A bundle of puppies for your viewing pleasure.
If they’re off air, check back later to see their adorable little tails, muzzles, ears, feet and tummies. There’s a volume control in the lower RH corner if you want to hear them squeaking. Watching them is my new favourite hobby. Vicarious puppy ownership!
You've seen those big red and white signs on the highway? When I was a kid I wondered how the dickens the signs knew?
Earlier this year Nana scared the bejesus out of us all with a health blip. Her brain went off to la la land and we were quite stricken at the real possibility she'd never know us again.
In the jumble that was her reawakening mind, apparently the first family member she referred to was dad. Something about this was comforting, I like to think he held up the intergalactic wrong way, go back sign and her consciousness did an obedient U-turn in its etheric white Mazda and zoomed back home.
Just as well. There is beer to drink, computer Solitaire to play, pink lipstick to wear, Lancôme to slather, and rosaries to recite. She's a great tale-teller, last year when she visited (she lives interstate and I can't travel) we talked a lot. About the bay horses she rode as a child; her schooling; the maid who had nits (I was excited about the maid, I didn't know I knew anyone who had a maid); her courtship with Grandpa - he was a soldier and they went on their first date at the Cosy Corner Cafe; and the weather, which was thrilling because there were floods and she loves extreme weather events. Meals on Wheels did a delivery, absolutely sopping wet, and she gleefully told them, What wild, wild weather we're having! Then she made them look out the window at the torrential rain, even though they'd just been in it.
Since that last big blip, Nana's not the same. She's had to move out of the beautiful heritage-listed home that's been in her family for a couple of generations, and into a place where she can receive better care. This is a massive loss, her home has always been such an extension of her, it's hard to tell where she finishes and the high ceilings begin. I've always felt the walls and creaky floors somehow embodied her. I wonder if she misses the gigantic bunya pine outside the kitchen, and the agapanthus flanking the long, curved drive.
There's been a general turning point this year, it's the first time some of my grandparents have been as incapacitated, albeit differently, than I am. It's hard to watch their struggle with drastic functional limitation and loss of independence. But I'm also aware how lucky they are to have lived long, healthy, productive lives.
In many ways I have more in common with my grandparents (as they are now), than with my peers. I understand what they're going through. We talk on the phone, and I try to be a supportive confidant. I hope in some tiny way I demonstrate that we can live well, contentedly, holding fast to the good things, regardless of what hijinks our bodies get up to.
Last Thursday night I fell over backwards while standing completely still. I'd closed my eyes momentarily, always a mistake when upright. After my beloved stopped laughing, he said, “You have the proprioception of C-3PO!”
image via jeffbots
I’ve always liked C-3PO.
The State of Me. I read it, I loved it, I will read it again. It's the first book I've read in print form in a long time; I was enraptured by the slice of turning pages and the smell of paper and ink.
It's a novel about Helen Fleet, a Scottish woman who falls ill with M.E. while abroad as a young student.
Helen proceeds to experience all the delights and horrors of the journey to adulthood: love, sex, heartbreak, friendship, family life – all with the grim overlay of a bewildering chronic illness.
The book is set in the 1980s and is a fascinating account of what it was like to have M.E. in Scotland at that time. M.E. is a condition that has been surrounded by controversy, and the author has managed to gently convey that, and also to weave medical facts into the story without bludgeoning the book into textbook terrain, which must have been quite a feat.
Reading a story about a character whose physical experience of life is very similar to mine was surreal and uncanny: subsumed in a parallel reality, mine, but not mine. I couldn’t put it down.
I found the narrative compelling, and the precise, pared-back prose lovely. The unabashed Scottishness is delightful. It is laced with humour and has a spiky grace. A good book is a work of art that strives to be truthful - even fiction - especially fiction. This book is unflinchingly truthful.
Here are some extracts if you’d like a taste of the writing style, and the original blurb (which I personally prefer to the one on the cover of this edition, but am sure will be used for the next edition).
The author is a dear blog friend, so I'm not an unbiased reviewer, however I've enjoyed reading other reviews, and will point you in the direction of those for more than one opinion.
The best place I’ve found to buy it for overseas readers is The Book Depository, which has free shipping worldwide. The only bad thing about The Book Depository is that unlike Amazon there is no facility for adding a review, and I always find reviews helpful when considering reading or buying a book. Nonetheless, if you've ever bought anything from Amazon you are entitled to write a review on any book, and I'd encourage you to do so -people that take the time to write reviews are performing a kind public service.
I currently have a spare copy or two, if anyone who lives locally wants to borrow it, give me a yell.
I commend this book to you, dear greenlings, and if you read it I’d welcome your thoughts.
I had a 6-month hiatus from Meals on Wheels when aforementioned sibling returned to the fold. This was fantastic - I'm not one of those people who can eat the same thing day in, day out - and the 10 meals of gristly beef stew I had in a row last December nearly did me and my relatively recent omnivorous status in. What with my brother now moving a little further away and me being incapacitated after the excellent but reckless nuptial shindig, it's time for Meals on Wheels to make a return. They now have little printed labels instead of hand-written ones, and the price has increased from $5.70 to $6.50 a meal. Groceries are getting so much dearer, if you lived solely on a pension and relied on Meals on Wheels for 2 main meals a day it would be unaffordable. Though I guess you could eat the Meals on Wheels at lunch and yoghurt for dinner. I'm always making mental contingency plans in case I lose my three local family members in a car accident. It’s practical, not morbid. The lady that delivered my meal today is my favourite, we greeted each other with a hug, she’d been wondering where I'd gotten to. "Never fear," I said, "I'm still here. And married, furthermore." Meanwhile she'd been on a Pacific Cruise. Good for her. Today she was training a new volunteer, a young woman who looked about my age. She had a beautiful smile and was simply but immaculately dressed. I had a wan pallor and was trembling with pain. I very much hoped she didn’t feel sorry for me. I should have written her name down so I could remember it for next time.
