it’s not daily, but I’m with my grandkids, so shut up). Australia Zoo.
ThirtiesGirl and her family have been Queenslanders for five years. While I secretly hope they will come to their senses and move back to Victoria so I can get weekly grandkids doses, I know they love the Sunshine Coast lifestyle. I have to say, it’s enticing. Warmer weather, slower life. I’d have moved already if it wasn’t for my parenting-caring-guardian responsibilities with ThirtiesPerson. Who DOES NOT WANT TO MOVE NORTH, THANKS.
Here are: PizzaBoy, myself, Miss J, Logie B, and Super C.
We hit the ground running with an early soccer game for Logie B, then off to the zoo.
Cheetahs, tigers, and lemurs, oh my!
I haven’t been to any zoo in years, so it was good to get amongst wild animals again, and see some up close that I’d never seen before. The lemurs are just as cute as you think they are. Those long fluffy tails – why can I not have one of my own. And if you’ve ever thought something similar, go read ‘The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party’ by Robert Silverberg. I don’t care how that story turns out, I still want a lemur tail of my own.
As you can see, it rained. Welcome to northern Australia and monsoon season. It was still warm, but the lemurs and many other animals were moving towards their heated shelters. And yet, we humans were waking around, buying up cheap plastic ponchos. (@Australia Zoo, how do you justify the plastic ponchos when you’re all about reducing plastic use in the world, especially one-use plastic?)
The giraffes, zebras, and rhinos live together in a large communal enclosure. This giraffe seemed to be going out of his way to bug this zebra, continually breathing on, nibbling, licking and nudging. I guess your older brother can be from another species, and you can bug him like the brat you are.
The croc show in the Crocoseum was headed up by Bindi Irwin’s husband, and two young women. This pale croc is called Casper, and ‘always brings 110%’. Must’ve been a slow day, because he shlumped around. Then again, this show must be a bit like a sushi train. If you don’t fancy the rats and chickens today, meh, because you’ll have another opportunity in a few days.
Even so, I cheered and yelled ‘Crikey!’ with the best of them.
Super C and I kept commenting on the ‘excellent bin chicken show’, whenever some wild ibis landed and poked around. “This is what I flew north to see,” I told him.
“I moved here for this!” he replied.
And I don’t care what species these snakes actually are. Miss J and I called them the Stacks On snakes.
By the end of the day, we were all chilly, and worn out, so home to dry couches, soft blankets, and down time on iPads.
I’m really happy to have had this day with my family, and to have made some new memories.
Back to burlesque class last night. I started Burlesque Basics at week 7 out of 8 classes for Term 1. So, last night, I did Lesson 1 for Term 2, and will continue up to lesson 6.
Dear Twitface Satya: if you are going to eat dozens of Easter eggs for weeks on end, and then scarcely move your body for a week, should it be a huge surprise that you hurt everywhere, and creaky like a dunny(outdoor toilet) door?
It was Bump and Grind night. All my belly dance training came to the fore and was subverted into:
Hip circles = slow grind
Hip flick = bump
Pelvic tuck = part of the griiiind
There are ‘stir the soup’ grinds, and ‘grind coffee’ and ‘rollercoaster grind’.
None of the moves were unfamiliar to me. Done it all for years, albeit with my legs much closer together, and the focus being on the whole hip circle, rather than the tuck, and exaggerated ‘push your booty out’.
Belly dance – keep it nice. Burlesque – down and dirty.
The only part of me really sore after class was my knees. Dammit that the dog’s Cartophen shots have been shown to not be effective on humans! I’d be at the vet in seconds. Here mate, put some painkiller into my knees like a good bloke.
Fortunately, I just missed a tram, and the Epworth Hospital is opposite Maison Burlesque. I had time to buy Panadol Osteo, Nurofen, and some joint gel at the in-house chemist, before getting the next tram.
I sat there popping 4 pills like the pain relief junkie I am, then stinking up my part of the tram by applying generous amounts of arnica and wintergreen gel to my knees.
When I got home, I drank my magnesium drink like a good girl, made sure I had extra water, and I was tired enough to get a decent sleep.
Today, I’m good. In fact, good enough and ‘shook the stress out of me’ enough to have a wee boogie to some Housework Music I have on my Spotify playlist(Rock Around The Clock, The Twist, Peppermint Twist, Viva Las Vega, Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride, Papa Oom Mow Mow).
I now have painkillers and gel permanently in my dance bag, along with my dance shoes, a sweat towel, and a packet of blister Bandaids.
Of course I’m going back next week. Dance is hard. It always is at the level I’m playing at. Which is ‘have fun, but sweat hard, and learn’.
Progress: only called myself ‘fat’ and ‘old’ three times last night.
Goal: reduce this to zero, and reduce all other derogatory self-talk, and replace with neutral talk, or better yet, self-loving and self-respectful talk.
I’m astonishingly fit and agile for 60. I’ve worked hard to be here, and deserve all the fun I can get.
Well, we had an NDIS(National Disability Insurance Scheme) meeting with our NDIS coordinator, and a lady from My Second Home, a housing supplier, to do with my offspring ThirtiesPerson. Anything to do with anything like this, I get tremendously triggered. Years and years of awful Centrelink(social security) meetings about disability stuff, employment, and the right to survive in Australia. Years of drama with NDIS funding. Disability, disability this, disability that. Pfft. Nah, one paragragh is all that deserves.
I could write about Couples Counselling. I had an individual session today, and bubbled over with anger that has little to do with PizzaBoy and everything to do with growing up an undiagnosed, underrated, underestimated, mostly ignored neurodiverse, smart girl in the 60-70’s. But that’s stuff that I’m not ready to share.
So, bucket list items it is. One of my bucket list items is swimming with whales in Tonga. My term deposit is coming due soon, with interest on it. I looked at the interest. The responsible mother/carer/guardian/wife would reinvent that wad and be grateful that my nest egg is growing. That I’m a white woman in a first world country that values white, and I’m very comfortable as a near-Boomer. Thanks Mum for the inheritance. Thanks PB for making life financially easier for me, or I’d have none of that money left by now.
But….there are other parts to me than mother/wife/carer/guardian/near Boomer. There is a curious black cat who wants to be a hippie and travel and smell of jasmine and experiences.
I emailed our pet travel agent TallThinYogini and asked if my interest was enough to get me to Tonga, accommodated, fed, swimming with whales, and home again.
I’ve discovered a blog and possible travel website that detailed everything to do with this, so I quoted large chunks of it at TallThinYogini and gave her likely dates.
Judging by the prices quoted for the swimming(it’s Tonga’s main form of income), my interest might not be enough for everything. But surely there’s something wonderful I could do. It might not cover PizzaBoy and I going to Monkey Mia to do the volunteer dolphin programme.
But it would be enough for me to have some time away from everyone and everything in Byron Bay, off season. And judging by today’s therapy session, I need that time away to decompress myself. I am not a very good full-time mother/carer/guardian/wife/housewife/little brown sparrow/responsible adult. Sometimes my hippie trippie self needs new age wankerism for a couple of of weeks, when I start thinking that Circus Skills is a perfectly good university course, and that full-time surfing and weed smoking is ‘well, whatever mate, you do you’, rather than ‘ffs, get a job, or create one’.
Anyway, the research ball is now in TTY’s hands, and I await her response.
And yes, I know, extreme privilege right here, right now.
For a couple of years now, I’ve wanted to have a go at making an Easter lamb cake. I saw some absolute disasters on cakewrecks.com and figured I could make a fine entry.
However, I did not know where to obtain an un-iced lamb cake, or any sort of lamb cake at all. It’s not really a thing here in Australia, as far as I know. We are the biggest consumers of Easter eggs in the world, but lamb cakes, not so much.
When I shared pics of disaster lamb cakes on Facebook, I told my friend NoobBaker that she should do this on her Twitch channel. We made a pact. We’d do this.
We did not do this. She’s busy with her young family, and I’m a woman who avoids the kitchen.
So, when I posted the disaster lamb cakes again, I tagged NoobBaker and said ‘still on the bucket list’. Then PizzaBoy’s best friend and pseudo sister back in Canada got involved. She said she had a lamb cake mould. She would follow my Google Hangouts advice and heckling while she iced it. Aim: demon cake.
HomesteadWoman was on.
And so, HomesteadWoman armed with her kitchen supplies, a newly minted vanilla lamb cake, and icing sugar, and me armed with Google Hangouts, and a big streak of mischief went to work this morning. Add in HomesteadWoman’s two adult daughters, PizzaBoy occasionally peeking over my shoulder, and my wish to make the worst lamb cake ever.
Off we went with white icing that did not curl in little rosettes, but stuck like glue, and dripped like goo. Then tea-flavoured icing, because Aussie lambs are pretty much brown after rolling around in the Aussie dirt. Then coffee-flavoured icing for the lamb’s bum.
I encouraged the girls to pierce the lamb’s ears with toothpicks, and make the lamb smoke. I said next year we should put ugly gimcrack earrings on toothpicks.
HomesteadWoman added eyes, pink icing for the ears, a piece of Easter egg for the nose(I think), and then part of a sugared cherry for the mouth. Our lamb was done, and even had a small brown slick of a hairdo, and a very pert mouth.
The cake mould will be on its way to me for next year’s attempt. I am no cook, no baker, and definitely shite with icing. We shall see what happens. NoobBaker, you know you want in.
Let me select at random a photo from the vaults, and give you a wee story. Some of you may have heard it before, but some not. Here we go.
The date on this says 2008, but it’s likely earlier than that. I’m still with XP, aka as the Ex Partner. A nurse friend of mine summed him up, after we’d split up, as ‘One episode away from a psychotic break’. Apt, in retrospect.
Anyway, let’s say this is around 2006. I’m 42. I’ve recently read about Extreme Ironing: the very odd ‘sport’ where people go to extreme places, and proceed to iron a nice white shirt.
I give you these random pics off the internet as examples:
You have no doubt noticed that I am not doing anything extreme in my photo. In 2006, studying Teaching English to Students of Other Languages (TESOL) was the only way I could imagine getting myself travelling anywhere. Get the Advanced Diploma and when my kids were old enough, take teaching positions for 3-6 months in various countries.
I didn’t own a travel iron. Why would I? No travel.
Even so, I had to get in on this, so I opted for Mild Ironing. I took my iron, and a small ironing board loaned from a friend and XP drove me to Black Rock beach. I tell you what, anyone who wanders along any beach with a surfboard under their arm – not a single stare. But let a short woman stroll along with a mini-ironing board, and there are double takes all over the place.
Plenty of whispers: “I thought she was holding a surfboard, but…it’s an ironing board…”
I got myself precariously out on some rocks, and it was my first experience of ‘styling’ my photo. I wanted to be close enough to the water that it looked vaguely beachy. With any luck, a spray of water would be caught in-frame.
There was nowhere to plug my iron in, of course, so I got to work cold ironing my summer pyjama pants. I wore a tshirt that I’d bought at a Jane Goodall event. If she could go live with the Gombo chimpanzees for years on end, I could pretend to iron pyjamas on Black Rock beach. Which is not even a surf beach.
On a side note, my friend was disappointed when I brought the ironing board back.
“I thought you were going to surf on it,” she said, peeved when I showed her the Mild Ironing pics. “I don’t it back. I don’t iron any more.”
I kept the ironing board another 5 years, just in case I became more daring and decided to iron up on Hanging Rock, or perhaps iron whilst jumping off Princes St Bridge during the Moomba Birdman Rally, but neither ever came about. I gave the ironing board and the iron to an op shop, and went on to do other nutty things, as well as eventually get to travel.
So there you have it. Not a ‘today this happened’ but a happy memory.
Let me know if you want more photo memories, and I’ll see what I can find in the vaults.
I should know better. A late night Friday. 3 hours of dancing yesterday. Yoga this morning. My body said “Are you crazy?” and showed me which muscles were tired, and fed up with the whole business. WE WILL NOT BE DOING WARRIOR THREE IN ANY FIRM, BITCH!
Good thing I had a massage booked for late this afternoon.
However, that’s not the only area of overexertion. As some of you know, I always have about 8 projects on the go.
Currently:
– databasing my writing
– doing generative writing with ‘Season of the Wolf’
– getting my garden beds into order
– slowly filling up what used to be the back lawn so that it’s a bee and bug habitat
– burlesque classes
– once Wolf Season finishes, I’ll be doing a second draft of my dance memoir
– getting my NDIS funding reviewed
– launching ThirtiesPerson into independent living
– getting all my travel journals typed up
Well, I’m about to add another project. A WOMAN OF MARS is my first poetry chapbook, printed professionally by PS Publishing in 2010. It’s the chapbook people ask for the most. It was a 300 copy print run, and was marketed as a collector’s item. Secondhand copies may be floating around.
All copyright has reverted to me, and I want to reprint it, with a new cover, and make it a paperback, and ebook.
Which means figuring out a flow-chart of what needs to happen.
As if I’m not spread thin enough – all of my own doing.
A quite day today, which has meant an opportunity to wrangle the ever-tall email mountain. You know the drill: delete some out of date shit; unsubscribe from 3 more newsletters; answer a few pertinent things; once again fail to update my writing records to show 2 poems rejected, 1 acceptance.
I do subscribe to the JourneyWoman newsletter, and they just posted a few of their 2025 trips. JourneyWoman are women-only travel. Group travel mostly, and I’m always leery of that because the itineraries can be brutal. “Get up, get on the bus(optional whip cracking noises), get off the bus, appreciate these rocks, stop appreciating them, visit the gift shop, get back on the bus.” That sort of thing. But JourneyWoman notes that most of their tours are ‘relaxed’. They posted Morocco, Southern America, and the autumn leaves in New England. All 3 on my bucket list.
There’s no harm in looking through the itineraries, and drooling, and thinking ‘yes to this, and no to bourbon tasting, and why would I want to make an inconvenient something I can’t get through Australian customs?’
Now, PizzaBoy and I have Egypt in our sights next year, and we are limited to one international trip per year….but. Oh look, there’s no buts, Satya. That’s how it is. One international trip until our circumstances change dramatically – like ThirtiesPerson housed; we’ve downsized; I stop spending money on crap.
We are hoping that Wyld Tribe run their Egypt trip, and we can both lob onto that. But in case they don’t, we are occasionally doing homework on who else we might travel with. I’m so set on doing this Egypt trip next year that my Noom(diet and health app) goal is to lose weight so I look fantastic in Egypt travel pics next year.
Goblin Brain is chanting ‘NewEnglandMoroccoNewOrleans’ in my head.
Random tourist pic from the Wyld Tribe ‘Return To Avalon 2023′ trip for interests’ sake.
Number 67 on my Bucket List, posted a few weeks ago, is kayaking.
It was a relatively easy one to arrange. There are small businesses who do kayaking trips along the Yarra River in Melbourne. I signed MidWife, PizzaBoy and I up for a one hour kayak through Melbourne.
It started quite near Princes Bridge, and went down past Jeff’s Shed, Polly Woodside, and further on still.
Now, I have a bit of a thing about deep water, and water I can’t see the bottom of. I’m not sure how deep the Yarra is (tide was out), but it IS dubbed the only river that flows upside down. It’s brown. Impenetrable brown.
PB and I arrived a few minutes late, and got the speed induction. Sign the waivers, into flotation jackets, into the kayaks, and we were away.
It was a hot day. Fortunately, I didn’t feel hot on the river. I did struggle with the paddling. I don’t have loads of upper body strength. Some, but not a sustainable amount. I took plenty of mini-breaks as we meandered down the river.
“Can you tell when I stop rowing?” I asked PB?
“No.”
“Good.”
PB was the ‘power’, and sat in front. I was the steers woman, using pedals at my feet to send us left or right. Which is why we wandered all over the river, narrowly missed buoys, and said hello to the mud on either bank. There was no slacking. If I took at moment to stare around me, suddenly, we were heading straight for the stone pylon of a bridge.
We were the last kayak, always. The neurodiverse part of me wanted to fit in by being in the centre of things, but this was not on PB’s agenda, so we schlopped along at the rear. Which gave us a chance to chat to the guy who kept us rounded up, like a sheepdog.
Even though we passed many riverside cafes and restaurants, and I was very taken by one called Botanica, most had loud music doofing away, and thus wrote themselves off my ‘maybe a visit one day’ mental list.
Plenty of people in cafes on pontoons watched us, and a few laughed when I mimed whipping PB.
You can also rent little boats to putter up and down the river. A group of girls dressed to the nines, complete with tight short dresses, high heels, and tiny purses rented one. All so they could eat their McDonalds in style.
I did enjoy the odd moments between cafes when there was just the lapping of the water, and the swish of our oars. Very peaceful, and if I could get that without paddling, I’d be all about it.
A few ducks, and a black swan were are only animal companions.
Clambering out of the kayak was a bit of a circus. I’d managed to soak myself with water, and my bum was about the same width as the kayak seat hole. I had to wiggle myself out, a bit like a cork, then inelegantly clamber onto the bird-poo strewn bank.
Then, PB, MidWife and I walked along SouthBank until we found ice cream. All three of us had brown bums because of bird poo.
I’m now home. Showered, cooled off, properly hydrated, and resting on my bed. I suspect Panadol Osteo will be my friend tonight and tomorrow.
And I’ve promised PB that my next Bucket List item will not be physically strenuous.
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