March 31, 2006
Today is one of those days-I am suffering from one of the above. Work is ongoing on the new house to the point of insanity-I didn't understand why people were looking at me funny (admitted I was in glasses and with no makeup and that can scare anyone) until I saw myself in the mirror-I had been painting ceilings all day and somehow bumped my head up against it while painting it, so I had a perfect white stripe right down the center part of my nearly-black hair.
I was Pepe LePeu's more American cousin.
Embarrassing.
So I give you a few house pics, and an example of all the help we are getting while we rebuild the Barbie Dream House.
First off, the lovely house.
Me doing the important things.
A before pic of the fugly kitchen, which has been painted and is already looking different.
A pic of the germ warfare 1970's carpet that exploded, thereby exposing us to Mad Cow or the like.
And Mommy's Little Cupcake
He has already learnt how to sit. My God our dog is brilliant. BRILLIANT. He decided to apply his brilliance and would help Angus.
Of course, his kisses aren't very helpful.
And then everyone got involved.
Hard to believe we haven't finished the move with all the help we're getting.
See you Monday, by which time I will have turned 32.
-H.
PS-it's our tradition, isn't it? Happy birthday, Mitzi!
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Gorby is too cute!
March 30, 2006
The book traveled round with me until I finished it and tucked it into a shelf of our much-beloved place in Nelson. I signed the inside cover of the book, like I always do when I leave one behind. I always sign my name, the date, and the home country I bought the book from just because I like to imagine the book will then wing its way around the world on some other journey. I saw I wasn't the only one who thought that way-I opened another book on the shelf and out tumbled a business card of a man in Wellington, who had read his book and left it behind. I replaced both the card and the book (it wasn't my kind of book) and smiled, walking away.
The author's book stayed with me, though. Not the incredible quality of writing, not the fact that I found it in Auckland, not what I wrote on the inside cover (which is, in itself, a shocking thing for me to do as I believe that you should never, ever deface a book or break a spine.) The book stayed with me because of one part of it, a section in the middle that was a few pages long.
The author talked about death, the death of a loved one specifically. She wrote that there are many that think that people come back to touch us in death, to tell us it's ok to go on, that it's ok to love again, ok to grieve in little pieces instead of big chunks that haul us down to the bottom of the river. The book was fiction but it told of a particular story in which a woman was touched by a butterfly, who flitted around the house to specific objects her husband loved but had been left untouched since his death. The story goes that the butterfly was somehow her husband who had come back to remember the best bits, and the butterfly floated near her cheek and then out the window. The widow then felt she could move on, and from then on she maintained that the butterfly was her husband who'd come back to say goodbye. The author backs this up by thinking aloud that people do say goodbye to their loved ones when they go.
What a load of fucking rubbish.
I lost two of the most important people I ever had in my early life-my grandfather and Kim. They both died nearly 7 and 6 years, respectively. They went off into whatever unknown there is and there hasn't been a sign of an insect around to tell me that life can go on, love can go on, and they'll see me on the other side. It just doesn't work that way.
Not like I didn't look for something. I confess with the death of my grandfather I let him go at once-his entire life was filled with pain and suffering from a body that was ill equipped to carry a soul as big as his. I didn't look for signs from him because I really hoped he had gone. He may have left a grieving bunch behind him and I may have lost the only man that ever actually loved me from the beginning to the end of my life, but in terms of stupid sayings I really do think he's gone somewhere better. I hope when he gets there he's greeted by his beloved Collie Tammy, a lovely girl who died by his bedside as she'd fallen off the back of a tractor-trailer and had most of her skin scraped off. He slept by her side and she awoke briefly to crawl forward, lick his hand, and then laid down with him and died. If I had any sign from him, I would hope it would be the sound of his solid hand patting her side as they walked through a field somewhere in eternity.
Kim, on the other hand, wasn't such a straight case. As I've said here before I looked for him everywhere. I didn't believe he was dead, he couldn't be so mediocre, I was sure he was undergoing some metamorphosis and turning into something else, some other creature and personality who was going to surprise me and love me forever. It was several years before I stopped looking for him in crowds, in airports, and on sidewalks. He really did do something as fucking mundane as dying.
Then when I realized I wouldn't find him, I did look for signs. I admit I never turned to the lepidoptera world for guidance, but I did hope to see him in the hallway, in my dreams, in my mirror, a love message in the dust on the bookshelf. I hoped for some kind of assurance that wherever he went, he was ok. I wanted to see that he was himself, he had all the action figures and red-headed stewardesses he'd always dreamt of. Above all, I wanted to know that it was ok for me to love again, that he didn't mind, and that he would love me forever. I wrote this post as some kind of hope for that, some kind of saying goodbye, letting go, making our peace.
These kinds of catharsis, they don't come like that.
The grief is just grief, you can hold it in your hand and wear it like a necklace around your neck, there is nothing to hold your hand and hear them say 'I will always love you'Â. You can cry rivers of tears but they'll never float you down to where the loss lays. They say religion is a leap of faith but I think saying goodbye is. You have to trust that they've moved on and they'll forgive you for moving on, too.
There are no butterflies, no writing in the dust. The author banging on about them made me a bit angry, made me want to write and say You've never lost anyone, have you? Never. You don't know what it's like to get sucker-punched by a memory, to feel adrift living in the world that they created for you. The ending of her book made me even angrier, (and even potentially put her on my 'I'm not buying another one of your books again ever'Â list, I'm not sure yet) which I won't go into as no doubt a lot of people reading this blog will read her book and I will have then spilled the beans.
But over time, the sucker punches get softer and softer. The idolatry of the dead passes, they weren't heroes but rather humans who made mistakes as stupid as a cutting word, an affair, even of dying on you. You forgive them their tresspasses just as you forgive them for moving on. You may find that you don't think about them every single day and you don't feel guilty when you realize that. You don't look at the life you lead now and apologize to the dead for it-I know that Kim and my grandfather would want me to be happy. I know that because that's all I would want for them. Maybe that's the definition of real love-you love them so much that all you want is for them to be happy, even if you can't be the one to do it.
My life goes on and I don't feel the need to resolve where my heart was with where it is now. I don't stand by the window of our new house and look out the garden and think: Would Kim be ok with this? I don't pet Gorby and think: Would Alexi, the dog Kim and I had together, mind this new affection? I don't turn the world counter-clockwise to try to see how the past reconciles with the present. This is my life and I love it unconditionally, I can't imagine that Kim wouldn't love it for me.
There are no butterflies.
There never will be.
That doesn't mean I don't have his permission to move on.
-H.
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March 29, 2006
All this has been rendered irrelevant.
I was brought down.
I have been beaten by the house.
Angus and I have been making runs every day, sometimes multiple runs, with the seats in the car removed for more access (we have one of those people-mover minivan things. It's fucking ugly but does the job well.) We have moved over 50% of the house already, and the place looks like a wasteland here. We are constantly doing something-patching up, boxing up, packing up, moving up. It's been non-stop since Friday and there is absolutely no sign of stopping as sometimes the sheer quantity of work makes us weepy.
Tuesday Angus had to go to Ipswich, and so Gorby and the girls and I faced the world alone (we had decided to take the girls to the new place after all, and will keep them in a warm and secure confined space when we power sand the floors-their distress at seeing their current home disappearing was really stressing them out. We walked upstairs once to Maggie shaking in a corner, so we knew a balanced environment with their things was what they needed). So the four of us (including the two cats, very happy to be in the new house and enjoying the massive windows) went at it alone.
It was not easy. There were many deliveries coming Tuesady, a utility room to paint, and all of this within a certain span of time. I also had my day job to keep paying attention to so the attention span, she was short.
It started early. After waking up at 1:30 and 4:00 for puppy walkies I blearily packed the car at 6:45 and made my way to our new house with Gorby, aka Sir Drools-a-Lot (CalTech Girl, we've found the same thing you suggested-it's not only a matter of him getting used to it but if he's in his crate he has no problem with motion sickness-unfortunately we don't always have room for his crate!). I hadn't had a chance to give him his motion sick tablet and there was no space in the car for his kennel, so he was strapped into the passenger seat. Once we arrived, he ran around outside while I unpacked the latest car load.
I walked around, smelling puppy farts. Gorby's stomach was obviously upset from the car ride. I felt sorry for him but he was in the garden looking like nothing was wrong and we had a little walk with no results. The telephone line guy called and said he was coming in to check the line. I walked into the study to check the other phone when I saw it-Gorby wasn't having puppy farts. The four day no-accident streak had ended, as Gorby had planted a load on the study floor the size of a grapefruit. I had 0.5 seconds to clean up the massive dump before someone came into the home and thought us disgusting RSPCA mental cases.
I cleaned it up and noted the acidic hole on the varnish it had left behind. I decided I would throw puppy poo on my future enemies instead of battery acid, as same effect, less danger to my lily white hands. I opened the door and blamed bad smell on bad puppy farts, which is the dialog I would use the rest of the day.
It was non-stop. I felt like Catherine O'Hara in Beetlejuice, directing the moving men and screaming 'This is my art and it is dangerous!'Â At one point the phone was being repaired, satellite was being installed, the fridge delivery was here and the bed we'd ordered was on its way. All this and I had to paint the utility room to get it ready for said appliances. I buried my head in my hands and kept painting, despite being told to move cars/open doors/sign delivery papers and answer work calls. At one point I was on a work conference call and had to point to where the satellite needed to go and hold the phone to my ear with my shoulder while miming with the other hand that the home phone? She no work. The satellite installation man called me from outside so I opened a window to answer him but forgot that I am a tall Jolly Green Giant and so smashed my head into the frame. The kitchen was alive with the phone ringing, only it was the phone man trying to fix it as the phone doesn't work, anyway.
All this and there was Gorby to look after. Gorby, my darling boy. Gorby, who right as the fridge men knocked on the door and the satellite guy was talking with the phone guy about some kind of business, he walked up to me, smiled, and sweetly urinated all over the floor.
I promptly burst into tears and buried my face in my hands, hitting my recent window-frame related swelling. I thought about curling up in the space where the dishwasher should go, but as that was arriving later in the day and curling up in there would mean I'd have both puppy and cat company, I refrained. I thought about calling Angus and being all dramatic: 'I can't take this anymore, darling!'Â I would weep. 'There is simply too fucking much going on and I HATE EVERYTHING!'Â
Oh yes. A load of boxes, three delivery guys, one puppy, one half-painted utility room and a pint of orange juice and all I knew was this-I can't pick up the bacon. I can't fry it up in a pan or even make him forget he's a man. I have been beaten by suburbia, it has soundly kicked my ass. Women do this all the time. Women are stronger than me and make it look like a cake walk. In fact, women juggle toddlers on one hip and have their kids making paper-mache or yarn pictures while they do this. Me? I'm fucking incompetent.
So once it was all over-urine cleaned up, delivery guys gone while I waited for the next ones to come, and kitchen as unpacked as it could get-I did what anyone else could do.
I sat down with Gorby and watched a bit of Mannequin as a bit of 80's bad movie therapy on our new working satellite system.
Suburbia: 1. Helen: 0
-H.
PS-two people need you. One needs you because a little one should never have been through this. The other needs you because her little ones are hanging out in uterine space and she's working her way through the dreaded IVF two week wait-called the 2ww it really does a number on your head. Love to them both from me.
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March 28, 2006
There was a lot on my mind this time. Not only have we had the move and the dog, but recently something came and popped its head into my life, something that I never really thought I was over but also never really thought about. Life may move on but time holds still in that loft office, as we zig and zag between the past and present in preparation for the future.
Last Thursday my neighbor Billie came over for a drink. Billie, my book club mate. Billie, fellow dog owner (she owns a Bernese Mountain Dog and a dachsund, which I call the Walking Couch and the Little Sausage. She doesn't mind.) Billie is the one who tried IVF for more years than she wants to remember. Billie, someone who has become a friend, even if I sometimes keep her at arms' length.
Billie had brought a bottle of wine and we talked. As we continued to talk, there was a real quality of sadness to her voice that I had never heard before. I listened, as the only thing I can do is listen, and finally she looked up at me with tears.
"I've never been so down in my life, Helen," she said, crying.
"Oh God, Billie. Is there anything I can do?" I replied, and hugged her. She told me some of what's on her mind. She told me all that she did know, and I think that like me, there is some that she doesn't know. She talked about drinking, of sorrow, and finally, of hurting herself.
"Billie," I say calmly. "You're not thinking of killing yourself, are you?"
She shook her head and said more to herself than me, "I don't know. Sometimes I do."
And that's where the worlds meet. It's true I have many ingenious walls myself, hidden traps in which I can expedite people that get too close. I will find ways to have people leave my life if I think they're starting to like me, as it's easier that way. I never share about my mental health with anyone in my real life, and I sure as hell never talk about suicide with them.
Until now.
Sitting across from her on the couch, I open my mouth and tell her of the snowy Swedish evening. I tell her of the evening in the mental hospital that nearly broke me into a thousand tiny pieces, ones that none of the king's horses or men could put back together again. I tell her of it just because the one thing in the world I want is for no one to ever feel like that, ever.
I don't tell her it wasn't my first suicide attempt. I've got a Frequent Triers card, that suicide attempt was actually my third. Three times in my life the only thing that stopped me from going into the light was choosing the wrong pills. The first two times no one even knew about it, I simply slept it off. The last attempt was when the warning lights came on, and they stayed on. I don't tell her I know what it's like to look around and only see the darkness. I don't tell her that there's a hole in my heart that feels like a mine shaft, and the pit ponies drag one horrible god-forsaken memory or feeling from one shaft to another. I don't tell her that I too had a drinking problem, that I too hurt myself, or that I too sometimes needed to find an excuse-any fucking excuse, even something as mundane as Must See TV-to try to get out of bed in the morning.
What I do tell her is that I'll go to a doctor with her. I was once so alone as well and terrified of talking, I needed someone to help me only I didn't even know myself how truly lost I was. I want to open my brain and show her the images inside-of the restraints on the bed, of the taste of activated charcoal, of the millions of tears that could feed a nation. I want to show her this so that she will never have to go there herself.
So I sit across from my therapist and tell him about this. I tell him how incredibly and woefully unqualified I am to help. I tell him that there is nothing I can do and how I think platitudes are the worst form of insincerity. I tell him I don't want her to be where I was, I'll listen but am not much good at helping.
He talks about my past, of running from friends. He talks of where I am. He leans forward and asks me how I'm feeling.
"It all tastes like pills," I say quietly. I can feel them, bitter and hard, on the tip of my tongue. "I think it's because the second attempt, it was so many pills. I had downers and uppers and anti-depressants and sleeping tablets, and...it was so much. It all tastes like pills." I look up, and he is nodding, listening. "And the other times, it just feels so black, so full of despair. I can't see anyone else going through that despair, this shaft in the heart. I just can't."
He tells me that people who have been through something like that find each other. That suicide and deep depression has a specific darkness that other people seek for empathy, as the rest of nature fears that kind of darkness. He tells me listening is the best thing I can do. He tells me many things, and together, we both try to find a way out.
And at the end I tell him I have a lot of time for people that are there or have been there. I was so lost for so long and even now what I've been through doesn't make any sense, someone else on the same journey would maybe have had an impact. I don't know what I've become or who I am. I don't know what everything means. All I know is that staying alive is something I have to do for myself-all of this time, the suicides were to try to rid myself of every bit of me. And now me is the one thing in the world that I have to fight for, that I get to fight for.
Depression is like a fingerprint or a puff of breath-they are all different. I am terrified of saying the wrong thing and not sure what the right thing is, so I will say nothing and hope that my fingerprint helps hers.
I am not worth much but if I can listen, I will. I pulled out the greeting card I had bought in a Target in Raleigh nearly 8 years ago. It is in rough shape now, even though it stays in a plastic sleeve and goes with me everywhere. Someday I will scan it and post it here but for now it remains something that I hold in my heart to get me through each and every day, no matter how joyous or fucking miserable they might be.
On the cover is the famous painting "The Lady of Shalotte" by J.W. Waterhouse, of the red-headed woman in a boat, heading off to her death. The cover says:
"Every passage has its beacon. Every shadow has its light. We must therefore keep watch, my friend, keep watch."
-Captain Brenner Tate.
And on the inside, in simple letters, it says: "Everything is going to be all right."
My therapist read it and held it in his hands for a long time. He says I may be her greeting card, and all I know is this: something will be her greeting card and when it saves her, I hope to be in her life to talk it over with her.
So I listen to a song by Gemma Hayes that I found a week ago, from an album titled The Roads Don't Love You, and perhaps because the roads don't love me I love the name so much. The song is called Helen, and the first lines are:
I will welcome any stranger
For strangeness is a welcome guest
And I will make a bed for it to rest.
And I will make a bed for it to rest. It's the song version of "Everything is going to be all right." None of this means that I am cured, that I regret trying to top myself and that I am on the Care Bear Path to good mental health. It doesn't mean that I am full of happy bullshit like "I am worth so much" or "Life is a precious gift", what it does mean that every day is a new day, every day may or may not be a struggle. But it's my struggle, they're my days, and I owe it to myself to let me-whoever that Helen will be-have a real chance. I'm sure I'll never cure cancer or do anything useful in the world, but that's not the issue.
At least I'll get my chance to just be.
Here's to greeting cards.
-H.
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March 25, 2006
'We have the house,'Â he whispered, taking in the giant dragon around my neck.
We have the house.
We drove immediately to the estate agents where he got the keys. It took 2 minutes from the time he went in to the estate agents to the time he came out. 2 minutes. Our whole future cost us more money than I can imagine and 2 minutes.
He had an envelope in his hands with a number of gold keys. We drove to our house and opened the door, breathless and giggling. We went in, and loved the place all over again.
Some rooms were bigger than we remembered. There was a strong smell of cigarette smoke and golden retriever, a smell that a fresh coat of paint will get rid of. The enormous garden has been tidied and flowers are springing up.
We have the house.
We dumped off our car full of IKEA things and went to the shop, where we bought two bottles of wine to give the vet tech. Then we headed down the road, me more excited than a redneck at a Sonic double chicken sandwich sale, and got our boy. His sister goes to her new home in Bournemouth on Sunday (which I am so pleased about. I got little upset thinking that was the last time he'll ever see her, but I guess this is how things are in doggie-land.)
Gorby, it turns out, gets horribly car-sick. Badly. He has to be given child car-sick tablets before getting in the car, which seem to work. I think it's a function of being neglected-he also has problems with cars passing him, strollers, bicycles, even traffic cones are things he's never been around and so has to get used to.
We drive home-him salivating horribly all down my arm as the car sickness sets in. We make it home before he vomits and brace ourselves for a reaction with the girls. The cats were raised with a dog, a collie named Ed that liked to chase them from time to time. We set Gorby down on the inside, wondering if he too will be their one canine source for Nordic Track.
Maggie peers down from the stairs. 'Right. You can just take that thing right back from where it came from,'Â her expression reads.
Here's him and Maggie checking each other out. Gorby, dude? Please just remember-she can kick your ass any day of the week and she won't even break a sweat.
Mumin wanders up. 'Cheese,'Â she says, rubbing up against the dog.
The dog cowers before the cats and then sticks his nose in their asses, the doggy 'Hey, what's up, dude?'Â
Twenty-four hours on and Maggie's a bit insecure-she slept on the bed which she only ever does when we come back from being away. She doesn't seem to mind the dog, but she is pretty annoyed. Mumin the Village Idiot is unaffected. Gorby and I lay on the floor together and Mumin walks up, laying down with us.
'Hi Mumin,'Â I say sweetly and pet her. 'I'm glad you're here!'Â
She purrs and rolls over. 'Lavender,'Â she replies.
Gorby is turning into a bit of a Mama's Boy. He sits on my lap. If I lie down, he lies down on me. He follows me from room to room and acts as though the world has come to a short and painful screeching halt if he is left alone-I know puppies have separation anxiety but this is a whole new level. He can be in his kennel as long as we're in the room but once he can't see us it sounds as though someone's removing his puppy nails one by one via way of a knitting needle. He has a little blue pigment bit on his left eye, which I love to look at. He sleeps through the night and hasn't had a single accident since he got here. His tail has started wagging this morning (a change from it being tucked under him) and Angus looks at him with wonder and remarks that he's the most exceptionally well-behaved dog he's ever met, although he has to be kept in the kitchen while we load the car to drop things off (held in by cardboard moving boxes. I am resourceful! Ha!).
And I am in love with him. People adore him-our neighbors met him and have begged to puppy-sit him. Strangers stop us and remark at how unusual he looks. Everywhere we go he causes a stir and I am so proud of him I always burst.
We haven't taken the girls to the new house yet as we only just ripped up the fuck nasty carpets this morning. Since the floors will have to be sanded with power sanders it will be pretty frightening for them, so since we have the rental house we're living in for another two weeks it makes sense to drag out living in our little rented house until the big house is ready. That means that girls stay here until the scary noises are over.
The carpets? Revolting. When we started ripping up the shag carpet it basically exploded as it disintegrated into what is no doubt some kind of household germ warfare. The newspaper beneath the carpet revealed it had been laid on February 19, 1985, but it sure hadn't held up well. As I dragged up the corner the green plastic lining basically turned to a revolting dust. If I ever do manage to have a baby I wonder if it will be born with psychic abilities, as I inhaled that nasty shit, and I don't even get to say that in a funny 'And guess what I did with a cigar!'Â kind of way.
We tore out the carpets in three of the rooms and have to decide if we want to take out the carpet in the hallway, too. The floors need to be sanded next weekend, and we have the paint ready for most of the rooms-we are both relatively useless at figuring out what colors go together so the brochures that the companies distribute are like caffeine to us-without them, life and civilization as we know it would crack.
The proof, if we needed it, is already there. Gorby loves the new house as much as we do. He runs around the downstairs with his tail wagging. We run around the garden, him kicking my ass and not even bothering to be humble about it. The house is far from done-we have so much stuff to move it makes us exhausted just thinking about it. The phone line has been turned on but the line quality is shit so any minute now we'll lose internet access as dial-up isn't possible until the line is fixed. We have painting to be done, a shower to be installed, and floors to be sanded. A huge load of deliveries come on Tuesday-a bed, a fridge, a dishwasher-and I'll have to be there for them (and our savings accounts now have tumbleweeds blowing through them). Gorby still needs to continue with the housebreaking (but zero accidents so far!) All this and it all has to be worked in around work commitments and occasional business meetings in London. All this stress, time pressure, and incredible expenditure.
And through it all I am so happy it should be illegal.
-H.
PS-house pictures coming, only they're on the other camera which is conveniently located at the other house.
PPS-yes, we've curled up on the floor of the living room together for a nap. SO?
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March 24, 2006
When you enter the front door you go through a door that only partially opens. Creaking up the stairs you pass walls patched with gray filler. The bathroom looks like a toiletry-laden bomb has gone off, exploding tampons, face cream, and toilet paper which no longer hangs on the toilet paper holder. The bedroom has had all the mirrors taken down, and the only reflection you can see is in the gray filled holes left behind. The kitchen is an obstacle course involving exploded cabinets, cardboard box jungles and paint cans.
Moving sucks.
Since this is a rental property we are making sure that anything we did to the house is repaired ten times over, as the company that manages rentals are complete wankers. We sued them successfully two years ago and are bracing ourselves for round two. In these houses, where there are no towel bars and toilet paper holders, putting one up means taking it back down again and making sure there's not a trace left behind. We are going to paint over every scratch and mark, but because the builder who fixed the place up five years ago used a different version of 'industrial magnolia'Â on every wall it pretty much means we are repainting every damn wall as we just can't find matching paint and can't be bothered to for every separate wall.
And that doesn't even include the cleaning. When we moved into the house the oven looked as though it had never even been used. After a few volatile Thanksgiving turkeys the oven definitely is going to have to be hit repeatedly with that caustic shit that burns your lungs and makes your hands itch.
This is a far cry to when I was a student-I remember filling holes with white toothpaste as then you couldn't see the marks. I never got a deposit back, either, but when I was younger the urge to flee was far greater than the urge to tidy up. There were some things I would walk away from money for.
I still think it's worth it although my approach has changed over time.
We get the house keys today. We get our dog tonight, after we make the first of what I suspect will be many IKEA runs (we just need some cheap storage for now, and we need to buy a single bed for Jeff. For the first time Melissa and Jeff will each have their own rooms, with their own dressers to store things they want to keep here. As Jeff and I walked through a marketplace in Nelson he saw a bi-plane made out of a Coke can, the propeller spinning lazily in the wind. He saw it and decided he just had to have it for 'his new room'Â. Naturally, I bought it and can't wait to hang it up for him.)
There's a lot happening. My 32nd birthday is one week (I am getting old and getting old faster than the rest of you.) There is so much to do and organize. Our phone lines (and broadband! Sob!) get turned off tomorrow, with the new lines turning on in the new house (hopefully) on Saturday. The broadband, alas, won't turn up for another two weeks. We're facing a dial-up household and this is a tragedy as dial-up is the end of the world. Plus since our office figured out that loads of their staff waste precious time on blogging they have effectively blocked every blogging tool and blog site, so getting to my blog may be tough for the next week-if posting is quiet it's because I have no access or I am trapped under an avalanche of fallen recycled cardboard.
I can't believe a bit over a week ago I was in New Zealand, and now we are facing The Big Move. The house that we love, the one we idly dreamt of. The garden begs for romps with the dog and cats, of hammock-swinging moments and al fresco sex. We have spent ages on the Dulux website planning colors for the house (it turns out my 'color wheel'Â is called 'Gentle Perfectionist'Â. The colors are warm blues, warm violets, and warm golds. It is pretty much dead on for the colors I love. I would love to paint the walls that color, I want to paint the walls any color but orange as nothing schitzes me out more than orange walls.)
Saturday will be spent at the new house getting it ready. We're going to paint two of the bedrooms which are currently covered in Laura Ashley vomit-colored chintzy 80's wallpaper. These, of course, must go. The bathroom currently only has a bathtub, we either have to rip it out to install a shower or find a way to add a shower to it (I will miss a bathtub very, very much) as the idea of showering by way of using a plastic cup under a running bathtub faucet does not appeal. We're ripping up the carpets in every room but one (indeed, the house has what I think is a typically English phenomenon-the bathroom is carpeted. This seems whole levels of unhygienic to me-how the hell does it ever dry out? What's growing under there?) One of the rooms upstairs has the poster child for 1970's shag carpet, and if I didn't think that the 70's were the scourge of the 1900's we might leave it but we absolutely hate that shit thus this carpet is going, too.
Underneath the carpets are the original wooden floors from when the house was built 100 years ago.
We can't wait to clean them up and let them shine.
The kitchen will be ripped up soon enough, and an extension, a conservatory, and many other things are planned. There's an original fireplace in the kitchen that has been covered over that I am desperate to reveal. The dining room will become my office and my already packed Family Guy action figures are just aching to be displayed next to my framed Czech Lost in Translation postcard, my kooky Kaikoura vase, my iDog.
The house will be ours in every sense of the word. The house we are leaving behind will not miss us although we will miss it-we are now moving 5 miles up the road and into another village. Our address is simpler and our garden is bigger but our hearts will always love the little village that saw us together as a couple-really together-for the first time.
Goodbye, Hartley Wintney. We will always adore you.
With Love,
Angus, Helen, Maggie, Mumin, and Gorbachev (friends call him Gorby).
(We bust Gorby out at 1530 today.)
(Puppies smell like Fritos.)
-H.
PS-Dear God, please let there be loads and loads of hot water in the new place. Thanks.
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March 23, 2006
She wore those horrible screw-on earrings, ones that were bright red to ostensibly look like cherries that had miraculously fallen from the sky and stuck to her lobes. She used to wear the blends that were popular in the late 70's (and continued with the tragically fashion unconcious throughout the 80's)-the matching vest and trouser combo complete with the crease down the front of the leg. The material was invariably some kind of completely unnatural poly blend that was so flame retardent you could wear it on the sun. The trouser suits were of the sympathetic cherry or violent purple color, just in case you were working on a color blind test. Her hair was an enormous grey puffball that rose strategically from the top of her head and ended somewhere just beneath the fluorescent lights. She was the uncool Marge Simpson prototype, a future poster child for Dippity-Do.
And she hated me.
A lot.
You think that teachers shouldn't really hate pupils, but from Day One I was Queen of the Unpopular. There really was a vendetta against me, I wasn't paranoid (and my therapist backs that up, I'm not actually a paranoid person, I dabble in a palatte of other crazy colors.) She hated me from the minute I walked into her class and loved my best friend, another little girl named Helen. It made for an incredibly rough year.
It was 1979 and I was 5 years old, entering kidnergarten.
Mrs. Pratt made sure that I had it rough. She came down hard on me while idolizing my mate. I am not sure why this was-I know of one incident involving a poorly-planned and executed nose picking bonanza during a math session which may have something to do with it, but beyond that I see no clear reason for her angst. I used to sit on the teeny-tiny chairs at a teeny-tiny table, the table marked by the existence of "the trouble-makers", including a confused over-Christian girl named Ruth that I imagine is now in prison somewhere and busy being someone's bitch. I got ignored by Mrs. Pratt a lot, which was ok with me. After a while I realized Ruth at the teeny-tiny table was struggling with reading. Since at that time I had no ability to predict her future in shiv-making, I helped her out.
I remember my mom having a conversation with her on the phone. "Of course Helen can read," my Mom said, twirling the long phone cord around her hand. "She's been able to read since before she turned 4."
My mother listened.
"That's great that she's helping another student learn how to read. But I knew she could read, I guess the question is, why didn't you know?" My mother asked in an example of touché, before I knew what touché was.
I had been able to read since before I turned 4. I wrote my first poem just after turning 4, standing on a chair to be able to reach the table, wielding my big pencil and my Big Chief writing tablet. Strangely for a swiss cheese memory I remember the poem, and I remember the day I wrote it. I wanted to be different from the "roses are red" bullshit, so it started out as "Daffodils are yellow and peanuts are brown". Hey-the world would not be the same if all the impressionists had just carried on. Thank God cubism came in for a while and screwed up perception!
Mrs. Pratt was the worst. Of course, there were other bads-my first grade teacher Mrs. Blanchard put me in a remedial reading course once she realized that I could read, but I read by memory. I didn't understand phonetics, they made absolutely no sense to me, and so sounding out a word wasn't possible. I had to ask someone what the word was and then I knew it. At the time this was unacceptable-that I was able to read wasn't enough, I should understand all the little hyphens and dashes that go with it-so I was put in a remedial reading class with Junior, who had a form of Down's Syndrome, and Alexis, who was autistic.
All this because of the fucking schwa sound.
To which I now say: Fuck you, Mrs. Blanchard. I have studied 4 languages and give a mean blow job, none of it thanks to your bloody Hooked on Phonics. The upside down e has not changed my life in any way, shape or form. Now reconsider the horizontal stripe shirts, ok?
I had bad teachers-once I walked in on my male high school drama teacher giving a blow job to another male high school drama teacher when I walked into the costume storage room unannounced. I had a poetry teacher who used the words "belly button" too many times, and as I have a navel phobia I went right off him. I had a chemistry teacher with a 70's porn mustache who finally just passed me to be done with me, as he couldn't take my histrionics in trying to pass his class.
I have had a few good teachers as well. I had a nice sweet teacher with a tragic perm in third grade, a woman named Mrs. Altman. She made time for all of her students and only slapped her forehead against her hand when I managed to release all the fruit flies for our science experiment in one misplanned moment involving a step and a clumsy Helen.
My sixth grade teacher, Mr. Gruber, was a good guy too. He was kind and easy going and had the hots for my mother. He encouraged us to talk politics (thus introducing me to the word "coup", which is a valuable part to any daily conversation). He was fair and had a massive loft in his classroom that we could all climb up and read in, something that I imagine insurance would prohibit today.
We all had some suck teachers. Mine were just unable to encourage, they didn't actually introduce physical harm. Angus' stories-whether a factor of a different generation or because he was in English schools-are far worse. He of course had to wear the jacket, tie and short pants for many years (all year-round even in the winter), which his cruel-hearted bitch of a girlfriend finds to be super-cute and just a bit hilarious as she pictures Christopher Robin in her head (and he did actually grow up just next to Pooh Bridge and the Hundred Acre Wood, which in reality is the Five Hundred Acre Wood. So my visions of Christopher Robin aren't too far off.) Of course, she's a little aghast to hear that the short-panted school boys had their calves whipped with shoelaces if they were running too slow in gym class, but then again we had paddling in some of the schools I went to, and I'm not talking about the kind of paddling that involves canoes.
I asked Angus about his worst teacher last night. He answered without hesitation.
"Mr. Dipley and Mr. Singh," he said sipping a glass of wine. "Mr. Dipley was bloody mental. He was a Rhodesian who taught woodworking"-which is perhaps why in our current woodworking class Angus had blocked out some of the basics-"who would throw chisels at us when he was angry."
Right.
Perhaps not so much a bad teacher as someone who should be charged with assault.
"He'd throw chisels at you?" I asked, dazed.
"Oh yes. He never pegged anyone but he threw chisels. We'd get him back. Invariably one of us would throw a chisel into the ceiling and have it stick and Mr. Dipley would spend the entire class searching for it. He'd finally figure out it was hanging from the ceiling and have to get it down, but he never caught on that each time a chisel was missing he should just look up."
"And Mr. Singh?" I asked, not sure if I wanted to hear the answer.
"Mr. Singh taught chemistry and he was the doziest man I've ever met. We would set fire to the benches with the Bunsen burners and he never noticed. We were always blowing something up and he didn't even see it."
Sounds like Mr. Singh was less of a bad teacher, more someone suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.
While it would be nice to hold a cherished memory of a teacher in the heart, if they have 30+ kids to teach and you're busy with your finger up your nose you're going to get the negative zones. Schools are for surviving, they're not for precious memories. At the end of the day I guess teachers are more a matter of survival, as opposed to someone that will imprint on you forever.
Unless, of course you get hit with a flying chisel. I suppose that imprint would really scar.
-H.
PS-if you can, give some love to Statia. Even if you don't know her well enough to love her, a least try. A little forced love goes a long way for someone who's just been through a big one.
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March 22, 2006
In a large grocery store in New Zealand, I stood in an aisle. I was wearing shorts and an unzipped sweatshirt, my feet encased in flip-flops. I reached a hand out to the shelf, where I saw a box of Kraft cheese crackers on the shelf. I saw my long fingers unfurl over the top of the box and the muscles and tendons in my hand unfurled to hold onto the sides. I picked up the box and clutched it to my chest, wrapping my arms around it to hold it tight against me, a shield, my armor, my world encased in a box of carbs. I stood in the center of the aisle as people streamed to either side of me, a little Helen parting the waters, and I felt so small standing there with my box of biscuits.
I don't know how long I stood there for, all I know is that the world passed me by and I didn't know how to reach out a thumb and hitchhike onto the back of it.
Angus has said I seem to be making peace inside of myself with some of the troubled relationships that storm the surface of my life. He says he can see a change in me, with regards to my family, my One Person, and my thoughts on the whole situation, and I think he's right. A card has tumbled inside of me, a switch has been flipped, a line in the sand has been erased by a bare foot. Something inside of me has shifted and the new lay of the land is somewhere that I am exploring.
When we were in California this past month we stayed in Pasadena. One day we drove into Old Pasadena, the shops littered and lingering on either side of the peripheral vision. We parked up and went into Jamba Juice where we all got a thick heavenly juice drink. When Angus, Melissa and Jeff went into a shoe shop I wandered down the sidewalk a bit until something I saw in a window made me blink in amazement.
There in the window was a sign. A painted sign, one of those looks that's supposed to be nouveau antique, the whitewashed finish lying as it implies that the object is old when it's really fresh off a line somewhere. The sign sat on a faux antique table and the sun hit it just so. I gaped at the sign and felt like I'd been sucker-punched, surely the cosmic definition of a sign can't be something so literal.
I went into the shop and bought the sign on the spot. I saw it immediately in my head in our new home, placed just so. I saw it in my head, I feel it on the tip of my tongue, and I have been thinking about it ever since.
The sign reads, simply: Home is where the story begins.
My entire life I've spent chasing a rainbow over someone else's horizon. The street names I have lived on have changed so many times that even in my own memory I can't remember all the places I have lived. From a tiny tender age my feet itched to step on foreign soil and the grass has always been greener on the other side. My life has been lived in finite chunks, timelines that allay the fact that my heart and soul gets wrapped up in butcher paper and handed to the next customer.
People ask me where I'm from, and although my stock answer is Texas, my heart shrugs and says: Yeah, I dunno. Where do you want me to be from?
When I moved to England something resounded inside the core of me. Here was a place that I felt comfortable, that I felt was where I needed and wanted to be. I'm a stranger in a strange land but I have felt, from the moment I stepped out of that bright throbbing light in Heathrow, that this is where I was supposed to be. And when we found the world's tiniest hamlet of light in our little village, I knew I didn't want to leave for some time.
I don't know how I found my way here, I just know that I get down on my knees and thank god I did.
When spiraling through New Zealand I was so amazingly, utterly content as well. I felt completely at ease and remarkably happy, happy not just in the 'I'm on holiday'Â sense, but in a warm, wrapped way that spoke of some kind of inner contentment that they never get right on TV and in ads. I felt like I was home in a world so far away from everything I've ever known that you keep flying into tomorrow to get there.
Maybe something in me is changing, maybe I am no longer trying to outrun my own skin.
Or maybe I am lucky enough to find places that I never want to leave.
So home is where the story begins. Where the story begins, where the story begins'¦where does my story begin? Does it start with two razor slashes down the wrist? Does it start when I leapt from the world I'd known my entire life into the snowy tundra of Stockholm? Is the beginning the day I realized in the shower that Kim really and truly was dead and the rest of my life would be going on without him? Does the story begin when I got my visa stamp at Heathrow and began my world here? Does it commence with an uncomplicated move that led to a complicated world?
I can't decide where the story begins, I can't get my head around it. I know the story doesn't begin with hot steamy Texas summers, the heat shimmering off the black asphalt and the cicadas humming piteously. I can't believe it begins with military moves to military bases and military lives. I know it doesn't start with dusty Iowa fields, the corn stalks reaching for the sun and the taste of dirt on the top of the nose. I don't think it kicks off with the darkest coldest Swedish winter, me on the chair looking out the window and wondering what was next in the world.
But in the meantime, I have that sign. I have something that creates a sense of calm inside of me. I've never been a believer that home is where the heart is because I am very forgetful and keep leaving my heart in different places. Home isn't where you hang your hat, that's just an opportune hook, a peg on the wall for convenience that doesn't imply all of the history that it should do. Home has always meant something huge to me, and the sense that I didn't have one has forever tormented me.
But I do have a home. My story begins somewhere, I just need to decide when and where that is. And for once the tiny me stands in the middle of the aisle, clutching a box of cheesy biscuits, and smiles.
-H.
PS-we had to go pay for his vaccinations and arrange when to get him. It turns out he likes to sit on laps! And likes to be held! And he likes to be kissed!
I think there may be a lot of dog pics coming on this site, but I'll try to control myself and limit them to Flickr only.
I said try, of course, because Christ that dog is cute.
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March 19, 2006
"Ooh! I like Jonathan!" I squeal. "Matthew?"
"Matthew's good. Arthur?"
"Arthur's ok." I clutch his hand. I am so happy I could die. It seems unreal. I am happier than I have been in...well, ok a week ago in New Zealand, but before that it was a while since I had been so utterly content and thrilled. I am walking on Cloud 10 having bypassed Cloud 9 and taken the upgrade.
We walk into a bookshop, a piece of paper recording our favorite boys' names. "I like Gordon," Angus says thoughtfully. "Gordon is a nice name. As is Giles."
"Oh I love Giles," I reply. We are both looking at average, commonplace English names for a boy. None of this nouveau stuff for us, we like strong, solid traditional names. We take the escalator up to the baby section of a throbbing Oxford Street Waterstone's. We plop down in the pregnancy section and reach for books, our foreheads crumpled in thought. Angus looks amazingly happy, and I catch a sight of my face in a glass display-I am positively glowing. People come and go from the pregnancy section and watch us.
We make a list of the boys' names we like, giggling and exclaiming forgetting the quiet attitude that one is supposed to take when one is in a shrine devoted to the loving of books. Once we feel our eyes start to swim with too many names, we out the books away. As we stand I see a book on infertility and I reach for it, flipping it open to the IVF section. Angus smiles at me.
"If anyone sees you reading that book they're going to get really confused," Angus says, laughing.
I smile back, not at all weird about it, and smile back.
We leave the bookstore, a piece of paper in my pocket with a list of about 20 names. As we ride the train home we try to pare it down and come up with three names that we love terribly, and agree to think on it.
The reason we need the names?
We got a dog.
We got a dog!
On Friday Maggie and Mumin got loaded into their kennel full of malevolent spite. They love the kennel almost as much as they love riding in a car. From the second the door of the kennel swung shut the howling commenced, and it didn't stop until we reached the vets' office.
"Hi, I'm Maggie and Mumin's mom and we're here for their annual vaccinations?" I say to the vet tech as Angus carries the huge kennel, still marked with the airline tags that brought them to me a year and a half ago. The girls are due for their injections, and as such we are at the vets.
When we go into the exam room it's clear the personalities of my girls-Mumin is friendly and out of the cage like a rocket. She loves the vet! She loves the stethascope! She loves the table and the injections, she loves everyone! Maggie has to be dragged from the back of the kennel, where she lays completely flat and glaring at all of us, wishing us death.
As I give them our new address, the two injected cats in the kennel at our feet, I mention that we are looking for a dog and did they know of any in the area? The vet tech thinks and then writes down a name for us of another vet tech in a sister branch that runs the local rescue society. We take her number.
Saturday I ring her and ask if they have any rescue dogs, as we're going dog hunting that day with plans to go to the RSPCA in Battersea. She confirms that she just got in a 4 month old collie puppy who was raised with cats. She is desperate to find a home for the puppy, would we like to see?
We agree to stop by and say hello on our way to Battersea. We get in the car and drive to the vets', which is in our new neighborhood. Once there, she takes us to the kennels in the back. There in a kennel is a black and white border collie puppy. She is cute and sweet but our eyes are immediately drawn to another dog with her, a dog whose coloring is a mess and whose tail is wagging nervously, alternating between wagging and tucked under his legs.
The vet indicates the little black and white puppy as the one we're here to see, but we keep watching the other fellow. "What's the story with this one?" Angus asks, as the messy colored one licks his chin.
"He's reserved," she replies kindly.
We spend time with them both-they are incredibly thin and very shy. It turns out they belonged to a breeder who had gotten rid of all the other puppies but couldn't be bothered to deal with these two, so they were locked behind a couch in the lounge. They weren't pet, held, talked to, or loved (people make me so fucking angry sometimes). The RSPCA intervened and removed the two from the home due to the neglect and abuse they'd faced. They were with the nice vet tech at the local rescue society as the two responded so well to affection and kindness (and were so desperate for love and attention) that there was a chance with them.
There was a chance.
The mother of the two was a border collie cross and the father was a blue merle collie. We sat on the floor with them to give them as much opportunity to come near or run away, however they were most comfortable. The messy colored one protected the black and white one, an extremely shy and timid creature, and from time to time the messy colored one would crawl into my lap and sit there, revelling in being pet. The vet explains she can't keep them as she has two dogs of her own, but both dogs are sweet and gentle and get on fine with her two cats. This is, of course, a priority for us. Our two girls are so important to us that we have to ensure a new family member gets on well with them-I'm sure they're going to be furious at the introduction of another four-legged friend but furious we can accept; in danger we cannot.
The vet tech smiled at me. "I can call the family the messy colored one is reserved for. They have two other dogs, it's possible that they will agree to let this one go to a single dog home."
Angus and I exchange glances. "Would you?" I ask hopefully.
We exchange numbers and as we're driving to the train station to go to Battersea my phone rings.
The other family agreed to give up the messy colored chap.
The vet tech said she would be thrilled if we wanted him.
I shriek and scream and become totally uncontrolled. I accept and laugh and shriek and agree to come by Tuesday to pay her (the only costs she asked if we could cover were his vaccinations, which we think is absolutely and totally fair and we have no problem with that.)
We get him next Friday, the same day as we take over ownership of the house (Angus is pushing to give us a week before we get him but I really, really want him here and I want to introduce him to the girls as soon as possible).
We haven't decided what to call him yet, but the leading contenders are Nigel, Colin, and Gordon, and a shot in the dark name that we heard on the TV on Sunday and laughed out loud we thought it was so fitting: Gorbachev (because of his strangely spotted nose).
Your vote on the name is greatly appreciated.
Here's his little sister.
Here is our lovely perfect boy, the grey and white spotted one with the funny nose. He will never, ever have to spend his life locked behind a couch desperate for affection again.
God I'm happy. Like Hallmark Channel happy. Now that's happy.
-H.
PS-unless they are showing Touched By an Angel. I'm not that happy.
PPS-of course, I've never seen Touched By an Angel, maybe it's an ok show it's just the saccharine content of that show scares me.
PPPS-but I still won't watch it as one of those main characters looks like an alien from that 80's series V, and that's simply too much for me to take.
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March 17, 2006
My father had been there in the military once. He brought back a sheepskin rug and a box full of New Zealand butter. In my memory, that remains the best tasting butter I have ever tried.
Maybe you're tired of holiday posts, and heck I'm tired of writing them and even had another post I wrote on the train yesterday that was going to go up, but I have to say this-it's almost impossible for me to write up a post about New Zealand anyway. It's a huge haze of memories, most of them sticking me in the heart. It seems a million years since I was there and yet it was less than a week ago. I expected to like New Zealand. I didn't expect to feel the way I do.
I feel absolutely and completely in love with New Zealand.
It was without question the greatest holiday I have ever had, in a place that I love unreservedly. I want to move there, and maybe someday (years down the line) we will. I felt completely comfortable there, in a land where the mountains fall into the sea, in the land where we swim with dolphins and seals, in the land where even the immigrations and customs staff are kind and friendly.
I didn't want to come home, but there you have it. We are already talking about next year's holiday, and hot on the tip of my tongue is New Zealand.
So this post isn't going to be a play-by-play of the holiday. It's a collection of memories, all of which taste sweeter than the one before it. Here it is.
We only had 7 days in New Zealand and we decided not to be stupid about that time, so we focused only on the northern tip of the South Island. We landed in Christchurch and drove to Kaikoura in our rental care, a 4wd Mitsubishi something or other, and stayed in amazement at our hotel, which lingered with a view that made my eyes burn with delight.
The next morning we got onto a boat wearing wet suits 5 mm thick and swam with seals in water so cold it took your breath away for a damn long time. This is only one of four spots in the world where you can swim with them, and the only one that you can swim Great White Shark-free. The seals dove off the rocks and swam beneath and around us, their enormous puppy dog eyes peering up at us, their mouths barking with laughter. The little fuckers are cute, fast, and unbelievably huge.
The next day we woke up at 5 am to swim with the dolphins. Kaikoura is placed right off of a huge shelf in the ocean, a trench teeming with rich life. They have whales, orcas seals, and above all the dusky dolphin, which is known as the Acrobat of the Sea. Jeff decided the water was too cold for him so he watched from the boat, but Melissa, Angus and I decided to go for it and thus at 6 am with the dawn breaking above us we were thrown into the water and into a pod of around 50-100 dusky dolphins leaping and bouncing around the boat.
When I got into the water it was so cold I went numb. I gasped in pure shock as the team on the boat shouted to me to remember to hum-dolphins love the sound of it and swim closer to investigate. My mind was absolutely and completely blank and I raced to think of a song, any song, I just needed to hum through my snorkel. My mind latched onto one and for the next freezing cold hour it was all I sang.
My choice? Deck the Halls. No, I don't know why either.
I hummed it, and you know? The team on the boat were right. Dolphins dove around me, circled me, checked me out. I kept humming and stared them right in the eyes as their bodies curved around me, their mouths open with laughter. It was so surreal, so unbelievable, so completely fantastic that I never wanted to get out of the water. I forgot the cold, Melissa and Angus forgot the cold, and we snorkled with the most remarkable creatures I have ever seen. From time to time I would raise my head above the water and just laugh, and I didn't know why.
When I dream sometimes I still feel like I am turning in circles in the water, the dolphin bodies just at my fingertips.
We bought a few things in Kaikoura-T-shirts, a few prints. I bought two amazing and kooky vases that I love completely, one of which Angus has agreed to turn into a light for our new hallway. I hand-carried those vases all the way home just to make sure they'd be ok. They make me think of Dr. Seuss, and they will always smell of Kaikoura to me.
The next day we drove to Nelson. We stopped at an antique store on the way, where Angus saw a 1920's Art Deco lamp that stopped his heart (he would eventually come home with two Art Deco lamps for our new home). We bought it, along with a 1930's clock that I adored. The cost of the two of them were a fraction of what we would pay in England for the same things. We checked into our guest house in the old area of Nelson, and it was hands-down the best place we have ever stayed in, ever. It beat every five star hotel, every hotel with service up to the eyeballs. It was the single greatest place in the world.
The view from the balcony was stunning.
It had retained all of the early 1900's features, including a massive bathtub whose window opened out onto a view of the water. I couldn't resist, and had a bath every night with the window open, blowing cool sea air onto my back.
We were so happy.
The next day we took a SkyWire ride, which is the equivalent of a ski lift whizzing you at top speeds way above the valley. It was an exhiliarating blast, and since we were the last family of the day the operator was a sweetie and let us do it twice.
There were of course a lot of sheep as per the stereotype (that said there were many deer farms, cattle farms, and others so the distribution of farm animals was pretty much even), which we thought were very cute (black sheep are my favorite. Naturally.)
We walked through a market and bought a few things, we ate a fabulous Asian meal. We took it easy and relaxed, and we took time to note the sunsets.
There were always amazing sunsets.
The last day we drove into the hills and had lunch in the sun at a vineyard called Moutere Hills, which will reign in my heart forever. I didn't want to leave, I was so content to sit in the sun, the sound of a folk group playing live music in the background, and nurse my one glass of wine.
When we left it was to sadness. We didn't want to go, we wanted at least one more week there. The flights home were long and arduous and I watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy again just for the backdrop. When we arrived at Heathrow the real world caught up with us-one of Angus' beloved antique lamps had been crushed to bits, and with sorrow we have to claim the money as the beautiful piece is no more (it was quite large and thus was checked. It was packed many times over and labelled "fragile" so of course it was probably treated like a football).
I was so happy in New Zealand.
The 35 hours in transit were worth every single moment just so I can hold those memories sacred.
So now I'm home and the slide show comes to an end. Thank you, and the exits are to the left and the rear.
-H.
PS-more on Flickr as a set of pics has been uploaded.
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March 16, 2006
This may seem like no big deal, really, who gives a shit if I bought a dress, only it turns out this dress has become rather significant for me. I remember where I was when I bought it-it was your average American mall with your average American mall stores, and there was American Eagle, before it became stocked with clothing that a Kate Moss wanna-be would wear. They were having a sale on things, and I bought two tank tops, a purse, and a dress. The dress, if I remember correctly, cost less than $20.
I have worn that dress on every major holiday since. It was first worn on my trip to Singapore and Bali, and for that reason alone it was worth every penny as that holiday meant the world to me in many ways. More than that, that was the dress I wore on that magical Bangkok evening, the one in which Angus, being a gentleman and crossing a busy Thai street, took my hand to help me cross and shocked me right down to my core.
This trip was no exception. The dress came with me, as the dress always does. I should be glad that an eight year-old dress still fits me, and I am glad. It helps that the dress is empire waisted, thereby making the wearer look pregnant, bloated, or just a sloppy dresser, and on any given day I am the last two of those choices. It's not particularly flattering, but it is comfortable and I love it.
For example, here's me and the dress on the Greek Island of Amorgos in 2002.
And me and the dress in Langkawi Malaysia, also in 2002.
Here's me in that dress in the Cook Islands along with wet hair and a strange streaky sunburn.
I love that dress and hope I have it for years to come.
The day we left for the Cook Islands it was bright and sunny outside. Somehow, it seemed as though the bad weather that we had when we landed in California was a memory. We drove around and did some shopping, before heading back to LAX. At LAX we went through acres of security, security which drives both Angus and I wild with anger. Then we waited for our flight, the kids relaxing. Melissa had been feeling badly all day, so we dosed her with cold and flu medication and all of us took it easy.
On the flight we were able to move around-Angus, Jeff and myself each got a row of two to ourselves, and Melissa stretched out and slept on a row of four. It was an 8 hour journey to Tahiti, where the plane would stop before heading to the Cook Islands' destination of Rarotonga. The flight took off late in the evening, and all of us quietly went to sleep. I would wake up from time to time and cover Melissa and Jeff with the blankets they would invariably fling off, and then wind up shivering with cold.
At one point I woke right up and I didn't know why. I just sat straight up. I looked around and saw Melissa was awake.
'Are you ok, babe?'Â I asked her, as I padded up the aisle to her.
'Do you have more Tylenol?'Â she asked. I went and retrieved them, along with a bottle of water, and she slugged them down. She patted her hair and then looked at me. 'I think I'm going to be sick.'Â
'ÂAre you going to be sick?'Â I asked stupidly.
'I'm going to be sick,'Â she re-iterated for the slow me. I frantically dove into the seat pockets looking for air sick bags. Wouldn't you know it, for the first time in ages there weren't any. As Melissa started gagging I leapt across the aisle and started looking at seat pockets that had passengers' things in them, while frantically punching the flight attendant call button. I finally found a bag when I raced over to Melissa-who promptly threw up over both of us before I could get the bag open. Once the bag was open, she continued hurling into it.
The flight attendant came up and viewed us warily. I explained the situation, and she fetched some ginger ale, more air sick bags and some vomit-free blankets. Melissa, having thrown up the contents of her stomach but not the Tylenol, confessed to feeling better.
I think, at that moment, I felt more like a mother than I ever have in my life.
When we got to Tahiti things got worse-she was feeling horribly and the sudden rush of heat made her throw up again. This was repeated when we finally reached the Cook Islands-we'd reached the tropical paradise and the vomiting kept coming. We hailed a taxi and, upon arriving at the condo, Melissa and Jeff trooped off into the swimming pool to cool down.
The place had the most beautiful spot-right on the beach, a loft-style home that had another downstairs bedroom for the kids. The good news was their bedroom was air conditioned. The bad news was the rest of the house wasn't. I was a little disappointed with the condo-it was a bit tatty, a bit of a drag. A cockroach raced up one wall and the kitchen cupboard handles were falling off the cupboards. I felt so let down-Melissa was sick, I was chugging Immodium tablets, and the condo was not the splendored bliss I'd hoped for.
Angus came to give me a hug as I peeled off my vomit garments. I told him I was disappointed with the place, and he asked me to think of all the tropical places I'd been-were the places like this? I thought about it and admitted they were. Case closed, he said. This was how life is in these kinds of places.
We changed and went outside with the kids. Leaping and playing in the pool, we all then jumped in the warm Pacific waters'¦and it was lovely. Although we wound up fighting a really hard current and giving up for the pool, the water was clean and bright and so warm to a winter-blistered soul.
We went to dinner that night, and Jeff exclaimed with marvel that the parking spaces in the parking lot were separated with a concrete divider. 'Don't you see, Helen?'Â he asked me. 'In America and in England they only use a white painted line to separate car parking. Here they use concrete! They are so rich here, this must be the richest country in the world!'Â
His breathless wonder was what did it for me. I realized that I was feeling a bit down but that this place really was paradise. It really was as amazing as a 9 year-old could see, and from that moment on it didn't bother me-I simply killed a roach if I saw it, I shooed lizards out of our bathroom with a grin. I didn't mind, I just loved being there.
We got to snorkel in the water, and if you've been here at my site for a while, then you'll know that one of my single greatest pleasures in life is to snorkel in warm water with the fishies. That's all I want to do. To just be with my head below water and the fish at my fingertips and to just swim, something I can do for hours and hours.
We also got to go diving. Angus and I had one dive together while Melissa had a discover scuba dive course (Jeff is too young, but he had a brilliant time on the boat. At one point they emptied the enormous plastic box onboard of its scuba gear and set him afloat in it with a flag, so that he could be his own Pirate of the Caribbean, albeit it was the Pacific.) On the second dive, Melissa joined us and the three of us swam in our swimsuits (we eschew dive suits) in the warm sea, marveling at everything around us.
We hired motor scooters, which is what everyone does on the island. The speed limit is very, very low and people drive around on the scooters instead of cars. In order to do this, Angus and I had to take a driving test, which we did successfully (although at least one person failed-as we started off an Aussie chick hit the accelerator instead of braking and slammed right into me. She failed, I passed, and I had a nice bruise on my back to prove that I was rammed by a redheaded motor scooter rider.) We toured the island this way, traveling via motor scooter around the whole island (all 32 km of it) and took our time snorkeling when we felt like it, eating when we felt like it, and driving into the jungle when we felt like it (the interior was something straight out of Jurassic Park, man. Dense.) Jeff always rode with me, his small arms around my waist and his endless questions and chatter amusing me.
Angus bought me a black pearl necklace-black pearls are found almost exclusively in the Cook Islands, and they are stunning. He bought me a gorgeous and flawless necklace with a fabulous setting, and now that we're home I've replaced the nylon thread it was on for a thin silver chain.
All of us fell asleep early every night and woke late all but one morning-early the second to the last day I woke to pee and saw that the sky was alight with a brilliant sunrise, so Angus and I went outside to enjoy it.
The days passed quickly, and looking back on it we didn't actually do that much, but that's all we needed-the kids stayed in the pool, I relaxed in the warm ocean waters every chance I got, Angus and I had nighttime al fresco sex, and above all, it has become a warm, beautiful memory.
We got ready for the next and biggest portion-our trip to New Zealand.
And when we got there, I couldn't believe it.
-H.
PS-more pictures are on the sidebar to the right in my Flickr account-some of them are amazing (in my humble I'm-not-a-photographer opinion).
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March 15, 2006
It's not completely impossible.
We are now back from our lovely holiday and suffering the jet lag. The holiday was structured thus-two days in LA, four days in the Cook Islands, and then six days in New Zealand. We left for our fifteen day holiday (as we were flying around the international dateline, we lost a few days with just crossing the line and in enduring airplane hell) loaded with only two suitcases and a backpack each. We came home with two heaving suitcases, two boxes, a duffel bag, our backpacks and two carry-ons, but that's another story. I was extremely stressed-up, because here's a secret about me-even though I have been all over the world and driven my way through three over-stamped passports, I am still a nervous flier. I find it stressful and frustrating to say the least, so the start and end of every holiday is always hard. We packed up, got on the airplane (it was all of our first times on Air New Zealand, and for the record, they are excellent. The flight attendants have a sense of humor, there is enough leg room to kick around in (even with the guy in front of you having his seat laid all the way down into your beaver) and the movies on the video-on-demand are to die for.)
So here's part 1-LA. Luckily, we arrived in no time (or so it seemed-a 12 hour flight was relative when we remembered the flights we would have to get home). We walked up the aisle of the plane, headed to the exit ramp'¦and witnessed one of the hardest rainfalls we'd seen in ages. It was as though someone had set off a fire alarm and did a runner over all of LA. Sighing, we picked up our rental car (yet another Hyundai with yet another impotence problem) and two hours later, we'd finally made it from LAX to our bed and breakfast in Pasadena with two passed out kids in the back. We settled in and tried to go to bed.
Only Melissa was beginning to not feel well.
And stunningly, I was having traveler's trots, which is diametrically opposed to what my colon usually goes through. I suffer from bowel stage fright in any bathrooms but my own, and pooping while traveling? Impossible. Completely impossible.
The next morning the sky was still dark and dreary but we decided to chance it. That day had been earmarked. We only had two days in LA, and Day Two was allocated for shopping (and it was on Day Two-Target was hit hard, as was Old Navy and shoe shops, and I bought something that has me thinking very hard and feeling very good, but more on that later). But for Day One, all we all wanted was to go to Disneyland, and through hell or high water (which it looked like the heavens would comply with) we wanted to ride the rides.
We started with breakfast, as the matron made us zucchini frittatas (always popular with picky 9 year-old boys). She talked to us for ages about her mother's side of the family, who lived in London, and how she goes to England once every few years. She turned to me and regaled me with a long story of how she got upgraded once.
'We had so many bags, they tried to charge us for everything!'Â she bemoaned.
'I worry we're going to have the same problem heading home,'Â I agree.
'Well, here in the U.S. we have something called the Post Office. Just so you know, you can send things home via the Post Office.'Â
Well, slap my thighs and call me a Krispy Kreme. You have a post office here? I'll be goddamned. I could have sworn when I left the States that they were still using Pony Express and carrier pigeons. Techonology really does move on in the Big Country, doesn't it?
I smile, even though I have no idea what was up with her last statement. 'I also dread the flights home,'Â I add.
'Oh, but all you have to do is complain. See, the thing about Americans is that we complain. We get things done that way. It'll take you some practice and learning of how we Americans do things before you can see results.'Â
I cocked my head. What the hell? Did she think'¦? 'Um,' I stammer. 'I am an American.'Â
Her eyebrows shoot up. 'You are?'Â
'ÂYes,'Â I say, shrugging. It's obvious I'm American. All I have to do is open my mouth and it's like listening to the crackling drive through box at a local Wendy's.
'You don't sound American, not at all!'Â she chuckles.
It was to become a repeated mantra I heard throughout the holiday.
Something twigged in my memory that I may have been to Disneyland before, only nothing while I was there was actually familiar. So paying an exorbitant sum of money (Jesus Christ, how the hell do people not paid in shiny pounds sterling afford Disneyland? We were gifted with a great exchange rate, but if I was paid in US dollars and had to pay that kind of entrance free, I would demand a round of oral sex, or at least for them to do my laundry, for those kinds of prices.) We went immediately to the California Adventures Park, or something called a similar name like that, and spent some time on the rides there (note: The View Over California or whatever the hell cheesy title it had? Yeah. Worth it.) We enjoyed the Hollywood Tower of Terror ride so much it was ridden three times. We lunched there, too, where I was introduced to something that I hadn't seen in many years.
I was carded.
Repeatedly, as it happens, while I was in the U.S.
My 32nd birthday is in two weeks and I was getting carded.
Not only that, but in Disneyland, the goal is to throw you off.
While Angus, Melissa and Jeff gathered the lunch I went for the margarita hut. I never get margaritas over here and they are hands-down my favorite drink (ok, second favorite. Nothing can replace champagne in my heart, nothing!) So I walked over to the margarita hut.
'Hi, I'd like a margarita, frozen, with salt please?'Â I ask. Humph. As if there's any other way to drink a margarita.
'Certainly,'Â chirped the nameless, faceless Disney chick. 'Can I see some ID, please?'Â
Slightly startled, I nod and open my wallet. I pass my English ID onto the counter and she reviews it, checking the dates and my picture (and it was indeed a bad day on picture day) before smiling and handing it back to me. She turns to the wall and readies my margarita. 'Here you are, Helen,'Â she says, smiling and handing me the plastic cup of frozen goodness.
I look up quickly. Did I know this chick? I look at her name badge-'Wendy, Cast Member since 2003'Â. No'¦not familiar. I smile back, unsure, and hand her my money.
'Thank you, and this is seven, eight, nine and ten in change. Thank you, Helen!'Â she chirps.
I feel thrown off. I'm only buying one margarita, I generally require less chat from people keeping me in tequila.
We carry on with the rides. Since Melissa is a shining example of a Daddy's Girl more often than not Jeff and I are together, which is ok with us as we get on pretty well. Jeff is an odd child, an extremely sensitive but extremely tricky child who has to be handled carefully (perhaps a bit like me). He's very kind and sweet but also extraordinarily stubborn and he has an explosive temper, one so harsh that I'm wondering if therapy might be a good idea at some point in his future (but then I'm so paranoid about being screwed up that if I ever have a kid, chances are it'll be in therapy before it's toilet trained, sitting there gumming a pacifier and talking about its feelings). He's very inquisitive and pays close attention to everything you say, so fobbing him off on one of his four hundred thousand questions he'll issue forth is not a good move. He's both exhausting and enormously rewarding.
He's also going through a bit of a phase at the moment, a 'my body is a temple'Â phase, which means no sodas, no excess sugars, no caffeine and no swearing. It also means he'll lecture anyone who enjoys any of the above vices, and if you're an adult he'll throw in the sudden need to revive the temperance movement as that gets commented on with gusto. It gets annoying, this almightiness about the organic crunchy life. It's bad enough to have to ensure I never swear, add on lectures about coffee intake and a discussions about a glass of wine and it's downright wearying. He's concerned his sister is swearing in school, so he's thinking of asking her friends and discussing with them about her not cussing. To which I think-He's going to approach his disdainful teenage sister's friends about her swearing? Yeah...I wonder how many stitches he'll need after said encounter.
The kid, he is ripe for the Scientology or Mormon pickings. I worry about the day someone comes forth with a lifestyle quiz or whizzing by on a bicycle, back tie flapping in the wind.
The day continued at Disneyland, which actually was enjoying sparkling sunshine and nice warm temperatures. Combine it with no crowds, and we had no wait at most of the rides at Disneyland. It was fantastic. We rode Space Mountain four times, at which point I decided the souvenir I wanted most wasn't mouse ears, I wanted a T-shirt that said 'I went to Disneyland and all I got was this lousy concussion.'Â My neck throbbed and my head ached (that aside, do you know how weird it is to have to poop at Disneyland? It feels so fundamentally wrong, like wanting to have oral sex with a Smurf or sell a My Little Pony to Alpo).
At the end of the evening, all rode out on silly rides, whipping rides, water rides and rides which we had to take just because it's Disneyland but which we hated (*cough*It's a Small World*cough*). We noticed that there was a parade drawing up and the sidewalks of the main street were getting crowded. We sat on one curb and surveyed the scene-Disney 'cast members'Â getting the crowd excited, talking to the kids, and got children dancing in the street. The lights strung all over the park lit up the night, and when the parade started Disney characters by the bushel came out on floats, dancing and singing to the kids on the sidewalk curb, absolutely spellbound in delight.
'Helen,'Â Melissa ventured, 'Why is Disney such a big deal to Americans?'Â She is looking at the dancing characters, a small frown on her face. Disney is not big in Sweden, so I understand her reaction. It's maybe not that huge in the UK, although Angus' nieces sure are nuts about Disney princess characters. I look at the dancing little girls, their eyes shining with adoration, their tiaras, wings, princess hats askew. Their heroes are just in front of them, characters that are as real to them as their family is, perhaps more so. I see in their eyes what I know we all had at some point.
'Disney was something we grew up with," I say, smiling at a little girl hug a woman playing Belle from Beauty and the Beast. "We had Walt Disney to tell us stories, to wrap up our dreams and deliver them with fairy dust. We had Muppets, we had Mickey Mouse, we had all of these fantastic things straight from our imaginations. They were the ones who taught us right from wrong, good from bad, and all of it with a sparkle that our ordinary lives never had. We grew up with Disney, and I think we're better for it.'Â
I look at her and smile. 'Now there's Tinkerbell on that float. Let's grab her and rip her goddamn wings off.'Â
-H.
PS-pictures will be uploaded to Flickr as I go.
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March 14, 2006
This was the view from our beach condo in the Cook Islands.
Yeah. I can't believe I came home, either.
Am now home after over 30 hours in transit, and am so jet-lagged I may die of confusion. More from me tomorrow.
-H.
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