midpoint

Life amongst the peaks

 I keep trying to come up with FB status updates to clinch the recent changes in my existence, but they’re too long to be pithy, so it’s time for another blogpost.

My universe has been re-ordered around a part-time (0.5) policy job staple plus two casual teaching jobs. The staple is at a Peak Body…I’m not sure why there are so many ‘peaks’ in Victoria—something to do with the old ALP-style politics that once predominated?  Anyway, I’m at another Peak. It’s probably one you’ve never heard of, not because it’s insignificant but because it has the most appallingly unmemorable name AND acronym. (No, I won’t repeat it here, because I’d rather not post even positive things about identifiable workplaces on the net.) 

The current leadership style of this organisation is however appealing to me. It’s interesting what a difference that leadership makes…it’s not just a matter of dynamism and charisma but something (for me anyway) about having a reasonable vision and reasonable people to drive it.  There was a eureka moment or two at the job interview, when I thought with relief ‘I could work with that’ (as opposed to working with dated whiny lefty-ism—I’m so over that particular trip).

 One of the best things about this Peak is that it’s located on Flinders Lane…Lane of Laneways. Mind you, the last peak I worked for was also in quite a strongly caffeinated location.

Another good thing is that it has workbays with a limited amount of roomies in each and with walls…high walls—thank crikey—rather than this terrible open plan, or even worse, open table business, where you can hardly hear yourself think. (Or that’s maybe meant to facilitate some sort of Gen-Y environment, where people with short attention spans network socially all the time.)

The Peak doesn’t seem too fussed about the fact that I’m a writer: I had to ‘come out’ at the interview, to explain my relative lack of professional ambition over the past few eras.  It does seem to employ other flexible odd-job type people with backgrounds in areas like IT and community development who also have other lives and projects, so it probably wasn’t too hard for them to get their heads around the concept. The projects I'm working on aren't dull but probably don’t reflect my true level of skill, tho if they did, I wouldn’t have the time nor the mental focus to write: so be it.

I’m also trying to build in an hour on each work day when I at least think or read about the subject on which I’m writing, even if I don’t get round to the actual writing, to maintain continuity.

 Otherwise—I’m still helping the helicopter parents and their spawn on some weekends, and doing sessional teaching in Creative Writing.  It’s funny what a difference context makes.  As a postgrad, we used to see sessional teaching as part of the structural oppression to which we were subjected.  But as an academic outsider—or a ‘practitioner’, as my script editor put it—sessional teaching seems like the perfect gig, compared to academic CW positions: you just walk in, do your thing, and walk out. No need to try and justify yourself endlessly according to awkward, often inappropriate academic criteria (for creative writers) and a minimum of admin. Compared to the teaching and administrative load at Bumbledore, it seems incredibly cruisey.  (Certainly, no one ever asks me if I could go over to the student dorm and tell so-and-so that the bus times to Fingal Bay have changed.)  On the other hand, I have large classes and not enough time to teach CW properly.  Bumbledore’s longer workshops and smaller classes (1:11 ratio) were much better in that regard.

Feline update: Otty turned 16 earlier this year and is now officially a grumpy old man, sleeping as Jessie did for the last couple of years for long periods of time in one place. Lulu continues not to be the biggest loser in the weight-stakes…I thought she might lose some weight once there was one less cat in the house to steal food from, but she continues to burgeon in the blimp stakes, despite their both being on a ‘science diet’. The latest weight loss innovation from Fitzroy Vet Village for her to try is a ‘treat ball’. This is a plastic ball with a spiral-shaped maze inside.  You put half the cat’s quota of dry feed inside, then she has to work out how to get it out through a hole: it’s a mental puzzle as well as calorie-burner. The vet nurse said, ‘I can’t recommend it highly enough, just in terms of focusing the cat’s attention.’ It seems, if nothing else, to have gotten rid of the hour or so of trashing the flat that happened most evenings, regardless of whether she’d been fed. It’s definitely given her a new focus in life.

 

Jessie: the return

I have sad news to report, which will explain my virtual absence from the net over the past week or so.  For about a month, I have noticed the increasingly strange behaviour of my 18 yo cat Jessie--already ridden with hyperthyroidism, if ridden is the right word, and highly resistant to taking the required medication.  Every now and then, she would stop eating all together.  The first time, I took her to the vet's and they put her on a drip, saying that she'd become dehydrated because her hyperthyroidism had gotten out of control.  I asked them if it was possible that she had something else as well, like cancer, because she looked like my cat Lenny when he had cancer, and wasn't overeating rather than not eating supposed to be a sign of hyperthryoidism?  They told me that she had eaten ravenously once they'd re-hydrated her, but I wasn't convinced.  It happened a couple of times again, but rather than make such an expensive excursion to the vet's, I coaxed her back into eating by feeding her barbecued chicken.

On the final occasion, she wouldn't eat the chicken at all, and I noticed that she growled sometimes when I picked her up.  I took her back to the vet, and said, 'There's definitely something with this cat.  I'm trying to medicate her regularly, and I've been feeding her barbecued chicken, but now she won't eat.'

The vet gave her a body exam and said that this time, she could feel a growth, whereas she hadn't been to do so before.  I could take her to a specialist for an ultrasound but she was certain there was a growth.  She said, 'Eleanor, you've got to put her down.'
Jessie started to push her head into my clothes. I burst into tears and said, 'Can't I have a couple of days to think this over?'
She said, 'Yes, but don't leave things too long.  It's not kind to let them linger.  Some people say they'd just like to let their pets fade away at home, but you don't know what pain they're going through.'

I took Jessie home and cried for about half a day, bursting into tears whenever I saw her.  To my surprise, she started to follow her routine again--yowling in the afternoon and waking me up in the morning for food. I began to think that maybe the problem was that I'd fed her Piedimonte's barbecued chicken rather than Coles'--equally greasy but not as smelly.  So I bought her some more chicken from Coles and started feeding her, almost on demand.  At the same time, I stopped giving her the hyperthyroidism med'n, as the vet hadn't re-filled her script.  Last Friday afternoon, Jessie even came out into the kitchen to watch me work then tottered onto the balcony and watched the world go by for an hour or so. I hadn't been able to make an appointment with my favourite vet for Friday or Saturday, so I was glad of that. But her world became increasingly smaller after Friday, limited to an hour on my bed at night, then under the bed till breakfast, then out again for a feed in the late afternoon before returning under the bed.  She was very skinny with a large distended chest-- even I felt I could feel a growth--and walked with an awkward lopsided gait. She could jump onto the bed but not the dressing table.  I began to worry that I was being cruel and that she was in pain, so I made an appointment for Monday.

When Monday came, she was still eating and following her routine--and I remembered that I'd invited lactose-intolerant vegetarians around for dinner.  I thought, how am I going to get my head round putting down a cat, burying her and cooking for lactose-intolerant vegetarians all in one day?  So I made another appointment for Wednesday, as it was the last day before I went away. 

On Tuesday night, she slept on my bed for a short while but went underneath after I freaked her out with a restless-leg-syndrome moment, which I occasionally experience.  She woke me up at 6 am, demanding to be fed then went back under the bed.  I tried to coax her out mid-morning to see how she was, but she turned round in her basket and put her back to me.

When the fatal hour came, I was in two minds, because she was still eating but I could see she was sick.  It would only be a matter of time, and who would have the patience to feed her BBQ chicken on demand for the week and a half while I was away?  I didn't want her to end up like Leonard, fading away under the futon two days' after I'd gone overseas.  I didn't imagine that she'd rally, either, and live for another couple of years if I kept on feeding her.

When I put her in the cage, she seemed more upset and disoriented by the prospect of travel than I'd ever seen her and pressed her cheek against the grille closest to me in the car while I drove her to the vet's.

I took her into the vet and explained my dilemma, and she said, 'It's your decision but little Jess's long-term prognosis isn't good.'

She said the fact that she was eating was probably a false indicator, because hyperthyroid cats are ravenous without medication, and that she 'looked terrible'.

I said I knew the logical thing to do was to put her down, especially since I was going away.  And the vet said, 'But that's not how it feels, is it?'

They left me with the cat for five minutes, then came back, and I said I agreed, it was the right thing to do. 

A vet nurse came in and held her while the vet shaved her leg and inserted the needle.  She said, 'She's so skinny, her veins are popping out.'

It was all over very quickly, and the vet nurse said she felt Jessie heave a great sigh, 'As they do.'

I waited there with Jess for another few minutes before they came back and wrapped her up for me to take home.  It was a strange moment, a situation I'd been in before, waiting with a body when you see the life has gone and you just want to leave.  I have to admit to some relief once the decision was made: it somehow wasn't as bad as being told she didn't have long to live and the whole mental anguish of working out exactly when to make the decision.  Even if I'd stayed in Melbourne to be with her, things wouldn't necessarily have been better for her.  She might just have had another ten days of pain.

<n.b. scratchmark on nose--no sympathy in the feline world, even on your deathbed>

I'd been in contact all week with A, an old flatmate, charting the course of events.  She'd said I could bury the cat at her place where we'd both lived.  I said to her, 'If you're not careful, you're going to end up with a train of middle-aged women who live in flats, coming to bury their pets in your garden.'

When I arrived at A's, she had already started digging a grave in the front garden.  It was a fitting place for her to return to country, because Jess had often sat in the window-frame above, looking out onto the street.

I laid my little grey possum to rest in an old Dangerfield bag (biodegradable) between two rosebushes. Later, I took round the gravemarker I'd used for Leonard -- a red ceramic cat holding one paw in a power salute that I'd bought in Chinatown in San Fransciso--and placed it on the spot.  In the evening another old flatmate came round, and we had a wake for Jessie--something she would probably have hated, being such a gentle timorous soul, tho I have memories of her sunning herself in that room while we had weekend brunches.

It's not such a bad juncture to be leaving town tho I'm a bit mystified as to why these cats always seem to die around the time I'm about to go on holidays.  I still have the other two cats, of course, whom I suspect see me as a contemporary, a fellow member of the cat colony, rather than their owner.  Jessie and I still had something of the traditional pet-owner relationship: she never quite bonded with the subsequent usurpers. She was my gentle grey princess, my oldest cat, the one who had been with me the longest and through every move with me.  

big little Melbourne

The other night at a Day of the Dead celebration, I ran into a woman I’d met once before.  We’re both from interstate and we said how much we liked this aspect of Melbourne: that’s it’s like a series of interlinked communities.  And that it’s so friendly.

When I first came back to Melbourne and found that it had become ‘Big Melbourne’, I was a bit worried that it might have caught up with some of the worst excesses of living in Sydney.  It has, in some ways: the real estate prices, for example. A friend who hadn’t been there for ten years didn’t recognize what Spencer St Station had become.

You can have that Big Melbourne, Marvellous Melbourne experience (a re-run of its gold rush glory days?) Or you can go small and potter between various communities and groups of friends.  Like the Grid itself with its laneways.  There’s also the sense that its inner suburbs have opened up and spawned more neighbourhoods: the Fitroyalty area holds less sway than it once did.

The woman I spoke to had worked for many years for Qantas.  She said it was a well-known caveat that the Sydney flight crews were harder work; that the Melbourne crews were friendlier and easier going.  She (or someone else there) said, ‘Sydney’s like the glamorous, snooty older sister.  Melbourne’s like the plainer, more down-to-earth sister.’

I’ve heard the one about Sydney being the sultry blonde and Melbourne being the cool brunette, but being a plainer, less glamorous younger sister, I can relate to that one (tho my sister can hardly be said to be snooty).

good bad TV or bad good TV

One of the good things about having a virus is that you can treat yourself to watching some high quality trash on the couch.

 I’ve found a source in Brothers and Sisters, the first season of which I’m now watching from the beginning, having only seen a couple of episodes before and not made much sense of them.

 It seems to be about people shagging the wrong people—but that’s probably the basic premise of most drama, apart from people killing the wrong people.

 It’s really borderline trash—not enough brain power or serious development for it to be HBO-standard quality drama—but not quite the level of soap either (maybe on a bit below Boston Legal, that sort of thing).  Somewhat disappointingly, Rachel Griffiths plays a mumsy, salt-of-the-earth type.

 But sometimes, there’s some truly execrable dialogue, spoken in part by a bug-eyed Callista Flockhart:

K: I need to tell you something.

J: You slept with him?

K: Yup.  I was drunk, it was a mistake.  I’d just found out about my father’s infidelity.

J: Kate, Kate!  There’s no excuse that matters, not one.

K: Jonathan, please tell me I have a chance with you!  The us that I saw today was much better than the we I saw last night.  I just lost you forever, didn’t I?

Oh my!

Man Built a Sanctuary for Homeless Cats

The Secret Go-Girl Files of Dr Tan

In case you're wondering about the recent video link that has appeared on my FB profile, I present for your edification the secret go-girl files of Dr Tan from over the past couple of weeks.

 If you're also wondering, more to the point, what a gay male 50-something (oops, I meant 20-something!) Hong Kong cinema expert in Macau could be doing, busying himself in marketing a 'p-mate' for women, well, remember the 90s when everything was supposedly 'queer'.

And yes, it does seem that the go-girl is something that you can carry in your back jeans pocket and use in a park.  I can also see it being put to great use on the Larapinta trail.

<Dr Tan>

Hey Auntie E, have you heard about go-girl? A thingy that helps women standing up peeing...This is a serious question. S

<Me>

How could it be serious -- I laughed before I got to the end of the email.

Is it something you can carry in your backjeans pocket? Or will everyone know you are a go-girl?

<Dr Tan>

You can buy go-girl on the net. Yes it is apparently very versatile. It (including variations of Gogirl) comes in disposal form and also recyclable form--the latter includes liner and cleaner (citric smelling). Very portable too...one can carry it around like a tampon or condom. I am surprised that Gogirl and such is not as widely used. It seems a verypractical invention. and the Go-girls have called it 'gender gapper". A friend of mine in China is interested in doing a Gogirl revolutionthere and has asked me to do some research...Gogirl may well bring me the proverbial pot of gold--haha! Go Tan Go

<Me>

I imagine it's useful with the squat toilet situation. I have become constipated in Asia just at the mere thought of polluted squat toilets while everyone else gets Bali belly.

Can you use it in a public park...with your leg cocked against a tree?

I'm not sure how much detail I should ask for...

Note to self about staying alive while in concussed state

I am writing this note to self to make it clear to self that I am not dying of concussion (else how would I have the focus to pull a few sentences together?) and also to stave off possibly of dying after having fallen asleep in concussed state, in manner of tragic child characters in Hollywood movies.

The occasion of my concussed state was this: while riding my road bike down St Georges Road at one o'clock this sunny afternoon in hope of making it all the way down to St Kilda, my back wheel caught in a tram track and I fell backwards onto my right shoulder, hitting my head on the bitumen.

Freeze that frame: There was a scary moment when I thought, My head's going to hit the bitumen now.

When I picked myself up, I took my helmet off and found it was cracked in several places. I touched the back of my head, which I've now done several times this afternoon, and there was no sensation of bruising, swelling, grazing or anything except a distinct feeling of having been jarred. So helmets really do work, despite their rather lightweight appearance.

I went and sat on a bus seat and a man raced out of a restaurant nearby to see if I was all right (several people made noises: I hit the road pretty loudly, but he was the only one to come to my aid).  He brought me a glass of water, while I 'monitored' my state to see if there was anything really wrong and whether I was concussed.  He pointed out that my back wheel was buckled, and offered me and my bike a lift home. (n.b. helpful passerby was a Pom: I entertain a theory that American (definitely) and European men have better manners than Australian ones, tho perhaps the same could be said for the womenfolk?) I asked him to take me to the bike shop instead, to save me going back there later with remains of bike (it was closer than home).  Also had no desire to go back to flat and die Lonely Death of Strange Single Cat Woman with Concussion.

I then caught what the Other Ellie (not that she likes me calling her this) calls the Secret Tram: the one that slides up along Park St into St Kilda, all the while musing upon what a splendid cycling day it had turned out to be and the fact there were people around me meant that hopefully one of them would send me to A & E, should I keel over (tho no swelling, haematoma, loss of consciousness that I could feel).

I further dealt with the minor concussion by downing two champagnes and a white wine with the Other Ellie at the Galleon, the end result being that I just felt incredibly tired.  Ellie says I only lost it once during the afternoon, but I'm sure it was at least five times.

After drinks at the Galleon, had gloomy phone call from bike shop in which they said that wheel was buckled so irreparably as to need to be replaced, along with handle bars, and various mutterings about carbon forks...as if they didn't think it was worth replacing, which all sounds bad, as tho it'll cost heaps (they'll give me a price tomorrow).  But I can't let that bike go: there are too many memories associated with it.  It'd be worse than giving up my Territorian numberplates.  Not only that, but yesterday I got a parking fine for not noticing I'd parked in a ticketed area...just after declaring I would save and not spend money on silly things now that I had been reasonably sated with Melburnian-ness, esp because I had enough books, clothes, shoes, etc, to last me another year.  Sudden expenses always pop up once I make some commitment to budget and save big time.

Now on couch, saying 'focus, focus' to self under breath and 'stay alive, don't fall asleep in manner of tragic Hollywood starlet with concussion,' etc.  To keep me awake for another couple of hours, I have with me part 1 of an Eric Rohmer omnibus (even worse--the early Eric Rohmer), which I picked up in an idle moment in a DVD shop.  It will no doubt be full of teeny French gels in teeny French bikinis on grey pebbly French beaches, eyeing off teeny French garcons and saying, 'quel sportif!' How it will stand between me and a deep sleep,  I don't know.  Wake me up tomorrow am, if I don't appear on Facebook.

The Election from a Near-Octogenarian's p-o-v

Dear Elsewhere,

I went off to Whitebread West school to vote just prior to midday;  there was Tony Abbott and John Alexander, but they had so many people around them I could not get a photo.  I had brought my old Olympus 4 m.p. which refuses to give up and you cant see the pix in the sun.

When I arrived at the Polling Station they said Maxine was due any moment.  I voted, and there she was ( plus a lot of cameras).  I am hoping to attach five pics.  One is of future development at the School, two are of Maxine and they were hard to get (3 cheers for being tall) and one is of the new Aurora Assembly Hall.  Also one of campaigners with balloons.
 
Am trying desperately to do the attachments - Vista is a cow of a program.
 
Now I have had a message to say that Microsoft are restricting me from sending the photos.  I'll try some other way.  I get so mad that I feel like going out and buying the best Apple notebook on the market, and I probably will when I get my tax sorted out in October.
 
In the meantime I hope you are all well and things are good with you.  I'm very fed up with the cold weather because it has restricted me in what I would like to do, but it's no big deal really.   It was good to see the cousins again when they came down on the 17th August and we went to the Leagues club with Betty, who was rather glum.
 
Lots of love,
 
Mum XX

Keep the flags flying

I'm sitting here in an almost cube-shaped room at the back of the L-girl's house on the northside of Alice.  It's a perfect ad hoc writer's studio, with a large desk bequeathed by a well-known local poet and a caveat by Salman Rushdie pinned to the wall.  I have actually gotten things done today.  It reminds me a little of my desk in my studio at MacDowell: I even have an Alice Munro collection of short stories beside a bed with crocheted rugs on top.  But instead of looking out at pine trees, turkeys and blackberries, I see spinifex, orange mulch, dark shrubs with hard-edged leaves and an orange tree in full fruit.  Tibetan prayer flags flutter in the breeze...I've never had much truck with them but it is somehow soothing to watch flags flapping.

As for Alice Springs in the winter...hmm, it looks warm out there but it ain't.  Plenty of bright light and space.  I've become used to living in a smaller place already and being on streets full of people. The local paper touts a bizarre histrionic headline — 'Stabbed for an ipod' — ah, home sweet home. 

I haven't moved back; I'm here for a conference next week.  I'm glad I came early so I can grab a breather before what we are promised will be five days of 9.5 hours work.  900 people are coming, and already I feel a little protective of Alice -- my old town -- wondering what the response will be to the place.  Will people rush in, tutting at all the racism in the place (not to mention ‘the Internvetion’), then fly off like a storm of locusts?  There is a lot of deeply-embedded racism here, much of which is more direct, less veiled than you'd see on a daily basis in a major city.  But it’s complicated.  And there's so more to the place.

Conversation with older woman in the occasional junk shop at Clifton Hill

Her: Hazel gave the best years of her life for him, building his career, and the other woman gets all the accolades now.  Hazel was a wonderful woman!

Me: Yes, she was.  I remember.

Her:  Terrible things have happened in my life too, and at the end of the day, you just have to put them behind you, and take pleasure in your children and grandchildren.

Me: Yeah, you just have to keep on going, otherwise you’ll keep on living those things from the past over and over again.

Her: But Hazel!  She should have gotten something better than all this.

Me: Perhaps she just fell for the wrong guy.  I know that sounds simple, but…it happens.

[Woman smiles and touches me on the arm]

Woman: You know, an Italian man flirted with me earlier today.  And I’m 73!  Think of that.