Thanks to Colour cubic for best 2009 imge I could find.
This is one of those posts that shouldn’t be happening right now – I should be writing about the wonderful Gabfran and Law and Shoes and how wonderful she is to give me a blog award, and how I feel about said blog award. But that deserves a truly magical and wonderful blog. But as my mind feels like it is stuffed with cotton wool I am going to copy a blog I saw on Camel Shoes . A truly delightful blog.
And this will sooth my brain because it requires minimal thought…
So here is my Best 31 things of 2009…soon to be followed by my 31 things to do before I am 32…One thing at at time and Gabfran deserves my attention before I do more than one blog…she really rocks :)
Anyway – 31 bests of 2009…particulraly as bests have been hard to find..
1)best book
“Forbidden Fruit” by Kerry Greenwood – brilliant author, love all her stuff all the time – find it here
2)best movie
Not best necessarily, but most inspiring for me was the remake of Fame, I loved how they did it, loved watching it, and it made me happy for at least 24 hours afterwards
3.best song
I have to say it was a tie between Kate Miller-Heidke “I just Can’t Shake it”, “Last Day on Earth” and Jason Mraz and Colbie Callait singing “Lucky”
4.best album
Alanis Morisette – The Collection. So Rock – Tim Minchin.
5.best destination
Sydney :) definitely Sydney, too much has happened there this year for it not to be.
6. best blog find
Too many of them – look at my twitter lists and my bookmarks on my ever suffering laptop to see why I can’t just pick one – but first blog find, not written by someone well known – Josie at Sleep is For the Weak for introducing me to a whole new world :)
7.best trip:
Most recent one to Sydney which can be read about two posts before this one :)
8. best restaurant moment:
Actually eating at an Italian restaurant in Sydney – first time I’d eaten in one in years :)
9.best moment of peace:
This makes me laugh. actually i think it was on a train coming home from Sydney when I something in my head just clicked and I worked out what I wanted to do with my life.
10.best challenge:
Drama school auditions, and regular blogging :) Both have been wonderful
11.best place:
The beach. Always has been my favorite and my best, as Lola would say, always will be.
12.best new food:
Pitta bread wraps with jarlsberg, Avocado, baby spinach and cucumber. Am eating REAL food :)
13.best change i’ve made:
Ah that one is a bit too much for the blog, let me just say I’ve stopped doing something that while not too bad for me made me and others unhappy. And it isn’t an option for me anymore which is great :) Amazing even when I think of where I was this time last year
14.best tea of the year:
Peppermint.
15.best saying of the year :
Anything preceded by a hashtag, usually as random as possible (oh dear – just said random – #toomuchtimewith9yearold – there – see?)
16.best shop of the year:
Etsy – haven’t bought anything but I LOVE it.
17.best project of the year:
Rehearsing for acting auditions and also trying NaNoWriMo – have never written so much.
18. best learning experience:
Learning to put up boundaries and not to trust so easily – or trying to.
19.best gift:
Not good with ‘bests’ with gifts – no real favorite…
20.best aha! moment:
(I hate this expression, but as it is a origionally used one it must be used in list – I call them a ’slapping the forehead moment’) When I worked out that I’d be better off without my parents in the country, as much as it hurts now, this hurts more than the damage they routinely do while here.
21.best social web moment:
Meeting such a wonderful group of parents and others on Twitter who are so amazingly supportive and caring and wonderful and hilarious and silly and intelligent and just great- these are people who know me only through my Tweets and my Blog, yet are kinder to me than many people I know in ‘real world’ and are generally far far more supportive. So if you are reading this – YOU ROCK! and I appreciate you!
22. Best Moment with Children -
Being on the manly ferry and freaking out because of turbulence – children held my hands, when it had calmed down took me outside to see the beautiful sea and told me I was brave :) they were amazing.
23. Best item of clothing bought -
The dress I bought for me that Bub 1 ended up wearing to my cousin’s wedding. Beautiful, but I like a skirt i can bend over in (note to self, do more clothes shopping in new year)
24. Best TV show discovered -
True Blood. I love Buffy – True Blood is something completely other and of course with True Blood goes the books that i also love.
25. Best DVD movie watched
- Juno, still, over and over again, Fo’ Shizzle.
26. Best DVD TV series watched –
Firefly, Dr Who (the new ones) and Black Books. I can’t have a best out of them.
27. Best new TV series discovered –
Flight of the Conchords watch them here
28. Best YouTube Clip -
“Beached As” – love it, kids love it and they also love it when DOC says ‘Six Chips’ in a New Zealand Accent :) If you had asked me last year it would have been “Death Star Canteen”.
29. Best thing watched on YouTube -
The hours of Tim Minchin – particularly ‘White Wine in the Sun” and the opening and closing of the comedy festival gala 2007 – very clever man.
30. Best person to be inspired by –
If I was going to go by famous people I have many – Tim Minchin, Kate Miller-Heidke, Alanis Morisette, Naomi Watts, Claire Bowditch – the list goes on and on. In ‘real world’ the many new people I have met on Twitter come in here too – they show me that I’m doing ok at this whole mothering thing and are encouraging amazing and supportive and inspiring in so many ways. If I’m going real world one of my best friends who has just finished his acting degree, gotten an agent and work and is trying to live his dream under extremely difficult circumstances yet still has enough time to deal with my texts :)
31. best resolution you wish you stuck to: I made no resolutions last New Years Eve. I have many to make this year.
There – done – phew – brain is now definitely cotton wool.
And Gabfran, I promise you a wonderous blog full of bells and whistles – tomorrow, when my brain is back :)
Thank you to camelshoes http://www.camelshoes.blogspot.com/ and http://snobnicky.blogspot.com/2009/12/bests-of-2009.html and http://everyonewantsthis.blogspot.com/2009/12/best-of-2009.html
I have no witty words or clever observations.
I have no pithy anacdotes about Christmases Past.
I could write about Christmas present and future but I figure that could be boring.
and as this is ‘Wordless Wednesday” I’m going to use the pictures to tell the story for me…
May you have a peaceful day full of joy if “Merry Christmas” is appropriate…
If not…
Happy Solstice or Happy Yule or…
Happy Hanukkah (even though I’m slightly late – apologies)
I will return to bloggage once Christmas Day is behind us.
May everyone be happy and healthy and have a wonderful time with family and/or children.
We wait at the back of St Pauls Cathedral, a gaggle of girls in neatly pressed school uniforms, hair checked for tidiness and suitability moments earlier, coloured hair elastics replaced with black or brown, nervous I suppose in some way, but this is the end of our last year of school, new life now.
The Cathedral is full, I remember the years before we were allowed in the choir, when we were too young, when we sat in the rows up the front of the Cathedral singing the smutty lyrics to the carols, laughing at anything that even remotely sounded like it was related to anything sexual (when you are thirteen, it is amazing how many euphemisms you can find and giggle over in a two hour service “Come they told me” was a favorite), being stared down by the teacher at the end of our row.
Then came the Carol Choir years, exams over the last two weeks of school were devoted to rehearsal, every day…my mind hold on to the laughter produced by one of the Choir mistresses calling out to the other “We need more ding dongs” (Ding Dong Merrily on High).
And then in year twelve we got to sing the first verse of Hark the Herald Angels sing as the choir walked down the Aisle to the choir stalls at the front of the cathedral.
But these aren’t the lyrics that linger…it is Silent Night in German that we also sang that year that makes me remember Christmas the most. What it used to feel like. What it does no longer.
My life is strung on lyrics. A song will take me to a place, to a moment, to a person.
I am a lyric girl, some people love a tune they can dance to, I need lyrics that speak to my soul, to my heart.
Every relationship I have, every year of my life, every change has its own soundtrack.
Bub 1’s first year is Travis and “Why does it always rain on me” and also their take on “Hit me Baby One more time” which was bub 1’s favorite song for many years :)
The end of Bub 2’s first year and my emotional disintegration is Avril Lavigne’s ” Complicated” and “I’m with You” and the longing they invoked, the teenage part of me that never got to exist, the bit that was squashed and kept in a box, that was dying to live.
I have lyrics that take me back to moments, to love, to pain.
I could write my life as a play list.
At the moment I am Dido’s “White Flag”, I am Cat Powers ” Come to Me”, I am Jason Mraz’s ” Beautiful Mess”, I am Tim Minchins “White Wine in the Sun” and his “Rock and Roll Nerd”, I am also lyrics that I know not the names of, but that are colouring my heart.
They keep me whole, they let me be me, they give me an ability to feel as deeply as I feel without simply falling apart.
I have lived in music and lyrics, when I go anywhere I am plugged into my MP3, happily lip synching and if, if the music is right and the soul is happy dancing on benches and swinging around signs.
So if, in the next week you see a thirty something woman/girl in black, dancing down a footpath with tears running down her face, seemingly mumbling to herself with headphones in her ears, that’ll be me.
And I’ll be fine.
Many thanks to Dad Who Writes for the inspiration for this and to Josie at Sleep is For the Weak for helping me realise that a good blog need not be happy or humerous all the time.
So, I went to Sydney. Again. I can hear the chorus of Why? You were just there? Surely one person can’t be that in love with long distance train travel? .
And after the train trip on the way there I certainly am not a fan of long distance train travel.
And yes, I was just there.
But I got accepted into a Bachelor of Performance Course (much glee) and as I have moved interstate before without checking out schools I didn’t want to do this again, and I already had an audition booked before I got into the bachelor audition so i thought, well why not.
This is where this post becomes one of many parts – there were some brilliant, excellent parts in big neon signs.
some that were just depressingly sad, or worrying for my children.
Some that were good.
And Some that were just plain weird.
The trip up to Sydney during the day seemed to take forever (although considering it took my cousin 7 hours to fly from Brisbane to Melbourne lately, trains may well be almost as fast as flight, with more time feeling like you are actually going somewhere).
But I have never been so stultifying bored.
See the results of my boredom here.
By the end of the trip – the Origami Bunnies were waging a war over who would take over bruised knee hill and triumph (the lined bunnies won, as opposed to the pretty patterned ones) (and oh yes, I managed to severely bruise my knee on the way to the train, on a bench. I could say the bench moved, but it didn’t. I am just that uncoordinated.)
But I arrived, safely, stayed at my friend’s house, slept and went to this audition with no expectation, listening to my iPod, crossing the harbour bridge on the train (very exciting for me, though I’m a bit worried how long I’d last were the train to stop in the middle – i give myself about 7.5 seconds before I start behaving like Marge Simpson on a plane, you know, racing up and down going “I have to get off the train, I have to get off the train” although I have no idea what I’d do then to get off the bridge. The flagging down of cars may be an option , anyway)
I arrived at the Acting School. The door next to a bakery. A very dodgy door next to a bakery, under a train station. and I pondered for a second, and then I thought, almost exactly “Well, I have my audition pants on and took the train across the bridge so I might as well, plus if it is dodgy I can scream very loudly, and kick and run” and then I thought “well at least I hope I can, ah bugger it, I have my audition trousers on” Yes, I am THAT obsessed with clothing.
So up the dodgy stairs I went seeing no signs for the Acting School, until walking through random door number 3 (if anyone wants a kinesiologist there is one under a station in Sydney who is very friendly), I stumbled upon a guy and a table, chairs and pile of pamphlets, he knew my name, we chatted, he was lovely, told me about how he’d been commuting from Wollongong to do the course and had just completed his bachelor in commerce but loved acting too much to do whatever it is that ex-commerce students do, and I felt happy, not one second of nerves.
After about ten minutes of chatter in leapt (literally) the course director, welcomed me, I went straight into an ‘interview’ only it wasn’t, it was the course director, a graduate and I talking about theatre and film and acting and why we love it and how we do it and my life and for the first time ever when I said I had children (as comes up in the ‘what have you been doing since you left school) I didn’t get the ” well you do know this is a FULL time course” he thought it was great.
And when I told him I was on a disability pension he asked me why, and I told him, Borderline Personality Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and for ONCE someone asked me to explain what it meant, he really wanted to know, so I got to say that it just means that I feel more than ‘the average’ all the time, I get really sad, but I also get really happy, over simple things, and they can be very small – not in a massive bi-polar way though. I also have flash backs, and I’m not one hundred percent sure of who I am. And this wonderful man laughed, he smiled and laughed and said – “But Isn’t that being an Actor?” Then the graduate who must have been about twenty-five said something along the lines of ‘imagine if they came and assessed our class, EVERYONE would have something” and I thought, you know what, this, this is a place where nothing I feel will ever be wrong, or too much, and I was happy.
Then came the cold read (they give you a script, you look at it, establish a scenario and perform it). Cold Reads have always been my enemy, my downfall.
It was a dialogue with the graduate, relationship based, and the director said, you just be you in this situation. So I was. Then we sat down and he asked all the usual questions about who i thought this person was and where she had come from and what had just happened and was she justified in asking for what she wanted, and I knew it all, and realised what I needed to do with her and did in the second read through. And I realised that cold reads aren’t my enemy any more.
Then in the brilliant white blinding lights of the old theatre with burgundy seats and curtain we did Improvisation as I have never done before, given a situation – i was in a relationship with the ex student- he then used people from my real life to flesh it out, he had been dating my friend(A) and then me when A went overseas, A had come back the night before and at a party he had been only with her, another friend (B) had called and told me she saw them kissing and left together after I left.
Then the director told me to Just be me. To not put on layers of emotion, to just feel what I would in that situation.
And I did.
And it was the best thing I have ever done, the biggest buzz, the best ‘acting’ I have done in my life, the most connections with the other actor. The stage wasn’t there nor the director, just him and me and my shattered heart and wanting him back but terrified he was going to go back to my friend(A) and wanting to know what had happened but not, and it was amazing. No it was AMAZING.
I walked away from it in tears and so happy, sat in the stalls with the director and the graduate, who said some very complimentary things, and the director turned around and said ‘Usually i like to think about my decision, but I’m going to Melbourne for two days tomorrow, besides I know what i will say, I’d love to offer you a place in the course”
So half crying, smiling, laughing, lip synching to Tim Minchin on my MP3 I wandered back down the dodgy stairs, back to the too high train station.
I have found my place. Not my place in the world at large, but my place to learn and grow, my place to simply be me without fear or regret. I am accepted as an actor.
And you know what? That Rocks.
And I think the other parts of this post can wait for another one.
Merrily eating a kit kat on my way home celebration – i got into a brilliant course :)
- Posted using MobyPicture.com
- Posted using MobyPicture.com
- Posted using MobyPicture.com
Thanks to The Dotterel at Bringing Up Charlie I have been inspired to give all of my blog readers and all of my Twitter followers what I do with obsession every year – that is send out hundreds of Christmas Cards .
Only this year – thanks to Bub 2’s ever improving drawing skills and my slightly greener conscience we are opting for the internet version, which people can print, or not.
Except for family and friends who don’t have computers, or who have low bandwidth or maybe even some who i really don’t like so i want them to know that ‘yes i only spent less than a cent and virtually none of my time or thought on you here is a dodgy picture of a camel who I may feel obliged to send cards to – the rest are getting e-cards.
So here, for you, my new friends, is something very Special Indeed.
Merry Christmas. Happy Chanukah. Happy Yule. Have a wonderful New Year :)
I need advice.
And this seems as good a place to get it as any, as i know that most if not all of the people who read this blog will offer help or at least amusing suggestions which will distract me from the situation.
We are moving interstate. To move all of our ’stuff’ would cost upwards of $2000, which is totally unfeasible.
But then, I am of the opinion that as we have a good twenty boxes that haven’t been unpacked since the last move, that the majority of my children’s toys spend more time underfoot than they do being played with, that a new table will cost about 90% less than it would cost to move out current one and my wardrobe seems to have grown wildly out of control, as has my daughters*.
So maybe, just maybe, we should move the bare minimum of stuff that we *need* actually need instead of luxury items, like fridges and washing machines, and put the rest of our ’stuff’ in storage, from which we could transport a small amount each year when we come down to Melbourne for Christmas and to see family.
So, my dear blog readers, is this idea reasonable? Can a family survive without a blender? Will it be possible for children to live without the toys they have not played with in a year? And will I be able to part with the clothes that I have not worn in 4 years?*
*facts in this blog may be slightly exaggerated, I’m sure the toys get shoved under the couch or bed occasionally.
Bub 1 is entering a very awkward age. She is ten now, and acting like she is twenty sometimes, fourteen at others and 3 more often that you would belive.
I remember this age – but I was older – It seems to get younger with every generation…For me it was the Christmas I loved “Playing Beatie Bow”, and asked for a china doll and wanted to live in the 1800’s, when I felt out of place and like life just didn’t fit – the end of grade Six. I wanted to be in love and didn’t know what that meant.
She constantly needs hugs (which is lovely, although not so lovely when you are in the shower or carrying something from the stove)
We cannot tell her off for anything as even the slightest indication that she may have done something not ok can lead to one of three responses.
1. The Toddler – Screaming Crying, More Screaming, More Crying…cut to an hour later…Screaming , Crying, sniffle, Sob – try to talk about problem again stupid stubbornparent Repeat from Screaming.
2. The fourteen year old – I HATE you – stomping down the hall, bedroom door slams. Sobbing.
3. The sixteen year old – Silence. “Bub 1, can you answer me?” “murmur” “pardon?” “Yes” (with that GOD, you are just SO embarrassing, LEAVE me alone tone) “so why did you hit your brother/throw that toy out the window/draw on twenty pieces of paper then leave them all over the floor/take your shoes off at school AGAIN/take all the clothes out of your wardrobe” Silence. Repeat, about four times, at the end of which one of us does the fourteen year old – at the moment its about 50/50.
In addition she has started telling her brother what he should eat at dinner, when he should go to bed, to get off the computer, to have a bath etc. Which might be cute was he under one, but as he is 7 and perfectly capable of independent thought he finds this frustrating. As do we. Because then we have a grumpy 7 yr old as well as a grumpy 10 year old because we’ve told her she doesn’t need to parent her brother…
I think that her change between child and teenager (tween – pah – buzzword) is reflected in her christmas list…
Spore (DS game)
Books
Wowie-alive pet polar bear (which will end up like the TechoPup she got two years ago -loved for a day – it died through too much dust collecting on it in May)
Laptop (What for?! I exclaimed – she shrugged “My friend has one”)
Plush toy(But you have so many and you don’t play with them – again – I exclaimed – yes I do, she said, just when I wake up really early and everyone else is still asleep)
Cap that I saw at Kmart (this she has wanted for MONTHS)
Sun Glasses (but only ’cause Mum said ‘Don’t you need sunglasses)
perfume Factory
Elastics (she discovered these the other night with my help – glad she likes that as an idea :) )
Face Paints.(Um – NO – I remember the last time we got some – she was a dog for three months- even at school at 6 that may be ok – not sure at ten?)
She also wants nailpolish and a mobile phone (to call who? Ummmm Dad?) and desperately wants to be grown up enough for a certain female undergarment and to wear makeup – yet has not asked for any, or jewelry, or any of the ‘goth’ (Black) clothes she admires so much when we go shopping.
This point in growing up need special parenting and I have no idea how to do it – I can’t treat her like a child, but she isn’t a teenager yet.
There is no naughty step, grounding doesn’t work as she doesn’t go out much.
Yelling is no go, she doesn’t care about removal of DS, TV or Computer use.
Nothing matters to her very much, except for any pain we or her friends cause her with the wrong words at the wrong time.
It must totally SUCK to be ten.
