All Grown Up

Well that was interesting.

While trying very hard to orientate myself in a positive way, trying to push any neurosis or such off to one side to deal with later, I've had something of an explosion of change. I have grown tired of my living in squalor. Of no energy. Of dreading every waking moment.

So the other day I finally snapped and cleaned up all the mess in the house. Well, not all the mess, but a large amount of it. The main living areas are now habitable, and I shall be working hard to keep them such (by bullying anyone who tries to mess with them. Like a housemate). And instead of fast food after junk food after takeaway, I went for a shop with aforementioned housemate and bought some food. Real food. Chicken. Mince. Bacon. Bacon. Bacon.... oh, and some sweet potato, some yoghurt, some other things I've forgotten, and some things I'm not mentioning on here (like chocolate) so as to appear all healthy and whatnot. Stuff that's not bad for you.

Normally, on the off chance that we ever went on a shop like this in the past, we'd grab tonnes of bread, pasta, rice and such. Not so this time. We've still got some pasta in the cupboard, and not being one to waste food we shall be using it, but from here on out it will not be the go-to filler for us. Slowly cutting back on portion size while we're at it, but for now the important effort is that of attacking our intake of unhealthy foods.

On top of that, I've been doing a bi-daily 1/2 hour walk. It's been thrilling. Hoping to build up to more rigorous exercise, but I'll be doing the walk for now.

Now of course this is not me adressing main problems or dealing with issues of actual import, but I can't deal with those at the moment. Even trying leaves me feeling very unwell. So for now, whilst trying to deal with being unable to deal (yeah, figure that one out), I am focusing on things that make me feel better. So, to the crux of the post...

Today, using the nice happy foody things I'd grabbed in the shop, I made dinner. This alone is an interesting divergence from the norm as housey mc house usually makes the meals. Today I decided it was my turn. Following the advice of a friend (read, co-opting their ideas) I grabbed two of the chicken breasts out, got some garlic, salt and pepper & sort of kneaded them into the chicken. I figured that would add a little bit of something to the meat. After buttering up a baking tray (something I've never done, but seen done enough times to know it's a thing you do to trays) I popped them onto it. 200 degrees Celsius, pre-heated (again, something I've heard people do). After 30 mins of baking, took them out & drained out some of the juices.

Next some pasta sauce went onto them, liberally. Then back in the oven for a further 30 mins. At the 10 minute mark I grabbed some mixed veggies from the freezer, two minuted them in the microwave, & seared them in a frying pan with some oil, chilli flakes and peppercorns. Two minutes of searing. No more. I heated up a little more of the sauce incase it was required. It wasn't required per se, but was nice to add.

Finally, took the chicken out of the oven, grabbed some grated Parmesan & deployed it over the chicken. Again, liberally. Back in the oven for a quick second while I portioned out the veggies, then served it up to the housemate and myself. It turned out better than I expected, and I think even the housemate was floored by the level of awesome it hit (comparatively to our past meals). Afterword, I grabbed a nice bottle of wine out of the rack and am currently enjoying a glass.

It's very strange.As I said to the friend whose recipe it was: I'VE HAD A GROWN UP MEAL THAT'S NOT BAD FOR YOU IN A CLEAN HOUSE!?!1RFO5fHsefOI7H86UHE9RIH!23e

I've had a very nice dinner that didn't break the budget, wasn't hard to mock up and didn't make me feel unhealthy or dirty afterwords. Plus a nice glass of 7 year old something something red. Totes feel like a grown up.

Good times. Great classic hits.

Test-tube baby with guns for hands

Good god it's early. Hello giant screaming anonymous unhearing interwebs. How are you this fine day?
A bit past 6 in the morning and I've been awake since 3. Why, you might ask, if you were wont to ask such things. Well, it's a very uninteresting story, but short, so buckle in.

Today marks my return to school after an impromptu holiday from it, brought about as a result of a combination between lack of funds for transport combined with some sort of minor anxiety attack. So of course the best thing at the end of an anxiety-ish thingy is to have to get back to normalcy while everyone around you knows something happened but don't know what. All they know is you disappeared, and I'm in no frame of mind to tell them what happened, because if you say it out loud it just sounds ridiculous: for no reason I can fathom (but I assume there is one and am searching for it) I had to stay in bed and not talk to anyone for a while, going to great lengths to do nothing... See? It sounds insane. And made up. Which is the problem with it I guess. It doesn't sound real, and if you're on the outside of it looking in its hard to see how real it is. Even if it was you in there just a few days ago.

So of course that chest-crunching anxious feeling is back, in different form, as I head back into school. To face the people who don't understand and who I'm not strong enough to tell. To try and pick up the pieces.

As an abstract thing, and not something I have to deal with, it is interesting to note how and when this hits. I originally thought it was a new thing. Something recent due to stagnation or who knows what. Panic at being back at school again. But reading back through this thing, using the posts as a sort of memory palace, unlocking those events, I see a much more troubling pattern. I see a young man struggling with the very same thing I appear to be trying to deal with. I see him hide from it in distractions. In theatre. Until last year there had not been a single year I hadn't done something theatrical since 2003. Last year was the first time since then that I was unable to do a show, due to time constraints. Last year was the first time this thing really hit me hard. And I didn't have an outlet. And it was bad.

Right now I honestly can't say if I'm still in the middle of this thing or if I'm on an upswing, and having to content with things like illness and poor-being-ness in the middle of it hasn't helped anything.
I don't know how today goes. I do know that writing this all out is a wondrous distraction.

Now back to listening to music.

Well look what I found...

That... that was terrifying. Hello giant and inscrutable interwebs giant, anonymous in your unanimity. Goodness knows what drew me to it. Well I do know actually. I was careening through some other peoples blogs in the blogosphere when I remembered that I had this thing floating around somewhere. So a few clicks later I have re-discovered this thing. This *thing*. Uncaring, invisible interwebs that I shout into (as all people seem to do these days, wishing to be heard and knowing I shant be), how are you? Have you been well? I've been well too. I've had my ups and downs. Am currently in a down. Which is interesting to me because traipsing back through this blog o' mine, I've noticed that there are distinct periods where I can track the ebb and flow of things I'd thought only recent to my mental state, occurring time and time again throughout the years in a terrifyingly similar manner. It's like discovering I'm not a beautiful and unique snowflake, and that the other snowflakes are all me... That analogy hurts my brainy parts.

How long has it been? 2009... That's math number of years! Wow. I guess, if I'm going to utilize you in any way, shape or form (and why the hell not?) then there's a lot of ground to cover. I can't promise that I'll remember it all, or that you won't be seeing it through rose-tinted glasses, or reading with a pinch of salt (speaking of which, some of the things I wrote all those years ago... So young. So foolish. So denial-y), but I can promise that I may or may not write another post on here. So there's that.
I've always maintained that I suck at keeping a diary or journal. In fact, most of the posts on here start out saying pretty much exactly that. But I've found this to be one of the more persistent expeditions in this field, so that's a thing. Such non-committal ends to sentences! MT, shame on you, and your family, and your dog, and that homeless man on the.... Ok, stopping that. Re-reading past posts has actually got me writing in their semi-rambolic manner, which I still do (but would like to think it's better crafted. Suffice to say, if I start straying from a topic, I've either forgotten what's what or am deliberately refusing to continue down that path).
There are things I can see, from my vantage-point, reading between the lines of past and present things, and I think it'd be interesting (for me. not for you, interwebs, but for me) to go through and look at them. Deal with them, as it were. Travel back through things I was skirting around and refuse to skirt. I've never been very good at doing such absence-of-skirting, so no promises, but you can't break a few eggs without staying out of the kitchen.
And again with the... you know what. Nevermind. That's me done for the night. Night y'all. MT

P.S. I tend to sign off with 'See you when I see you'. Still. Going back through all this, it became noticeable that this was a thing I was doing. A thing thing. Yay me and my learned habits of social normalcies!
P.P.S. I have been so very very very very very tempted to delete a huge swathe of past posts, as I look back on them and cringe. But a stubborn part of me refuses to. It is a record of a time that is a dim memory to me. So it shall stay, lest the memories fade completely. Re-reading this has made me laugh, giggle, and cry (the post before this. Remembering that day was hard. Knowing that I'd written that on that day, through tears, made me heave great wracking sobs.). See you when I see you.

Woof - better than you'll ever be.

July 23rd, 12:40PM.
I’m going to tell you a tale.
Cast your mind back 15 years or so, if you will. What were you doing?
I’ll tell you what I was doing, shall I?
I was 7 (nearing 8) years of age, and my one and only brother was 3 (nearing 4).
We were living out in a little place called Lara, which at the time was slowly heading into one of the first of many expansionist phases (which to this day have tripled its size and eaten into the surrounding farmland), and we were in sore need of something to occupy our time, so as to stop us killing one another.

Scene is set. Cue first act.
Enter into our little story one friend of Father. This friend worked at the pound attached to the council that father also worked at. One day the pound was overfull and a new pup came in, for which there was no safe place. Father was asked by this friend to take home this pup for a week or two, till one of the cages emptied or till the pup had grown a tad bigger.

Father was a tad uncertain about this, as my brother was quite fearful of dogs due to our previous one (a little dog named Maggy) which was one of those little yap yap yap things sprinting around our yard and jumping all over people. That dog was gifted to a friend as she had been gifted to us from a teacher who was leaving the school we lived at. She had been old when we got her and grew older still as the years went on. This is not her story.

What finally convinced father I shall never rightly know (for he is a dreadful spinner of falsehoods and can lie quite convincingly. I have never met a more honest man with stricter moral principals and yet is able to lie like that) but that pup came home with him that day. The poor thing had been found in a box near a river, its owners apparently having tried to drown it. We’d brought it home and it lived in the laundry for three days, then Mother and I went to the Vet with it.

There is an age at which dogs are allowed to go home, can be taken from their mothers and given away. This pup looked about the right size for this. The first thing the Vet told us is it was so very much younger than that. So young, in fact, that it should still be with its mother and its eyes would have only just opened not that long ago. Weeks old, perhaps, I do not remember. The Vet also told us it was a mongrel and it was mostly part Mastiff and part Great Dane (mastiff head, GD body colour and markings). At the Vet that day was a fully-grown GD, larger than me. We realized we’d just got a BIG dog.

I cannot remember who named him. Mum says KJ did, but I think she did (and is hiding behind KJ). But he was named, and we named him WOOF. This was in part because he’d bark these big deep barrel-chested woof woofs and in part because he’d wolf down his food in no time flat.

The Vet had also told us that his two front legs were in a spot of bother, and one was quite broken. They told us we’d be better putting him down right away so as not to get attached. My parents told the vet we would do what we could for the thing and if we only managed to give it 6 months, then we would.

Plaster casts for both front shins, a touch of surgery, and a lot of care. I can still remember him trying to vainly to step up the brick lip of the house he was that small. A tiny thing, all floppy head and running around silly. I remember the Styrofoam box we used to keep him in the laundry but in sight. I remember he learnt that by butting his head against the door it would slowly lever the box out of the way. I remember the old doona cover we’d used to cover the box to stop him from eating it. I remember him pulling it off to sleep on and eating the box anyway. I remember having him sit at the foot of the grey couch and silently farting when we entertained guests. I remember him getting into a whole bowl of peanuts and eating the lot, shell and all, only to throw it up minutes later.

I remember my parents (with our help) planting a bamboo tree and 30 smaller trees in the back yard. I remember him eating them all (the bamboo tree lasted a few years of his chewing, but eventually it went too) within the week. I remember him bouncing around with us, devouring every ball sent out into the yard bar one, his red football.

It wasn’t even a real football, just some cheap plastic auskick thing, but he loved it, and loved playing tug-o-war with it and fetch and “I’ve got it and you don’t, ha ha ha.”
He kept it for years, one day years later chewing the ends off it, then 6 months later it was eaten.

I remember the myriad times he ate washing off the line, presumably in protest for not enough walks. Somehow he almost always managed to get to the most expensive thing on the line, that favourite jumper of mums, my only good pair of school shorts.

I remember he loved carrots. I’ve never seen an animal so addicted to those things. Even today he chomped down as many as could be fed to him, and then some. I remember training him, feeding him, cleaning his never ending piles of crap. He has been with this family for most of my life, and I remember so much more than I’ve been able to put down here.

How he used to get out and go for a walk himself, down the same path mum took him down. How he’d sniff at the cat and how she’d try to ignore him and fail. How he’d know you were leaving so he’d climb in the car too and refuse to get out. How he’d woof away at 2am and wake everyone. There is too much to remember and too much to write, and not enough time, so I shall save it for another day perhaps.

Suffice to say that this member of our family grew old, and ill, and was unable to properly stand, and so just after noon today, moments before I started writing this, he was given an injection, and put to sleep.

I miss my dog.

Methuselah the Great

and my other calypsonian friends.

This is me, I am here. But more importantly, I went to the falls festival (08/09) and it was Legend-wait for it-Dairy. One artiste who stood out from the rest, and then stood out again, was C.W. Stoneking, who is an australian artist of such sheer awesomeness that he is... words cannot describe it. Or rather they can, yet I fail them with my inability for usage.

here is him, on JuhJuhJuh.




see...

Bow the halls with decks of holly....

or is it bough? Blargh! Where has this most esteemed year gone?! Time is rapidly rapidifying, and not taking it's time about it either! It is christmas, 2.33am on the 25th of Dec, and I have accomplished nothing this year, wound my way into further debt and basically bollocked things up royally without actually doing anything to do so. Woot to me! Too tired, merry new whatever. Time moves too fast. Hate all of you sychophants (if you do not count yourself as one, rest assured I may not be talking to you... If you suffer bouts of paranoia, I may be!!!) out there, yes indeedy.

See you when I go to some random music festival for new years!!!

The Kinsey Scale

I discover'd a thing,
It was a thing.
"Oh thing," said I,
"for that is what I name you,
knowing no other name by which to call you."
"What," said this thing, "is it that you want?"
"Go check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale I told it, and it did."


...and so should you.