Sunday, June 20, 2010

Not quite as they seem...

I was laying in bed the other night thinking about things that sound much better than they actually are. This is what I came up with...

*Falling asleep in someones arms - sure, it sounds romantic and it is nice to snuggle but you wake up with a sore neck or a dead arm and one of you will undoubtedly be covered in drool...

*Starting a health regime - I always find myself getting really really motivated...just before I go to sleep at night. I lay there, planning all the things I'm going to achieve the following day, from eating a healthy brekkie to getting to the gym to taking a vitamin supplement. It never seems as easy the following morning.

*Offering to do the dinner dishes when at a friend's house - it's the polite thing to do and really, the fair thing to do. You've imposed on your friend for dinner, they've gone to a heap of trouble, slaved over a hot stove all day and you innocently suggest that you could help clean up. They're not supposed to say yes! lol

*Camping - I love camping, sitting by a fire, sleeping under the stars, have billy tea, having an adventure! Well, in my head I do anyway. In reality it's always cold, damp and uncomfortable.

*Telling the truth - just because it's the truth, doesn't mean it's all fine and dandy and won't hurt. Sometimes it's ok to sugarcoat it a little to make it easier to swallow.

[The following may be TMI]
*Sex in a pool or spa - sounds naughty and adventurous but the water washes away your natural lube and it kind of just hurts...

Are there any other really obvious ones I've missed?

Friday, June 18, 2010

'Insert humourous title here'

Hmmmm...the other night Christian and I went to see The A Team with Mikey and Scott and due to none of us correcting Christian when he told us the wrong start time, we had about an hour to kill beforehand. We decided to go for dinner at Fast Eddies and were seated next to a large birthday group. Amongst them were a set of twin boys, about ten and dressed identically in jeans and check shirts. It was the outfits that first drew my attention to them as they had obviously gone to great pains to make them as individual as possible without annoying Mother. One of them had untucked his shirt and was looking ruffled while the other had his shirt tucked in and his jeans pulled so high up he surely had some wedgie action going on. I nudged Christian to show him the outfits and he took one look and declared loudly 'Twins Basil!'.
For those of you who don't know, this is a quote from the third Austin Powers movie and we tend to trot it out whenever we can. It has been stuck in my head now ever since and I was going to use it as the title for this post. However...after my last entry I figured that it may be in poor taste and so decided not to use it...

My older sister and my neice flew out to Canada on Tuesday to go and visit my Dad and I must say, I am insanely jealous! I really enjoyed my last trip out there and miss Dad like crazy and so I would have loved to have gone with them. But I'm hoping to get out there next year and it's not like I don't have a trip of my own to loook forward to. Jo and Darcie leaving was actually a bit of a landmark for us since we leave for Scotland before they return and so I knew our trip was really close when they left. Only four weeks to go! Yay! I cannot wait! In many ways it's very similar to Jo's trip in that I'm returning there and it's going to be a really nice feeling to be familar with the area and to re-discover things that I loved last time I was there. Small things won't be such a big shock (Weirdly shaped 2L bottles of Coke, I have you sussed now!) and the best thing is that we're going to visit loved ones too :)

And now a story that I feel is blogworthy but actually happened to Christian, who feels having a blog is pointless and lame...
About a month ago he and his workmate Steven saw on some photo-a-day site (I have no idea which one and he isn't here to ask) a photo of how Subway are supposed to put cheese on their sandwiches. It is cut into triangles and so they should be layed in opposing angles to cover the most amount of bread but as I'm sure you're well aware, they don't generally do this. Then last week another photo popped up, this one of a photocopy of a Subway internal memo documenting the new proceedures for laying cheese. Christian looked at Steven, did a fist pump and then they made plans to have Subway for lunch.
When they got there Steven was in front and when the girl put his cheese on the new way he turned to Christian and gave him a big thumbs up. Then Christian ordered his normal veggie delight and waited with breathless anticipation*. There was a bit of a sandwich backlog and Christian's veggie roll was stuck behind a guy whose sandwich contained a shit load of what looked to be raw bacon. The girl came to do the cheese and laid cheese all over the bacon and then went 'Oh, that's the wrong one' and then took off the cheese from on top of the raw bacon and put it on Christian's Veggie Delight! And to make things even worse, she didn't even lay the slices the right way! Christian apparently stood there glaring at the girl but she didn't even notice, just turned around and put the bacon thingy under the grill. I asked Christian why he didn't make a complaint and his reasoning was that he didn't really care, he just wondered what would have happened if a real vegetarian had been in that situation.
I told him they probably would have blogged about it...

*Or rather, slight anticipation of a small detour from normal routine.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

When three become two

I have quite a large family, my Mum is one of seven kids and my Dad one of five. However, the older I got the less I saw of my extended family. As kids we were always going to visit aunties and uncles and my sisters were quite close to some of our cousins (I didn't have any my age so I was always either hovering around the older kids or looking after the younger ones). As time went by things changed - couples split up, family members were disowned for being complete twats, others were just a little too strange or feral to make the effort. Now I very rarely see any of my extended family and it doesn't particularly bother me that much.

Christian's family on the other hand are very very close. His mother is a triplet and over the years he and his mum have lived with one aunt or another at times or lived just down the road. Christian's cousins are more like his sisters than cousins, and it was rare for a day or two to go by without them seeing someone. When I met Christian 14 years ago I was welcomed into his family and they became my own extended family. From the beginning I could always tell his Mum from the others but it took me a couple of meetings to tell his aunties apart and even longer to distinguish their voices on the phone. We've moved away now and so Christian and I don't see his family anywhere near as often as we used to but his Mum saw her sister's almost every day and if she didn't see them in person, they spoke on the phone. For 63 years they had almost unbroken contact, something that normal siblings rarely have. I mean, I'm close with my sisters but sometimes a week or two will go by before I speak to them.

So what happens when three becomes two? One of Christian's aunties was diagnosed with cancer in the beginning of the year but she had been sick for rather a long time before that. A combination of keeping the fact she was so ill quiet and also having Gall Bladder cancer which is extremely rare made the diagnosis late in coming. But apparently even if it had been caught straight away, there would have been little they could do and so the sisters soildered on.
Her condition worsened and then last Wednesday she passed away.

It was not an easy passing. My MIL had always said she wasn't so upset about the fact that her sister would die but what she would go through before she did. And from the snipets of details we've heard it was worse than anyone imagined. When a family sits around just hours after her death and laments the lawlessness of euthanasia, it's obvious that no one should have gone through so much before the end.

The grief that followed was unimaginable. I've had those thoughts that everyone has in those dark hours - what would it be like to lose a partner or parent or sister? I'm not as close with my sisters as I once was, but even so, we are still close. I live just 15 minutes away from them both and see them whenever I can. And I know that I would be devastated if one of them were to pass away but the truth is, we just don't have and never could have, the bond that triplets would share. I can only guess but I'm sure if would be like losing a limb - a loss that physically hurts and can never ever be replaced. Christian's aunty said that she will be sad every single day from now till she dies, she doesn't think she could ever be completely happy again. People often comically describe the crying of others as 'howling' but I had never understood the meaning of that phrase until my MIL broke down. It was a primal, soul destroying, outpouring of grief. It broke my heart.

We have a memorial service for her today, just family and a few close friends, a celebration of the life that was lost and the joy that she brought to those who knew her. We'll share the memories that have stayed with us the strongest. And I'll dwell on the fact that I'll never again get to see the look on people's faces as they try to figure out what exactly it is they're seeing when they see three identical women walking down the street towards them.