Greenie, Birdo, Foodie, and Karaoke nut

1979
I am born in October.
Mum's water didn't break so the doctor broke it with a hammer thingy and scratched my head in the process.  They didn't tell mum, just handed her a baby with a massive lump on its head.  For years I claimed I could still feel the lump.
The family GP gives mum a copy of "Custard The Cowardly Dragon" which features a heroine named Belinda.

1980

I turn 1.
I don't remember it.

1981
 
I turn 2.
I don't remember it, but we fly to Melbourne to visit my aunt and newborn cousin. (this might have been in 1982)

1982

I turn 3.
I don't remember anything else.

1983

I turn 4.
For my birthday I get a book about how I'm all grown up now I'm 4 years old.

1984

The family drives to Melbourne to visit my aunt, uncle and cousin.  I have vague memories of this trip.
I turn 5.
Either 1984 or 85 we travel to Dongara.  Dad plays Ravel's Bolero (made famous by ice dancers Torvil and Dean) as we drive through the sand dunes.  Bolero is forever more "sandhill music".
My brother catches blowfish, I keep some in a bucket for a day or two, then my brother "pops" them and disposes of them.  I swear they came in blue and green colours, but now I know my local fish, the Weeping Toadfish comes in one colour - a creamy, greenish/brown.

My pre-school teachers are Mrs King and Mrs Hedland. 
I have a ladybug cake for my birthday at school.
All us kids dig a complex series of channels and bridges in the sandpit.

1985

The family road trip is to Busselton and Augusta.
Our cabin in Busselton smells of the kerosene heater.
My brother catches a flounder.
We visit Jewel, Lake and Yallingup (Nigilgi) caves.  A water drop falls on mum and the tour guide tells everyone, "okay everyone on three.  One. Two. Three." *everyone goes "awwwww"*
Oddly I can't remember where we stayed in Augusta.
I turn 6.  My mum invites my "friends from school".  Most of those girls I didn't regard as my friends.

I start primary school
My teacher is Mrs O'Mara.
My best friend is Lisa Willmot, a girl the rest of the students have collectively decided is the lowest rung on the pecking order.  This puts me on the second lowest rung.

For Christmas I get a trampoline (probably a joint gift to me and my siblings).  And I get an orange pony toy with apples on her butt.  Applejack is my first My Little Pony.

1986

We travel to Cervantes to stay with mum's cousin.
There are sea hares all over the beach.
I am in grade 2.  My teacher is Mrs Robinson.
We have two class goldfish named Fergie and Andrew.  Eventually they die and some of the kids blame me because I accidentally dropped this craft thingy made of a toilet roll into the bowl briefly.

This year and all through pre-primary school I am bullied, pins are put on my chair, I am accosted for my lunch money and sometimes walk home the long way to avoid this.
Because I have few/no friends I often eat lunch in the toilets, which feels safer.
One time I retreat to the toilets when chased by bullies and make "wooooo" noises like a ghost in hopes of scaring them off.  A teacher comes in and tells me off for making the noise and makes me stand in a corner of a building for the rest of lunch.  I cry while I'm there.  It's also not a safe place to be outside like that.
I see dog faces in the terrazzo walls of the toilet cubicles.
I hate the large gap at the bottom of the doors and walls - some kids peek underneath them.
Thursday is fishburger day.  I still remember the taste.  I buy fruit balls with my canteen change, that way the bullies can't get money out of me.
If I can, I sit in the library most of lunch.  No wonder I became a bookworm.  For a few years I pretty much refuse to read fiction, only reading "fact books".

1987

Family road trip to Broome.  Nanna Forbes comes with us.
I need to find my diary from this trip.  Written in soft lead, smudging, pencil and a child's messy handwriting.
In Minilya we end up camped "next to a cesspit".
We stay at Wittenoom overnight and visit Wittenoom gorge where we have a close call with a kangaroo and collect rocks, some containing asbestos.
In Sandfire a friendly black cat sleeps in Nanna Forbes' feet and cows wander through the campground at night.
I fall in love with Broome.

I am in 3rd grade.
My teacher is Mrs Rennick.
We have a class bunny called Nibbles, who pees in Mrs Rennick's lap one time.

Saturdays are shopping day.  I sometimes throw tantrums when I want something.  Sometimes I get what I want.  Specifically the My Little Pony Pretty Parlour and a beautiful big book called The Atlas Of World Wildlife.  I love both things, and I still have them to this day.  The book is probably one of the foundations of my lasting love of nature.

1988

Road trip to Monkey Mia.  We stay in an onsite van on the beach.  The woman next to us has a black cat.
I feed and pet the dolphins.  None of these things are possible these days.
We meet a woman with hands attached straight to her shoulders - no arms.  She is a thalidomide baby.


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This Podcast Will Kill You has finally started their series on pregnancy, which I have been keen to listen to.

I've already cried once at the tale of a dismissive doctor and a way-too-early labour, resulting in the baby surviving only 3 hours.

I have zero desire to carry, birth, or raise a child.  I am TERRIFIED by the concept.  Listening to all the things that can go wrong at any stage, from conception for the life of that child, however long it ends up being, scares the shit out of me and that just one of many nopes as to why I don't want my own children.

But, I DO feel the joy and sadness and grief by people who desperately wanted those children.  And the fear of those who have unwanted pregnancies and hope that they have access to whatever course of action is best for them.

I remember in my teen years I'd always fancy being in a band.  Once I even made some posters for a band, asking for other folks who'd like to join.  But I had no idea what actually went into BEING a band.

I also thought a song was written by someone, and it was something they came up with in their head then wrote or played the whole thing and recorded it like that.   I had absolutely no clue that songs are generally a case of someone writing music, someone else writing lyrics and finding which two pieces fit, then a producer going over the recording and chopping and changing and rearranging until it sounded good and that was the finished piece.

I've only learned about this process really in the last few years.  No wonder I was never able to actually be in a band or write any actual music, I 
misunderstood the whole process.  I feel it's the same way for a lot of things.

 Me at various times throughout the years around neurodivergent folks.

"I totally sympathise/empathise with you because my brain does the same dumb things."

But at the same time my un/under-diagnosed ass is like

"Why do YOU get to use it as an excuse/reason for things?  Why are YOU allowed to be open about it when I feel like I have to mask mask mask.  I mean, I don't even feel like I can be open about it with you, someone with the same afflictions as me, because I haven't been diagnosed so maybe I'm just pretending??"

You could replace neurodivergent with queer/non-hetero/non-monogamous/non-allosexual/non-alloromantic and masking with being subtly in the closet.

Back in the 90s I listened to Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette so much that I became totally over the album and haven't listened to it for many years.  Being over an album or song is not hating it.  It's just, "this is probably quality, but I have heard it so many damn times that I don't need to again."

But now I'm having a listen again and being surprised by actually how quality this album is, despite Morissette's weird breathy wheezy vocals.  Even You Oughta Know is a decent song listened to with an objective ear.

And then there's track 3.  A song that hit me hard during my teens and did once again, now I'm in my early 40s.

 Well, 2021 was a doozy. Brother got diagnosed with cancer. He proposed to his longtime girlfriend. We had some trouble getting the tenants out of our house but by the start of May - 2 months later than originally planned - we moved into our home. My nephew got married. My brother went through lots of treatment and is now in remission! Got engaged. Had my car smashed into. Spilled tahini on the floor right near closing at work.

 If I eat from a regular plated meal - I'll tend to eat everything on the plate, even if it's too much.

If I have a small plated meal - I'll eat everything, and sometimes still be hungry.

If I can graze from a big plate/bowl - I often stop myself once I am full.  One notable exception is the salads I make which I tend to scoff way too much of.  But perhaps this is a way to control my intake?

The houses are well established and a decent percentage are owner-occupied.  There are plenty of big established trees, lots of natives, lots of fruit trees.  I wonder if that tree down the road was a pistachio?  Plenty of parklands, and a short walk to Talbot Bushland.

From some points you can see all the way across to Roe Highway, across the ugly new Movida estate, where houses that all look the same are situated on tiny blocks with rudimentary gardens, a few small shrubs and goddamn lawn.  Come summer they will roast while we'll be quite comfortable in shady greenery.

It's somewhat easy to tell the rentals and owner-occupied places apart.  Renters don't have the luxury of being able to make long-term projects of the garden, so the yard usually consists of a few scrappy trees and bushes and a weedy lawn.

After years of renting I finally have the opportunity to work on my yard, take the time to meld it to my vision.

Another thing I noticed - we don't have overhead powerlines!  They must have been undergrounded at some stage.  Nice.

I recently discovered that Marty Robbins wrote two sequels to El Paso.  In them he tells Rosita’s side of the story – that she met a dashing cowboy who made a mistake and got shot and then in the end she kills HERSELF over it all and it made me throw up in my mouth a bit.

The original song tells the tale of a cowboy who goes to a remote cantina, falls in love with the dancing girl (Rosita), one night sees the dancing girl drinking with another guy so he shoots him in a jealous rage, runs away, steals a horse (a hanging offence in the old west) and goes to ground briefly.  Then he is so overcome by his need (‘love’) to see the dancing girl again that he rides back into town and is promptly shot by the local posse.  In the last verse the dancing girl is by his side, and she kisses him before he dies.

These days I have a different personal interpretation.  Nowhere in the song does it state that his love for Rosita is reciprocated.  As the dancing girl, it stands to reason that she might be sitting and drinking with whichever customer pays the highest price, but for the narrator, how dare another man make moves on the woman he’s obsessed with, even if she doesn’t know who he is.  So, for an obsession, this guy commits murder and grand theft and then is STILL so obsessed that he gets himself killed returning to the scene of the crime.  The last verse to me is obviously a hallucination.

 

I’ve spent the last few days of 2018 (and the first of 2019) listening to these guys an awful lot. The three Kiszka brothers (two of them are twins!) and friend on the drums look and sound like they were plucked right from the best of 60s and 70s classic rock. It seems half the world hates them because they look and sound pretty much exactly like Led Zeppelin, and the other half loves them because they look and sound pretty much exactly like Led Zeppelin. I’m firmly in the LOVE camp, I’ll gladly listen to a new breed of musicians working to resurrect the old sounds. Long live rock ‘n’ roll.