Family

Twenty Five years.

by frogpondsrock on February 3, 2012

Wow internet that is a long time.

Well it’s not really a long time if you are a tree or a rock or a giant squid.

BUT it is a long time to have been married.

Today is my anniversary, The Spouse and I have been together for 25 years.

I often flippantly say that I found him on the side of the road and decided to keep him, well that is true, up to a point.

I didn’t really decide to keep “The Spouse” until four years later.

What I don’t say is that I only went out with The Spouse for a few months when I was seventeen.

“The Spouse” swears that for him, it was love at first sight. He says he just knew that I was the one for him.

At the fickle age of seventeen I just thought he was rather hot and very fuckable. I went out with him for a few months and then dumped him when he started to talk about long term plans.

At the words lets settle down,I went WTF and bolted.

I bumped into Jeff at the pub again when I was 18 or 19 and one look into those eyes of his and I was immediately smitten again. But once again he vowed and declared that I was the only one for him and I was off like a shot.

At the age of 20 I was living a rather torrid life. The share house I was living in was full of crazy people doing crazy people things. I was working night shift in a popular blues nightclub and I wasn’t just burning the candle at both ends, I was putting a blow torch to the middle of the fucker as well.

Enter “The Spouse” into my life again

Third time must have been the trick because on my 21st birthday I decided that maybe there was some merit to settling down with this bloke and so I jumped onto the back of his motorcycle and we have never looked back.

I like this photo very much, even though I joke that I should have moved the knife block a bit closer.

“The Spouse is often underneath my car fixing it for me.

I was telling him to pose for the camera and we got the giggles.

This is my favourite “Arty” shot of the Spouse.

Hey Jeffrey Foale. I do Love you!

{ 16 comments }

Hospitals, Weddings,Life and the Universe and well everything…

by frogpondsrock on November 21, 2011

in Family

Hello internet.

I spent most of yesterday and part of today in the emergency department of our local hospital with my daughter Veronica and her small son Isaac.

Isaac has a viral infection and we were that worried about him that at 5.00pm we braved a trip into the hospital.

Isaac was finally admitted to the Pediatric ward at 2.30 am.

I then drove slowly home at 3 am this morning being very careful to avoid imaginary large black dogs and kangaroos on the highway as my tiredness produced some interesting hallucinations.

This photo taken with my phone camera at about midnight last night sums up all our exhaustion.

This photo says more than I ever could.

I am tired internet, I am slightly stressed and I have a fever and an infection as well.

We have a wedding in five days time.

But.

The plates are in the kiln.

The cake is made.

The sheep is being delivered tomorrow and will be killed tomorrow night.

A spit roast has been organised and I have rustled up some chairs and tables.

We will be testing the livestream tomorrow. I will tweet at you tomorrow so that you can tell us if it works.

I am sure it will all come together and even if we all just stand around in a paddock eating lamb and gravy rolls it will still be a wonderful day.

Because Isaac is now home again and he has eaten a bowl full of sliced peaches.

{ 48 comments }

I am very glad I have you to whinge to internet.

by frogpondsrock on August 26, 2011

in arseholiness,Family,headfuck,real life,Veronica

Otherwise my head might just explode and that would be very fucking messy.

Some people are just arseholes. There is nothing you can do about their inherent arseholiness other than stand by with your mouth agape and wonder where on earth they learned their low life skills.

Australia, the lucky country, the land of the fair go, home of the tall poppy syndrome.

Where if you start to shine a bit brighter than all the other stars out there some lowlife will always come along and decide to start throwing a bit of mud.

anonymously of course

*sigh*

Well,
what can I say. firstly congrats on the wedding, Really, you drug your child at 3 am with panadol, didnt you watch today tonights segment on the effects of medicating our children for a “good” nights sleep, oh thats right you have sold out to ACA and Kellogs for a measly few words on allergy free breakfast. Luckily – you didnt make an “idiot” of yourself.

Selling out? Where on earth has all this talk about selling out come from? Veronica has always had advertising on her blog and has always worked with brands.

Drugging her child? For fucks sake. Amy was sick. You use paracetamol to reduce fever you idiot. You of all people should know that.

I am seriously grumpy today internet. Mainly because I am 99% certain I know who the anonymous arsehat is and that makes me very sad as well.

I am going to play in the garden today because I need to have my hands in the soil. I need to earth myself so that all the negativity is absorbed by the universe instead of fizzling around inside my head and fucking up my balance. And if you scoff at that as old hippy nonsense well then anonymous that is your loss and I advise you to remember that Mammon is a poor excuse for a god.

I really should follow my own advice to Veronica when dealing with arseholes, which is to stand a little taller, square your shoulders and be secretly pleased that you chose today to wear your teflon shirt so that the shit these arseholes fling, just slides right off.

But I am having a bit of trouble with that advice right now.

Deadshits.

{ 29 comments }

The missing doesnt stop.

by frogpondsrock on April 7, 2011

in Autism,Family,Grief,Mona

Some days I miss my mother so much that even writing down the words make my eyes prickle and fill with tears.

There is a heap of stuff I am trying to deal with. On their own, these things don’t have much weight but tie them all together and it feels like I am swimming through mud.

My grand son was officially diagnosed with Autism yesterday. Systems will be put into place for Isaac, autistic specific playgroups will be found and the experts will step in and try to help as best they can.

This is good. This also breaks my heart.

I am trying to write an email to a physiotherapist to tell him that “The Spouse doesn’t want to continue with his appointment because it is obvious the Physio knows nothing about Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and in The Spouse’s words is “completely fucking useless” How do I say that? How do I say “Listen son, you need to bloody well do a bit of research on EDS before we go any further”.

I worry that he will break my husband or my daughter with inappropriate exercises designed for non-bendy people and I also wonder if I can be bothered dealing with his air of professional superiority because he is a trained medical professional you know. ( insert sarcasm font)

I worry that my grand daughter who has an unofficial diagnosis of Aspergers as well as EDS will fall through the cracks. I worry that the paediatrician in charge of her care is another one who knows absolutely nothing about EDS and is more than happy to think about his golf handicap instead of my grand daughters care.

My son is living in town with his friend and I worry that he will decide to sleep all day, rather than go to his classes. My mantra when the children were growing up was, “your choices, your consequences”.

It is hard not to want to live their lives for them.

I want to shake my son and say look, look at all the mistakes I made, don’t do it, don’t make my mistakes. All I can do now is watch and hope and wish that mum was here to gently laugh at me.

I am watching a very clever liar, weave a complicated web of deceit and I am in two minds whether to call them out and wear the fall out or just wait and see what happens.

I went to Mona yesterday and once again I was drawn to this fabulous sculpture PXIII by Belgian artist Berlinde de Bruyckere

This sculpture makes my soul sing. The artist says this work is about loneliness and I can relate to that.

I think that I am becoming invisible, the older that I get.

I interacted with Australian artist Greg Taylor’s art work titled My Beautiful Chair, featuring a couch, a lamp, a rug and Philip Nitschke’s suicide machine. As I watched the prompts on the computer I thought about my Mum and how peaceful her death was. I remembered what it felt like to stroke my mother’s dead hands and the beautiful ivory colour of her skin.

It was a very introspective three minutes.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

So this one time, I went to a conference…

by frogpondsrock on March 21, 2011

in arseholiness,blogging,Family,friendship

And met a plethora of amazing bloggers.

I have spent the morning reading blog posts about the conference, looking at photos, reading the tweets and sitting here trying to work out how to write a post that actually captures the sense of community that was so strong through out the conference.

The dynamics of my twitter stream and google reader are changed forever now.

I am able to put real faces and real voices to my online friends avatars and I am very very happy that I was a part of this wonderful event.

But the main thought in my head at the moment is how do I write about all the amazing people I met without overdosing on adjectives?

How do I write coherently about the cold, cold anger that I am feeling at the way that my daughter was unceremoniously dumped from the the final keynote speakers selection with less than five minutes notice due to so called time constraints, without admitting that even a public apology will not calm this Mother’s rage.

So I wont, I will write instead about the phone call I received at 1.45 am this morning that has left me gritty eyed from lack of sleep.

The words

Hi Mum, I am at the hospital can you ring me back, click .

Turned my soul to ice and my fingers to jelly

It seemed to take an eternity as I searched for my mobile phone so that I could find Davids number in my contacts. The fucking phone was flat and the charger was in my suitcase so it was a few minutes before I could call my boy back to see what was wrong.

The words

It’s okay Mum, it’s not me, I am fine, allowed me to breathe again.

My teenage son had been staying in town with his friends while I was in Sydney and one of the girls had wandered off and had slashed her arms so deeply with a razor blade that she needed an ambulance.

David told me quietly that he had carried his friend up the hill from the oval and waited with her for the ambulance. He told me that he was in the hospital without any money, totally stressed, covered in her blood and desperate for a cigarette.

As we talked I could feel my son calming down and together we worked out a plan to get him back to his friends house.

My son is so like me, he is a people person

But my son gathers the broken to him and I worry about my boy.

This is the third time in less than 2 months that one of Davids friends has attempted suicide.

And I wish I could protect him, I wish I could protect both of my children. I wish I could magically make their hurts vanish as easily as I did when they were small when something as simple as a wiggles bandaid was all it took to make them better.

I look at both my children and I am incredibly proud of the pair of them.

I watched Veronica act with class and grace and style on the weekend.

I listened to my son this morning tell me that he thinks he needs to go and do a first aid course.

And I look at my husband as he grumbles about the mess I have already made in the short time I have been home and I know that I am pleased I went away but I am even more pleased to be home.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

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