Monday, December 24, 2007

Festivus

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, nonaddictive, gender neutral celebration of the solstice holiday, practised with the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or the choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that Australia is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed,color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms:
This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal.
It is freelytransferable with no alteration to the original greeting.
It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her / himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.
This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings, for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

Note: No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons have been electromagnetically relocated.

Suburban Rituals: Mowing

Over the weekend, I attempted to mow my yard.
Note "attempted".

There are many things I struggle with in life, far too many really, and sadly, this list is only being expanded by my half-hearted first foray into home ownership.

Since I moved in two months ago, every weekend has been pierced at various (read: early) hours of the day by the cacophonous mating call of the lesser two-stroke mower. A popular Queensland variant of this creature features an unusual symbiont - a weedy thin human male clad only in short short stubbies and the old style thin things. Hat/sunglasses are optional, as is a half-smoked durrie and blurry blue old tatts down the forearms, but accessories do make the man. Lawns are as close as Suburban Queensland seems to have to a soul. Gardens are nice, but you really just need a lawn. The "inifinity" lawn look is popular too - from the edge of your house to the kerb in one smooth unbroken golf-green.

Well, since it rained, I have been pleased to watch a variety of green things sprout and thrust their way competitively into the sunlight in my yard. Some resulted in yellow swaying flowers, some in tiny blue ones - leaving a very pretty haze of almost lilac blue, some just in giant woody tendril structures keen to make a bid for control of the house. I like the idea of a garden, eventually, but it has been a long way down the energy-consumption-priority list lately and I was happy just for it to be green.

When I lost Riley in the yard and had a minor freakout that the thing that lives in the bowels of the Deathstar had grabbed him, I realised it was time to mow. I borrowed the mower from Ma & Pa, got long pants, boots, hat, leather gloves, ear plugs on, over and in. Fired her up and commenced battle.

What an ordeal.

Painful, noisy, uncontrollable, rough, endless.

When the machine over heated after 20 minutes having done about one twelfth of the entire yard I was in complete concurrence.

This is going to take more planning. If I can only do a twelfth at a time, and the grass continues to grow at the current rate, then my initial computations suggest that I will be mowing this lawn for... roughly the REST OF MY NATURAL BORN LIFE.

So there's got to be some other options. Today I am trying to figure out what second job I can get so I can afford to pay to have the whole thing paved, or turned into the set of Narnia, or adding decking to every side of the house over the damn thing, or dug up and put to useful cultivation...

But I don't really have the energy for that either. It's all a bit much. Time for a cup of tea and a crack at the crossword.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Touching Base

Ma often used to say "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" and it got to be ingrained. That's not a handy habit for a writer. Life's going on all around, but I don't want to seem like a whinger, so the habit is to clam it up. Swallow it down and get on with going through the motions.

Ma does it herself - a phone call will run out of steam, and she'll say "well, there's nothing else to report" as though we're talking just to entertain me. This last month or so, I've been doing that to myself. Not talking just to be in touch and shoot the breeze, no, it's been a bit "nothing to report" as though there has to be something newsworthy going on in order to say - hey - what's good for dinner? or how funny is it that Dumbledore's meant to be gay? Or, man, I am bored! It's tough to heal the breach when you're not talking to yourself. There's no-one to be the go-between.

The thing I like about this time of year is that there's a push to be in touch *anyway*. If you're into the G-d thing one way or the other, or summer solstice, or just the end of the year (please, please, let the next one bring the good stuff!!) you can just send a message saying "I'm thinking about you, and wishing nice things into your life" and I think that's just brilliant.

So this morning I feel like I'm back talking to myself, and we're patching things up. She's given me some chocolate and said sorry, and I've promised not to shut her out and pretend like nothing's happening. Yeah, it's getting better. Our world seemed to shrink a lot this year and that's quite a weird experience. I think we've passed through the worst of the transition now, and starting to find a way to inject a bit more imagination and humour into things without resorting to outright denial and escapism will be good. (Note future tense there - still learning!)

Anyway, from us and Riley to you and yours, for no reason at all, have a great weekend!

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Innocent Fantasies

This morning was a lot like yesterday morning. You know how the work week goes. Alarm clock, stiff knees, bored with breakfast, briefly ponder clothes and pull on almost exactly the same thing again.
But I got a gorgeous phone message from Mez, that she's been daydreaming that we were hanging out together today with her new puppy instead of us both going to work in separate cities. As soon as I read it, I joined in, and imagined us baking something for afternoon tea and maybe I could finally teach her that double handed patience card game. I don't know why I still teach people how to play it - I nearly always loose. I guess it's like Scrabble - I like playing it because it's a good excuse to spend time together and keep the hands busy while joking and laughing and story telling can go on.
Such innocent fantasies. How lovely to know that there's still a source of enjoyment and pleasure to be had that doesn't need a copyright permission or is sullied by a badly made movie spin-off console game. It would be better, of course, to wag work today and be teleported to your lounge room and have a laugh, but there you go. In a moment of personal revelation to you, I confide that I have these innocent fantasies much more often than any other kind.

My favourite one lately, from about 2 weeks ago, was a fully-fledged dream. I was in New York promoting the new book, and Neil Gaiman had a night free in his schedule, so we met at a family restaurant he knows and had dinner. It was good to catch up and the food was well made. Afterwards, we said goodbye on the pavement and he walked back to his friends' place and I caught a cab to the hotel. It was good to see him so relaxed.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Formalising an Accent

Name?
Jayke.
J-A-K-E?
nah - J-A-Y-K-E.

pause...
Aussie Bogan parents huh?
Yeah, 'fraid so.
Poor bastard. Next!

Saturday, December 01, 2007

What Happened to November?

...'cause last thing I knew it was October, and things were getting kinda busy.
Gee, you look away for just a minute and the whole political landscape of the country changes!

In more thrilling personal news, I had two (2!) separate house guests during November - Mez and MsJaye both made the trek north and braved the humidity. What fun! Such glee! That makes it four this year - how spoilt and loved I am!

Ipswich remains a lonely exile and this last week has been quiet as well, due to my long-suffering dvd player going on the blink. Ack! No cds, no music other than the radio. Ever hopeful, and well trained by years of using microsoft, I turn it on again each night, patiently waiting for it to recommence operations. After all, this is exactly what happened earlier in the year! I take this time to do a little reading or explore exactly how early I can fall asleep.

I planted out the fig tree and found it very rewarding to dig a hole, and fill it in again. The fig is doing well, which is more than I can say for the mulberry, which has suffered a nasty lopping from the back neighbours. May fortune piss on them! There has been plenty plenty plenty of rain so everything is growing as though to catch up for two years of being thirsty. Ma & Pa's place is an utter biological riot. If you sit still, it feels like you can hear things growing. Kinda creepy. Maybe I've been reading too much scifi.

No, not possible to read too much scifi.

Oh, and the election... well I'm cynically hopeful. Is that possible? Yes. I've had my naive hopes trashed by the ALP in the past, and let's face it - what a disappointing piss-ant backflipper Peter "Once had principles" Garrett has been.

The trouble with elections is that a politician always gets in.

Okay.
Anyway,
December.
December already.
I'm not ready for december already.