crone

Not quite, but the signposts are getting clearer (or is that too fuzzy? Stupid little fonts they use these days!)

I no longer care about my cleavage, and I have decided to embrace the grey. 

There are bits that move and you think "that needs a good oil" (but not in a dirty way) (see, getting old)

There are bits that move that shouldn't.

As motoring enthusiasts (& not so enthusiastics) know, there comes a time when you notice the repairs are getting a little more intensive. I'm probably going to need new belts or something equally sinister (can you tell "motoring enthusiast" does not come to me naturally?). 

The sort of service that might have that "No longer economically viable to sustain" judgement be made - in a car.

Phew. 

Don't pull the pin.

There are good books to read. I just finished "An Afterlife for Rosemary Lamb" by Louise Wolhunter. Goodreads page on it an author page

I have also recently finished the audio book of Burt Bacharach's autobiography "Anyone who had a heart - my life and music". That was interesting.

Am going to Mum and Dad's for a quick weekend visit. Be in the same general vicinity of my siblings for 24 hours. Get about 5 hours of an audiobook and drive with Paris.

Bought tickets today to fly out to see V.'s mum and brother (and no doubt other people) but such tight time constraints for work and school and working people wide mean that it will really only be a few weeks once you factor the time that it takes in getting there and back.

And then you realise that this is very much a "21st century problem" (or are we up to 22nd now? Is 21st so last century? I can't remember if that is one of those stupid math rules or a sensible one)

Darn. Glitch in the app means a swathe of my book blabber has vanished, but believe that it was good and would have piqued your interest in "The Birdman's Wife" (Elizabeth Gould) and "An Unconventional Wife" (Julia Sorrell)

So your take " taking it gracefully" or "kicking and screaming"?

Or old enough to think naught of it, what will be will be.

shall I compare thee to an Autumn day

It doesn't really have the same ring, does it?

And these Autumnal showers over the Equinox after steaming days don't bring to mind "Fall".

Anyhoo, updates:

• The carseat covers got back onto the seats before the service at the mechanic's. Auspicious.
• 'Salina's softball team won their semi-final on Saturday and we got to watch.
• I got to spend a weekend with my folks and celebrate my sister's birthday - and see the last of the next generation in a photo of the first of the older generation and their main link, Dad's goddaughter/Bub's mother - my cousin.
• Laptop is not dead!!! On the way home from their place yesterday, Paris sent her love via text - 
  
  
  
• When I got home she said "guess what" and I said "what" and she said "I fixed your computer" and I said "how" and she said "I plugged it in".  (I can't seem to link a pertinent IT crowd link)

The Week of the Ides of March

It's been a month this week (& it's been a year today).

Saturday 

We had planned to do absolutely nothing (when you commute 5 days a week and do a 200km drive every couple of weeks, I actually protect these rare opportunities closer) and succeeded for the most part.

I also cooked curry. That is my truly most happy spot. I read recently of how fusion food was cultural misappropriation and I think that that is definitely my line in the sand. I would be devastated if "they" were to deny the evolution of taste but I also see the theory also of such a stance in regards maintaining purity and integrity. (There was a fleeting sidetrack regards horses and frogs but luckily I can edit)

Curry was good. Three dishes:

Brazilian Chickpea Curry - a new and very simple vegan deliciousness;

Authentic Bangladeshi Beef Curry - very non-vegan that I wasn't sure was a winner but it really grew as it complimented the other dishes

; and

Palak Paneer - very much a favourite and I cheat with a couple of packs of frozen spinach and Australian feta from the deli counter.

Sunday

Right until the moment before I left the house the prospect of an additional overnight trip was on the table,.so my trip to see my breast surgeon for the first annual check up was efficient.

Google Maps advised me of a journey of 1 hr and 37minutes, and adding in the country contingency of a half hour I left in plenty (ish) of time.

Google maps didn't know about the caravan convoy (Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition) but should have been aware of the roadworks on the scrabbly shortcut between the highway and my destination.

It gets me every time.

I arrived at my appointment with 1 minute to spare.

The appointment took 10 minutes. The last 3 of those was general chit chat about travel, geography and economics. As you do.

Unfortunately it's not really the sort of appointment that you can phone in.  Good news is boobs are fine.

Paid the fee, hopped in the car and headed back home.

Bonus afternoon at home so managed to harvest most of the back meadow before a lovely little rain storm.

Monday

A little bit of work organising moving pieces before I left to meet up with Dad.

We had a lot of hurry up waiting with a few medical establishments, a massive thunderstorm giving a soundtrack and two strokes of incredible medical luck for the day.

Tuesday

Dad got to experience the joy of school mornings with an adolescent teenage girl. I don't think anybody recommends that. 

Dad majors in imparting the wisdom of his nearly 84 (4th 21st coming up) years. 

Paris does a good line in aversion to being told anything.

I dropped him at a shopping centre while I had a quick trip to work to organise working from home for the next couple of days.

After I finished the day's work and was about to prepare dinner, Dad suggested that he wanted to shout for us. 

Among his many attributes, there were 2 at play here. He loves to show generosity (to a degree - it's "share a plate" rather than "splash the cash").

The second is his weakness for a good seafood basket or platter - and the closest option had such - it was a bit exxy but you should always share a platter, and so we ventured forth.

There is a whole saga in that trip that would be worthy of a post in itself, but it included 80s bouncers, economics of bread slices, the inverse theory of proximity to salt water and care and attention to the seafood platter, the alcoholic status of lemon, lime and bitters and carpet design.

Wednesday

Another appointment that could not be zoomed but for a different part of the body.

Plans afoot to give me more room for audacity (apologies - I thought that I had a link to a kiofra tik tok about the anatomy and audacity but apparently I don't have time tok linking skills!)

Took Dad to my hairdresser and got him onto a bus home.

Thursday and Friday

Work. Parenting an adolescent badly. Food. Insomnia. Rinse. Repeat.

Oh - and my laptop died so doing everything on my phone is a new skill that I am developing.

Tomorrow

My list for tomorrow (written at 3 this morning):

Washing

Packing

 Mother/daughter bonding moments

Travel agent

Kmart

Watching softball

Pathfinders

Driving 200km

Mother/daughter bonding moments

How was yours?

Capital A capital L Australian Literature

I am in a book club and there are some books that I love and some that I do not.

A fair swag of it is Oz lit and I am trying to pinpoint what it is that riles me so about the more vaunted tomes.

I honestly think part of it is a modern cultural cringe where they feel that they have to write - so beautifully they do write- about harshness and despair at nearly every turn.

 You get to the point as a reader that you mistrust even the slightest glimmer of hope because you know that it will be spectacularly extinguished by the absolutely woeful "shit happens and then you live miserably in filth" ending they learned in Capital A capital L Australian Literature 101.

I just finished Denizen. Gorgeous writing. Nailed the above.

Prior to that I failed to finish Salt and Skin - the whole time I felt like I had read it before (perhaps I had or perhaps it's cookie cutter AL).

Please offer me something to disprove my theory - or lament with me

Two oh two three...

Welcome to the year.

I would first like to inform you that I have managed to fulfil one of those (always in the long run wrecked) sub-conscious resolutions, to keep diary! (okay, fair enough, for one day - but on the upside -  for ONE WHOLE DAY!)

Of course, I remembered it at 11pm so its already a tenuous prospect.

Last year was a very mixed bag.

• It began with unblogged issues regarding a work situation.
• Then threats of floods.
• Then cancer.
• Then treatment.

The whole litany wasn't dreadful - there are indeed good things mixed in the not so good things in the above.

But the overall IMPRESSION of the year is one of those really dark paintings with some gold flecks highlighting (sometimes ironically) other things.

• Paris is now a high schooler
• ergo, V is now the male parent of an adolescent.  That is going as well as can be expected
  
• unfortunately with a side-salad of holy cow, I am the mother of one.  Eek
  
• House stuff happened.  House next door stuff happened.
  
• Work stuff happened (in fact, this statement is sprinkled liberally through)
  
• Family stuff happened (and keeps on happening)
  
• Covid hit
  

'Salina is all grown up and a well-regarded allied-health professional, doing well and enjoying what she does for a living.  We are still looking for some photos of the first ever orthotics that she made when V came into our lives!!

Eddie grew very old in November and we took him to the vet in December.  They said whatever we did would be palliative and then we got what medicine was available for his competing old-aged woes.  

It worked until it didn't and we said goodbye to him last Thursday.

Poor boy boy.

So 2023 has a clean slate on which to write.  I have some goals to try to achieve this year and might have to start taking being a grown up seriously.

Who knows if I will write more or stress less - but I can but try. 

So I am hopeful for the year ahead.

Possibly wary, but hey, we got through 2022.