One dimension less
This morning I received a note from a publisher comparing my steampunk book to Gail Carringer. All very nice, except the publisher wasn’t meaning it as a compliment exactly – she was explaining that it wasn’t her sort of thing. It so happened that I drew a line in the sand more than a year ago, and the line just got crossed – that was it: the end of any plausible hope for that book, or for any other book I’ve written.
Although it’s perfectly possible I’ll start over in five or ten years, the psychological harm of constant near-misses plus the expenditure of time in a pointless endeavour is now greater than the joy of writing. So, since I believe a writer is someone who writes. . . that’s it. I’m not a writer at this time, and may never be again. In terms of major life goals, I now have only one dimension left: stay at home mum. I like Louisette a lot (who doesn’t?) but a large chunk of my soul just got amputated and thrown away. This is the second time over a decade of my life’s work has been proven to be more harmful than helpful, and it’s right to feel sad before moving on.
My African heritage….no, seriously!
My biological father left when I was very small, and my mum married again when I was two – so “Dad” to me is, unsurprisingly, the man who raised me.
Biodad has been in and out of jail his whole life for various financial scams, so it was no great loss that he vanished out of our lives well before my older brother or I could hope to remember anything about him. I was in my mid-teens before it came up in conversation that he was South African by birth, and had only moved to Australia with his family as a young adult. This was cool because it means I’m half African. (White South African, clearly. . . When I visit Indonesia people ask to take photos of me because they’ve never seen someone so white).
*Abrupt change of topic*
I’m known for my pancakes. My sister used to ask me to make them for her when she visited from Perth, and when I decided to quit all paid work and give writing a full-on go back in 2001 I lived mainly on pancakes (with margarine instead of butter and using powdered milk, one can eat pancakes two or three times a day with lemon and sugar for about $5/week) for several months. It didn’t even put me off pancakes.
At the child care centre where I work, two of our cooks are South African and the main lady in the 1-year olds’ room is from Finland. When my Finnish co-worker talked about how she was looking forward to making cloudberry pancakes on the weekend like she used to do in Finland, one of the cooks talked about how South Africans love to make very thin pancakes, cover them in cinnamon sugar, then roll them up and eat them as the cinnamon sugar melts into a syrup.
It so happens that the pancakes I make are extremely thin – almost see-through – and I like cinnamon sugar on toast enough that I have cinnamon sugar pre-mixed in my cupboard. For the first time ever, I felt I had a connection to the country that gave me half of my DNA. I actually misted up.
Naturally, I celebrate this new-found “family tradition” with pancakes and cinnamon sugar – cooked paper-thin and rolled into a tube to eat. Because that’s what we South Africans do.
Where’s your nose?
Louisette has had this question down for a while, but she still likes to point out noses wherever they may be. Also, she’s just learned about ears, which will be handy for charades shortly.
Can’t write.
Too busy watching the Tour de France. Tonight will be especially epic – mostly flat then Mount Ventoux. It’s common for riders to be delirious when they reach the top due to altitude + fatigue + wind blasting. Enjoy?
Monkey See, Monkey Do
Those who know me know I have a complicated system of storing my memory in written form, especially on my hand (it turns out that ink really doesn’t seep through into one’s bloodstream and do whatever-it-was my teachers darkly hinted at). When Louisette gets a pen, she knows just what to do with it.
There’s plenty more of the sincerest form of flattery coming up, I know. Time to stop swearing, start eating healthily, and be perfect in every way.
*sigh*
Don’t Mention the Bus!
This year is the 100th Tour de France, and although Lance Armstrong’s drug use can’t help but come to mind it’s severely outmatched by the sheer scale, drama and pageantry of literally the only sporting event that I watch (I don’t watch the Olympics, possibly because it’s lacking in ancient castles perched on sharp-edged mountains beside the races).
Here’s my personal highlights so far:
The two-year old Australian team (Orica GreenEdge – developed the year after the Australian leader of team BMC, Cadel Evans, won the tour) started day one with a comical (and potentially deadly) saga: their team bus was stuck fast under the finishing banner as the riders raced towards the line. Bits of the bus were coming off; the fire department was on the scene and helpless; the riders were advised over race radio that the race would finish three kilometres early (some heard the warning and some didn’t). . . . and then it cleared up just in time.
Only days later, with literally centimetres to spare, an Orica GreenEdge rider – Australian Simon Gerrans – JUST BARELY won a stage (ie he came first that day). This was a huge boon for the team.
The following day, Orica GreenEdge won the fastest team time trial ever in the Tour de France by a fraction of a second. . . which made Simon Gerrans the overall fastest thus far. That meant he got to wear the incredibly coveted yellow jersey (and it also meant that the team would take the lion’s share of on-road pacemaking responsibility while he had it).
He kept it the next day. The day after that, he gave it up – by choice – having worked out that if he dropped back a few places at a crucial moment, his own team-mate Daniel Impy would get to wear the yellow. Daniel Impy is the first South African – the first African – to wear the yellow jersey – and apparently all South African cyclists wore something yellow that day to celebrate.
In other news, on the sprinting side, Marcel Kittel won the first stage (which meant he got to wear the yellow jersey on day 2), Mark Cavendish won a stage (he’s won more stages than anyone ever and is a rather unpleasant but intensely skilled rider), and his ex-team-mate Andre Greipel also won a stage (which made me happy, because I like Greipel – partly because he has a history of frantically pedalling after Cavendish and/or getting left out of the Tour altogether).
And then came the mountains – when middle-of-the-range teams like Orica GreenEdge drop back and the overall contenders and mountaineers come to the fore. On the first day, Chris Froome of team Sky (the same team that won last year – Froome was in a supporting role then, and came second, with observers wondering if he should have been the team’s choice to win) shot ahead, leaving serious contenders like Cadel Evans behind by minutes – in Tour de France terms, a huge amount. Australian Sky team member Richie Porte was instrumental in helping him (just as Froome was instrumental in supporting overall winner Bradley Wiggins last year).
Many people, myself included, concluded that Chris Froome would win, Richie Porte would come second, and perhaps Alberto Contador would come third. On the very next day, however, Richie Porte fell back a huge amount, and Froome survived with barely any help from his team. Tomorrow is a rest day, so either team Sky will recover and soldier on – or Froome will try to win alone, and will certainly fail.
We’ll wait and see!
Louisette likes a bad boy. . . already
Last week I worked a full 38 paid hours for the first time in about ten years. . . and I didn’t even get sick! Most of that was at the child care centre that will also be Louisette’s school (she’s already enrolled, and I’m almost always in the same room as her). I’m utterly fascinated by the clear personalities and friendships among the 1-year olds.
The group as a whole is brilliant – happy, healthy, and gorgeous. It’s my belief that 1-year olds aren’t actually “naughty”. They can be “cheeky”, they can certainly disobey the grown-ups (habitually or otherwise) and they can absolutely be “high-maintenance” but it’s too early to say that naughtiness is a part of who they are – because they’re trying it out, along with everything else.</p
Parent/Grandparenthood
These just seem to sum up the experience. Or at least, the bits that can be photographed. Only CJ’s parents are featured here because I began this post before uploading photos became an issue (I can only load one at a time these days – I do have some notions of how to make it better, but it’ll take a while to figure out).
The Downfall of Feminism
I’m mostly sane these days, but there are still certain things that make me much more anxious than they should. Exercise is one of those things. I make swimming a priority, but the emotional cost is high (and coordinating care for Louisette at the same time is remarkably complex too).
So the other day I went for a swim – just half a kilometre (usually I swim a whole k) because of the spine thing. It was a weekend, which is good because CJ minds Louisette no problem, but bad because weekend = more people = more anxiety. But I was being brave.
My normal pool was closed so I went to another one, and it was super crowded. Only three lanes were available for lap swimming, and they had signs indicating slow, medium and fast lanes. Each lane had about four people in it, but the fast lane had three so I made the rational choice (hesitating, because of my neurotic fear that someone will approach me and say, “What are you doing in this lane?!? You’re TOO SLOW” but acknowledging silently that everyone was better off if I chose based on crowd levels – and I wasn’t even the slowest person in the lane).
I lurched awkwardly into the pool, gritted my teeth against the awkwardness that is sharing a swim lane, and began my swim. It wasn’t fun, but I was determined.
Then someone stopped, facing me. I paused politely.
“You’re REALLY slow,” she said. “You should go in the slow lane.”
It’s not often one’s paranoid scenario comes true, but there it was.
“Thank you,” I said – which apparently is what I say when nightmares come true – but I did manage to sound sarcastic (which almost counts as a win). There was a microsecond pause as I grabbed at my foggy notion that human rights apply to me as well as everyone else. “But I won’t.”
I swam on, shaking with the trauma of it all but pleased with myself for responding quickly enough and rationally enough to satisfy my non-paranoid (and non-pathetic) side. It wasn’t going to be easy to finish the last three hundred metres, but I swam a bit faster and worked hard on keeping myself together.
The I was stopped at the end of the pool – by a staff member. A real live authority figure. She informed me that I was swimming in the fast lane and should move over for other swimmers. Clearly she’d been primed by my little friend – but now I was really freaking out. But I’d been primed too. I’d made the decision to go in that lane, had questioned it myself AND after being challenged, and was still sure I was right.
“I can’t move over!” I blubbered (which doesn’t SOUND impressive – but I could have silently shifted elsewhere). “I have contact lenses and I can’t go under the rope – and I can’t pull myself out because I recently had a baby!” (All true – I haul myself over the ropes when I have to, and it’s not pretty.)
“I’ll go get another staff member and we’ll move the rope for you.”
So I waited for my humiliating experience, determined to at least not capitulate without a fight. After a while, I waved to the staff member and said, “I’ll just swim another lap while I wait?” and swam off – with two laps to go.
During this lap the original woman caught up to me again. She stopped to share some more life advice with me – loudly: “Passive-aggressive behaviour is the downfall of feminism!”
“Wow!” was my oh so articulate response (I write novels, you know). But of course she’d crossed the line from Concerned Citizen to Nutbag and, by a process of elimination, that meant I really WAS being the rational one. I felt a lot better after that. The opinions of nutbags don’t bother me nearly as much as the rest of the population.
And so I finished another lap. . . and there was a new staff member waiting for me. I took a breath and steeled myself for further telling-off and the inevitable move to a different (equally crowded) lane.
“We are so sorry,” she began. “I don’t know what that woman has said to you just now, but she will be banned from this pool today. You are hardly slower than her, and the other lanes are just as crowded as this one, so it’s better that you stay where you are. You go ahead and swim in this lane as long as you like. That woman is about to leave and never come back.”
Of course I cried a bit (crying with strangers in public is normal, right?), but I finished my swim and went home shaken but proud. I realised the lane had gotten suspiciously empty in the second half of my swim – this woman had been haranguing everyone around her one by one in order to clear the lane for herself. Only I, Louise Curtis The Barely Holding It Together Lady, had the courage to stand up to her bullying and make it stop.
Downfall of feminism? Me? Not today.
Felicity Banks 