Our family is now not known for our Christmas spirit, in fact, most of us are emphatically, absolutely anti-Christmas. Now. It wasn’t always that way. Growing up, the lead up to Christmas was filled with anticipation, hope and joy. That was until we woke up Christmas morning.
I know it’s not good to get kids everything they want for Christmas, but when you really really want a boogie board and end up with a “foam rider” or really would like a bike and end up with an almost life-size doll at the age of 15. Let’s just say disappointment becomes your friend.
When Mum told me to shut-up on the “Santa’s not real” front, or I get no presents. I was VERY tempted to spill the beans.
I get that my parents didn’t have loads of cash, we grew up on the poor side of Parramatta. However, I don’t think it was really too much asking for one good present instead of 15 smaller (read: cheaper), less significant ones. Christmas meant perpetual disappointment as well as a chance to polish up on my acting skills. “Wow thanks Santa, I always wanted a 3 piece suit with shoulder pads in lime green and pink. How did you know?”
The other part of Christmas that was, hmmm, not so inspiring was the food. As far as I know, we are the only family who could actually lose weight at Christmas due to our yearly consumption of turkey salmonella and mouldy bread rolls (usually purchased the week before the actual day to ‘beat the rush’). The ‘jelly turkey’ is a huge turkey cooked for the same amount of time as a standard (and much smaller) chicken. One Christmas the turkey was still cold in the centre even after having come straight out of the oven. Mum always got really offended when we had to get up in the middle of our meal and ‘nuke’ the turkey in the microwave. We all have an ‘iron gut’ from Mum’s cooking. Forget kombucha, kefir and kimchi we had our yearly injection of jelly turkey salmonella…..yum!
The other anxiety-induced part of Christmas was the pudding. My grandmother would bake a traditional plum pudding that included having sixpences throughout. So you would have to try to mush it up with your teeth to ensure you didn’t actually swallow coinage. Of course, being incredibly anxious I ALWAYS thought I’d swallowed one and would end up trawling through the World Book Encyclopedia looking up “copper poisoning” or “nickel poisoning”. Siri? Do you poo out coins if you swallow them?
Christmas normally ended in with us in tears after Mum yelled at us about how ungrateful we were and how there were starving kids in Africa that don’t even get turkey, let alone jelly turkey. P.S. Please don’t tell my Mum I wrote this….. She still scares me!
Merry Christmas! Bah Humbug! Hope you all have an awesome day! As always, thanks for reading!
I use the term “need” very loosely. I’ve never really felt bad about not having a husband/boyfriend/significant other in my life, I don’t feel as though I’ve missed out by not being married. However, that all changed for a small 10-minute window the other evening as a GIANT HAIRY RAMBO HUNTSMAN decided to make my bedroom his own.
I saw Rambo Huntsman downstairs in my living room about a week ago. We were peacefully cohabiting the space together, as long as he stayed on his side and I stayed on mine. We could keep eyeballing each other, from a safe distance. Later, lying in bed, I realised I was being watched. He had decided that my bedroom was now his space and I was having none of it. I grabbed a spatula from the kitchen, an empty bowl and some cardboard and tried to move him back outside where he belongs. Even though he ran UP MY ARM, I still tried to preserve his life. Gently placed him outside and closed the door.
Next minute he has squeezed himself in through the gap between the two sliding glass doors and races. Races. Warp speed, to go back upstairs. I had no choice. This dude had zero respect for my boundaries and we could not live in peace with each other any longer. With the insect spray in hand, I sprayed him until he turned white. This just egged him on even further. He didn’t even slow down on his continuing mission to get into my bedroom. I had to hit him with the thong (for USA readers and others: thong = flip flop). It was my only option. I feel bad but I can’t help his stubbornness and bad decision-making skills.
Actual Size.
If I had a husband I would assume that he would have just taken care of it. Big assumption. But I do assume that must be what it’s like to be married, nonetheless. The husband deals with the insects. And garbage. And pipework sewerage stuff. I know old fashioned blah blah patriarchy blah, independent woman blah. But, the way I see it the husband would do everything I don’t want to. Can you tell I’ve never been married?
So, that’s what I’ve been up to lately. As well as pondering whether the spider is not he but is actually a she? Does she have a family she was trying to provide for? Has she laid eggs in my bed/ear while I sleep? Do I need to burn just my house down or the entire neighbourhood?
This is a tale from long long ago, back when gangs of youths tormented Western Sydney (more than they do today) and “Cops killed Tsakos” was the graffiti sprayed on the side of the chemist on Hawkesbury Rd. Parramatta Park still had the train that hadn’t been burnt out and Westmead Hospital was still all shiny and new.
Criminal
That’s right, it was the 80s. 1986 to be exact. I was 6. They were tough times. People drove home drunk. I was allowed to drive my parent’s car down the driveway, meat was thawed out in the sun all day. Kids roamed the streets until the street lights came on. Kids got bashed with wooden spoons.
As we know (now), I have grown up to become a world-renowned scientist, owning a quite inquisitive mind (read: overthinking). This crime takes place when I was 6, and in year 1. No longer in kindy and full of confidence I wanted to understand why I was skinny while my friend *Katie was…..not. My scientific hypothesis was that she did not have a body full of blood like mine, but perhaps she was filled with yellow…..fat. You can see where this is going…..
So, sitting next to her literally right in front of the teacher, I took out a standard-issue 2B lead pencil and sharpened it up to the pointiest of points and promptly stabbed it into her chunky thigh as hard as my little arms could. Unfortunately, I didn’t pierce her substantial hide but *Katie screamed so loud that I thought I may have killed her. She was sent to the sickbay while I was sent directly to Miss Baxter’s office (she was the very stern Diana Ferrari loafer-wearing middle-aged junior school Vice-Principal). With what could only be described as fury in her eyes asked me, “What on earth was I thinking?” When I told her about my experiment she just laughed and laughed and laughed, eventually saying she would have to put me on numerous detentions and call my parents. My life of crime came to a very swift end. *Katie and I were no longer friends.
That’s it from me for now. Please let me know if you’ve ever broken bad, if you’ve ever stabbed someone or if you ever conducted your own scientific experiments ending in detention. In the next post, I ponder whether this early violent episode has led me to a life of watching gratuitously violent tv.
*Katie recovered quite well, no scarring (physically).
*Katie’s name has been changed to protect the innocent.
Sorry everyone – I’ve lost my writing mojo lately. Turns out working full time, doing a couple of uni subjects also having a bout of terrible anxiety makes me a very tired and worn out gal.
Not sure why the anxiety has been bad, maybe a mix of a few things, spending 99.9% of my time at home alone, combined with a dose of general doom and gloom, extinctions, elections, covid, general humanity loss got a little overwhelming for me and I thought I was dying again. I am actually super proud of myself that I have bounced out of it so quickly. Heavily medicated but feeling 99% back to my normal self. That counts doesn’t it?
The trouble with vomiting, can’t sit still, pacing around the house, can’t leave the toilet anxiety is that it makes getting anything done….well difficult. A 4-page uni assignment took 5 days. 5 days! That’s about 4 days too long. I wasn’t even overly happy with it. Should pass but hardly going to win any Nobel prizes for it.
Do you know what else I did for the first time in a long time…….? I went on a date. With an actual living breathing other human being. I know it’s hard to believe. That anyone would want to spend time with me is absolutely astonishing, and overwhelming. I told everyone at work and keyed them up with a “quick one of your products is being recalled” message to get me out of it half-way through, but I actually got through to the end. He wasn’t for me, and I wasn’t for him but ….. A date!
I have gone on some nice hikes lately to clear my head and get out of the house. This picture was taken at Blackheath…..no filter…..seriously! Look at that late afternoon light! Yes, I am old now and say things like Look at the light! Also, this was taken about 2.5 seconds before I told an approx 8-year-old to mind his own business.
I purchased a new diary, all shiny and new for a new year – one befitting of how I have been feeling lately – mental health wise. I think it suits me.
Anyone who knows me, knows I love going off-grid. I love going a bit feral. More on that in another post.
Once again, I am writing this when I am supposed to be doing a uni assignment. If I can get it done in the next couple of evenings, then I get the weekend off. However, I did find this little gem of an “I Could Live Here” whilst I was doing some research for the assignment…
Which totally counts right?
I found this one on the NSW Planning Portal website, I won’t go into the detail of the assignment or the website but this house was on that website as an example of sustainability excellence in residential building.
It’s on 8 acres of bushland in the Blue Mountains – otherwise known as my happy place
I love its split-skillion-roof-pod-design
It is built of fireproof concrete that looks like timber and also protects against termites
It is not a huge house – I am not a fan of huge houses for the sake of huge houses. I like a house that is built to service current needs and not a series of ‘what if’s’. Like what if 8 of my “friends” want to come up for the long weekend? (Scroll down to see the solution to that)
Net-zero emissions
22 000L rainwater tank, heat recovery system, 6.8kW solar with battery backup, worm farm sewerage system, double glazing, in-slab heating, stringybark timber from the site used internally.
Hello new home it’s me…..Jess. Image Credit: Anderson Architecture
Perfectly cosy for those Blue Mountains misty afternoons. Image Credit: Anderson Architecture
Can you see the ‘hidden’ solution to all those pesky guests? Image Credit: Anderson Architecture
Not a bad spot for a morning cuppa. Image Credit: Anderson Architecture
No problem with Kangaroos watching me bathe. Image Credit: Anderson Architecture
Do you often find yourself watching or reading the news or doing something in life where you use the term “What the f*ck?”. Like what the actual f*ck. There are so many times each day, each week, each month…..where I just don’t get it.
Here’s my current list (in no particular order):
Why do stupid people become so successful? Case in point: Donald Trump.
On the flip side, why do smart people do stupid things?
Why is the economy more important than the environment? Nearly 3 billion animals were lost in Australia’s recent bushfires, so let’s destroy some of their remaining habitat where there are some known colonies of Koala’s and build some overpriced McMansions. You can help here.
Why were there millions of jobs throughout the world that required us all to go into an office every day, sit in traffic for hours, that are now magically able to be done remotely with the same output ….
If someone can tell me how to plot/interpret this diagram I would be much appreciative;
Adiabatic lapse rates, aerological diagrams and just generally using this graph paper are not my friend.
Why we work a ratio of 5 days work to 2 days on – it seems really crazy to me. Why does working rule our lives so much.
Why school hours don’t match up to working hours.
Why I can’t wear smart casual attire to work in the office. I’m not talking trackie daks and thongs, I’m talking black jeans, trainers and a cool shirt. I don’t produce work to a higher standard or work harder or more productively because I am wearing a business suit and heels.
Why people believe “Influencers” over actual scientific fact. All those people who promote health, wellbeing and natural lifestyle all while having fillers and implants. Photoshopped instaposts #blessed with captions like: “Today is the day to start your dreams” or “Wherever you find yourself there you are…use “influencer 10” for a 10% discount off incontinence pads”. Note: If anyone online says “You’ve all been asking what I’m wearing…..” you can ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE that NOBODY has asked them.
My attempt at influencing has earned me ZERO dollars and ZERO respect
Why is bottled water so popular? It’s free from the tap and perfectly safe in Australia.
How people can abuse animals, or children? Some adults… I get.
Why mental health inpatients are given the same treatment as recovering drug addicts? I’m anxious and depressed, not coming off meth or opioids.
Why people stand up as soon as the plane lands (mostly middle-aged man-babies, I wrote about it here). In the same way, why people jump up to go to the toilet as soon as the ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign is off.
Why can’t I sleep at night?
How the trees magically know it’s spring time.
Why – when it’s summer I can’t wait for winter and in winter I can’t wait for summer.
That’s a good little list for starters. Got anything you want to add to my list?
