Monday 27 November 2006

yeah, first lobster!

Christmas has come early to our flat. i'm going to nte this week and dave's going to be in mudgee for the next two weekends so there wasn't going to be a chance to put up the tree when we both could do it until midway through december. and you do need to put up a tree with someone else, don't you? so i went and bought a tree on sale from Kmart (my first fake tree since childhood - and i actually rather like it!), collected the box of decorations from mum's, and we put it up yesterday.


this is going to be the first Christmas Day i host at my house, so that's why i get to have the tree (normally it's at mum's). at dave and mum's suggestion, the tree is set up in the curved window of the living room and looks like it was just made to go there. we put lights up around the windows too and i had to go outside and have a look and, well, i got a bit excited. i don't normally get that excited about Christmas until the week before, and even then not so much about the decorative side of it.

the other thing i noticed in going through all the decorations that we've amassed over the years is how odd some of them are. there are bright red shiny apples - why, i don't know, but we've had them ever since we lived in singapore (we came downstairs one morning to find the house mouse had eaten some of them, which was kind of amusing really as they're made of polystyrene). there are lots of little wooden toy ornaments with bits broken off that i can't quite bear to throw out. and there are, strangely enough, a number of ornaments featuring ducks. my favourite one of these is pictured below in one of the fuzzy pics i took with my phone. you probably won't be able to see it too well, but take my word for it - ducks present at the birth of Jesus. it's a beautiful thing.

Karen: So what's this big news, then?
Daisy: [excited] We've been given our parts in the nativity play. And I'm the lobster.
Karen: The lobster?
Daisy: Yeah!
Karen: In the nativity play?
Daisy: [beaming] Yeah, first lobster.
Karen: There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?
Daisy: Duh.

from Love, Actually

Friday 24 November 2006

mincing words

it has been a crapful day at work. i tried to call in sick with a migraine and screaming back but there is too much to do before our conference next week so i had to come in. the phone has been ringing non-stop and i'm starting to think i might need stronger drugs.

but something did make me laugh. i just heard my boss say to someone on the phone, "just as well you called. if you'd left it any longer, you'd have been dead meat in the water."

the mind fairly boggles.

Tuesday 21 November 2006

lead us...not...into...temptation

also titled:
an honest, slightly embarrassing, admission
and a strong desire to be kept accountable.


i blocked someone from msn this morning. i really hate doing that, as i like to give people the benefit of the doubt and try to get to know them, and msn is a bit of a difficult beast - it's so easy to misread and misunderstand without body language and voice inflections and all the usual indicators that tell you whether someone is serious or joking or flirting or whatever. so when you meet someone online and get to know them through msn or myspace or whatever digital representation they choose to show you (WoW?), it's hard to know what they are really like in the flesh and where the boundaries are and you can find yourself doing and saying things that you would never dream of doing or saying if the person was right there in front of you.

this person seemed like a really really nice guy and someone i'd get along really well with. he sent me a sweet message, i checked out his myspace page and he seemed to be on the level, not like some of the sleazy guys who just want to add a whole bunch of chicks to their friends list. i wrote back to thank him for his message and thought that would be it, but we ended up exchanging msn details.

we had some fun chats that turned towards quite, ahem, extreme and explicit flirtation. for a while i persevered with the contact, thinking it was all a bit of a joke, and he was flattering for sure. it boosted my ego like nothing else! but after a while it became increasingly clear that he didn't want to get to know me, he was only interested in the sexual aspect. and for me, the 'coming down' was terrible; even though i tried to take it as a frivolous interaction, i wondered why he didn't want to talk to me, why he wasn't online, why he hadn't added me to his friends list (an evil invention! it can make you feel so insecure!)...and then one day he pretty bluntly told me that it was impossible for us to have a conversation without it turning to thoughts of sex.

though it would have been pretty obvious to the casual observer, it took me a while to realise i had blundered again, and forgotten to guard my heart. i had bought into the lie that it was harmless, that i was in control, that it was all just a bit of fun. and yet it was screwing with my head and my heart, not to mention running in the complete opposite direction to the way God wants me to go!

i knew the only way i could stop giving in to this was to cut off all connection with him, but even so it took me ages to delete him out of my contacts. i really wanted to believe that we'd be friends, that he would want to know me as much as i wanted to know him. but considering i had given him absolutely no reason to respect me, there is no reason that he would.

anyway. he may read this, he may not. so, t, sorry but the fun wasn't worth the compromise.



some things from a christian webzine i've also been reading this morning that helped clear my thinking (not necessarily directly applicable to me or my situation, and some of you non-christian friends might find it all a bit freaky, but this is where i'm at and the principles are worth thinking about):
sex at the edge of night
preference or sin?
how do i resist sex?

Thursday 16 November 2006

errrrrrrg

i am so tired. my body is just exhausted, my eyes are burning, i just want to sleep. i go to bed early and lie awake in the dark for hours. eventually i concede defeat, i drag my laptop out and waste time on the net, time i could be sleeping. then i eat the remainder of a packet of sugared cashew nuts, crunching on the delicious sugary slivers long after i have had enough. now i am still exhausted, but with a slight sugar buzz, and probably even less chance of actually going to sleep.

not my smartest move ever, no.

Sunday 12 November 2006

the slippery slope to the end of the year

and so we reach the end of another weekend. have tried to make it work for me instead of getting swept away by it, but it still seems too short.

had drinks at home on friday night which was fun but a little tiring at the end of a busy week. went to the chiro on saturday morning, then did a very girly thing and went to bondi junction with mum for a pedicure. my toenails are all shiny and pink like christmas baubles! also got a new fancy mobile phone, so spent half the evening playing with that. today after church and a choir rehearsal, had fish and chips with the whittinghams and a lovely swim and walk at clovelly.

it was a nice oasis of relaxation in the midst of what seems to have been a really stressful and emotional time for me. been feeling very lonely this week and my mood has been all over the place - happy, sad, angry, frustrated, melancholy, placid, content, happy...then through that cycle of emotions all over again. i know it must be hard for people to be around me when i'm so inconsistent; particularly for some friends who seem relentlessly upbeat, or at least relatively stable in their moods. it's nice when i meet new people (like a couple of people on friday night) that they like me and we get along. i think over the last couple of years my depression was becoming increasingly obvious to the naked eye...i guess i had thought i was good at hiding it, but after hiding it for so long it just began to seep out of my pores. so i'm glad it would seem that i am still improving, that i can get out amongst people and appear to be relatively normal and easygoing, even if i have minor breakdowns behind the scenes and have to have afternoon naps (but how good are afternoon naps?!).

it seems as though the pressure's only going to increase from here on in.

i've just realised how jam packed the next couple of months are going to be, and i'm dreading it. i will probably actually enjoy it, as i find it's always better to be occupied and busy than sitting around getting too introspective, but at the same time i'm already feeling exhausted. our national conference in canberra is less than three weeks away and there's so much to do before we get there. my dad is going to be in town for most of december with his new (32 year old) girlfriend, so that's a...thing. there's the usual stack of christmas activities and services at church which require lots of involvement (musically at any rate). then there's christmas itself - janice reminded us in the prayers at church this morning that we shouldn't allow the stress of christmas to overwhelm us but to focus on what we're actually celebrating.

then new year's...yet again i do not yet have a plan for new year's. i'm thinking this year i need to actually decide what i want to do and make it happen, rather than getting to new year's eve and feeling disgruntled that i have no plans.

i am very much looking forward to the holidays.

Tuesday 7 November 2006

i am half un-australian

am i on glue? the melbourne cup is really just a horse race, isn't it?

i feel like a traitor almost.

don't get me wrong, every year i end up watching it and getting excited and even emotional about it, but i really don't understand why as i know absolutely nothing about horse racing, i have never placed a bet and have never even been to the racetrack (aside from a first year exam that was held at the panorama room at randwick racecourse, but i don't think that counts). i kind of resent being manipulated this much, but hey, i enjoy a spectacle as much as the next person.

i'm sick today, and so i'm at home, sitting here, watching channel 7's coverage, and i just don't get the hyperbole. "there are two days that mark the australian psyche...anzac day, where we honour sacrifice...and...the melbourne cup..."

what?

i've always missed out on that aspect of being australian - i'm not into any sport in any way. when the olympics were on i got kind of swept up in the fun of it all but the only thing we went to see was the synchronised swimming, which doesn't really seem to be taking the whole thing seriously, does it? i have a passing interest in the swimming and i'll usually watch the australian open, or bits of it anyway. if someone i know is really into a sport and they can be bothered explaining it to me, i will often get into it, but only really as a bonding thing with that person.

is it because i'm half-chinese? :)

oh they've got chris isaak on now doing a cover of cheap trick's "i want you to want me". so that's worth watching - although they also have these bizarre people on stilts doing some interpretive dance thing to the music and it's really not working. and there's darren beadman - he and his family go to our church (or they did, haven't seen them for a while...they're a lovely family).

hurry up and run the damn race so i can go back to bed.


Delta Blues, right, in a photo finish with Pop Rock.
Photo: Wayne Taylor


at 3.09pm
horses are beautiful. i want a pony.

Sunday 5 November 2006

which came first, the misery or the music?

i just have to say it. i love nick hornby.

So maybe what I said before, about how listening to too many records messes your life up . . . maybe there's something in it after all. David Owen, he's married, right? He's taken care of all that, and now he's a big-shot diplomat. The guy who came into the shop with the suit and the car keys, he's married too, and now he's, I don't know, a businessman. Me, I'm unmarried - at the moment as unmarried as it's possible to be - and I'm the owner of a failing record shop. It seems to me that if you place music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the centre of your being, then you can't afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product. You've got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, you've got to pick at it and unravel it until it all comes apart and you're compelled to strat all over again. Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship. Maybe Al Green is directly responsible for more than I ever realized.

See, records have helped me to fall in love, no question. I hear something new, with a chord change that melts my guts, and before I know it I'm looking for someone, and before I know it I've found her. I fell in love with Rosie the simultaneous-orgasm woman after I'd fallen in love with a Cowboy Junkies song: I played it and played it and played it, and it made me dreamy, and I needed someone to dream about, and I found her, and . . . well, there was trouble.


High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, p141-2 (Indigo)