Do you see me?

Last weekend I read a book on my Kindle that has had me thinking a lot during the week. It was Divorced, Desperate and Dating. It was very, very hot and heavy in places – I’ve commented to a couple of friends that I felt the need to have a cigarette in a few places! Of course I didn’t.... (I haven’t smoked since I was 21). I wouldn’t normally go for what my niece termed ‘mummy porn’ but the story was very well written with a murder-mystery theme.

The conclusion that I’ve come to in my musings this week is that books like this are aimed at the need in us women that we want to be noticed, we want to be ‘seen’. In the way the Na’avi on Pandora (Avatar movie) have a greeting that says “I see you”. To be really, truly, seen. From the depths of our souls to the superficial cover of our bodies.

I also think the movie The Wedding Date reaches for this connection with women. Debra Messing’s character pays a gigilo to accompany her to her sister’s wedding in London. She pays $6,000 so that her ex-fiancé believes she doesn’t miss him, or want him back. Of course the story line is predictable with the gigilo (the very spunky Dermott Mulroney) falling in love with her. My favourite scene in the movie is where he makes her feel all woozy by NOT kissing her – not quite, that is! Another moment to reach for the cigarette packet! The premise of the movie though, is that a woman may not be desirable on the outside (or feel that she is) but if she could just get a guy to spend enough time with her he would fall in love with her when he ‘sees’ her.

Another movie, A Walk To Remember, has the lead female, a very straight-shooting teenage daughter of a pastor, agreeing to tutor a hot young jock who’s a naughty boy. She agrees to tutor him but first makes him promise he won’t fall in love with her! Now there’s a girl who understands this whole thing. Regardless of the outside packaging, if you spend enough time with someone and get to ‘see’ them you are likely to fall in love with them.

So, what about girl-guy friendships? Girls being best friends with guys? Who knows. I sure don’t. I’ve had my share of guy best-friends. In my experience the romance/long term relationship thing always got in the way at some point. And it’s usually one person who’s happy with the way things are and the other wants it to be different and that presents a dead-end for the friendship. I’ve been on both sides of this scenario and neither are easy.

Anyway, I think it just comes back to women wanting to know that someone notices them and this leads to them feeling they’re a significant person in the world, not just one speck amongst 6 billion others. John and Staci Eldridge talk about this beautifully in Captivating. The underlying question for girls/women is “Do you see me?”, “Am I lovely?”. I remember Princess S asking me this as she twirled around in a dress when she was three years old! “Am I lovely Mummy?”. Some of us feel that we don’t ever really get that question answered to our satisfaction. And it drives a subconscious searching.

Like the facebook status that says “Sometimes your knight in shining armour is just a retard in tin foil” my knight turned out to be something far different from what I was expecting.

Colin Buchanan, tv and birthday - what a mix!

Listened to some Colin Buchanan music tonight with the girls and BFF. I'd forgotten how funny and clever he is. If you haven't heard his music there is a little bit on YouTube. Bringing back a few memories of times we listened to it in the car on long trips before D and I separated.
It also reminded me of some tv shows that I don't watch any more. D and I used to enjoy watching Spicks n Specks and RockWiz but they just aren't the same to watch on your own, so I don't watch them any more. Funny, isn't it?! ...or not. Some things in life are just not much fun on your own.
Madame I turned 10 today. She's such a beautiful young lady. She had a couple of friends come and we went out to a restaurant for tea then a sleepover. One of her friends said "wow, menu's. I've never been in a restaurant with menu's before" I think what she meant was that they weren't just laminated sheets, but were in a nice folder. The girls were just lovely to be with and we all had a great night. When we got home they played on their Nintendo DS's together and watched a movie....I went to bed at 11pm and they finally came up to bed just before 2am! So I did the parenting bit and told them it was time to be quiet and go to sleep, and they did. Then Madame I woke up at 7:30am and woke the other 2 up! after only about 5 hours sleep... So tonight I sent them to bed at 6:30pm! Thank goodness for winter sunsets at 5:30 or whatever it is. Pitch dark at 6:30. They are both sound asleep now and it's only 7:20pm. :-)

Easter's coming

Well, it has been a while, hasn't it?! I guess that means life has been cruising along a bit....and I haven't really had much time to blog.
I'm working now in two jobs, one office job 2 days a week which I love and the other cleaning our church which, to be honest, I don't love but it's pretty easy as far as cleaning jobs go - no bathrooms or toilets! I'm still studying but have dropped back to 1 subject at a time. I finished a Gender subject called Defining Women which I really enjoyed - and got a Distinction for! That's 4 Distinctions, 1 Credit and 1 Pass so far. Not bad! Now I'm doing Statistics in which we use a computer program for all the hard work, so it's all about understanding the figures and knowing how to get them. I really like it, and have grasped the concepts fairly well. I did enjoy maths in high school, so it's good to do something that doesn't require researching and essay writing.
On the home front, I think I realised this morning that I haven't forgiven D (still!) and that I don't actually want good things for him. I am premenstrual (sorry - more info than some of you need) and I know that has some impact on how I feel about things.
I wonder if I'll ever sincerely want good things for him? I resent everything he does, because....I'm not really sure why. Because he's not my husband anymore and I still grieve that, because he couldn't pull himself together for my sake or for the sake of our girls when we were married so why does he do it now?, because sometimes I feel really trapped being a single mum - still haven't been accepted for any new rental properties even though my income is pretty good, I feel like I'm never going to be partnered again because as a single mum I have baggage and am hard work. Most days this stuff doesn't bother me much, but every now and then I feel very alone. I realise how difficult it is to be the only one in the house who can cook tea, do the dishes, do housework, pay the bills, take the kids to school and pick them up, do the shopping. I really miss having another adult to do some of those things sometimes. Experience tells me this will pass, and in another week or so (hopefully) I'll feel refreshed and more positive.
Thank goodness it's Easter and there's a great excuse to eat lots of chocolate!
The girls will be with D for Easter, and I'm staying in Adelaide for the weekend - church still needs to be cleaned! So I've organised a brekkie at a nice hotel on Saturday morning and then a day of geocaching which I'm really looking forward to. (I'm planting some caches especially for it during the week, with the help of a very experienced friend). It'll be nice to be out with friends for the day. If you'd like to come with us drop me a line and I'll give you the details.
Well, that's it for now I think. Some good stuff, some not so good stuff, I guess that's just life!

Happy Australia Day

Firstly, happy birthday to my sister, JI and my nephew, DJ, who both have the privelige of being born on Australia Day. JI and her family are celebrating on a cruise somewhere on the ocean....today she reaches a milestone birthday!

My current subject at uni (I'm only doing one now with 3 part-time jobs!) is to do with women's liberation, history, equality, stuff like that. It seems rather significant that on Australia Day (I'm very behind in my readings) I'm reading about the disparity in the Feminist movement between white Australian women and Aboriginal women. Reading the history of all this has just got me thinking quite a bit about Australia Day, what we (white Australians) celebrate, and how the Aboriginal people might feel about it all.

We celebrate the plonking of the English flag on soil at Sydney Cove in 1788. What I don't ever remember being taught in history lessons at school (but that Wikipedia is quite happy to explain to me) is that the First Fleet tried to settle in Botany Bay but it wasn't suitable, so they looked further north and found Sydney Cove. The 'scouting' boat then went back to Botany Bay to tell the rest of the First Fleet that they would all be moving north. The weather was against them and they couldn't get out of Botany Bay....and while they were trying, the French boats Astrolabe and Bousolle appeared at the entrance - French trying to get in, English trying to get out. So now the race was on - who would plant their flag first? As we know the English won that little battle. Who knew we were so close to being a French nation?! How is it that I'm 40 years old before I know this?

Wikipedia states that between 21-23 January Captain Phillip and a few officers 'also had some contact with the local aborigines' on their scouting mission. What does that mean? Was it a meaningful exchange? Or was that when the stuff-that-we-don't-like-to-talk-about started?

When I read history books that detail what actually happened to the Aboriginal people from that moment on (and some of it is still happening today) I feel very ashamed of my white, English heritage. The early settlers fed information back to the Mother Land that Australia was "terra nullius' - an uninhabited land, so that they could claim everything they found as belonging to England. What bastards!!! No wonder the Aborigines have had such a fight on their hands to get some of their land back!

So, whilst I am fiercely proud to be an Australian, I also realise we have a very dark past that still reaches into the present.

(images are from wikipedia)

Our hospital visit

You might want to get a coffee first - this is a very long post!
Last night Princess S had another fainting spell/seizure - it seems to still be rather unclear as to what it really is. The girls were cleaning their teeth with the apparently obligatory laughing and so on, when Princess S had once of her coughs, then a huge vomit (mostly on the bathroom floor, thankfully) then fell to the ground. When I got to her a nano second later she was very blue from the bottom of her nose to her chin, vomit all round her mouth, arched back....I tried to roll her onto her side because of all the vomit, but she was as stiff as a board and wouldn't be rolled anywhere. We called the ambulance and waited. She came round while I was on the phone to the operator and gasped for breath and I could then roll her onto her side. It was very full-on and some aspects of it seemed to happen so fast, while others seemed to drag on forever. We decided on taking her to hospital to be checked, mostly because this 'spell' was different from the other 3 she's had in that this time she wasn't in extreme distress before hand. She'd had worse coughing fits in the past few weeks and she'd vomited from coughing as well, without having the same outcome. She was terrified of going in the ambulance, and of going to the hospital. I overrode her fears and off we went.
Typically the (male) ambulance driver headed off in the wrong direction, having no idea of the easiest/most sensible way to head south....and I assumed we were going to the Women's & Children's in the city. I asked them if that's where we were going and the driver responded with a mumbled..."I thought I could turn right back there....". When we got to the hospital we had to wait (with her on a bed) in the corridor next to the triage nurse's station. On the way I'd sent a text to D so that he knew, and he said he'd come once he'd finished work, which he did.
A couple of really, really funny things happened which helped lighten the mood somewhat. We were near (across the end of) a set of 3 bays with patients in them. One had a very large woman (patient) with two (also very large) female visitors. Then, along came another 3 very large women, one with a walking stick, to make sure everything was ok - presumably family as they all looked very much alike. When this woman was taken to x-ray all 5 of them started following! The nurse suggested they could wait for her to return. So 3 of them waddled (and I'm not kidding - they looked like a bunch of ducks) they waddled to a set of 3 seats at the far end of the corridor, near the vending machine, and squeezed their rather generous bodies into the seats. They looked like some kind of caricature sitting there together. When the patient returned from x-ray they all waddled back down the corridor to stand by her bedside....and there is barely enough room for one visitor to sit on a chair in the cubicles, let alone 5 very large women! When finally they wheeled the patient through into the Emergency dept D and I looked at each other and burst out laughing! It was just so funny.
The other funny thing - we arrived at the hospital just before 8:00pm. We finally went around to the paediatric emergency section at about 11:00pm and it was midnight before we saw a doctor for the first time. You do expect a long wait when you go there, but apparently the paed. dr rostered on last night called in sick! So 'general' emergency dr's were seeing the kids and calling down the paed registrar when needeed. So in walked this moderately hansome youngish man and when he started to talk I felt like I was in Notting Hill, About a Boy and Bridget Jones' Diary all at the same time - he sounded exactly like Hugh Grant! Didn't really look like him, but if I just closed my eyes I could swoon quite happily! But it did make it hard to take him seriously....Then he called down the paed registrar who came at about 1:00am and spend a long time with us, going through what had happened and what they could tell so far (which wasn't much). She was a lovely lady/girl "Dr Bec" and the funny thing was that she sounded exactly like our children's pastor, CW, when she talked! It was just so bizarre. She was just brilliant with Princess S and even coaxed her into allowing them to prick her finger to get some blood - the slightest suggestion of this in the past has resulted in screaming immediately. Sometimes it's best to just step back and let complete strangers do the talking....
Anyway, we eventually went up to the refurbished paed ward at about 2:00am at which time D went home. The new ward is just amazing! It's like a hotel! Very impressive. They have a circular nurse's desk and near the floor there's a port-hole cut out, one in each side and there's a fish tank behind the port-hole. How very clever! So we were very comfortable and finally climbed into bed at 2:30am.
The upshot this morning was that apparently about 10% of people who have recurring fainting episodes have a small seizure at the end of their faint. It's possible that Princess S is in the 10%. They also said the nasal swab that was done at the GP's for whooping cough last week wasn't done properly and could be a false negative, so this morning they took another swab from the back of her throat and are testing it now. It is still very unclear what the trigger was last night, as her other episodes have all had very obvious triggers. So the dr has ordered an EEG which couldn't be done today so we'll go back for that when they send us an appointment time. The Consultant said that even if it is some form of epilepsy they wouldn't consider preventative medication at this point, until such a time as she was having them every couple of months and it was being disruptive to day-to-day life. I'm pretty happy with that. The other trick is that EEG's are not always accurate in picking up epilepsy. So really the only clear answer we have so far is that we need a first aid plan for when this happens, which will include (depending on the severity) an ambulance and possible hospital visit.
It really was a scary experience, much more so than the other times this has happened. I'm so thankful my friend T was there to help with Madame I (who was very distressed at all that was happening), and BFF was coming as well and arrived after the ambulance got here. We were going to have a 'girl's night', but that soon changed....
Onward and upward....hope you survived the epic blog! Must be time for a trip to the loo now you've finished your coffee....lol

A Walk To Remember

I just watched a movie tonight called A Walk To Remember, at the recommendation of my niece GN. It was a great movie, very touching, romantic, funny, a little bit predictable but was so heartwarming I could almost overlook the predictability.
My favourite line in the movie: a young girl who is the local 'dork' preacher's daughter is asked by one of the 'hotshots' of school to help him with a project after school. In all seriousness she says to him "ok, but you have to promise you won't fall in love with me". Classic! If only more of us girls had that sort of confidence; that if only a guy would spend enough time with me he would naturally fall in love with me.

I wish I was more like her.