Festive All Over

Since my last update… Christmas: done. New Year’s Day: done. My birthday: done. Lying Around Doing Nothing: done. Taking down the Christmas tree: Really? Already?

I got books as presents this year. The Robert Galbraith series (yes, yes, I’ve read them on kindle. Yes, I’ve listened to the audiobooks. Yes, I’ve watched the TV adaptation. And yes, I needed them in physical book form. Let’s say no more about this), the Penguin Classics and Penguin Modern Classics books by Henry Eliot for reference, and J.L Carr’s A Month In The Country, which I’d never read before but is wonderful.

Also, on presents, my husband bought me a dress, which is a challenge of high difficulty because who ever gets it right with style and dress size and colour? He chose well though, which is a relief because no one wants to spend the post-Christmas period wearing an ugly dress and shouting “No! I love it! I really do. Shiny neon pink polyester is JUST MY SORT OF THING.” before quietly sending it off to the op shop.

I was also give Hogwart’s Legacy on Nintendo Switch, which I am “sharing” with the kids. By which I mean, they are playing it and occasionally I get a look in, which is as it should be.

Plus, we did family, food and all the other fine things of Christmas/New Year/Birthday. I had my traditional birthday pavlova. All was good with the world.

Let’s see your numbers…

Because I am a responsible adult I sometimes take my blood pressure and because I am also a completely irresponsible adult I took my blood pressure six months ago, saw that it was extremely high and then pretended I hadn’t seen it. Like the poet Walt Whitman, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

But today, while I was at the doctor for unrelated boring reasons (having a form filled in), I decided to be a grown-up and asked him if he would take my blood pressure. His face when he saw the result was like that monkey’s up there. A face that says “I don’t know how you’re alive” and “So you knew about this and did nothing? That’s special”. He sent me straight to the pharmacy downstairs to get medication and told me to take one IMMEDIATELY. Which I did because sometimes I am good.

I’m popping back to see him later this week to have my blood pressure checked again. Maybe this time I won’t turn him into a startled monkey. And maybe I’ll finally learn my lesson about not avoiding the doctor (unlikely, but I can dream).

Over and over.

School holidays are over. We went back to the movies to see Transformers: One. The kids loved it. So did I, for different reasons. For me, Transformers One was the experience of eating snacks then falling asleep, occasionally being woken by shouts of “Megatron! No!”. That’s a good time. Much better than the time I decided to take my husband to see The Northman and had to keep my eyes open the entire time while vikings flapped about on the screen. That was a bad time.

Today I did loads of writing and found a copy of Arthur Schopenhauer’s Essays and Aphorisms in a street library when I took the dog for a walk. This was good as well. Never read Schopenhauer before. Came home and opened it to the introduction to the Penguin edition which starts off with “Schopenhauer is not difficult to understand provided one knows first something of the problems German metaphysical speculation was engaged in during his lifetime…”. Ah. Might be a problem. Still. I can always take it back into the street library if it doesn’t go well. The street library never judges.

Holiday. Celebrate.

Busy with the school holidays here. Writing: zero. School holidays swimming lessons: loads. Adults refusing to get out of the swimming lesson lane and ending up standing in the pool having an enormous argument with two swimming teachers, one gym manager and two security guards before being corralled in a corner in a corner of the pool by another swimming teacher and instructed to remove themselves: three and I enjoyed it tremendously. Best moment of my swimming lesson mum career which usually just involves sitting on my phone by the side of the pool waiting for my kids to emerge, then shouting “Well done!” and handing over the towels.

We’ve been to the library so the kids could borrow asterix comics, books about war and books about unicorns. I borrowed a huge biography of Madonna and read it in a day and a half because it was fascinating to read about someone that intense. I doubt she’s ever spent a single hour faffing around, let alone lose entire days to it, like I regularly do. Part of me would love to that driven, but the other part - the main part - would like to lie on the couch watching old episodes of One Foot In the Grave. This is why she is Madonna and I am a blob-shaped human on a couch.

More school holidays to go with gymnastics and parkour (for the kids, I’m just the personal assistant) and going for walks and hanging out at home doing nothing and baking and sleeping in and all the good things of the school holidays. I wish we could holiday longer.

Let’s Go Shopping

We went house-hunting on the weekend which is hugely fun and also exhausting. There’s something about looking through someone else’s house, seeing the bones of their life that can be a little eerie. Especially if it’s, like one of the houses we looked like, well past its glory days. This one was a 70s timewarp house but not in the good way (Give me a well-preserved 70s house museum any day). Once it had been a party house, the pool and the butler’s pantry filled with vintage ashtrays and cocktail making equipment was proof of that. Now it was all a little tired. The wallpaper was peeling off the walls. The lilac toilet and the burnt orange kitchen was proof that everyone briefly went colour-blind in the 70s. The hot tub looked festier than a bucket of Legionnaire’s Disease laced with the gentle dew of a thousand sweaty party goers.

We also saw a house being sold by a high conflict divorcing couple and that real estate agent spent a good twenty minutes telling us about all the meetings they’d cancelled on, the offers to purchase one or the other had rejected and the way both of them had flat-out refused to wipe the mould from the walls. Real estate agents apparently spending half their time as hard-nosed capitalists and the other half as reluctant life-coaches and counsellors gently prodding vendors towards a new life.

There was one house we liked. But so did the rest of Sydney. We stood and admired the view from the backyard with five other couples. We stood on the verandah and imagined ourselves enjoying the quiet afternoons with the same five couples. We could barely hear the real estate agent tell us he’d phone on Monday over the noise of everyone inspecting the ensuites and tramping through the kitchen. That’s the way it goes. If you want tranquility in real estate, go to the mould house or the festy hot tub mansion.

Reading: The laugh out loud edition.

Who are the “laugh out louders”? Or where are they? So many book jackets claiming they are “Laugh out loud funny!” yet I rarely see anyone actually laughing out loud when they read a book. I’ve caught a lot of trains and buses in my life and seen a lot of people reading books. Many of them the “laugh out loud funny” kind. But I’ve almost never seen any laughing. Not even a little giggle. Definitely not a “HA HA HA HA! THIS IS A FUNNY PART! HOO, BOY, THIS IS MAKING ME LAUGH A LOT ON THIS TRAIN I’M ON HERE!”

Alright. I might have seen it once. But it wasn’t a laugh. More a repressed chortle.

While we’re on the topic, why is it always “laugh out loud funny”? Isn’t the “funny” superfluous? Books are never “laugh out loud terrifying!” or “laugh out loud romantic”. No one says “Oh my God, I was reading this book on the train. It was laugh out loud boring. I could hardly hold my sides together! Everyone was looking at me. I nearly fell off my chair roaring. You have to read it, it was just so boring!”

I digress.

I love comedy - books, TV shows, movies, radio shows. It’s my favourite genre. I don’t often laugh out loud at it, though. It’s rare. Maybe a few times a year. Mostly comedy just gives me a warm inner glow and a sense that the world is working as it should. Much like when someone drives past, honking their horn dramatically because he thinks you’re driving too slow, then you see the flash of the speed camera that just caught Mr Honky doing 70 in a 50 zone and the world feels like a temporarily good and just place.

All this is to say that I read a book that genuinely unexpectedly made me laugh out loud and it was delightful. It’s Jessica Dettmann’s How To Be Second Best (amazon link) and I highly recommend it because it is…. laugh out loud delightful.

This be the book.

I don’t know how I hadn’t come across her before. She’s Australian and writes funny domestic fiction, which is right up my alley. I’m glad I’ve found her now though because I have two more of her books to read. This one was her first and it featured a divorced, long-suffering (so long-suffering, my God), funny woman with two children and, oh look, let’s save some time by reading the blurb: Going from one child to two is never all that easy for a family, but when Emma's husband simultaneously fathers a third child three doors up the street, things get very tricky, very fast.

No longer is it enough for Emma to be the best wife and mother - now she's trying to be the best ex-wife, and the best part-time parent to her ex's love child, and that's before she even thinks about adding a new bloke to the mix.

Set in an upwardly mobile, ultra-competitive suburb, this is a funny, biting, heartwarming modern comedy that looks at the roles we play, how we compete, and what happens when we dare to strive for second-best.

It was very good. And it had a joke halfway through that properly made me laugh out loud. And many other good jokes but that was the one that got me. I won’t spoil it but it involved WD40. That’s all I’m saying.

Thankfully I was only on the couch, not on the train so I could do it without scaring anyone. And the book jacket doesn’t promise it’s laugh out loud funny. Although it is.

Recommended.

Into the Valley of Death (and sniffles)

It’s a genuinely horrible moment waking up with a horrible cold, staggering out to the lounge room and realising that your husband is doing the same thing, because he’s come down with the same thing. This means the battle of Who is the Sickest and Who Will Look After the Kids is about to commence. It’s a war no one ever really wins.

Fortunately our kids our now at the age where they’re happy enough to watch a movie on the couch while we lay at either of the end, drifting in and out of sleep and only waking long enough to say “Do you still have a cold? Because I still have a cold” or, just “For God’s sake, when will this thing just go?”

Three weeks of us staggering around the house like pensioners. And not the active, fun-loving kind of pensioner you see on the news. The ones in the human interest bits who’ve taken up hang-gliding at the age of ninety-four. No. The other kind who sat in a chair the day they turned sixty, announce they’re done with living now, thank you very much, and spend the next thirty years watching daytime television and reading the obituaries in case there’s someone they know featured in there.

The most galling thing of all is that we caught it off our oldest kid who was sick for no more than half a day. This is the most outrageous part about having kids. “Oh,” they’ll say, “I think I’m getting a cold, my throat hurts a bit”, then they’ll cough right in your face because where else would they cough? The next day, they’re completely fine, but you now have the Black Death and are wondering if it’s too late to update your last will and testament.

We’re better now. I didn’t need to have a nap today and my husband went back to work. Sometimes in the evenings we reminisce about that first week of being sick, as if we’re veterans of a terrible war. “Remember lying on the couch?” “Oh, yes. I remember the couch. Did you have body aches and pains and a throat like razorblades?” “I had the body aches but not the throat, did you have the crushing fatigue?” “Yes, I thought I was going to die from exhaustion just getting out of bed.”

Parenting books never mention this part. Probably because it’s not considered polite to tell terrify new parents. But someone should at least drop a hint that they’re about to the victims in a biological warfare and there’s nothing they can do about it. Except buy more hand sanitiser and fruitlessly say over and over, “Did you wash your hands? I don’t think you washed your hands. Well… because I saw you with your finger up your nose almost to the elbow. Yes, I did. So, can you go wash your hands?”

We really are better now. But please can no one cough in our faces again? We spent too long in virus town, we’re not ready to go back.

C’est Banana! Hahaha!

We went to the new minions movie and it was good. Just the right amount of slapstick, farting and 80s pop tunes. Tricky combination to get right but they did it. Kids collapsed with tiredness when we got home. Sitting in a cinema eating truckloads of popcorn is exhausting stuff.

Then came home and read more of The Problem With Everything by Meghan Daum and it’s terrific. Her writing is so beautiful and the content of the book is so clear-eyed. She makes me think about things that have just slid by my consciousness in the maelstrom of pop culture and politics and I like that.

I’m writing this while I’m wearing of those teeth-whitening, red/blue-light, tooth-lightening contraptions in my mouth. It’s a highly undignified situation. The red and blue lights flashing on and off make me look I’m hosting a dance party inside my own mouth. It’s ridiculous. But why be sensible when you could be throwing a disco for your own teeth?

Master of None

Why is there a gnome at the top of this post? Because I searched for “master” in stock images, immediately regretted it and chose this gnome as a palate cleanser. Partly because he looks serene even despite the bird in his beard but also because he’s not wearing leather and chains. Let’s say no more about it.

Well, it’s a great day because I finally finished the Joyce Carol Oates Masterclass I’ve been bogged down in for months.

MasterClass is a website that offers beautifully produced workshops with experts. They’re all long - up to 8 hours if you pick Aaron Sorkin talking about screenwriting. You can watch Christina Aguilera explain to you how to be a great singer (I haven’t watched this but I expect it starts with “Step One: Be Christina Aguilera” and goes on from there). Or Anna Wintour can explain how great leaders work but I’ve already watched The Devil Wears Prada 500 times so I’m pretty sure I’ve learnt everything Anna has to teach me on that front.

It’s a little exxy so I thought about it for a while before going for it. It was all the writers that got me in. There’s a lot. And great ones. Salman Rushdie is there! And Joyce Carol Oates!

I started with David Sedaris and he was fantastic. He had a way of explaining his process with just the right amount of encouragement and severity, particularly when it came to how much work was involved in one of his essays. I loved it.

Then I moved on to Joyce Carol Oates on the short story and it too was excellent. Especially if you’ve always wanted to be on an MFA course with Joyce Carol Oates. She talks beautifully about her own writing and about other writers, especially when she’s discussing Hemingway’s short story, Indian Camp. The last two episodes were two writers discussing their first drafts with Oates, discussing what works and what doesn’t. I felt as if I was peeking into a world I wasn’t ever going to be part of - the one where people discuss each other’s short stories in an airless room and say things like “I really felt a great sense of joy throughout these passages” but Oates was tremendous, asking what the reader was supposed to feel at the end and teasing out what was literally happening in the story, as opposed to what metaphorically happening.

Now I’m onto James Patterson. I chose him because he has a lot of episodes on plot and outlining and those are my weak spots. I’m up to episode two, he’s funny and interesting so it’s already good.

So far, I am a master of nothing and I won’t ever measure up to those writers but it’s satisfying to listen to highly accomplished people talk about the thing they're best at. That on its own makes it worth while for me.

Expelliarmus

Just before the school holidays, my kids school announced they were going to start doing book week. Which meant I was going to have to start finding book week parade costumes. Sigh. Parent homework. The worst kind because you don’t even get to enjoy parading around after all that hard work.

Luckily my kids decided on Harry Potter. (Praise be to JK Rowling’s costume licensing division. Thank you. May your polyester wizards robes and plastic wands always be plentiful). So today I bought a Scabbers the Rat plush for one kid to carry as part of his Ron Weasley costume and a Time Turner necklace for another kid as part of her Hermione Grainger kit. And we watched the first two movies then my youngest listened Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone audio book. A very wizardy day.

I came to Harry Potter late. Partly because I’m a late adopter and I think also because I was/am a Terry Pratchett fan and he used to be very rude about Harry Potter and would huff and puff in his usenet group about people who accused him of copying wizard schools off JK Rowling. Shame. I love Harry Potter so much that I felt sad that it was over and that I hadn’t read it sooner. In its place I’ve started reading the Robert Galbraith Strike books and they’re fantastic as well although I struggle to remember big casts in books and sometimes I have to flap back and forth through the pages (“Who was she again? This bloke that’s just turned up, was he in that chapter at the beginning?”) so I read slower than usual. Mildly obsessed with Robin and Strike’s uncomfortable attraction to each other.

Also today: dusted off the sewing machine to mend one school dress, bring in the waistband of a pair of school sports pants because no one likes their pants falling down during netball, and mended the ripped sleeves of a princess dress. One day I will sew for me again. Maybe.