Deadline of Death

I've got something I have to do and by God I am going to procrastinate until the very last second. I've put this off twice already (by weeks) and done nothing towards it. Nothing. Rather than complete this task, that I originally offered to do as a favour, I've done home improvements this weekend.

Yes, I, the least capable, least interested, least skilled person in all of south-east Queensland picked up a hammer! Then nails! Then discovered I needed screws instead and called a handyman. That was a call he'll wish he never answered.

There was a full ute-load to the tip! Carpet got ripped up! The man-hole (giggle) was investigated to ascertain the viability of taking out some walls (walls, it turns out, can be finicky things to remove. Apparently some of them are keeping the roof up! This is clearly an activity that will have to wait until I have another project due that requires an even higher, more demanding level of procrastination). I pruned, I carted rubbish to the bin, I culled papers, cooked. I even cleaned. The house is looking great.

Still this thing needed to be done. So I watched my tv show and laughed the jolly laugh of someone who is frivolously throwing away time knowing that the DEADLINE OF DEATH is inexorably drawing near. The show finished after only an hour - nothing for it, I must turn on the computer and begin this slow, tedious and uninteresting task and perhaps earn some measure of redemption as a person by finally completing this thing.

But oh, Google opens and I remember that I wanted to find out what car Vin Diesel was driving in XXX as he chases the 'submarine' that thankfully has decided to run on top of the water this time or it would have been a fully shit chase scene
"Can you see it?"
"NO YOU IDOT - it's under the fucking water"
"OK, stay calm, we'll just bomb the shit out of the river"
"Well that's cool, but now what's our reason for drinving this insane care around really really fast?!"
"What?! We need a reason?!"

"Yes," I think "that's a valid tangent so follow at this point" so enter: Classic Muscle Cars and after only 2 pages discover that the Pontiac GTO is nicknamed "The Judge". Cool. I also learnt what 'break horsepower' refers to (and it is not about stopping!), and then as I find myself comparing the relative merits and lines of the 64 Plymouth Barracuda and the 67 Chevy Camaro three things really struck home:

1. I know nothing about cars. Nothing. But somehow I now find them funny instead of reprehensible. I've changed. I also want to meet a mechanic who shares my dream of making the first moon landing in a muscle car. I'll be navigation, they can drive.

2. I am an olympic level procrastinator. The only thing more hilarious than trying to figure out my car's "performance" metrics (Audrey the 81 Mazda 323 is so banged about that we can't be sure which of the two models that were released that year she is. Using Occams Razor - I'd say the cheaper one, not the slightly sporty one. But they had the same engine capacity so no big diff right? Anyway I've kept a log of how many kloms she does every time I fill up the tank so that I can figure out her average kloms per litre, but it's in the glovebox and I forget to bring it in) to add into the heavy-weight champs battle of Barracuda Vs Camaro would be to blog about it and invite the world to laugh along with (not at) me. Please feel welcome to laugh .... now.

and

3. That's another Hour and A Half gone and there is now no way I am going to get this thing done now. Maybe I should just go to bed, and blame the Global Financial Crisis...

Another gold for procrastination!

(Oh, and Happy (Chinese) New Year! Go the mighty Ox!)

Not Quite Neighbourly

The "Cult Film" mini project for work is happening. It's not for ages yet, but you have to get things nailed-down (spontaneity is for artists, not galleries) in advance so promotion can be booked, and staff can get used to seeing it on the horizon. There's a little hiccup with one of the Councillors having booked one of the nights for some lame event where they hand out certificates to whoever turns up. Might not be able to get out of that .... have to see.

KS and I have been circling mentions in the local paper of "Bookmarks of Excellence" being given to children who do craft at the shopping centres during the school holidays. There's something basically wrong with telling a general population that they're 'excellent' all the time, that their city is the best, that they're 'leading the way'. It's delusional apart from anything else!

Rather than get caught up on the many "quirks" of Trash City, I want to tell you a little about my new stalker. Anna.
Anna is my new neighbour (replacing Merv who Mowed), and has been transplanted from an Eastern Bris suburb - so she's a long way from her friends. She's moved to Trash City because her dutiful daughter is concerned for her safety (and the DD's response time should there be an emergency) now that Anna is in her winter years. So she has some time on her hands. And windows. Time to look out of windows. And a front porch as most of the houses in our suburb do. A front porch (rather than a back one) to add to that sense of 'community' - where everyone can 'watch out for each other'. Literally.

She has had a very interesting life - being raised in China in a Russian school (so although she's Australian, she has a heavy Russian accent). She and her husband started their family overseas and there were a few stories about trains and border crossings with babies and bags going missing, and no food and so on which made for an astonishing 45 minutes listening. She has two cats and a dog just like Riley ("only she is proper breed!") called Poppy. She's kind, friendly and always up for a chat. ALWAYS UP FOR A CHAT.

I realised last night as she sprung upon me out of the dusk as I darted from my car to the front door and started relating the activities of Rumi during the day, and how her two cats responded to this, and how great it was that one of my new shrubs was flowering, and how I had been at work a long time today and how I must be tired and she should be going, except that it would be best for me if I cooked a big meal on sundays and froze it in portions and then i wouldn't have to cook each night, just heat up my meal and it's much better that way, which is how she does it, in an enamel pot, they're the best kind and I nodded and tried to smile and it dawned on me. I am just not made for this suburban life. I am a crap neighbour. I have no interest in who is doing what to who over in number 13, or what number 15 thinks of it, and is trying not to say, nor why number 12 has so many people living there, or what they think they're doing with that great big boat, nor why Mrs Number 18 was in hospital recently, or if the people at number 11 are still the same ones who had the big drug bust or are there new people there now.
I DON'T CARE.

I say g'day, I offer to bring bins in if people are going away, I'll swap cuttings or dog-sit. That's kind of it for me. I've expanded that to being the loose-dog-pound-ringer and I'm done. I didn't realise that a yard would come with such a high cost. I also thought that fences would absorb more sound. There you go - wrong again.

Geckoville

There's an utterly unnerving, unterrestial noise near my house at night.
An explosive cracking CHIT CHIT CHIT randomly smacks me in the head. It's a phenomenal sound, and scared the bejesus out of me for the first 2 months I was in the new place. I had no idea what it was and after the first time, but when I didn't die, I figured that it was largely benign. Besides, if whatever was making that kind of noise decided to attack, well, at least it would be over quickly.
Then mum was over one night. "Oh you've got Geckos!"
"Can you see one?" I asked (having just pretended that maybe it was a secret airforce jet making that noise).
"Didn't you just hear it?" she said, and didn't I look like a boob!?

So, it's geckos making that horrible sound. Since I learnt this, I've started paying a tiny bit more attention, and learnt that there's not just one very gregarious gecko co-habitating with us, but rather at least two, and more recently a little tacker. Gecko love! Yeah baby, feel my suction pads!! It's a regular frackin gecko love-in at my place.

Given that the alternative is spiders, I am very positive about the geckos. Arachnids are just too far away from my branch of the tree.

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!

The Sounds of Clucking

There was a moment over the weekend when I realised that despite me not enjoying Ipswich as a cultural centre, my new place in and of itself hits all of the points I wrote down at the end of Mastery when we were dreaming of what we wanted our future to hold.

This was about four years ago now, and at that time, the idea that I might one day be a worthy citizen for a mortgage was ludicrous, bordering on delusional. To sit and write out "I want a place surrounded by trees so I can hear birds-song, and there's plenty of natural light, and wood and books. There's beautiful things, a place for my desk and it feels like home. There's a gas stove and a bath tub and music fills it. It is a happy home" was an act of faith almost beyond me.
One of the things that I didn't know I should put on that list, was chooks. I like the idea of chooks, but I am no where near uber-gardener capacity in terms of even planning the garden, let alone caring for food producers, but a neighbour very nearby has some and the morning chook noise is incredibly comforting and pleasurable. I stand in my kitchen, making tea with the cheerful red kettle on the singing gas stove, talking away to the dog (the cat already doesn't listen) and over the fence and between the hills hoists comes the sounds of clucking.

I am holding off putting a clock on the wall in a nod to this beautiful period in the morning when there's tea, the paper the dog and the chooks. A brief interlude of life for living without email and beeping calendar appointments. In a good, basic way, it's starting to feel like a home. Like maybe my home.

Enforced Sanity Break

The relentless flow of work I have been slowly sinking under the past two weeks has slowly ground to a halt this afternoon. The Sheltered Workshop email servers are down for the count. After 2 hours of neither giving nor receiving, I am forced to look up and notice that the sun still shines in the window, and that at 5.12 pm I am the last person left in the building.
Hi-larious!

Most excellent, I shall be home before half-past, and walking the dog in the twilight. Unpacking again after dinner and some planning about re-arranging everything. It all looked so serene and pure when everything was in nice neat boxes. The house is starting to look a lot more like somewhere that I actually live, with piles of papers and books in corners, against walls and encroaching everywhere except the bathroom.
Chaos emerging from the sterile purity of cubes. Lovely. Very heartening.

In other news, National Write a Novel in a Month is coming up again quickly - remember to register soon! You don't want to miss out on that crucial first day.

Oh yeah and the federal election got called, but that's late November - our novels should be nearly finished by then!!

Storms Forecast

This month is really getting away from me.
I've got until friday to get our next quarterly brochure proofed and signed off. I don't really write anything, I'm the in-between person. Not quite senior enough to be editing or making any real decisions. The type-it-up and send it back to the designer, person. Not glamorous, no. Not fulfilling, no. Slightly appreciated and well-paid. These things will do. Tomorrow is the 'send it to all the stakeholders for their approval of their bit' day, and we'll see if the preliminary approvals I got from each of them will hold good. Let's hope so.
Dull isn't it.

I didn't mean to start talking shop. There's been awesome thunder and lightening storms. Very little rain in them, and a bit of hail. Some areas have been devastated - others completely untouched. Everywhere is humid and horrible. Peter was grazing his cows in the long paddock this morning, and as we rolled through them, I saw how bony and tired they all are. His cattle, like ours, are near to death from hunger and creeping malnutrition. If we can squeeze two drops of water out of these storms we'll be grateful for it. In that context, print deadlines don't really mean that much.

I unpacked a few boxes tonight. After nearly a year in storage, it's a wonderful surprise to unearth so many beautiful things and wonder where I will put them all. The kitchen cupboards aren't quite finished yet, and somehow I haven't yet stepped over the threshold of putting anything into the built-ins. Maybe it's the lack of a bed. A home isn't really anchored until you're sleeping there. Until then it's a camp kitchen with an indoor loo. Still, my camp kitchen and indoor loo now have an owl or a Buddha in nearly every room. An eclectic pairing I grant you. It will just get better from here. The lovely Mel arrived today with hand-me-down couches. My vision of a lounge room that can comfortably seat 12 has finally been realised - sadly just about a thousand kloms from any of the usual groups of 12 that I can assemble! A success of its own kind nonetheless.

Street Gossip tells me that the horrid Bogans from Hell over in number 13 (no really!) have already gotten their eviction notice, so there won't be too much more excitement soon (read Police and GBH). "Gosh", says I "that's jolly good news". The folks in 15 had set up their lawn chairs at the fence-line for an uninterrupted view of the moving weekend. Glad to be that entertaining whilst doing nothing but carry boxes in and rubbish out.

For no reason other than it has been the main way I spend my leisure hours these past weeks, I tell you that I am still watching the TV series ROME on dvd. It is brilliant. Really. Bloody. Brilliant. This is my third spin through and it's still growing on me. The dvd extras are wonderful and bring out more and more of the value in the series. Don't get me started on Titus Pullo or Mark Antony. I will gibber, and that is never cool.