Friday, February 29, 2008

I'm Back!!!!


I got back home yesterday 28th Feb...


Happy for the time spent with my two daughters and two of my sisters.

(two of my four sisters - Veronica in front "she who must be obeyed...Atilla of the hens...and Joan, born six years to the day after me and with whom I had to share my birthday cakes...sacre bleu that was hard)

I had a great 54th birthday... a birthday I share with my younger sister Joanie (48)...I flew up to Brisbane, where my sisters are...

then down to Sydney (it is cheaper to fly up to Brisbane and down to Sydney than to fly regional from Port Macquarie to Sydney (sorry international folk... this will only make sense to Australians) ...Sydney is where Melissa and her husband Chris live.


Melissa and I

Then on to Melbourne... where Alison and Andrew are....

(Alison and I )


back home yesterday to a happy dog and pouring rain and a big mess of weeds etc outside my place... not to worry...

will catch up with all soon : )





Saturday, February 23, 2008

Can't find my links!!!

Am away till the 28th Feb or 1st March...had a look on my blog on the Internet cafe and it seems to have eaten my links hope its not someone mucking about with my computer at home. For some reason people seem to turn on my computer when I am away from home and I come back to find settings changed. I am pleased that people stay at the house because its out of town and better than coming back to a house emptied of all its goodies...but even though people have their own computers they seem to turn mine on as if its public property.

I think next time I go away I will put a lock on that door. I feel and no doubt the rest of you feel like this, but I feel that when they go into that room where I have all my personal stuff, letters from mum and dad and everything private, that it is an invasion of my privacy. Why when they have the whole house to roam in would people assume to do this. I am a bit angry really and am going to have to deal with that when I get back.

Re the blog... I choose what to post and am well aware its an open book but thats the choice I make. I just do not understand that quite a few people these days have no idea of boundaries. Everyone I know has a computer just about and as my house is only being used every few days for a night...its got me beat why they would need to turn on my computer...

I just love getting messages while I am away that the computer is refusing to shut down and wanting to go through some process (which I can't see because I am a few hundred KMS away...but which I know doesn't sound good) and then knowing that its likely there will be problems with it when I get home.

It can't just be me who finds this sort of behaviour rude... Melissa and Alison were really amazed and wanted to know what sort of people would do this... there are 2 types of people I told them...those who would never do this without express permission and those who wouldn't even think they had to ask...

When I get home I am going to slap passwords on everything as its an open slather the way I have it...aaaarrrgghhh... lucky I have no financial details on it ...still use a cheque book and debit card...

Hopefully all the links will reappear... and will check in on all when I can...

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Two hearts...

This time last year as CS reminded me... it was my birthday (be 54 this time) Don came into the room with a gold chain with two hearts on it drapped about his head and a big silly grin...loved that grin soo much.

We were never jewellery type people and this pressie was different for us...always been sooo practical.


It didn't fit as the chain was too short... so I put it to the side so as to go to the jewellers to get a longer chain (which I have now)... in the mean time Don who was ill when he gave it to me became much worse...went to hospital trusting they would care for him. They killed him...and now I have the chain and hearts, and the fight for justice. I would give anything this birthday to just have 'the Don'.
You can have your bloody sterile hybrid roses and chemical ladden chocolates... the smile and pleasure on my husband's face adorned with the pressie is all the romance and treasure I will need and want for the rest of my life.
he was so bloody pleased with himself.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

DADDY COOL BAND
For all you foreigners..this was big time coool in Australia in the early '70's and I loved this crew....

And like with Russell Morris... here they are old but better (of course)


RUSSELL MORRIS.........

When I was a Teeny Bop in the late 1960's I would have sold my soul for a night with this gent... well known in Australia...he was so pretty...



and now that he is as old as I this still makes me cry or is it sigh...weak thing that I am...

I saw on tele some time back that when he and Brian Cadd did this they were soooo stoned (the first one - in 1969) the song got longer and longer and longer... and they just recorded it as it came out and there it was a Hit... In Australia....

Life’s not fair but then it is gloriously so.
a bit of a thought train
Life’s not fair. Get used to it. Once you do and stop uselessly flailing about feeling aggrieved about the things that can’t be changed you can begin to change the things that can be changed maybe help to enable life to be a little fairer for those around you. Some are born bright, beautiful, cashed up; most are not. Some are dumb as mutton, ugly as toads, poor, hungry, sick, and die young - horribly; but there it is. Life’s not fair. Screw this small phrase up and throw it in the garbage can of reality. It doesn’t need to be said again.

My Dad had worked at the Meatworks, five days a week lifting a couple of hundred of sheep a day onto the conveyer belt aged forty-nine. On the weekend he worked his small wood cutting business and in between this, in his spare time he had a large vegetable garden, kept neat another acre of ground, had a chook run and then would surprise Mum sometimes when she came home from Mass on Sundays by using the time she was away to do a bit of a Spring Clean in the house and cook Lamb’s Fry with onion gravy.

(Dad in his vege garden)

He did this uncomplainingly having started work at age twelve at the Meatworks; going rabbit trapping, kangaroo shooting for skins and meat all through the Depression and taking care of his Mother’s needs for the many years after the Father died.

And I never heard him complain about the work or his lot in life. All I heard sometimes was his saying he was tired… fair enough.

Mostly he was a happy father, especially before we reached our teen years – teenage daughters “confused” him (a common happening). If he wasn’t away working he would make our birthday cakes, covering them with smarties and chocolate drops, because this very strong stocky man liked doing this… there was no division… he was never separate from us as some Dads are, he was a part of the whole. On Mother’s day Mum would get a small box of Cadbury’s chocolates and a “ Mother” teacup and saucer.

Killed at forty-nine walking on his way home one wintry evening, only a hundred yards from home by a drunk driver with the same Masonic handshake as the Judge and lawyer bastards.

When I was eight he fell out of the upper branches of a willow tree while working for the Water Conservation and Irrigation Department. They planted thousands of these trees all up and down the Hunter River to stop soil erosion, never considering that the willows themselves would become feral plants. His back was broken but not his spine luckily and he spent about two months in Maitland hospital lying very still so as not to damage the spine (unbelievable considering what later happened to my husband). What on earth we all lived on in those days I have no idea. There were four of us kids and Mum. Grandfather helped a lot, but worker’s Compensation was inadequate and it was a lean time all round. Months of recovery.

(Dad with June and I - she got the curls)

I never heard him complain nor whinge. My main memories are of his open face, his lovely smile and a thick, (once blue black but almost white by forty nine) head of hair which he tried so hard to control in those short hair days.

Another time when I was even younger his head went through an old fashioned windscreen, which splintered like daggers unlike the modern ones, which shatter – badly cut.

Again being scalded by an industrial steam hose front and back – badly burnt, hospitalised and in a lot of pain, some time in bandages at home… lean times again although hurt at work.

I recall his rare shots of temper mainly when we became teenagers and back lipped him… not too often, and mum used to laugh when she told the story of his trying to fix up the old wooden cot for the next baby and it all fell apart a bit…he lost his cool and kicked it right round the verandah where it really fell apart. Then he had to put it back together again… needs must.

Life may have appeared unfair for him but he didn’t act that way. That’s important. Life was even less fair for others… he would have known that… we are all somewhere on the sliding scale…

There was an old couple I think that their last name was Jones but am unsure. They lived in an unlined corrugated iron hut. They had nothing, but each other, and I recall the pair of them both tall and thin and somehow with a dignity. It must have been alternatively stinking hot and freezing cold in their hut. People were poorer then and that’s a fact.
(Dad with Joanie)
Mum told me that Dad and another man – I think he was Mr White used to deliver wood to them each winter free or at a hugely reduced price…depending. She laughed once when she told me that late one cold evening they were delivering the wood and left the hand brake off on the car (Dad used the boot of our car for his wood). The hut was damaged when the car slipped into it, so they worked off their tipsiness in the hours that followed and the next day repairing the damage. I know how Dad would have treated them and I know that he would have made sure everything was fixed and then more. He was like that.

Just a thought, a strange coincidence was that the exact spot on the road where Dad was killed, the old man in this story was also hit by a car and so badly injured he never really recovered.
Life maybe is not fair. But in saying this it is easy to find others that it is even less fair to.

It is less fair to those whose lives are lived surrounded by violence, raised in hate and ignorance, narrowness, hunger and catastrophes of other sorts.


{Dad with Annie Jackie) not too long before he was killed.}

Some appear to sail through life with just the expected loss of aged parents, healthy children, many healthy grandchildren and enough of the things which make life pleasant. Many of these people are also true and good people; many are also evil and greedy bastards…

For others the road is rough and life lurches from crisis to crisis. Some cause their own crises. For some crises finds them. For most of us it’s a mixture. Same as with those who seem to have it easy, there are good and bad people. Not all poor deprived people are good people, and it s a fool who thinks and generalises this way.

When we accept that life’s not fair and when we know that that balance will be struck for us all after death (my belief – won’t know about it if it isn’t), for me it gains a meaning and makes sense. This may be my own foolishness or not, but the wonderful thing is it is still a free world this way and no matter what we humans believe, think dream, study about life and death no matter what… nothing we think really will change the reality that has existed in the Universes before this one and on till infinity. I find a glory in the thought of this vast amount of time and in the size of things…it frightens others…again it’s a free world - sometimes.

Somehow for me, I found myself born amongst some of the finest people – boat people all. The Irish Famine years and the starvation drove out my Catholic ancestors; my Protestant ancestors driven out by hunger, which dogged the working people in England and Ireland during the Industrial revolution and land enclosures. God bless the aristocracy.

I’ve studied the history of my people who read their books at night, in the quiet bush houses they lived in. Mum told me of the long poems and stories by rote that were recited when she was a child. She told me of the music and the singing, performed for each other and because they could… in the daytime they broke horses, herded sheep and cattle, dug deep into the soil of the new land.

When I was a kid these wonderful people’s children and grand children all seemed to be in the last decades of their lives. I saw them out and I remember them, the quality of them had nothing to do with either money nor profession. Poverty was one step from disaster always but to me they were so rich and again I remember only one of them who complained and she did so often…for the rest they went about life and dying with what seemed to me as a kid to be the gentle passing of time… I try to recall this for myself to emulate.

What stays with me was that unlike too many of us today they did not lay the guilt of the world upon childish shoulders something I consider one of the worst of crimes.

One of my brothers in law is all gloom and doom.I hate bloody gloom and doom and hard done-by men and women. Selfish, doling out what should be freely plonked on the family table at payday and all and sundry divided as to needs of the whole first before the individual. Mum and Dad had a great system. She raised us five, no washing machines etc…Dad worked hard as did she. It was a cooperative effort. On payday…it wasn’t dad’s pay it was his and mums to divvy up as needed. He would put it on the table and they would sit there and divide up what had to be done. Any small bit left over was a beer or a packet of smokes, petrol a magazine for mum or some chocolate. Often things were so tight this didn’t happen but Dad would do the extra work to make things better…not in a mean sniping way… but in the way a husband and wife should do…with generosity and respect, not seeing it as giving but seeing it as sharing…

The selfishness and childish behaviour I see from some adults has got me beat I remember my Father, my husband Don, my two grandfathers and Uncles Pat and Frank and in my mind’s eye I see them smiling, open, good with just enough wickedness to make them interesting…

(Don and melissa 1975)

I think of them as Kings in the true sense of the word.

Some things to consider – The Celtic Kings of Scotland and Ireland were the Kings of the people (way back) wheras the Kings of England were called just that… of England denoting ownership. The term King of the Scots – denoting responsibility, accountability, compassion for the people whom you are responsible to. In this they were Strong, really strong – as time drew closer to the junction of the Kingships under the Stuarts the Scot’s tradition became more English…which was of ownership of the people as opposed to responsibility. There were exceptions on both sides but the idea of the Celtic Kingship was stewardship whereas the idea of the Anglo Saxon and Norman was ownership.

There are still some real kings about but the qualities of responsibility, accountability, compassion for the people and true strength are very unfashionable these days.

The so called “Kings” are of bullies in Industry, Government and unhappy homes and are the antithesis of what men should be and women should accept.

Life is not fair, never fair and why should it be? Life just is and the things that we struggle against uselessly, sap us… exhaust us.

Each child born should hope to be born to a true King and Queen. For the small reflects the large. We can never have a decent world by expecting our leaders to act and change things. It will only be when we have real Kings and Queens as mothers and fathers who enable nobility into each family individually without interference from Government force. A mother and father like this enables the children to be what they can be, and also enables each other to live with dignity.

I feel so lucky in that under this I was born into a family with a tradition of many Kings and Queens who allowed, enabled, laughed and taught by example. Being born a middle child into the chaos and noise of our lovely old house gave me something I needed to do the best I could to be what I needed to be … myself.

In this way life was very fair to me. To outside eyes my life might seem to be one of many tragedies all piled up one upon the others with a few sweet years in between, but even with all these tragedies… I can be myself and was always allowed to be, and encouraged.

We are not here for any other reason than to do our best to “do the right thing, because it is the right thing to do”… not because we’re afraid of hell or what others will think of us, not because we seek favour with God or other people, not for posterity nor any other personal profit… just because the maxim serves itself and the whole universe. To live this way is to live the way of real Kings and Queens and the only way to live on the messy, dirty slippery slope of being that we call life and to emerge untouched at our core.

As I write this “thought train” for myself mainly and for our daughters I see before me the eyes of the people who came before me, from whom I have drawn so much. I see the man who shared all my adult years and lived beside me so bravely - (he was brave to take me on for a start). I was like and am rough cut glass to his rough cut Diamond and we suited…

I see the eyes of our daughters, open wide, clear, knowing ready to laugh at the drop of a hat.

I know life has its fairness for me in all of this –
It all depends on whether you go through life thinking your glass is half empty when really it is always half full.

(Don and Ali teaching her how to cook!!! about 1989)



-

Monday, February 11, 2008

Disturbing.. very disturbing...

Once this would have be unbelievable outside Nazi Germany or Lenin's Russia or today's China...this is US... we watch their tele shows, read their novels, love their people who are wonderful but whose legal system allow this despicable shit....

land of the free I don't think so...the Christian bulwark against savagery... I don't think so

a bunch of cruel poseurs aware of the camera and loving it...mmmm hope they all rot in jail both the men and women officers.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable...like pigs at a trough...is nothing sacred any more?... nothing excuses this stupid animalistic crap ...these police are barely human to dothis...is there another planet I can live on please...?

Friday, February 08, 2008

HOME INVASION!

Our house is on a floodplain (not a floodway which is scary stuff). Therefore it has to be on a mound which is above a one in one hundred year flood (Considering records have been kept for about 100 years here, thats a real comfort... not to worry, I can swim.
The house though, on top of the mound is flat to the ground which worked so well for Don's wheelchair... no bumps.
There ia a tidal creek behind the house, which is a bit overgrown with people's offcuts from the years before... but its a creek. A bit smelly at low tide but I make sure people know its not the toilet... we have an econocycle sewage system and it works well. Also our own tank water and solar hot water...
thats not the point... I digress.
Its 90%humidity here most days of late, in summer. Its been raining almost non stop since January. Things that creep and crawl and pounce and jump and fly are searching for higher ground. Not even game to look in the shed today... it stays shut till I get the tractor slasher in to mow the 3ft high grass which hides all the snakes (no joke).
Never been bitten at 53 so no worries.
The other night about 3am I woke up to the sound of a scratching, chewing sort of noise. Turned on the lights... nothing.
Back to bed. It kept going. I figured it was outside and small so go to sleep.
When I opened the big sliding screen door (luckily I had shut the galss door... down the bottom was a hole aout as round and big as a bread and butter plate... THROUGH THE SCREEN!... all the bits of it were everywhere and the boggest rat poos or something all about.... Something was trying hard to get in... must have been awfully disappointed... a bit freaky... screen fixed and just have to hope that it learned how futile it was to chew holes in our house....
Till I got it fixed had to keep the glass door shut so none of the red bellied black snakes we have slid in as they have done...
And I love this place we found. In the early morning I walk down to the front fence for the paper about an acre, the mist lays low and the sun touches everything so gently in almost makes me cry. The old red dog just watches me after walking a bit with me... and then comes to me as I get back... he's not really up to extra walking these days. There is a peace, worth the spiders and snakes and rats... Don and I lived together in a sort of solitude which we liked, and I see no reason to change. People are for outside and that works for me.
So rat traps etc to be bought.. have to hope its not a small possum or bandicoot or some other such just desparate for a warm night.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Someone just sent this to me....

just had to post... note the photo of Tony Blair behind him... they both probably were hatched out of the same nest... Tweedle dumb and Tweedledumber

Monday, February 04, 2008

Home happy but....
I spoke to Ali (youngest) on Friday...her first words were "I don't want you to worry mum..." thats a sure trigger for panic in any parent...last day out on the slopes at Whistler (Canada) and she hit some powder and fell hard on her arm. Said the pain was unbelievable but that First Aid said ithey didn't think it was broken but that the ligaments etc had been injured or something...only had few minutes on the phone...so she's flying home to Melbourne now, arm in a sling, very sore and sorry but happy... thats her nature... didn't have to happen and I know it could have been worse, but it has been worse for almost a decade... just a shame it had to happen at all.

But then she went on to tell me that she' just felt she'd got the hang of it that morning and of course going back for more when they save their pennies.

The trip from Vancouver takes fourteen hours straight with no stops to Sydney and then an hour or two conecting to Melbourne and another hour and half she lands into summer heat...


Her friend is doing all the carrying, so his arms will be pretty darn sore when he gets home...I know how she packs...she takes after me there ...

But I somehow think he'll manage...


I feel so happy for her right now...no matter what happens in life she's had this time...

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Can't sleep again...

No trouble getting there... crash. Don used to be talking to me and then he's say it was like I became unconsious...I have always been a morning person, like wanting to get up at the first touch of grey in the sky...but 3am is ridiculuous when I can't get to sleep before midnight. It comes and goes like this. Before Don's death, and before the last hospitilisation I would crash and sleep right through, unless someting happened in the night...

Sometimes I still do. LIke if I get through till five am these days I consider that a good night's sleep. It seems to come in waves...

Yesterday (sorry the day before) I was heading down the driveway and grabbed the mail. Inside was a packet with "responses" from Don's GP and Surgeon and the hospital. I stupidly read the GP's before I went into town, trying not to get angry or drive stupid. I may have mentioned I started excercises a few months back because I wasn't feeling well and am feeling better now physically... this is not your gym junkie sort of place...some of the women (only) are in their seventies and go down to 15... its not a weight loss place where everyone wears matching socks and sweat bands..nary a sweat band in sight ( I think you would be laughed at, chaffed at and flung shit at if you turned up looking all cutsie and matching) and I don't wear socks at all ...just some old tracky daks and a very loose old T shirt... thats the uniform if there is one... suits me... its about getting strong again, stopping joint problems, getting blood pressure down which was scaring me. Mine was definately stress related.



So at the place and I am punching away and the owner came round and said "You are doing really well today"... I said "Its called Anger".



The bloody rotton creeping jesus of a GP claimed in his response that he was up there on the right hand of God practically, that I never went with Don to any of his appointments so how did I know anything about what was said... either calling me a liar or Don... he wasn't, I'm not. Claiming we didn't try to get help for Don because we wouldn't drive down the highway to see a specialist... we couldn't Don was too sick. I had to watch him in the rear view mirror when we did drive in to see if he was passing out in the wheelchair...in to town was all we could do at that time. His lips were often tinged blue because of lack of oxygen.

I was at the surgery when Don went there in January. He had been very unwell. I was in the waiting room. It has to be understood that over the years when Don was not so unwell he would often go to the doctors by wheelchair taxi, because he was a lovely man and wanted to allow me that bit of time in the house to myself. When he was less well I would drive him and often wait out in the van. He had his own autonomy and that included his right to privacy at the doctors. Thats how we worked. When he was less well I went in with him because he could be very dizzy at times… but would just sit in the waiting room.


I'd like to see that smug little GP do as well as we did together.



Its laughable... he did remember Don putting his arm out the night he died, but not as three of us saw - trying to hold the ventilator for just a bit longer so he could be with us at home...NOOO... the arm went out because as he said Don was feeling a little pain as he (the Doc) tried to disconnect the ventilator.



I was so bloody angry at that I dry retched in the van. There was a lot of other stuff in there which made us look (or me really ) look agressive, stupid, uncaring whatever...all of which we thought he was...he's the passive agressive type..



So because he is just a good jolly hockey sticks pooncy pants of a Doc...the Commisssion decided without giving me the chance to respond to his version... to not even talk with him. he's off! Scot free. Not so the surgeon or the hospital but I am sure that the commission will bend over backwards... its a government commission and the NSW State Labor Gov does not want any more scandal re health.



The same day this happened I had a phone call from a solicitor. She ahd been in touch with a top Cardiothoracic Specialist and relayed the issues. The Specialist said she would never have even considered Don for that surgery... and in strong terms. So good news followed bad news. This made me feel like crying because this was the first professionjal to back up what we knew and be vocal about it unlike a spinal specialist who was at first shocked and then rethought because of her postition in caring for the hospital before the patient.



So I spent all yesterday resonding to the doctor's response, re reading stuff I haven't looked at for some time and as the solicitor asked, doing a timeline. I guess this explains to myself why it was such a shit night.



As I write this there is a lovely photo of my Don which I have to the left of me. It was taken just before Christmas 2006. He wasn't well here, but we were down at Town Beach and tea on the beach late one summer evening. It was a perfect day.


When ever I am asked by those who have no understanding why I am doing what I am... like some people say "Just let it go" I could no more let it go than I could if someone had taken him out and shot him. And that...condisered a murder and chased up by the authorities was nothing compared to what he suffered. And knowing him as well as I did I know I am doing exactly what I should be doing because it is the right thing to do and no other reasons needed.

For some people it might work the other way, but I'm not them. I know down the track that the quality of my internal life will be much better...

as it stands now the NSW State Coroner will decide soon if there is to be a Coronial Inquest. I sure hope so because then that will mean that those responsile and those who have lied to cover their mates' backs will be forced to go on the stand under oath. There is also the Investigation started in the Health care Complaints Commission... as said they are a bit soft... The daily Telegraph is sitting on the story waiting for the Coroner's decision...that exposition would be a blessing. I have a solicitor helping me get an indepedant Medical report done which is essential, the NSW Gov has called for a more extensive (or do I mean expensive ??) Inquiry after their last one was treated with derision when they handed down their findings, just before Christmas 2007.

Its just become daylight outside and it is a most beautiful morning... I do love mornings best... one thing that just flashed...we used to have an old piano out in my bedrom when I was about 12-16. My sister and I used to sleep in a room our dad added on to the verandah...as the family grew. She on a Saturday liked to sleep till about 11am... not me. I'd be up there at 7am a thumppin about on that old piano for about 3o mins till I got hungry for breakfast... then I'd leave her in peace (ha). She'd groan and cover her head but she knew it would be over soon and I'd be totally gone from the room...strange sister... I'd have complained more physically.
can't seem to get spell checker to work so hope not too many typos)