Mini-Break

I’m laying in bed, sandwiched between sheets with a thread count several hundreds higher than the balance of my bank account, licking crumbs of Krispy Kreme glaze off my fingers and recovering from a Season 2 Sex and the City mini-marathon and thinking about how it is less than 24 hours until my huggle-bunny joins me and we can go frolicking and getting up to all kinds of mischief in the woods.... This is decadence.

It’s Easter, and it seems every year at this time I take a week long sojourn to the country; to eat extravagantly and constantly, put on pretty dresses and makeup everyday for nobody in particular, gossip continuously and consume unnatural amounts of chocolate. Such a description can only fit one place – Aunty Antoinette’s house.

It is nice to be spoiled sometimes. Even if it means I will return to Melbourne several pounds heavier than previously. Hopefully this will not happen – there is a treadmill here, and exercise bike and one of those jiggly things that you strap on and it ‘jiggles’ your fat away. They are all about to become my new best friends for the next three days, along with this laptop. I have been absent for a while, so here comes a big ol’ blog entry long enough to tide anybody over until I have more time and resources.

Something weird was happening here. For practically my entire existence, my Mother’s side of the family (Antoinette is my Mom’s sister) were all older than me and my siblings. We were the babies.
Now my Mom’s younger brothers have started having children, and it is hell. There were three little boys aged about 5, 4 and 3 and a 1 and a ½ year old girl. I suddenly feel a pang of guilt for having inflicted myself on my older cousins when I was between the ages of 1 and 6. It was detestable, but luckily all the children have gone now.

While they were all here though, it just confirmed once again in my head why I will never be a mother. The children just grated on my nerves. They would throw sandwiches on the floor and I wanted to yell at them for being so inconsiderate. They slapped and poked at my puppy until she growled at them, then she had to go outside. They climbed all over me, they decided what movie we watched, they smelt, they put paint everywhere and smeared chocolatey fingers over everything that would stay still.
But the worst part was their parents. Their parents are quite a bit younger than my Mom and some of the other siblings, so I always considered them a bit more fun. But honestly, I am secretly wondering whether parenthood actually has the effect of converting ones brain into mere gray mush. Sitting around the table, basking in afternoon sunshine and sipping Semillon, conversations would formerly revolve around… well, interesting things. Now it’s all crèche, toilet-training, stretch marks, et cetera. It is as if their children have become the only thing they think about. And even the rare, interesting conversations are brought to screeching halts with a, “Oh my God, Tommy, stop throwing pinecones at that bull!” or “Damn, her diaper is leaking again, can you change that honey?” Formerly intelligent, engaging people have become insipid sycophants, pandering to the needs of a small, inconsiderate, self-centred, unintelligent semi-being.

Sorry to everybody with parental aspirations. I suppose I’m just not built that way. My uncle challenged me today with the usual, “Oh, you’ll change your mind. Hormones will kick in and you’ll be baby-mad.” I guess I’m just going to have to disappoint everybody. There are reasons other than my severe dislike of children and babies which contribute to my sentiments. I, coupled with anybody with even slightly iffy genes in the mental health department, would produce the most genetically doomed child ever to exist. I am also an inherently selfish, sometimes unstable person prone to being jealous and holding a grudge – making me very bad parent material. Then there is the fact that I am pursuing a career where I would never get to do those little things that are oh-so-important in raising a child, so I would end up hating the thing once it grew up. All in all, even if I wanted to have children it would still be a bad idea.

So, there is only one thing to do: I hereby declare, adamantly, that I will never, ever have children.

Now, on to things that actually deserve to be written about! (here is the point where everybody who ever read this journal subjugates me to the ‘bitch’ list)…

I am already somewhat on the bitch list with my family though. At least for this weekend. In the long and tedious car ride to the house, several things happened and limits were pushed until I accidentally slapped my younger sister in the face. I had spent 36 hours being her servant, doing everything in my power to make her happy. I let her do a whole bunch of things in my house, I let her have grilled cheese sandwiches after she had refused to eat dinner, I put very subtle caramel streaks in her hair to cheer her up and I spent $50 on doughnuts to appease her. I won’t even go into what she did to me in return, but I can say that she probably would have treated Bush with more respect. So I lashed out - I meant to just push her shoulder roughly enough for her to get the point, but it was dark and the road was bumpy. I gave my 12 year old sister a black eye. Not exactly the proudest moment of my life. I since apologized though and she’s currently reading my books, eating my chocolate and in bed with me and our puppy about to watch a film with me. So I may be a bitch, but I can say sorry.

I was unsuccessful with The Grapes of Wrath. A year ago, I would have been devastated for weeks; crying to everybody I knew and trying to rationalize it in my head with a million different scenarios resulting in them picking someone else who was obviously inferior to me.
Last Thursday came and went. I checked my email a couple of times, sighed, and moved on. Afterwards I managed to say to Lucien, “That sucks,” but didn’t really think about it after that. I was proud.

The other day, Paul and I were discussing over pizza the role of emotions in how we live our lives. He told me of how easy it was for him to practice emotional detachment, whereas I had to confess to being completely ruled by my emotions. It is so stereotypical for a woman and I detest living up to it, but I am ruled by what my heart wants, what my heart tells me to do, et cetera. I am putting in a concerted effort to be a little less affected by everything though, and I think my ‘disappointment’ in not getting Rose of Sharon reflected that. I did want the part, it was a blow not to get it, but I moved on quickly and painlessly. Never before in my life would I have been able to say that, and mean it wholeheartedly.

On to issues less… well, deep, I have discovered a place that is becoming a bit of a haunt. Boheme on Bridge Road is a café-restaurant-bar that I am growing to like a lot. It is light, bright with incredibly high ceilings. They are unpretentious and very casual (something I am very glad of when it is so close to my house – it’s a place I can be seen with no makeup and bad hair days), like an upmarket pub with an emphasis on the food and coffee rather than the drinks. Lucien and I ended up there last weekend whilst looking for dinner; predictably, he ordered a meat-and-everything type pizza in the largest size they had. He was starving and not in the mood to order something subtle or something to enjoy on a sensual level. He just wanted his stomach to be filled as quickly as possible. I ordered a pizza too, and it was divine. Layered with fresh tomato, torn basil leaves, fresh mozzarella, drizzled with olive oil and cracked black pepper, it was topped with huge king prawns and scallops. I have never previously liked scallops, but these were lovely and quite edible!

I am aching to get out and experience more things; visit galleries I have never been to, drink red wine until I actually enjoy it, go to the Melbourne Museum, do things like go to random film festivals or exhibition launches, shop at the Prahran market every time I need food rather than paying three times as much at Safeway for substandard produce, actually go out with old friends for beer and buffalo wings rather than just talk about it. But there is the issue of means. I am realizing more and more that almost everybody I know has been… supported in some way. They live at home, their parents pay their rent, for their books, for their tuition, they have charge cards or trust funds, et cetera. My sometimes best friend Tasi seems to live on another planet nowadays, and is a good example of this divide. She drives a BMW and until recently lived at a $16000-a-year-plus residential college at university, which her parents paid for, of course. During her time at university, she decided she didn’t have enough time to get a job. She then whined to me, expecting real sympathy for the ‘tragedy’ that had befallen her – she had to do bourbon and cokes at her place before she went clubbing, because drinks at the clubs were just so expensive and she couldn’t afford to get drunk there. I think it was at this moment that I realized that the growing divide between us was insurmountable, unless she grew up or I went crazy.

Nowadays she doesn’t go to university anymore and doesn’t understand why her Mom won’t pay her credit card bills anymore. Also, despite living in a perfectly positioned and comfortable home, Tasi wants to move out and is angry that her Mom won’t pay the rent. I hope that the experience of having to work two jobs simply to pay the rent (with no money left over even for ‘pre-drinking’ let alone going out) will bring her down to earth a little and make her realize how ridiculously easy she had everything before she threw it away.

Meanwhile, I am trying to get on my feet in a way that I have never been before. I’m not sure whether I already talked about this, but I got a job. Irony of the century; I will be selling baby goods. But the pay is good for retail, I will be working three daytime shifts a week and it seems to be a quite secure working environment. I am hoping to eventually wangle my way into becoming Assistant Visual Merchandiser or something that I would actually be talented at. Simultaneously, I am halfway through the recruitment process for the cinema at the Jam Factory. Very hopeful – I volunteered myself for lots and lots of night shifts, if I’m successful.

In typing this, I was suddenly reminded by a comparison that Lucien once made. Upon watching Bridget Jones’s Diary, he laughed and said, “Oh, you two are like the same person!” This was a crushing blow; she is undoubtedly endearing, but ultimately it is not a favorable comparison.
But I see his point. For Bridget, she measured her life in pounds of lard, cigarettes smoked and alcohol consumed. I suppose I measure my life and progress too… let’s see. There is my job and how wealthy/non-impoverished it can allow me to be, being happy with my body and feeling occasionally beautiful, being academically brilliant (bah), my relationship with my darling boyfriend, my social life with friends (do I hear a death rattle?), how well I feel I am progressing with my brilliant career, et cetera.

So, in time the issue of capital will sort itself out, and I will feel better than all those people who can live at home or be supported by their parents because I will have worked harder for what I get.
Easter has been a hurdle in becoming Claudia Schiffer’s younger, thinner sister, but I will be back to my hour of exercise a day and no junk food routine tomorrow. I will go and actually get some things for my face so I don’t turn into a prune before I’m 30.
Essays are coming along, albeit slowly, but I am ahead of schedule and full of ideas. Words are flowing and I am so pleased with my brain right now.
Lucien will be here tomorrow night with bells on, and I am getting some ideas together for our little 2 ½ year anniversary weekend away.
Suki asked me to Click Click and I couldn’t make it, but I am determined to have her over for (this is sad, but we love it) a pint and trivia at the pub. Also planning on seeing about yum cha with Daniel, Lucien and Benjamin… could prove to be a stroke of brilliance. There is also a high likelihood that I will be somehow spiriting Paul away to my hometown for a trip down the coast.
As for career, well, I can’t force things. But I can try to create some luck for myself. I will continue hassling agents until they give me a go, I will continue going along to random auditions for theatre and film, and I will continue saving for the course at the Victorian College of the Arts.

I suppose measuring myself in these areas allows me a sense of achievement about myself that I couldn’t otherwise find.

This has been a huge entry… writing about myself is probably more interesting for me than it is for you to read, so I’ll try in future to either be interesting or talk about something else. Journalism/writing is my back-up career of sorts, so I guess I should try harder to be engaging. We’ll see.

But until then, I apologize in advance for writing trash.

Memory Lane

Another big day today, completing the fullest weekend I've had in a long time. It's definitely satisfying, but I'm so tired and needing that contemplation-reflection-imagination time that I usually take for granted. I wish I had a bath at my apartment, because taking a long, hot bath seems like it would be just the thing.

Ergh, my housemate just came home; singing loudly out of key, shouting, now going to the bathroom with the door open, swearing loudly and snarfling and snorting and spreading his filth and vibes of disgustingness everywhere. Horrible. Great, now he's making racist jokes. It's definitely time to move. I'm looking mostly at inner-city apartments and townhouses, but alas! I have nobody to share with. Last time I almost went into a share house with a friend ended in disaster, so there is the tiniest bit of worry tingeing what is otherwise a usually unwavering trust in the good in all people.
Grr.. now I have moved into my bedroom and I can hear him making fun of me and telling yet more racist jokes and tales of his various sexual encounters with prostitutes. Now, where is a bazooka that shoots poisonous nails and AIDS-infested broken glass when you need it?

Today was a family affair, which is strange considering my parents are divorced. We all went to see my little sister Ellen perform with her orchestra at the Royal South Street competitions in Ballarat. It was alright, but who won seemed to be completely arbitrary - the ensemble who won were definitely not the best. We saw a particularly awesome viola soloist, and heard the same piece (Intermezzo by von Chrysler - yes, I agree, what a name) about three times.
The original plan was to hit a delicatessen and go for a picnic, but we left out that one important detail - in Ballarat, it's always either stinking hot or freezing. Today it was the latter, and the first suggestion was McDonalds, so off we went. I protested. I lost!

After that, we split into two groups - my Mum, sisters and brother went home, and I went with my Dad, my grandmother (her name is Rose too) and Scarlett. I thought we were just driving back to Melbourne, but we definitely took the scenic route. We drove through Ballarat where she pointed out landmarks of her youth; the town hall where she made her debut at the Victory Ball, held when the war finally finished in 1945. She told me of people dancing in the streets and one young man who grabbed her and kissed her because he was so overcome with joy. We then drove to Learmonth, where we visited the house she grew up in and saw magnolia trees bigger than I have ever seen before. Grandma told stories about her childhood, about summers spent swimming at Lake Learmonth (picture left, in the 'good old days') - we went to visit it, and were shocked to find that it had all but dried up. There were a couple of puddles in it not much bigger than tennis courts, but the entire lake was dry. It was so sad to behold; the abandoned Lake Learmonth yacht club stood like an orphan, overlooking the dry lake bed that stretched almost to the horizon. Dad reassured me that it might fill up again one day, but it would take years of above average rainfall which is unfortunately unlikely.

We visited Creswick and then Daylesford to lay flowers on my great-grandmother's grave, and then my Grandma's best friend's grave. Wattles were blooming everywhere, like trees that had burst into riotous yellow fire, and daffodils were smiling up along the road the whole way. In our travels, we went back past the Ballarat Botanical Gardens and Grandma told me of the first time I went there. Picnics on the banks of Lake Wendouree are something that I remember distinctly from my childhood, and today I found out about my first ever time. I was only a few months old, and it was the height of summer - we had a heat wave that year, so it was unbearably hot. I was all dressed up in a pink sundress, pink bonnet and little pink cotton shoes. I was unanimously voted 'Princess of the Lake' by my aunts and uncles. Apparently that nickname stuck for years.. funny, I just don't remember it.

Eventually we made our way back to Grandma's house, building up a nice, cosy fire and sitting around munching on homemade yo-yo biscuits and drinking tea. Lovely. My Mum often urges me to see my grandmother, because she is quite old - she'll be 80 years old in January. It pains me to think that she is going to die one day, and not a far-off unimaginably distant day... but it makes me feel better to think that I do make effort to see her and make sure that she realises how much her family love her.

I have vowed never ever to have children, ever since I was about 5 years old. Lots of people say that, but believe me, I'm deadly serious: nothing ever could change my mind. I have possibly the worst genes in terms of certain health issues that anybody could give to a child - I don't want that responsibility of having created someone who is genetically doomed from day one. Also, I suppose I take a similar view of children as I do to .. well, dogs: why create one from scratch when there are so many needing love and attention out there already? I would never buy a puppy that had been specifically bred to be sold, I'd rather go to the pound and find one who was more in need. Likewise with kids, I'd rather adopt one than make one - why bring yet another child into the world when there are enough that need love and care already? Having said that, I'm far too selfish for children, so there!
But seeing my Grandmother, and the joy she gets from her 7 children and (counting..) 17 grandchildren.. maybe being old and alone is quite a disturbing reality. Maybe children are really like .. leaving a legacy. Maina Gielgud said something along the lines of this: Anybody can get married and have children, but very few people are able to find absolute fulfillment in other ways. (No quotation marks, because I can't remember the exact quote).

But I think that I will find another way to leave my mark, rather than getting married and having babies. Something that will help lots of people, rather than just a select group of brats who happened to belong to me for the first eighteen years of their lives.
Because I would rather adopt children than have children, and to be frank, I would rather adopt puppies than adopt children!

Adventures in Suburbia

The last 30 or so hours have been a rollercoaster of non-stop fun.. I should be feeling guilty right now (for the amount of time I have spent not doing homework, for the calories consumed, for the missed phone calls, for the ridiculous amounts of money spent) but no - I just feel content. It's nice! This post will read like a blow-by-blow account, rather than anything fancy. Too much happened to elaborate on it.

I spent a blissfully blank Friday morning and afternoon - no class. I planned to donate blood on Bourke St, but they didn't have any appointments left (that's a job for next week). So I just lounged around in my underwear, chatting to Paul and listening to lovely music. Around 5pm I got dressed and sauntered down to Richmond for an appointment with the shrink - while I was waiting, I drew a picture of a rose garden for a man in the waiting room. He loved it, and it made me smile.

I was met by Lucien after the appointment who whisked me away to Chapel St, Prahran. The tram ride was eventful - it was one of those old W6-Class ones (see right) and it ended up breaking down for 15 minutes. A rude lout sitting near us spent the entire wait complaining loudly about the government and Connex, spouting rubbish like that they should pay for him to get a taxi because the tram broke down. I felt like slapping him. He just went on and on and on until I was seriously considering stabbing him in the head with my parasol.
We finally got to the Jam Factory where we were met by Benjamin (Lucien's best friend) and another friend, Ted. We ran to Friday's where we had cocktails - such fun! I had a Long Island Iced Tea and a Cosmopolitan; Lucien had a B-52 and a White Russian. Trés exciting, and enough to make me go silly.

Soon enough we were met by about.. 7 other friends. We had pancakes and then went to the cinema. Benjamin and I got into trouble for walking down the 'up' escalator. The stupid ticket girl came and said to us, "Either go up or down, but you can't just stand still," which made us laugh even harder. We finally got into the film, Snakes on a Plane, which I deemed to be brilliant fun. Sure, it was no intellectual masterpiece.. but it was the kind of film that appealed to my me-when-tipsy self. Benjamin, on the other hand, was mortally wounded by the fact that he had just paid $11 to see what he proclaimed to be "enough to make me want to die on the spot". We all responded in wildly varying ways, continuing to bicker for a long time afterwards.

By this time, it was 1am and we realised that public transport had ceased for the night. Everybody was in a bit of a state before they realised that Hawthorn (where most of them live) wasn't actually such a far walk from Chapel St. So they set off, leaving Lucien, Ted, Mark and I. Luckily, Mark had brought his car and was sober (red and fast!) so we piled in with the crazy idea of driving out to Narre Warren to hunt for Krispy Kreme doughnuts. We managed to get lost a number of times along the way, but it was all in good fun.

As we neared the fabled Krispy Kreme store, we noticed that there were lots of other cars that seemed to be going exactly the same way as we were. Then we saw it - 2:30am, and there would have been maybe 20 cars of people there. We got out to stretch our legs and managed to be approached by a gaggle of drugged-out emo teenagers. Dripping eyeliner and practically having sex with each other in the parking lot, they seemed to love me. I was wearing bright colours I suppose. They all wanted to hug me, so I doled out the hugs and then we ran away.

Between four people, we bought four dozen doughnuts. Forty-eight doughnuts. We carried the tower of boxes to a grassy hill where we sat and devoured about twenty of them. As fate would have it, there was a lone shopping trolley in the carpark. Lucien put me inside it (forcibly! - he grabbed me around the waist and flipped me over his shoulder, plonking me inside the steel contraption completely without my will, as I was screaming and probably waking up EVERYBODY in the Eastern suburbs) and took me for a 'spin', literally. He pushed me fast, then would stop suddenly, then spun me around in fast circles and managed to let the trolley almost fall over at one point. It was too much - the height of dignity came when I had to stumble away to be sick behind some bushes.

Delightful.

Lucien and I returned to my apartment where there was much hearty sleeping to be done. Alas, tragedy struck in the morning when ... the sun shone through my bedroom window directly onto my sleeping head! I wasn't a happy girl, especially when I woke up to see that I had terrible panda eyes and a hangover (oh the shame of getting a hangover after two cocktails..). I managed to grin and bear it, though I stayed in bed until 12 when my Dad called and adventures started all over again.

We met Dad and Scarlett at the Queen Victoria Market, where we enjoyed some awesome bratwurst. Saturated fat in a bun with onions on top was exactly what I needed, and everything seemed to get a bit brighter. It was a beautiful day with not-too-harsh sunshine and a lovely breeze.. I was wondering around in a tank top, flip-flops and a short skirt all day. My last post said something about the breeze feeling like it was kissing you, and today was the same. Too bad tomorrow will be cooler and I'll be stuck in bloody Ballarat (hear about it next time!).

We bid farewell to my Dad and then wandered into the city. We grabbed some old-fashioned lemonade from the Food Hall at Myer and then headed for the State Library, where we basked on the grass for almost an hour. Then came some more hunting of sorts - Lucien's mother called him with a request from his father about what he wanted for Father's Day (tomorrow, in Australia). Liquorice. So of course we had to find a Darrell Lea store, quick. We walked around for hours trying to find a store to no avail (despite the fact that there is one on Swanston as well as one on Elizabeth). After asking about four different people for directions and going to the post office to look them up in the Yellow Pages, we finally found them. Lucien bought his liquorice and we made our way back to my apartment as quick as we could.

A late-afternoon siesta was in order, which we embraced with much gusto. Laying around in the afternoon sun, listening the The Virgin Suicides soundtracks, wearing very little and just basking in stillness, silence and each other's company was a fabulous way to spend the next two hours. I was suddenly overcome by tiredness, so I gave Lucien permission to run away and had a cat-nap. When I woke, I found that Lucien had run down the street to the Green Refractory Café (on Sydney Road). We ended up having dinner there, sitting in a gorgeous little alleyway lit by the moon with the smell of grass and spring in the air, before heading home to our parents for the rest of the weekend.

Ahhhh.. there you go. That will probably be the most boring entry ever for anybody to read, but I just had to chronicle the craziness and jam-packed nature of this half-a-weekend. I'm the kind of girl who might feel overwhelmed if I had scheduled events on both days of the weekend, yet I managed to fit in enough adventure for a month. It's kind of nice; making the weekend interesting and full enough to make up for the weekly slog through school/work/whatever your nine-to-five.

Bring on next weekend!.. after a week-long recovery period!