The way we are

Lately, I just have not been feeling myself. And in the process, I have lost my blogging mojo. My blogging mojo went AWOL. But yesterday, a very incredible thing happened: I felt like blogging.

And I nearly keeled over in sheer joy, because I have always loved reading and writing - but lately, I haven’t even felt like lifting a finger over in this neck of the woods. And I’ve missed my blog, and I’ve missed how deliciously brilliant all my blogging linky-buddies can be. Linky-buddies. Clearly a word.

Anyway, so I have exams in three weeks. These are semi-important, on account of the fact that I need a rather good average in order to get into post-grad Law. Right, so clearly these exams count, they’re important etc. So what have I been doing lately?

RE-WATCHING STAR WARS.

Of course. There can be no better form of procastination than getting back into a series you once loved. My friend has a similar philosophy, only she got back into West Wing. Yeah, and there’s like twelve series of that show. So obviously Stars Wars isn’t the worst choice in the world.

Anyway, for those that haven’t seen Star Wars: It’s about a boy, Anakin, who makes some pretty horrendous decisions (y’know, killing children and that sort of thing) and ends up becoming this warped piece of evil - Darth Vader.

But he’s not all evil, and at the very end of the series, just when his son (Luke) is about to die - he saves him. Warm fuzzies, right?

But the fact that Darth Vader goes from being completely evil and wanting to send his son to the dark side, and then suddenly becomes this mushy piece of goodness - well, that fact sent my friends and I into a deep, philosophical debate about the meaning of life.

Can a leopard really change its spots? How much of our personality is a part of us, and how much can we truly change?

Lately, I’ve noticed I have more of a tendency to listen to others. I never used to have that trait. I just talked all the time. And so perhaps that’s something I recognised that I didn’t like in myself - and I decided to change it. Or perhaps it’s just because I’m a little bit older now, a little bit wiser - and I haven’t truly changed, but rather I’ve grown up.

But then, I think the fact that I talk a lot is indicative of my mother, who also talks a lot. And the fact that I like a clean bathroom to the point of sparkling is indicative of my father, who also likes the old Ajax Spray ‘n Wipe. And because I’m always around my mother and father - I might always be like them. I might never be able to stop wiping down the bathroom benches, lest they one day grow so much grime that I realise I’ve created intelligent life.

So perhaps those are personality traits I can’t change, because they’re a part of who I am - and a consequence of all the decisions I’ve made, both the good and the bad.

But I also think there are personality traits you can change. My brother has a vicious temper. And I don’t mean that in the liberal sense of the word - I mean vicious with a capital V. I mean, punching walls and slamming doors and swearing like a fairy on crack. And in occured to me the other day, as he slammed the front door and stormed off in a fit of rage, that perhaps I have a vicious temper. And what was offending me so much about my brother cracking it royally was that it hit a little too close to home.

So lately, I’ve made an effort to be a little more passive-aggresive, and a little less complete-bitch-in-your-face. I’ve even been working on my back-handed compliments.

Obviously trying to change is the first step - but can it go any further than the first step? Can you really change who you are, or are all of us inherently who we are - and never anything more?

In a perfect world

In 2006, my very best friend flew to Vietnam, where she lived for seven months. And I still remember with absolute clarity the moment she stepped behind the doors at the international departures gate - and how my heart literally broke into a thousand pieces.

In 2007, my very best friend flew home from Sweden, where she had been staying for some time, and I still remember with absolute perfection the moment when I first saw her - and how wonderful it was to see her, and how glorious it was to know that she was home for the first time in months.

In December 2007, I stepped on a plane to wave goodbye to my three very best friends - Catharine, Beth and Jess - and I remember sobbing. Horrible sobbing. The kind of sobbing that racks your body and steals your soul, because I would miss them so desperately. And I remember hugging Beth goodbye, and wanting to remember exactly the sound of her laugh, and the way Jessie scrunches her nose when she giggles, and the way Catharine says my name.

In January, 2008 - I stood on a busy London road, with my beloved friend Anna by my side, and waved goodbye to Beth as she hopped into a cab to head to her hostel - after spending the day together in London. And I remember how cold it was, and the way I felt absolute heartbroken to her wave goodbye from that London cab window, and disappear into the bustle of the city and the glowing lights of a beautiful London night. And I remember wanting to tell her to stay, don’t go - please come back.

In February 2008, I arrived home - and I remember with absolute clarity walking up my best friend’s drive way - and seeing her beaming face at her stairs. And I remember being hugged as though we hadn’t seen each other in years, in decades - and I remember wanting to remember that moment forever, and how wonderful it was to be home. And how travelling, with all it’s glorious moments, could never beat the moment of feeling entirely at home.

In February 2008, I remember Beth arriving home - pulling up outside her house, as I stood waving on the footpath. And I remember running to her as fast as could, as quickly as I could - and forgetting about how much I had missed her, but remembering just how wonderful it was to see her again.

And now, after all those moments, it seems rather inevitable that the time should come when one of my friends heads off again - only this time, it isn’t just one. It’s all three.

Catharine, Beth and Jessie all fly off to various parts of the world in June, and I feel as though someone has knocked me for six. As though I have been running up stairs for a lifetime, and suddenly missed the last step. Because the three of them - my three very best friends - are so entirely wonderful, so especially brilliant - that I can not imagine a moment when I don’t have them beside me.

And despite knowing that June will come, and they will go - one for a year, another for six months and the other for two months - I can’t help but hope that perhaps time really can stand still.

Because airport goodbyes? They break my heart. And having to live through three of them in one week might send me into such pourings of tears that eventually my mum will come into my room and find me as an old wad of gum on the floor - a mushy mess of hopelessness.

I feel the need for chocolate coming on.

5 Things

The lovely Eleanor Bloom tagged me in a meme: 5 Weird Facts about yourself.

So, without further ado…

1. I like to eat my weetbix super soggy. It’s a thing of mine. I am always mortally offended when I stay at my friends B’s house on weekends, and she eats her weetbix so that they practically crunch in her mouth. Weetbix were not made to be crunched. No, no - I serve mine up with milk, and then let them soak while I read the paper - and then they are just perfect, when all the milk has sunk in, and they’ve turned in what has been described by my brother as baby mush.

I love my morning baby mush.

2. I get incredibly cross when people bump me. Not just a little bit - but universally pissed off, with angry eyes and possible words exchanged and everything else that comes with being royally pissed off. It happens most often on trains, and I recognise that, given that Connex sucks, the trains are frequently packed full - so I have to literally bite my tongue in order to not say anything. Because that wouldn’t be fair.

But should anyone bump me on the street, I always feel like screaming: GIVE A GIRL A BIT OF SPACE, WOULD YOU? You are stepping on my aura!

3. I listen to this song on my ipod on repeat in the mornings when I go for my run. I don’t really enjoy alternating the song. That is my chosen ipod song, and I love it. It makes me want to kick my legs up and go dancing. Possibly not on a main street, though.

My mum sometimes asks if I’m going to change the song. But hey, if it aint broke - don’t fix it.

4. When I was little, I used to believe so fiercely in fairies - and I was sure they used to live in tiny teacups in our garden. So one day, my dad planted a minature tea-set in our garden and told me that faeries came in during the night and ate tiny pieces of fairy bread and drank tiny cups of tea together. I still have that tiny tea set, and now it sits in the garden as you walk up to our front door - just incase any faeries should happen to stop by one day.

5. My bathroom always smells like industrial-grade cleaner. I am a serial bathroom cleaner. I can not function in a messy bathroom.

It destroys my inner equilibrium.

Last weekend, when I went away for a few days - I returned to find that my brothers had trashed the bathroom to the point where I thought it might actually flood. There were some very terse words exchanged, but then I just sucked it up, put on a pair of gloves and used half a litre of domestos on the floor. Only then could I relax.

I once considered keeping a bottle of Ajax under my bed for moments like that, but then I decided against it.

/ So, here endeth my five things. I’m not tagging anyone in particular, lest people suffer from tag-performance-anxiety - so take this up at your will, but make sure you link back, and that you tell me at least one of your strange eating habits. I want to know that I’m not the only one.

The Etiquette of life

Apologies - I have mid semester exams on at the moment. You can therefore imagine what my mind is like.

You know when you eat Weetbix, and you live them sitting in the bowl for too long - and they go all soggy and mashed up? Are you forming a picture in your head?

Yes, that is my brain. Smushed to smithereens.

So yesterday when I was coming home from uni, I found myself stuck at one of Melbourne’s busy train stations - Richmond. Where all the trains after 5pm were cancelled for a full half hour.

Imagine the sheer number of people on the platform by the time a train finally arrived - half an hours worth of peak hour traffic trying to get onto one train. It was not a pretty sight, and obviously everyone was tired and grumpy and just wanted to get home.

Being relatively short, I was one of the lucky few who darted through the crowd and managed to get a seat, though I hardly noticed anyone sitting around me - except to notice how packed the carriage was.

And I’ve been to London - I know the underground at peak hour. And I’m sick of Melbournians complaining about how crowded the trains are, because they’re not - IF PEOPLE WOULD JUST MOVE DOWN THE AISLE - but last night? The train was crowded.

And that is a large statement coming from me. That is akin to announcing the world is ending, or that God just appeared in my breakfast cereal.

So, there we are on this packed train - and obviously when it’s that crowded, you don’t really notice when someone shoves their elbow into your face, or falls against you when the train suddenly breaks.

As it did last night.

And when it did, the women sitting opposite me slipped off her chair and fell against the man sitting beside her.

And do you know what this man did? Do you know what this man did to a women who clearly didn’t mean to fall on him?

He punched her.

He punched her right in the face - and nobody in the carriage did anything.

The woman immediately cried out, but he just grabbed onto her arm and wouldn’t let her go - yelling obscenities at her and telling her he was going to call the police.

And I’d wager a bet that every single person in that carriage had fallen against the person beside them, however accidently, when the train had breaked so suddenly - and this man just lost it.

But what shocked me more was how so many people looked away, trying to avoid the finger of responsibility being pointed at them.

Very soon a man in a suit stood up, and told the man who had hit the woman to let her go - and she promptly got off at the next station, obviously shaken up. But in a carriage full of people, not one person said anything to the man as he sat back down in his seat and continued to read his paper - as though nothing had happened.

And it’s true of the world today, that story. If there are many people to take responsibility, you’re less likely to do so yourself. I mean, if someone else can do the hard work for you - why bother?

If I was going to write an Etiquette of Life book, I would include that little gem. Sort of like when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie started canoodling in public - and everyone was either Team Aniston or Team Jolie. That was an etiquette question - and I’d include that in my book, too.

So, in honour of my growing etiquette book (which you are welcome to add to) I am posting a link of a remix of a famous Paul Kelly hit - From Little Things, Big Things Grow.

It’s all about taking responsibility - no matter how many people shoulder it.

From Little Things, Big Things Grow 2008.

Who can send you to war?

I’m very sorry for the tardiness in this post. You see, I have encountered something of a major obstacle in the life of Rosanna. But that story will have to wait until next time.

However, recently I was forced to take drastic action in my street - in order to preserve my own sanity.

The story unravelled as follows:

Our new neighbours are building a McMansion across the road from us. This monstrosity is huge. It’s three story, with these awful faux round windows, the massive faux Egyptian columns out the front and the marble frontier.

Do you have a picture in your head of this awful creation? Because I know everytime I wake up and see it, I start to grind my teeth. And so when I’m twenty-one, and no longer have teeth, I will blame our neighbours - and send them the bill. Bastards.

Anyway, obviously a house as completely pretensious as this isn’t going to be built over night - the four-car garage alone took two months to finish. Which means that every day for the last eight months, our street has resembled something like a massive twenty-five car pile up, with builders trucks lining every possible strip of spare road.

And because we live in such a small, one-way street where no one has driveways, every single person who lives in my street now wants to gauge out the builders eyeballs - because we can never get a park outside our own houses.

And not only this, but the builders constantly play their radios at full throttle. And they don’t even play good music! So when I finally get a car park five miles from my house, trudge up my street in a foul mood and then arrive at my gate to be blasted by the strains of Shania Twain - I could easily rip their heads off. One by one.

So the other day, I finally lost it. I’d gone to Safeway and when I returned, my car park had been taken. Outside my own house. So I had to carry fifty trillion supermarket bags up the whole street - because I couldn’t get a park.

And, having already been woken up by the builders digging up concrete that morning, I was hardly in a good mood.

So I got back in my car and drove to Bunnings. And I brought four bright orange witches hats.

And then when the builder that was outside my house went to leave, I planned my attack - lining up the four witches hats outside my fence, effectively saving me a car space.

My smug little smile as I went about my work clearly gave me away, because a builder shouted out to me, asking what I was doing.

And I wanted to yell back that he was a massive dickhead and obviously I was saving myself a car spot OUTSIDE MY OWN HOUSE, because my life has become a series of never being able to get a park in my OWN STREET.

But instead I told him I was reserving myself a car park as politely as I could, because I hardly think it’s fair that we can no longer park outside our own property.

He just gaped.

Then I messaged my mum and asked her to buy a sign that said ‘Reserved Parking’ and she was so thrilled with the prospect of being able to park outside her own house (imagine! The novelty!) that she promptly went to the hardware store and then nailed the sign to the gum tree outside our house.

And seeing that sign? Knowing that in the morning I could drive to the doctor without grinding my teeth the whole way home, knowing I’d always have a car space?

It brought me endless joy.

Round one: Rosanna.

Suck on that, builders.

I bet you whoever wrote that saying ‘Love thy neighbour’ never had a neighbour build a new house in thier street. And there must be a thousand other examples of when ‘Love thy neighbour’ has just gone terribly wrong. So, tell me. Have you ever had to take drastic action when it came to your neighbours?

The moral highground

NB: Mum? Avert your eyes. Love, Rosanna.

Today, it was just myself and my younger brother at home in the abode of Rosanna and co. And I, being the good student I am, was studying hard - with my door closed and the strains of Enya and other such relaxing folk floating through the air.

But my brother? My brother who is in year twelve and should be studying every minute of every breathing hour? Well, he was in his room too.

But he wasn’t having a party with his books.

Instead, his girlfriend had arrived on our doorstep at 11am. And I had been delegated the unfortunate role of answering the door, clad in my gym gear, looking like a sweaty balloon after my work out.

And she was there with her perfectly straightened hair and gleaming teeth, practically bouncing on her god damn cheerful toes. And this is the girlfriend of his who I used to babysit.

How’s that for irony?

So, she struts into my brother’s room and the door is left firmly shut. And for the first hour or so, I hear talking. Yahoo! Talking! That means they can’t possibly be doing anything else. And thank god for that, because there’s an image my mind certainly doesn’t need.

So, there I am studying - when it occurs to me that the talking has stopped. And I am met by nothing except silence.

And silence is never good.

So, hoping to distract them from whatever musings they might be engaging in, I opted to hand wash my cardigan - which needed doing anyway. So there I am, in the laundry next to my brothers bedroom, hand washing my cardigan by the loudest means possible.

Of course, this then meant that I had to hang out afore-mentioned cardigan, meaning I had to walk straight past my brother’s bedroom window.

Which I did. And there was my brother. Wearing very little. With his girlfriend. Who was also wearing very little.

And I am pretty sure my retina’s fried and fell out of my head in that moment.

When I walked past again, the blinds were firmly shut - but I was so scarred that I ran to my best friend’s house as fast as my little legs could take me.

I finally returned home at 4pm, assuming it would be safe by that stage.

But his door? It was still shut - and when I returned home, I heard the distinct noise of a girl laughing.

And by this stage it had been five hours! Five whole hours that she’d been in his room!

So, I huffed back into my own bedroom, slammed my door as loudly as possible - to remind them both that yes, I do still exist. And no, they’re not alone.

Two whole hours later, they finally emerged - with my brother thankfully wearing clothes, and his girlfriend gave me a cheerful little wave as she strutted out of our house once more, with her hair looking significantly less straightened that it had done at 11am.

And as my brother reached into the fridge for whatever food an eighteen year old boy eats, he glared at me and said, ‘Oh my god, what are you looking at?’

Like, locking yourself in your room with your girlfriend for seven hours WHILE YOUR SISTER IS HOME is completely normal. Duh.

There are just some things siblings shouldn’t have to be put through.

The everyday life

Someone once famously argued that no man is an island.

That no one person can exist on earth without becoming attached to another person.

And I would have to agree with that.

Yesterday, at 10:23am, I sat in a cafe, laughing with one of my three dearest friends - B. We laughed until we cried, both ignoring that copious amounts of homework that have been piling up on our desks.

Yesterday, at 10:23am, as I sat laughing with my dear friend, another close friend of my family’s died.

Mimi died of cancer of the bone - a disease that seemed so ugly during her life, that wittled her away to nothing more than a skeleton. She said once that chemo was the most degrading thing she had ever done - that she felt as though she no longer resembled herself, but rather a person with Cancer. And that no one could see her for who she was anymore - but rather a disease that had no cure.

Yet, yesterday, when I heard the news of Mimi’s death - it wasn’t so much her who I wept for. Instead, it was for her daughter. Her beautiful daughter who is only two months older than me. We’ve grown up together, been through school together, made fairy bread together, cried over boys together. We’ve laughed and we’ve spent more times than I can remember crying.

And I’ve watched her beautiful daughter fall away, unable to find her place in the world with the knowledge that her mother was dying.

Because terminal is an awfully final word. It implies a thousand different meanings in one small word. To terminate. To end. To not return.

And how do you cope with the finality that word brings?

Today, when I rang Mimi’s daughter, she answered her phone sounding nothing more than an echo of her former self. And she whispered into that phone, with all the beauty that the world can afford, that she couldn’t get out of bed - because she didn’t know how to without her mum.

And my heart cracked into a thousand pieces for her. Not because I felt sick at the thought of her having to grow up alone now, but because I realised then that it is true - no man is an island.

Life seems exceedingly unfair when you lose someone you love. But I think it would seem even more unfair, even more unjust, if there was no one left with whom to share the load.

So perhaps grief is a healthy thing - perhaps it suggests that we can love someone enough to miss them with our whole hearts, to ache for their presence, to long for the feeling of their touch. And perhaps grief is the world’s way of reminding us that we are not islands. That, instead, we’re a chain of moments, memories and shared dreams that somehow, inexplicably, tie us together - and ensure that we never have to go through grief alone.

For Mimi, who always knew how to dance.

A time to cry

I’ve been feeling a little bit down about my love life lately.

Hey, can you blame me? The idiot boy didn’t ring me back.

And I’m so not over it yet.

Right, so yesterday I was minding the two delicious children I look after - Oliver, 2 and Evie, 8 months. And I needed to pick up my new handbag, so I thought while I was doing that we could all go to get a coffee, and Oliver could have a baby cino and be oh-so-grown up.

But easier said than done - packing to take out a toddler and a baby is like a military operation, and it took me a good hour from when I said, ‘Let’s go to get a baby cino!’ to when we actually left. And every minute of that hour, Oliver would say, ‘Baby cino?’ as though, woman - you are far too slow at this! I want my coffee now, bitch.

I understand, Oliver. I understand.

So we finally leave, Oliver in the pram (reluctantly strapped in) and Evie in her Baby Bjorn, which was a real mistake - because lately she’s taken to gauging out my eyeballs with her little claw fingers - and then laughing. As though digging out my eyeballs is possibly the funniest thing. In the entire world.

Amazingly, when we arrive at the cafe, everyone is in a wonderful mood and Oliver is being so well-behaved, mesmirised with his little baby cino, and so I decide to do the ultimate disaster of the day.

I decide to feed Evie. While at the cafe.

I mean, it can’t be that hard, right? Feeding a baby while keeping one eye on a toddler?

So I’d mushed her up some muesli earlier in the day, and she was quite happy to eat it - until she found a sultana.

I forgot that she hates sultanas.

So she scrunched up her little nose and did the only thing that a baby can do in such a situation.

She spat it all back up. All over me.

And in this moment of confusion, Oliver decides to run away. Because obviously that is the logistical idea. Hey, look - my babysitter is covered in mushed up baby muesli. Let’s run.

And even though his legs are very little, and mine are considerably longer - run away he did.

So I had to run after him, with the baby hollowing a gale under my arm and my face covered in baby spew.

And it is then, in those glorious few seconds, when my eyes are firmly settled on the toddler before me - I bang into a rather tall gentlemen.

And it’s one of those movie scene moments - when everything slows down and you know, deep down, that something extremely painful is about to happen.

Of course, before me - before the girl in the baby spew, carrying a screaming child and chasing another one - is my ex.

And obviously I look like the complete catch of the day with mushed up sultana’s hanging from my eyebrows.

To quote Elizabeth Bennet, how he must be congratulating himself on his escape!

How not to date

I’ve been seeing this boy, and it’s hardly a thing of note.

And we hadn’t been going out for very long when he inexiplicably just didn’t message me.

Just like that.

Just stopped replying to my messages - when he was the one who asked me out.

And so, naturally, being the calm and collected sort of girl I am - I completely flew off the handle and began to curse him with every name under the sun. But of course, being a girl, I could hardly message him again because all girls ever do is think about who messaged who last and how we couldn’t possibly chase after them and what dress to wear to the wedding. Honestly. It’s a natural thought process.

So, there I was one morning on my way to uni on the tram with three of my good friends - now six days into the whole ‘why hasn’t he messaged me?’ routine.

And, given that we’re all studying politics, it’s hardly surprising that we’re all just as loud and opinionated as one another. In fact, I’m fairly sure that by the time I bid goodbye to my friends - everyone on the tram knew that I had a boy. Who hadn’t messaged.

So, you can imagine my horror when I stepped off the tram and - because the world is a cruel, cruel place - so did the boy in question.

I think a little piece of me died when I saw him.

I am fairly sure he wont be messaging me now.

But surely I can’t be the only one. Other people have had dating disasters… right? On this glorious Easter long-weekend, please share your woes. It’s even more therapeutic than chocolate.

Sympathy for the devil

Everyone has a dirty laundry.

I’m about to air out my own - just so I can beat my delightful friend Anna to the job.

I was in London for 07/08 New Years (with Anna) - a wonderful, brilliant experience… that I can’t remember a moment of.

(I am well aware that, in posting the following, I am risking my mother having a cardiac arrest. Mum - avert your eyes. Put some Jane Austen on the TV or something, would you?)

So, there we were - in London. On New Years. And I decided it would be a good idea to drink enough Vodka to kill a small child. I must admit here that I was shamefully, ridiculously and insanely drunk. So, it was no surprise to anyone that by the time midnight rolled over - I was in no fit state to assert that people were even counting down to midnight, let alone what city I was in or to bask in the brilliance of being in London on New Years.

Instead, I found myself locking lips with the worlds Ugliest Englishmen.

No, not even joking.

A true story.

To prove my point, those that I spent New Years with have since titled him Frankenstein. And truly, there are no redeeming qualities to this story. No little side excerpt that I can add to aleviate what was obviously a seriously lack of (drunken) judgement on my behalf.

So there I was, spending my New Years locking lips with someone whose name I no longer remember. And that is how classy I am.

Of course, this all occured on the very night I could have spent with another english boy, who I’d had eyes for ever since I first met him. But, there you have it. We are all capable of serious errs.

I still cringe at the memory. Or in the very least, what I can remember.

Of course, that isn’t the only time in the past three months when I’ve embarrased myself shamefully.

The last incident was only yesterday, when I woke feeling slightly queasy - though it wasn’t due to a hangover. I just felt off.

But I went for my morning run anyway, and happily ate a banana on the way the supermarket to do the weeks shopping.

However, by the time I arrived, my stomach was like a washing machine and I was trying to will myself to just get the shopping done and then get home. Unfortunately for me, we had a barbeque planned for last night - so I had to go to the market and into…

The Meat Aisle.

I feel this deserves capitals, given how horrendous this event turned out to be.

So there I was, in The Meat Aisle, looking at - what else? - raw meat.

And that was it.

I knew I wasn’t going to make it.

And I threw up all over the floor. In Safeway.

I have never been so embarrased, or so horrified, in my entire life. I can’t even remember the last time I was physically sick - unless you count that horrible incident of food poisoning in year ten - and so I promptly burst into tears.

Because, hey - as if vomitting twice in Safeway wasn’t embarrasing enough, let’s add in some tears, shall we?

So there I was, the vomitting, crying girl in The Meat Aisle.

I am never, ever going back to that Safeway - as long as I live.

And my brother has promised I will never live it down.

And if that wasn’t shameful enough - I ruined the skirt I’d just had dry cleaned and saw three people that I knew on the way out, when I smelt little better than a dirty hospital and looked like a Banshee.

So, in honour of my mishaps, I’m titling this weekend ‘AIR YOUR LAUNDRY’ weekend. Tell me your worst.