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So, flickr just rolled out this lovely feature where you can tag people in your photos which I intend never to use (are you crazy?! No.) It also means that I can no longer right click and ‘copy’ on my own photos. I realise flickr isn’t intended as a photo storage place, and I do always link back to them. I upload them to flickr and then copy to my blog because I LIKE the social and sharing aspects of flickr, but I might just be uploading them straight to my blog from now on. It’s a pain, and I will probably have to buy more storage from wordpress, but they can get my flickr subscription since I won’t need it as much.
Aaaaand now I sound like an angry blogger with a chinbeard ‘you can’t take my copy paste away from me! retribution!!!’. That is not what I meant. It’s just not worth my time and effort to upload, tag, and name a photo, and THEN have to click on ’see all sizes’ in order to blog it. Especially when we’re about to get capped at home and my internet at work is heinously slow – and not meant for blogging at any rate. And then muck around resizing it because it’s huge. This is not social media web 2.0. This is old skool and I dislike it.
I was going to blog about a lovely day I had one the weekend, complete with photos, but now I’m cross again. So only two photos for you. The top one is a squash flower in my garden on Saturday. And this is the same flower the next day:
Ridiculous!
Hi, blogosphere.
I haven’t been around for a while. I haven’t posted in god knows how long, haven’t felt the need or had the words. This year has gotten crazy and I was just sort of hanging on – in a ‘I’ll think about that in the new year’ kind of way.
I haven’t even been keeping up with your blogs, really. There’s been so much going on here, people running around being crazy and demanding attention, that I didn’t have the thought to put in to other people’s lives. I’ve missed you, often, but… I thought I’d think about that in the new year.
But now I need you. I need to put things into words and record them and talk to someone – even an imaginary blogosphere – about them. I need a place to put my now.
My dad committed suicide on the 19th. He pulled over to the side of a secluded road and gassed himself. Very neat and polite and thoughtless, just like he always was. It was the day after his 52nd birthday, and two days before the 25th anniversary of him becoming a parent – my birthday.
We don’t really know why. My mother thinks his work killed him. And it certainly wasn’t insignificant. He was getting up at 4 to go in to work and getting home at 11. He was changing jobs, but they were still asking more of him. And because he was conscientious and scrupulous, he did. He put in extra. That kind of pressure is hard to ignore, especially if you’re the type of man he was (was! painful) and don’t know how to reach outside of your own little bubble.
My sister thinks that living with my mother killed him. I can’t say as I think she helped. And to put this in perspective, the last time I lived with my mother I was suicidal. I don’t mean I wanted to commit suicide – I didn’t want to, but I had suicidal thoughts. It was pretty bizarre, really – they were clear, sharp, strong, and completely alien to my brain. But I am certain beyond doubt that if I hadn’t moved out, I would have eventually done it. Considering that he was under a lot of stress, and her way of trying to ‘help’ was to tell him all the things he was doing wrong – no, I don’t think she helped.
Personally, I don’t give a crap why. It doesn’t matter – none of the reasons can be good enough, and none of them will be the real reasons.
I am devastated that my dad was so sad and alone that that seemed like the best, the only, thing for him to do. I am sad and angry that he couldn’t see us there, that he not only couldn’t come to us but he couldn’t see what this would do to us. I work at a freaking counselling agency, for fucks sake! It’s not like there wasn’t things we could do. At the same time, it was hard for us to see any of this going on – he was so reserved and generally locked down that all the signs would have been so internalised. I am going to feel guilty for the rest of my life that I didn’t see something or do something, but I don’t think that that’s reasonable. I don’t think there was much there to see.
I’m angry at him for ruining December for ever. For ever and ever it’s going to go like this. 18th, my dad’s birthday. 19th, the day he killed himself. 20th, the day we didn’t know where he was. 21st my birthday. The day we sat in a restaraunt desperately hoping that he was just off in a shit somewhere and would turn up. Also the day we found out he was dead.
And then Christmas! Hoorah!
…
But mostly I am just sad. I am sad for my father, that he couldn’t see all the things there were to live for. That he couldn’t get out of wherever he was. I am sad for my mother, who will probably have to sell the property in the hills, the house they built together, where I grew up and my sister was born. I am sad for my sister, who is 18 and still a kid, and who tells me she didn’t really know him either, but that she was looking forward to getting older and being able to work on knowing him better. I am sad for me, who didn’t even know what his favourite colour was (it’s blue, my sister tells me, but she doesn’t know much more than that) who wanted him to be there, in the background, for always. I wanted to get to know him better, too. I wanted him to meet any grandkids he might have, I wanted him to meet propsective partners and friends. I wanted to groan at his stupid jokes for the rest of my life. I wanted to be able to wonder something about science, or how to fix something and think ‘oh, Tim will know that, I’ll ask him’ without feeling like I’ve been stabbed in the heart.
I just wish this hadn’t happened. It’s going to be hard, organising things and working out what our lives will be like. Doing real world things. I want to be alone, and my sister does to – or at least alone together in the house. But my mother is here. She says she wants to go home and be by herself, but doesn’t want to leave us alone. I need her to be out of my space, but I don’t feel like I can let her be alone either.
I am also feeling lucky, though. Everyone is fantastic. Emma came over last night and let me cry on her shoulder for a bit and then pretend like things were normal for a bit, too. My boss has been fantastic – I’ve cried every time I’ve gotten off of the phone with her because she is so wonderful and handling it perfectly. She’s made it easy for me not to come in to work for the rest of the week – unless I want to, in which case she will make that easy, too.
I am lucky to work where I do. Not only do they know how to handle things like this, they will be an actual support. If I need to talk to someone, I won’t even have to make a counselling appointment – in fact, I’ll probably be fending them off with sticks! Except I won’t, because they’ll all be very respectful. I’ve had friends and friends of friends offer me their time, their ears, their food, their cars, anything I need. And I know they all mean it, too. I can’t tell you how much that means to me – right now, and in general. To know I have this great network of people, people who want to help and who, more importantly, I wouldn’t mind having help me… that’s something I haven’t had before, that I have found in the last few years. And I am so supremely grateful for it. There are no words.
I do feel a little weird blogging about this. I’m not entirely sure what the ethics of it are. But I don’t care. I need to. My mother is ringing around, I guess this is my version of that. I hope I don’t bum out anyone’s Christmas too much.
Goodbye, daddy. We will always miss you.
Here:
Oh, don’t worry, our white privilege makes racial slurs against us impossible, so you shouldn’t be offended anyway. For real. We’re super privileged, you and me. (Oh, look, I just used an objective pronoun where I should have used a subjective pronoun, but nobody will call me a dumb whitey. It’s cuz I’m super privileged. Whee!)
I think I want a t-shirt. A pink one. And in sparkly silver writing, it’ll say ’super privileged’ in curly, girly writing…
Or maybe on the bum of my trackies. Yeah… that’ll be hott…
OMG you guys! There is this WET STUFF falling from teh sky!!11!!!1!! Some of it is HARD wet stuff!!1!
WHAT DO WE DO WHAT DO WE DO?!?!?!
(I hope my bunnies aren’t scared by thunder. After all, it would pretty much sound like one huge alarm signal to them. Oh, noes! Scared bunnies)
I have a half of a post written about my holiday. But this first week back at work is kind of whooping my arse. So it’ll have to keep. And you get a dodgy post…
I got new glasses. they rock. Now, I can see the computer screen without squinting. Which is awesome. And yesterday, at the end of the day, it didn’t feel like someone had been rubbing glass into my eyeballs. Not even a little teeny bit. Isn;t modern technology incredible?!
I started a pattern drafting class last night. It’s only a four weeker, and in that time we make blanks for ourselves for a skirt, a bodice (and then combine the two to be a dress) trousers and a sleeve. Yesterday was the skirt, and it was very exciting! We made the blocks, did all the calculations (really, it’s much easier than regular algebra) and then the lecturer showed us ways to make our tailored skirt pattern into different kinds of skirts by chopping and changing it. It was very liberating, at least in theory. At any rate, I can’t make more of a mess of fitting it than I do out of bought patterns, so I figure I’m ahead.
I’m going to raid my fabric stash and see if I have something suitable to make a muslin this weekend. If, you know… I can get my act together… (it is to laugh)
Apropos of not much, this wedding is awesome. I found it via Cake Wrecks. Which is also awesome.
Also awesome: this tshirt. It is pretty accurate in describing how I feel when attempting to shop in the city on a Friday.
The end.
The smaller it seems.
That can’t be right, can it?
Time: 8:25 am
Place: the tea-room
Incident: N came into the tea room with a new jumper on. Scoop neck, three chunky buttons over the breast bone area, swinging freely after that. Vague A-line shape. Heathery wool, brown and greens. Stitch pattern: moss stitch panels framing faux-cabled travelling stitches in lines of four, with and actual cable on either side of that – just a mini one, maybe four stitches or even two?
I say ‘wow. Nice jumper, N. Is it new?’
It is new. It is from Supre.
Seamus says ‘it kind of reminds me of te Arans from hoom’ (excuse the poor reproduction of his delicious accent. Just try and recreate it in your head)
I say ‘yeah, but that’s not cables, it’s travelling stitches.’
Silence.
I hadn’t had my coffee, ok! My filters weren’t in place!
N proceeded to mock me for ‘having my little knitting club.’ This irritates me greatly. One time, P found out that I went to a knitting group and she asked ’so… what do you do? Do you all knit one big rug, or something?’. In this really judgy weird voice. Humph. like she can talk. She’s taking conversational French!
Anyway, luckily I had my wrap cardi on, so I could prove that I was no lightweight. However, note to self: just because your workplace is one of the most accepting and lovely and diverse places on the planet, does not mean that being a 24 year old knitter is not weird for them.
Luckily there are one or two secret knitters. They are, I have to say, older women. But they are also the most elegant, well put together people in the whole fracking building. They wouldn’t blink and eye at a conversation about stitch patterns… maybe I’ll go find them now…
That once you are in the kitchen, it is actually easier to keep baking than to stop and do the dishes?
Baked tonight: One apple pie (cheating, sort of. Pastry and filling made yesterday, it was simply assembled today). One chocolate pie (pastry made about three weeks ago.) Once butter cake (currently still in oven. One batch of white choc chip and raspberry cream cheese cupcakes (in oven – raspberry cream cheese icing to be made later.)
Still to be made? One batch of chocolate cupckaes. Can’t make them now, all my cupcake pans are full. Shit. I just realised… that means I’m going to have to do the dishes…
I heart silocone bakeware, btw.
Man-perfume. It’s Gross.
Especially when you bathe in it. Especially if it’s a $5 can of lynx. That you’ve bathed in. To cover your BO. And you’re over, say, 20. Seriously? I’m supposed to be attracted to that smell? 1) you smell like every boy I ever knew in high school. Not a turn on. 2) I can’t breathe. No, not because you are SO HOT. Because I have ASTHMA.
This PSA brought to you by Citizens for Breathing on Public Transport, in conjunction with the Department for Workplace Sanity. You might like to check out some of the other announcements from the DWS, such as ‘Perfume: not for bathing’, ‘Muttering Under Your Breath as You Type is Not Really Necessary’, ‘Why Would You Steal My Mug?’, ‘I Don’t Really Care About Your Weekend. What Did You Call Me For?’ and ‘Taking off your Nail Polish at Your Desk and then Re-applying it And Leaving the Tissues in your Bin: What is wrong with you?!?’
I’m not really pro-meme. I generally find them too long and boring when other people do them. But I’ve seen this one around a few times, and I quite like it. So I shall inflict it on you. Mwahahahahaha!
To play:
a.) Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b.) Using only the first page, pick an image.
c.) Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into the fd’s Mosaic Maker.
The Questions:
1.) What is your first name?
2.) What is your favorite food?
3.) Where did you go to high school?
4.) What is your favorite color?
5.) Who is your celebrity crush?
6.) Favorite drink?
7.) Dream vacation?
8.) Favorite dessert?
9.) What do you want to be when you grow up?
10.) What do you love most in life?
11.) One word to describe you.
12.) Your Flickr name.
This was funner (yes, I know that’s not a word. And I prefer ‘contradiction’ to ’hypocrite’, btw) and also harder than I thought.
Partly because it sort of ate my original one. And then when I went to remake it, the searches were different, due to people uploading new photos. Annoying. But still kind of fun.
My name one was hard – I really didn’t want photos of Kate Olsen, or people’s children. But the only ‘Kate’ on there that wasn’t a person had opted out of big huge labs, so I couldn’t us it (sad).
Also, turns out I don’t have a dream vacation, or a love of my life. Who would have thunk it? Still, I managed. I’m a trooper like that.
Oooh! Look at that! Lunch time. And I managed to haul arse into the kitchen last night and make lamb curry pies. I’ll let you know how that works out.
