a holiday story. In several parts.

Several months ago, my sisters decided to take a cruise and asked us to join them.

A CRUISE????? are you KIDDING???????????

We said yes.

Now I know some of you are thinking, OMG I DON'T WANT TO READ A HOLIDAY STORY! It's BORING or I'm JEALOUS (or both) and I understand. BUT -- for those who wish to know where we went and what we did, and hear how I nearly lost my kidneys but failed to get my hands on Jimmy Choo, read on.

(I'm writing in days, so I can keep it all straight. Hence, there'll be a few posts)

(and a lot of photos)

DAY ONE

We got up at 3 am, and drove up to Perth to the airport. This was sorta fun and exciting for a time, then I wanted more sleep. Too bad for me.

You can tell I was tired and excited by the blurry photo. Looked fine to my weary eyes.

Sunrise!! haven't seen one of them for a LONG time.

Then, of course, we found ourselves driving INTO the sun (nice)

and I MAY have nearly wet myself when we got to the airport.

(I said, NEARLY)

WHAAAAT??? doesn't EVERYONE take their Pilly on holidays?

Bags secured (no Corby moments for us)

and we settled ourselves in for the 5 hour flight to Singapore.

Pretty exciting for me -- my first trip overseas, our first trip with no kids.... I was like a puppy with two shoes to chew.

I watched Captain Phillips on the way over. Heading for a cruise ship. Yuh - huh. Began thinking about pirates and hoping they would like the casino too much to worry about my little gold bangles.


We hit Singapore early, and made it through Customs and Immigration very quickly and with no dramas.
(My sisters, the previous day, got the snarkiest officials ever. One sneered at Sissy's 'brand-new passport' and one was rude to Ker, and then offered her husband candy!!)

We were ushered out of the airport by tiny little old men and women wearing brown jackets and white gloves. They-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed point the way and hustle you along if you're not quick enough, and they also wave mysterious and instantly obeyed commands at taxis so that no-one is waiting for more than a few seconds. I resolved to smuggle a few home to Perth airport but my bag was too securely wrapped.

Our taxi was clean and smelled of nothing, and the fare was amazingly cheap compared to Australia. the driver barely spoke English so we resorted to OOH-ing and AHHH-ing out the window.

Here is some of what we OOH-ed and AHHH-ed at:

 This is something like the London Eye, a great big Ferris Wheel that you can see probably the whole of Asia from. I wanted to go in it but we didn't have time (a phrase you will hear a lot of!)

And this building is a magnificent creation, very art deco and fully swish.


At the hotel, I had this delightful package waiting for me:

                     (that is my sister, Ker) (I unaccountably failed to get a photo of her husband)

We caught up over drinks and dinner, joined at some point by Sissy and her husband, who had had the adventure of a lifetime.
After taking what turned out to be a ONE WAY ONLY tri-shaw ride by a skinny little man who clearly felt it was going to be too much effort to pedal two well-fed Australians back to their hotel, they were taken on a 'shopping trip' by their taxi driver -- which involved skulking down alleyways while gates clanged shut behind them.
They emerged with some nice gold jewellery, and two prizes -- a watch for Him, and a Jimmy Choo bag for Her.
The watch was something of a surprise for all involved. BIL stops all watches after a day or two. Even my sister has stopped wearing hers, because he stops it as well. They're not broken -- if he goes away, the watch will start working again -- they just won't go while he's around. Weird, huh?
And Jimmy immediately became the star of the trip. You'll see.

We were knackered by now. Fabio wandered away and managed to find some milk for morning coffees.

And we hit the sack. I don't even remember falling asleep.

new

A new year.

January always brings such hopes, doesn't it?

We promise ourselves new beginnings, new projects, new plans, and some of those we even manage to keep for a while.

I've given up on new years' resolutions. I don't think one ever made it to February.

There are lots of things I would like to achieve this year -- losing some weight (working on it), learning to use my camera, getting back to budgeting sensibly, and teaching the kids to cook.

But I'm not resolving to do any of them, because that's a recipe for disaster for me.

Instead, I'll simply say these are some of the things I would like to do, and we'll see how I go.

What about you? are you brave enough to make resolutions? or are there just some things you'd like to try?

U is for United

Today's insightful wisdom is brought to you by one of my favourite philosophers, the Legendary John Cougar Mellencamp, who famously said:

Everybody has got the choice between hotdogs and hamburgers.
Everyone of us has got to choose
Between right and wrong
And giving up
Or holding on.

*****

While some people I know are mystified that I would plaster my life on Facebook, telling the world all my secrets, I find it works as therapy.
When I say, "I'm having a bad day." or "I feel like a failure." my Facebook friends will fill up a page with love and support. Some might see that as a cry for attention.... well, yes, it is.

My friends are all genuine people. There is no teen angst going on here, no showing-off or trying to get some boy to show an interest.
When I cry for help, it's because I need it.
Even when I can't say what the problem is, my friends rally round. They lift my heart when it feels to heavy for me to lift myself.

They say delicious things, they remind me that all is not lost, they make me laugh, and sometimes cry a little.

And they do it with the written word. They take the time to type out a response, and if you think that's easy, you don't have predictive text on your phone.

There is great power in the written word. Seeing something in black and white is concrete. Comfort expressed on paper (or a screen) lasts a very long time.

*****

Sometime in life we all need a friend to help us. We can't always do it ourselves.

Maybe we need someone to help us hold on, or to catch us when we fall.

Or maybe you will get the chance to BE that friend.

Never ever underestimate the worth of a kind word or gesture when someone you know is in trouble.

T is for THANKFUL

There's a character in a book (one of the Otherland books by Tad Williams) where a guy has a music chip in his head so he can listen to music all day long presumably without damaging his eardrums.

I would so do that if I could. (this guy turns out to be a pyschopathic killer but I'm pretty sure the music is incidental - however, best look into that further before surgery)

I feel like there should be a soundtrack to my life.
I have songs for everything -- not just wedding and funeral songs, everyone has those, right? but songs for parties and songs for driving and songs for cleaning and songs for sad.
I have the song picked out for my husband in case he carks it. (please God, not this century).

I have ringtones for people on my phone (Fabio's is the Superman theme song) and songs for people on Facebook (in my head, since Facebook has so far failed spectacularly to arrange ringtones).

So you get that music means something to me, it's not just background noise but rather, I connect with it in my spirit. It calms me down or lifts me up, just like it probably does for you, too.

This morning, one of my Facebook friends asked for good news, cos she wasn't seeing any on the tv or in the papers, so people have been telling little snippets of things that make you smile. It's really lovely.
Many of those things are tiny, maybe easy to skip over if you're in a bad mood or busy. But the truth is, there's usually good news around us all day, every day -- it's just that we don't see it.
I am trying (with varying degrees of success) to see the good instead of the gloomy, and it helps a bit with those depressed days I have during my cycle.

For me, one of the surest ways to start looking for the little things is to play THIS SONG while I'm driving. I sing at the top of my lungs and I look around me and I see.

Today, I saw a mum and a dad walking the kids to school, holding hands and talking and laughing. How good is that?

 I saw kids running into the schoolyard greeting friends they haven't seen for two weeks.

 I saw builders working on two houses that we've been driving past twice a day since the lots were empty. The roof is going on both houses and I smiled to myself, thinking how excited the owners must be feeling now.

 I saw people checking the new plants by the side of the highway, out in the sunshine amongst the bees (and mosquitoes), instead of cooped up in an office somewhere.

 I saw magpies and cute little songbirds hopping around looking for breakfast.

 I saw people walking their dogs and a guy mowing his lawn.

 None of this is earth-shattering stuff. It's just people (and birds) going about their daily business, small doings in a big world.

But to me, it's also a beautiful world.





PS listen to the song.

s is for sneering

What is it with sneery people, anyway? what the fuck is wrong with them?

Let me tell you a little story. It's kind of pathetic. Brace yourself.

One time, we had to go to Kalgoorlie for some reason, and Fabio had to go do some boring Man Shit, so I asked him to drop me and the kids at Harvey Norman. (Kalgoorlie is not filled with cheap,  family friendly activities).

So we wandered around looking at furniture I couldn't buy, and enjoying the pretty doona covers and bedroom settings, as you do when you live in the middle of Fuck-All in a hideous little house -- and we happened across a particularly loud red and blue doona cover.

Small child asked, "Do you like that one, Mum?"
"Ugh, no," I said. "That's terrible."

Behind me, Sneery SmartArse was out shopping with his friends, obviously a couple, although he was on his own, for reasons which will become obvious at any moment.

"OOOH!: he said, loudly, adopting a Dickhead-pretending-to-be-gay voice, "That's TERRIBLE! OOOOH and THAT'S TERRIBLE!! and so is that! and THAT!! AND THAT!!!!"

Why?

Because he was (is) a Sneery Person.

That one brief moment crushed me then, and still does whenever I think of it.

I grew up with these idiots and I allowed them to make me feel inferior. I second-guessed myself and I stopped doing things I loved because they weren't 'cool'.

Now I wonder what the hell I let them do that to me for?
Because they're idiots. They do not deserve that much space in my head.

Now, I have to say, people still sneer at me today. They might pretend they don't, but I know. I am not as stupid, or as deaf, as they might hope.

And I am trying not to care, because I like me a whole lot better than I like them.

I will not let them win.

r is for re-boot

My husband just bought me a new laptop; the old one was dying and refused to start without some help in the mornings (much like myself).

My old lappie was about 6 -- and ran on Vista -- meaning that I've not only had to contend with swapping all my stuff over from Old Faithful to New Unknown, I've also had to battle a new OS -- the dreaded Windows 8.

Add in that we bought a new printer, too -- one that prints WIRELESSLY -- and you'll see that I have had my head turned inside out with all the New Learnings and Figuring Outs.

For a while, each new task meant that I had to work out a bunch of other things as well, and it took me so long just to do each small thing (like, to add desktop shortcuts to my favourite websites took about 2 hours. Not. Even. Kidding.)

However, I'm on the downhill slope now YAY

and I'm not completely driven mad.

Q is for quibble and quarrel

Today, I made a boo-boo. I am cranky, probably hormonal, and I should have stayed off the internet.

Or at least, NOT engaged in on-line 'discussions'. Particularly, those involving politics or the demonisation of Gina Rinehart.

But no.

Today, I acted like this was my first ever day on the internet, and I'd never come across trolls before.

I argued my point, and only served to prove the maxim

arguing with an idiot on the internet only proves there are two idiots.

I ended up apologising, at which point the troll said, "Oh, I'm bored now, bye bye." thus proving

a) yes, troll

and b) I wasted an hour of my morning.


I am desperately hoping not to compound the issue tomorrow. Might look at funny cat videos instead.

I can't tell if it's her or me.

I am sitting at my computer when my 8 year old daughter stomps past.

KLOMP! KLOMP! KLOMP! KLOMP! KLOMP!

Here is the conversation that ensued.

me: "Are you angry?"

8 yo : "YES!"

me: "Why?"

8 yo: "Because (my brother) is being MEAN TO ME!!!!!!!!" (this is some sort of criminal offence)

me: "What is he doing?"

8 yo: "He's not letting me DO WHAT I WANT TO DO!!!!!!!!!" (also a criminal offence)

me: "Well, what did you want to do?"

8 yo: "I want to play that my imaginary friend is in my body; and he is FORCING HER OUT!!!!"

So. Is my 11 year old son an exorcist? is my daughter an drama queen? am I slowly going crazy here?

love me like a zombie man

Last night, Fabio and I were watching The Walking Dead, which is a TV series about zombies.

In one scene, one poor man was trying to gather the courage to shoot his zombied wife, and he just couldn't do it.

I asked Fabio:
"If I got zombified, would you shoot me in the head?"

His reply? "Right between the eyes."

me: thankyou.

Fabio: My pleasure, babe.

Then we looked at each other and roared laughing.

Now that's romance, folks.