Mixed Feelings (PM)

I know that my approach to life and many of K's mixed feelings seems to be that everyone should just harden up, but I draw the line at listening to the death throws of the rats you have poisoned. I wouldn't have even been hard enough to poison them let alone listen to their mournful squeals. 

Of course the rats had to go. And I guess rats are somewhat harder to get rid of from your roof than a possum. A possum you just wait to leave and then fix up the hole where they are getting in. But who knows what you do with rats? We had mice once and trapped them with humane traps. If you consider displacing a mouse from its home humane. Which, considering the alternatives, I guess I do. So I wish I could help you resolve your feelings with this mate, but I think they're probably just going to have to remain mixed. 

Mixed feelings (AM)

I was sure that Miss Soft Crab had written a few posts under the banner 'Mixed Feelings'. Turns out this is the first. And even more surprisingly, we've only tagged 6 posts with the tag 'Feelings', though it seems to me all we do is talk about feelings. I guess we just feel them, and don't talk about them that much.  Weird. Or possibly, we talk about them constantly and don't use the tag 'feelings' when we do. That seems more likely.

Anyway, back to mixed feelings. My stage of life is quite conducive to mixed feelings.  I'm extremely excited all the time,  and I'm a little bit worried all the time. I could go into details but they are quite boring. Also, most of the time it's quite abstract. I'm excited about having a baby, but it's something that is happening in the future, and the things I'm worried about (apart from, you know, having the baby), tend to be well in the future.  Like, will the little tacker make friends? Will it have a bad sense of direction like I do? How will I help it if it does, I never know which direction I'm going! As you can see, it's really not worth putting in to words. But today I have mixed feelings about something very very tangible.

Basically, it's like this. We have rats living in our roof. I know, gross. I say 'rats', but I have no idea how many, or even if they are rats. The could be mice. Or possums. Or bunyips, who knows? All we know is that every night we wake up to the sound of creatures scampering about our roof in quite a hurry and with no mind to the fact that there are people sleeping downstairs. It's creepy and gross and I want it to stop. To this end, Appleheart put a bunch of ratsack up in the roof  the other day and when he came back, he said there is quite a lot of poo up there. Great, I thought. We'll get em for sure!
Flash forward to last night and instead of the sound of rats scampering about, I heard both scampering and squeaking, very mournful squeaking. I pictured a mother and father rat who had eaten the ratsack, or fed it to their rat babies, and were either squeaking mournfully because they were dying and terrified of leaving their rat babies behind, or watching their rat babies die.
I am SURE that's what happened and OH GOD it's all my fault but (assuming J would tell me to harden the eff up) living with rats in the roof is gross and one of us had to go.
So you know, mixed feelings.

Will I ever know for sure? (AM)

I've learnt, over time, that some questions have definitive answers. Like is Chris Hemsworth a hunk? (Yes.)

And others don't, like is climate change real? Or did The Holocaust really happen. Just jokes. Of course the answer to those questions is no. Just jokes.

But seriously folks, I wonder if there are just some things we'll never know. Like do I want printed pants in my life or not?

I think that even if I bought some printed pants I still wouldn't know if they were right for me. Or is the fact that I've never bought them the answer? Shit you guys!

I thought I'd put this question to bed last year. You see, Obus were putting out printed leggings and soft pants with great prints that I coveted yet never bought. I even tried some on but I felt like Crazy Legs. I thought that was the answer; I tried, I failed, I moved on.

But now I always see this woman I know wearing the Obus printed semi-leggings I wanted. She wears them to the pool and I always wish I was wearing them. So comfortable and easy to change in and out of for a swim. Cute too. And still I tried to forget them. But then K messaged me the other day:What do you think about crazy leggings?

"I DON'T KNOW!!" I wanted to yell via text message. "What do you want me to tell you? That not a day goes by that I don't think about those weird white leggings with the blue and purple splatters?! That I wish they were in my life today as much as I wished it the day I tried them on?! Is that what you want to hear?! Because that is the truth? Could I make it work with them? I don't know! There's no guarantees in this life. Sure you can take the safe option, but do you want to live life regretting the things that might have been? I don't! I've tried that, I've done it too much for too long! But I don't know how to change." That's what I should have said, that's the truth. Instead I just told her, "I kind of love them."

God, why can't I just be honest? With K, with myself, with the world!? I guess I've got a lot to think about. We all do.*


*Not really. Probably just I do.

Haiku Thursday (AM)

A handful of feelings I felt  yesterday

I

Lost my umbrella.

And my sunglasses got broke.

Felt disappointment. 

II

Super super loud

Lightning cracked over my head.

Felt a little scared. 

III 

Got drenched going home. 

Then made some hot cocoa. Felt,

Like a million bucks. 

The five stages of grief (AM)

 
Yesterday I was doing some house painting. You know the kind of work, something that requires some attention but does leave a lot of your brain free to think about things. It can be quite enjoyable. I had my iPod on shuffle, it's better, I think, than just listening to an album when you are doing this kind of work cause it gives you more direction for your brain journey. Like, I wondered about why I find the song by Biggie, 'Big booty hos' quite offensive, while NWA's 'She swallowed it' barely offends me at all. I guess it depends what you grow up with, right? I thought about how seeing Prince live was not life changing, but in many ways it was kind of life defining. I thought about how I can't believe I'm going to get to see Blur at the Big Day Out. About how it was such a long-time dream. About how I would do anything to be up the front see Damon right there. About how it was too good to be true.

And then, maybe an hour later I got this message from K.

I knew instantly what it meant. I hadn't known anything and when I saw the message I knew Blur had cancelled the BDO shows. Of course I googled it right away and it was just one of those times when being right sucks the most.

And then, well then I spent the rest of the day on the Kubler-Ross journey.

First, denial. I could not fucking believe it. Even though I knew as soon as I saw K's text that it was happening, I could not fucking believe it.

Then anger. Fuck you BDO organisers for "shifting goalposts and [creating] challenging conditions" and fuck you Blur for cancelling. Fuck you all. (I love you Blur. I love you.)

I pretty much skipped bargaining because I'm not an idiot and I know I can't do anything to change things. 

Then depression.

Finally, acceptance. A depressed kind of acceptance. I guess it's possible that I'm not over the depression. I guess grief wasn't processed in a day.

I know how you feel, Damon. I know how you feel

Call for friendship (AM)

When I came home from Brisbane the other night, I encountered some frustrations.

First, I left my phone in the toilet at the Qantas domestic terminal, and didn't discover this fact until I was in the cab on the way home. 

Luckily, I had my work phone with me, so I called my regular phone a few times and before I knew it, someone answered. It was Tasmin, a woman who cleaned the bathrooms in the Qantas domestic terminal. She had found my phone and was going to take care of it until I got there. 

Hooray! I thought. Problem almost solved! 

I told the cab driver to turn around and instead, he pulled over to the side of the road and because it was a rainy night, we immediately got bogged in the mud. 

This was the second frustration. 

The cab driver tried and tried to get us out but as with all boggings, the more you try to escape, the more bogged you get. 

So there I was, stuck in a cab that was stuck in the mud on a rainy Tuesday night. 

I'll spare you the details but suffice to say, cab drivers get very distressed when they get bogged and pretty soon, they start looking for someone to blame, someone who may or may not be sitting in the back of their cab. 

Happily, it wasn't long before another cab met me by the side of the road and whisked me away from the original cab driver and his cries of  "Great, now you're just going to leave me here...". 

Hooray! I thought. Problem almost solved!

When I got to the airport, I went to the toilets at the Qantas domestic terminal and called my phone to arrange the handover, as per the agreement with Tasmin. Like a genie in a bottle, she emerged - young and smiley and sweet and holding my phone out to me. I was so relieved and I asked her "How can I thank you?" thinking maybe she would let me buy her a cake from the nearby Gloria Jeans or something.

She said "It was my pleasure. But I put my number in your phone in case you want to call for friendship."

Um, come again Tasmin? Call for friendship? That's not the sound of a cake from  Gloria Jeans.
I said some things like "oh sure"and "well, I'd better get back on the road" and awkwardly scurried off while she pushed her trolley of cleaning equipment back in to the toilets.
In the cab on the way home I thought about Tasmin a a lot, and felt bad for her.
Maybe she is lonely and wants to make friends?
Then I started to worry about the content on my phone...what had she seen? What had she done?
I opened the photos app and found this.

The montage of photos that Pickle took that night J, Pickle and I went to David Jones to try on clothes we would never ever buy. That's the photo she had scrolled to and enlarged so she could get a better look at all the photos of us (seriously). 

I chuckled at the photos. That was a really fun night. 

And then Tasmin's request to call for friendship made sense. 

Who wouldn't want to try on spectacularly ugly pretty clothes at DJs with us? 

Hey! Where'd that mood come from? (PM)

There's something pretty hateful about that Kughesy and Hate poster. I catch a glimpse of it when I'm on the tram and it badly makes me want to look away. The jarring red background (I think it's red). The way they are angled towards the camera like newsreaders (I think that's what they're doing, I try to avoid looking at it so I can't be sure). The handfuls of cash they are holding (this much is clear). Without reading it or properly looking at it, I can tell they want me to listen to their radio show so I can potentially win lots of cash. It doesn't make me angry, it just makes me think:
No.

On a positive note, this is a picture I took looking down from my balcony in to my front yard. That's the cat from next door, with whom I have been trying to develop a relationship for months. Here it is eating the whiskettes I left out for it.

I think we really turned a corner. So my mood is pretty good I guess.

Lay-by: You're OK by me! (PM)

Lay-by rules, OK!

Until yesterday I had something on lay-by too! In fact, I could have picked that baby up earlier, but I strung it out a bit just to keep the anticipation alive. You know why? Because that makes me feel alive. Much more so than the empty feeling I get from dropping a few hundred bucks on a piece of clothing that I think is somehow going to bring me happiness and fill a void. More so than chasing the full and satisfying wardrobe that I imagine will substitute for a full and satisfying life.

Shit. Did I say that out loud?

I do love a lay-by and there was a time in my life when I was lay-bying laying-by putting things on lay-by all the time. Not just for financial reasons but because it made me feel better about the whole experience of buying things. It makes a purchase seem more considered and, therefore, more justifiable. And of course, the anticipation. In fact, I may just follow K's lead and put something else on lay-by too! What? I don't know! I don't care! Just so long as I can feel something. Anything!