Woo-hoo - I'm back. It's been nearly 5 months since I visited my blog. It's been a tough year. Losing Dad last October started a depressive process that was exacerbated by my serious (physical) illness in February. Julia came back from London in May, and is still living in the house, and I had a major meltdown in August that meant about 200 emails didn't get opened. Still working on those.
I was prepared to allow myself a year of mourning for Dad, and by and large giving myself that permission has worked. I'm only crying about once a month now. But having fiercely independent, opinionated and somewhat abrasive Julia around, along with Sylvia turning 20, has left me feeling like a bit of a waste of space. I feel like a cliche - empty nesting all over the place! I always thought that having the kids grow up and leave home was a sign of success, and I'd have a lot more energy to myself once active hands-on parenting stopped. With 2 extra adults in the house (3 when Ben's here as well), it hasn't quite worked out that way. If anything, I have less drive. I need to ignore the mess they all make, never having seen "maid" as part of my job description, and my mouth is firmly zipped against responding to some of Julia's more outrageous utterances. (I'm not alone in that - we all recognise that she has no filters, but have agreed that challenging her can only end in evisceration, so we ignore it.) Having her here is still a treat, despite all that, and I have no desire to hasten her departure for Australia.
My creative life has virtually disappeared, which is more distressing. I knit while I'm watching the few things I enjoy on TV, so there is a large collection of fluffy cakes and a Dalek on the coffee table, but poetry? No mind space.
So, I've decided to see a Life Coach, to try and get some direction back in my life. When I announced this to the people I talk to most - Jennifer, Sylvia and Anne - they all cheered. Apparently my lost-ness hasn't gone unnoticed. Isn't it funny how the afflicted are always the last to know? So I've chosen someone, via Google, and have had a response to my enquiry. Unfortunately she's out of the country until mid-October, so I'll have to wait. At least it gives me something to look forward to!
And in the meantime, I've given myself all of Saturday to finish a commissioned poem that I've been having a tough time with. With The Academy, my poetry group, meeting on Sunday night I've got some incentive to get it at least ready for comment.
And tonight I'm using a new wireless keyboard I bought to replace the old clunky thing I've had to use since the one that came with the computer packed up. It's amazing how much faster I can type when I don't have to actually hit the keys to make them work. Loving it.
Friday, 17 September 2010
Sunday, 25 April 2010
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
The names are back to front (yang=light; yin=dark), but what the hell. It's all in balance anyway. And what could be better than the Tao of cats?
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Illness, Obituary and other meanderings
I've been sick for three weeks. This is probably not of any interest to anyone other than members of my family, but it needs recording. I spent the 9th February (2 days after my birthday) in the medical day ward of Wellington Hospital, eliminating some fairly scary things I could have had but didn't (hepatitis, pneumonia, thyroid condition, neurological disorder), but had no diagnosis to show for my day off from the everyday world.
After doing a fair bit of research of my own on the wonderful world-wide interweb thingy, I believe I had an acute and miraculously brief attack of polymyalgia rheumatica. Interestingly, I (jokingly) told Wally when I first got sick that I had either the flu or an acute attack of rheumatoid arthritis, and then didn't think about it again, flu being the most likely explanation. Anyway, my symptoms ticked all the boxes for PR, including the instant onset of aching muscles (it started at 11pm on 26 January), anorexia, rapid weight loss, sensory distortion, anaemia and a few other things I can't remember because my brain is still a little fuzzy. The only variation I displayed was the length of the attack - 5 days, as opposed to 2-4 years! I'm still weak, and I have days of sitting on the couch gazing into space, though I seem to be able to work on alternate days without needing a long lie-down every half hour.
Anyway, one of the few things I managed to do while I was in the early stages of recovery was to write an obituary for my Dad for Menzed, the monthly newsletter of Mensa New Zealand. Here it is, for the sake of internet posterity:
Obituary - Colin Russell Gilbert, 17/12/23 - 18/10/09
Telephone engineer, grocer, taxi driver, park groundskeeper, gardener, bowler, Forest & Bird trip leader and much-loved father. How do you sum up an 85-year long life, without reducing it to trivialities? Dad was a man who believed in himself. He wasn't the perfect parent - who is? - but he did a good-enough job that when he got sick we fought over who would get to look after him. He chose the prodigal sister who lived in England for 40 years (and who has subsequently invoiced the rest of us for his care), because he wanted to stay at home until he died, and not go from house to house as the rest of us could manage.
Dad qualified for Mensa in the 70s, when he was still in his fifties. He chose not to join then, as he felt like it would be skiting. I gave him membership for his 81st birthday and told him he was old enough to skite all he liked. He displayed his Mensa Certificate with pride, attended a few events, including the 2008 AGM Gathering in Silverstream, and then let his membership lapse after he hosted a games afternoon which no-one attended. I tried to persuade him it was nothing personal - that Mensans are crap at RSVPing and travelling out of town - but it was rudeness as far as he was concerned, so that was that.
Dad was diagnosed with melanoma in January 2009. He already had congestive heart failure, kidney failure and gout; nevertheless I expected him to live another 10 years. He came from a long line of 90+-year-olds. We only got 10 months after the diagnosis. In September he was offered radiology as palliative treatment for the map of White Island that had erupted on his left flank. The caring sister thought it would kill him and refused to drive him to Wellington Hospital, so my younger sister and I willingly took on the job. Twice a week for three weeks Lency would drive to Waikanae to pick him up, I would meet them at the hospital, he'd have his treatment, we'd have lunch at Wishbone, and then I'd take him home. Those were amongst the three most precious weeks imaginable. We had Dad to ourselves, and for an hour each way he got each of us to himself.
I remember with great joy the times we used to spend together in his taxi when I was a teenager and could always get a safe lift home from parties - driving around with him until he got a job that took us near home. He wired and insulated my house when my first husband left after removing all the wall coverings, ceilings and wiring. Dad made all his grandchildren feel as though they were the most special of all, and he called me his "favourite middle daughter" without ever referring to a favourite oldest or youngest daughter or son. He maintained his loving sense of humour to the end, and the day before he died he asked to be moved into the living room so he could watch his final Wellington Lions game - he and I shared a love of rugby from very early days and made many trips to Athletic Park together.
He was cremated 2 days after he died, in a beautiful plywood coffin made by my husband Wally ("Thanks for making my bunk, Wal") which was filled to the brim with flowers from his garden, so we could see just his face. We included Mum's ashes, so they could be together again.
The funeral, which I organised (having been brought up by very independent parents to do everything myself that I can) was attended by about 100 people, and Dad had a soldier's farewell from a representative of the RSA, a ritual that never fails to move me.
It's been four months now, and there hasn't been a single day that I haven't missed him and I would trade my soul to have him back. But that's the way of things - we all end up orphans eventually, and we have to make the most of taking our turn at being the family elders.
Gales have stripped
the mulch from my garden
exposing the living earth
to its fellow elements.
I would ring you Dad
to tell you
and we would laugh
and be amazed together
if I could forget
for just one breezy moment
that the fire
has already taken you.
So now I've had to give up selling Dad's house myself (another job I hate to pay someone to do) because I've given up driving for the duration and can't get to Waikanae to show people around or run open homes, I'm wayyyyyy behind on my competition promotion work and I haven't started the March issue of the magazine, due at the printer tomorrow. On the positive side, I've managed to give up housework and am paying my oldest daughter (a single mother who needs the money more than I do) to clean for me, which means it gets done far more efficiently, and I have her in my home for a couple of hours every week - lovely.
After doing a fair bit of research of my own on the wonderful world-wide interweb thingy, I believe I had an acute and miraculously brief attack of polymyalgia rheumatica. Interestingly, I (jokingly) told Wally when I first got sick that I had either the flu or an acute attack of rheumatoid arthritis, and then didn't think about it again, flu being the most likely explanation. Anyway, my symptoms ticked all the boxes for PR, including the instant onset of aching muscles (it started at 11pm on 26 January), anorexia, rapid weight loss, sensory distortion, anaemia and a few other things I can't remember because my brain is still a little fuzzy. The only variation I displayed was the length of the attack - 5 days, as opposed to 2-4 years! I'm still weak, and I have days of sitting on the couch gazing into space, though I seem to be able to work on alternate days without needing a long lie-down every half hour.
Anyway, one of the few things I managed to do while I was in the early stages of recovery was to write an obituary for my Dad for Menzed, the monthly newsletter of Mensa New Zealand. Here it is, for the sake of internet posterity:
Obituary - Colin Russell Gilbert, 17/12/23 - 18/10/09
Telephone engineer, grocer, taxi driver, park groundskeeper, gardener, bowler, Forest & Bird trip leader and much-loved father. How do you sum up an 85-year long life, without reducing it to trivialities? Dad was a man who believed in himself. He wasn't the perfect parent - who is? - but he did a good-enough job that when he got sick we fought over who would get to look after him. He chose the prodigal sister who lived in England for 40 years (and who has subsequently invoiced the rest of us for his care), because he wanted to stay at home until he died, and not go from house to house as the rest of us could manage.
Dad qualified for Mensa in the 70s, when he was still in his fifties. He chose not to join then, as he felt like it would be skiting. I gave him membership for his 81st birthday and told him he was old enough to skite all he liked. He displayed his Mensa Certificate with pride, attended a few events, including the 2008 AGM Gathering in Silverstream, and then let his membership lapse after he hosted a games afternoon which no-one attended. I tried to persuade him it was nothing personal - that Mensans are crap at RSVPing and travelling out of town - but it was rudeness as far as he was concerned, so that was that.
Dad was diagnosed with melanoma in January 2009. He already had congestive heart failure, kidney failure and gout; nevertheless I expected him to live another 10 years. He came from a long line of 90+-year-olds. We only got 10 months after the diagnosis. In September he was offered radiology as palliative treatment for the map of White Island that had erupted on his left flank. The caring sister thought it would kill him and refused to drive him to Wellington Hospital, so my younger sister and I willingly took on the job. Twice a week for three weeks Lency would drive to Waikanae to pick him up, I would meet them at the hospital, he'd have his treatment, we'd have lunch at Wishbone, and then I'd take him home. Those were amongst the three most precious weeks imaginable. We had Dad to ourselves, and for an hour each way he got each of us to himself.
I remember with great joy the times we used to spend together in his taxi when I was a teenager and could always get a safe lift home from parties - driving around with him until he got a job that took us near home. He wired and insulated my house when my first husband left after removing all the wall coverings, ceilings and wiring. Dad made all his grandchildren feel as though they were the most special of all, and he called me his "favourite middle daughter" without ever referring to a favourite oldest or youngest daughter or son. He maintained his loving sense of humour to the end, and the day before he died he asked to be moved into the living room so he could watch his final Wellington Lions game - he and I shared a love of rugby from very early days and made many trips to Athletic Park together.
He was cremated 2 days after he died, in a beautiful plywood coffin made by my husband Wally ("Thanks for making my bunk, Wal") which was filled to the brim with flowers from his garden, so we could see just his face. We included Mum's ashes, so they could be together again.
The funeral, which I organised (having been brought up by very independent parents to do everything myself that I can) was attended by about 100 people, and Dad had a soldier's farewell from a representative of the RSA, a ritual that never fails to move me.
It's been four months now, and there hasn't been a single day that I haven't missed him and I would trade my soul to have him back. But that's the way of things - we all end up orphans eventually, and we have to make the most of taking our turn at being the family elders.
Gales have stripped
the mulch from my garden
exposing the living earth
to its fellow elements.
I would ring you Dad
to tell you
and we would laugh
and be amazed together
if I could forget
for just one breezy moment
that the fire
has already taken you.
So now I've had to give up selling Dad's house myself (another job I hate to pay someone to do) because I've given up driving for the duration and can't get to Waikanae to show people around or run open homes, I'm wayyyyyy behind on my competition promotion work and I haven't started the March issue of the magazine, due at the printer tomorrow. On the positive side, I've managed to give up housework and am paying my oldest daughter (a single mother who needs the money more than I do) to clean for me, which means it gets done far more efficiently, and I have her in my home for a couple of hours every week - lovely.
That's life. If I thought things would go back to normal after my difficult time around Dad's death, I was dreaming. 'Normal' is whatever's happening, and you'd think I'd have learned that by now, at my vast age. I keep forgetting. Perhaps that's a human defense mechanism to get us out of bed in the morning - "Oh, today will go just as I expect it to".
Like this blog - most of the time I've been working on it I've been trying to work out what font it started with, after I foolishly imported the obituary in Palatino Linotype and had to retype it. Blogger wouldn't let me publish because my Html was wrong. Anyway, now I'm boring myself, so I'll stop.
Sunday, 24 January 2010
January 2010
Happy New Year. I was determined to get back to my blog before a year passed since my last post, and here I am, several months early. Not that it was easy. The password I had recorded in my password notebook (Volume IV, Issue 63) didn't work, but good old Google still had me in its database and let me set a new one (not that different to the old one).
I have been creating. I've written 2 poems this month, and done some work on my epic, though not as much as I would have liked. I've also revived my handcraft interest, and knitted 2 cakes, a muffin and a donut, so I can feel a little bit virtuous about spending the last hour of every weekday watching Buffy. I'm managing an hour in the garden most days, which is looking much better for it, and still getting a bit of work done in the afternoons and evenings.
We have an explosion of ducks. One of our girls went AWOL and I knew she was nesting as she was appearing at tea-time every night, hoeing into the food, and disappearing again. Wally and I got up close and personal with every blackberry bush and shrub in all the back yards in our neighbourhood, knowing we had less than 28 days to find her. We didn't, and just after Christmas she finally appeared in the daytime; I could hear her next door. I whipped over the fence and there she was, with a batch of fluffy brown peepers hanging about her. When she tried to disappear at the sight of me (because of course I am a lethal enemy) she headed for the space under the neighbour's back porch. No wonder we couldn't find her.
Anyway, I grabbed her, stuffed her under one arm, and went back home for a bucket. With Mum quacking, "Beware, beware! Mortal danger!", I managed to catch them one at a time and put them in the bucket (a bucket of ducklings - that'll turn up in a poem some time) and took them home, to live happily in a disused rabbit cage (the rabbits are free-range). There were 8 of the little darlings. Apparently mother hasn't read the internet article that affirms that Khaki Campbells don't raise their own ducklings. She's been doing a damn fine job of it so far, though 2 of them sadly succumbed to an inability to swim when they tried before they were ready.
And as if a second batch of Khaki Campbells isn't enough, on top of the 10 we already have, a week later a random mallard duckling appeared from nowhere on our front porch. As s/he is a fluffy yellow creature, s/he has naturally acquired the Lynley Dodd-inspired name of Zachary Quack. Unfortunately s/he's too much smaller than the KCs to be raised with them, so is inside. Like I need more animals to intensively tend.
I'm selling my late Dad's house, on the basis that we rarely pay anyone to do something we're perfectly capable of doing ourselves. Sunday open homes in Waikanae are proving a bit of a trial, but there's quite a bit of interest. Several people have gone through the house and loved it, but not enough to sign on the dotted line yet.
That's enough for now. Don't want to tire myself out. Time I started promoting this year's international poetry competition.
I have been creating. I've written 2 poems this month, and done some work on my epic, though not as much as I would have liked. I've also revived my handcraft interest, and knitted 2 cakes, a muffin and a donut, so I can feel a little bit virtuous about spending the last hour of every weekday watching Buffy. I'm managing an hour in the garden most days, which is looking much better for it, and still getting a bit of work done in the afternoons and evenings.
We have an explosion of ducks. One of our girls went AWOL and I knew she was nesting as she was appearing at tea-time every night, hoeing into the food, and disappearing again. Wally and I got up close and personal with every blackberry bush and shrub in all the back yards in our neighbourhood, knowing we had less than 28 days to find her. We didn't, and just after Christmas she finally appeared in the daytime; I could hear her next door. I whipped over the fence and there she was, with a batch of fluffy brown peepers hanging about her. When she tried to disappear at the sight of me (because of course I am a lethal enemy) she headed for the space under the neighbour's back porch. No wonder we couldn't find her.
Anyway, I grabbed her, stuffed her under one arm, and went back home for a bucket. With Mum quacking, "Beware, beware! Mortal danger!", I managed to catch them one at a time and put them in the bucket (a bucket of ducklings - that'll turn up in a poem some time) and took them home, to live happily in a disused rabbit cage (the rabbits are free-range). There were 8 of the little darlings. Apparently mother hasn't read the internet article that affirms that Khaki Campbells don't raise their own ducklings. She's been doing a damn fine job of it so far, though 2 of them sadly succumbed to an inability to swim when they tried before they were ready.
And as if a second batch of Khaki Campbells isn't enough, on top of the 10 we already have, a week later a random mallard duckling appeared from nowhere on our front porch. As s/he is a fluffy yellow creature, s/he has naturally acquired the Lynley Dodd-inspired name of Zachary Quack. Unfortunately s/he's too much smaller than the KCs to be raised with them, so is inside. Like I need more animals to intensively tend.
I'm selling my late Dad's house, on the basis that we rarely pay anyone to do something we're perfectly capable of doing ourselves. Sunday open homes in Waikanae are proving a bit of a trial, but there's quite a bit of interest. Several people have gone through the house and loved it, but not enough to sign on the dotted line yet.
That's enough for now. Don't want to tire myself out. Time I started promoting this year's international poetry competition.
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