Monday Reflections

Monday night, and the weekend is long gone.

My mum celebrated the last birthday of her sixth decade. We had a family lunch at the same beachside restaurant that I had my first farewell lunch at last year. We were disappointed that the entertainment wasn't repeated. It was lovely to sit in the sun with the sea breezes, watching the yachts on the bay. After lunch we went back to mum's house to play with her new toy. She was very excited when my stepfather presented her with a game of quoits. Mum decided that we all needed to play by the rules that were included with the game. So we stepped out 9 feet and used a hockey stick to mark a throwing point. We sucked. We all threw about 60 times each, and only one of my brothers, my sister in law and my stepfather managed to get the quoit over the pole. Heck, we sucked big time. We even tried with our eyes closed. I laughed so hard when I was throwing with my eyes closed I didn't get anywhere near the pole. I guess I was the comic relief.

Yesterday I had an invitation to a 4th birthday party. I had to go and get the rest of his present first, so I accidentally bought 4 books* - the glorious Waterhole by Graeme Base for the birthday boy and the rest for me. I'm thoroughly enjoying Fridge Magnets are Bastards right now. I had the privilege of watching my favourite almost four year olds tear the wrapping paper from his stilts and his book, and then practice walking on the stilts. I do enjoy being his honorary aunt.

One of my favourite things about his birthday parties is that I get to catch up with such a varied group of friends. We celebrate and mourn together. Some of these people have been my friends since the 1980's. This weekend we were celebrating an unexpected but very welcome pregnancy. We were also the ears for the end of a 12 year relationship. Politics and religion got a good going over too.

These are the people that ground me. They are the important people in my life. Without them my life would not be as rich. I'm very lucky to have them in my life.

*They just fell into my arms. Really. It was an accident.

Fight night

Months ago I went and had a sleep study done. It was a very odd experience. As someone who is used to wireless everything, spending the night wired up to (what felt like) thousands of electrodes measuring my all, was very disconcerting. As someone who doesn't sleep well at the best of times, tangling myself up in cables does not improve the quality or quantity of my sleep.

The bottom line is that I sleep really badly. I had to do a couple more studies to ensure that the first one wasn't an aberration. Not fun. I'm lucky to get about an hour of unbroken sleep a night. As an added bonus I stop breathing approximately every 45 seconds. It's overrated. Really. On the plus side though, I have really high levels of oxygen in my blood. Painful bloodtests those ones. My specialist, who I really rate, told me that I was a freak, and that I should be falling asleep combing my hair.

Because of this, I've got a new addition to my bedroom. Unfortunately it isn't anyone from my list. At night I get to put on a very fetching headset, with the quaintly named nasal pillow. All night long this pillow pushes oxygen through my nose, stopping me from stopping breathing. Such fun.

Every night, I have fights with this machine. I haven't made it through one night with the mask staying on my face. I've found it over the other side of the room. I've managed to unplug the machine. I've managed to wrap the tube around my neck. I have no clue that I'm doing any of this until I wake up - usually somewhere between 3 and 4.30 in the morning. I don't think I'm a very nice person for an innocent machine to share a room with.

I'm noticing a difference though. Friday night I fell asleep without the machine, and woke up about 6 am. Yesterday was a complete write off. I was so tired I just wanted to sleep all day. I felt like I'd been hit by a truck, and if I'd combed my hair I would have fallen asleep.* I have to keep trying with this machine. I know what it does to me when I don't use it.

Thank goodness it shouldn't be permanent.

*I brushed it, I swear!

Rambling ...

I can't believe it is Monday evening already. I suspect that is something I have said way too many times already this year. Time just keeps flying.

Mike made my day today. It was lovely to come home from work and have an award from him. Thanks Mike - it was such a lovely surprise. Mike is a blogger I really enjoy reading so the award means a lot.

I'm so relieved that our PM has finally called the Federal Election. For those of you not in Australia, every three years or so we have to elect all of our lower house, and half of our upper house. We don't have fixed terms for politicians, so for the last three months there has been a swirl of rumour, breathless analysis of every movement in the current ruling party and relentless advertising telling us how good the government has been for us. All that is over, and now we have nauseating numbers of ads telling us how good one party is, and how bad the other party is. Next ad, it is reversed. I don't think I help myself though - being a media junkie means that I visit at least 10 news sites each day, I listen to the local public radio at home and when I'm driving, and if there is an ad I notice it. Roll on November 25th.

I had some lovely mail this week. My brother and his very lovely, still very new wife sent me a beautiful thank you card. The effort that they both went to to ensure that it was a personal message was just lovely. (Eeek, too many lovely's, but I hate the word nice) I'm so happy that they appreciated things I did for them, even though I wasn't looking for anything. The same day, we got an invitation to my step brothers wedding. I don't think he has had much say in it - the invitation and the envelope were hot pink! From what he says, he will just show up and do as he is told. I suppose it is a handy survival skill. I don't think I've been to a formal wedding on a week night before, so that will be a new experience. I'm glad I've managed to take the next day off work though. I've even convinced the boy to have a 3 day weekend. I'm really looking forward to it.

The boy and I are planning our next holiday already. We started within a week of coming back from the last one. Neither of us has ever been to Europe, so we are looking at spending a month there next September/October. He is very keen to spend at least half of it doing tours so we don't miss things we want to see. My sister and sister in law are horrified by the idea, but I'm happy to look at different options. Suggestions are always welcome.

My backspace key is having conniptions. It has decided that it wants to sit on a slope and nothing I have managed to do will fix it. Does anyone know how to resettle it? It is a great way to ensure accuracy though.

Why do so many people find my blog by googling "random questions" Why do people google that phrase? If you are one of them, please tell me - I'm bewildered.

My boy is gorgeous. I just wanted to say that :)

Blast from the past

Yesterday I spent 57 minutes trying to find a car park at one of my local shopping centres. Fun isn't the first word that springs to mind. I didn't get as frustrated as I could have done though, as they had an endless musical loop playing.

For a lot of people, the constant playing of the Urban Cookie Collective's "I've got the key, I've got the secret" would be one of the circles of hell. It catapulted me straight back to the summer of 1993 - 1994 when I lived and breathed cheesy pop music for 3 months. I volunteered at a community radio station during test broadcasts. The whole point of the test broadcast was to prove that the station could meet community needs and had an audience.

Driving around the carpark yesterday, I flashed back to the songs that just didn't stop that summer - Sing Hallelujah, What is love by Haddaway (responsible for one of the worst jokes of all time - What is love? If I haddaway I'd tell you), Dur dur d'étre bébé, Boom Shake the Room, No Rain by Blind Melon, All that She Wants, a remix of Walk this Way, It's alright, Oh what a night, Can we talk, One, I will always love you, End of the Road, This is it (the Ruth Campbell version), Gimme little sign, I've got the key, I've got the secret, the Chipmunks version of Achy Breaky Heart and Agro's version of Ballroom Blitz. Some of those songs I'd still be quite happy never to hear again. I was quite surprised to find myself thinking fondly of a lot of them yesterday though. I'm more stunned to realise how many of them are already on my ipod.

I thought that most of that part of my life was over. I don't expect to find myself back in the adult version of school camp ever again. I don't think my liver could cope with it again. I know my sleep patterns couldn't. I left the group about 18 months later - I couldn't stand the politics, and the constant jockeying for positions. Now, thanks to that song, and Facebook, that part of my life has come back.

I wonder if I can keep the good things, and let the bad things go.

So now what?

I took this quiz after seeing it over at Mike's. I'm devastated. Apparently I'm "Pure Evil"


How evil are you?

Where on earth am I supposed to go from here? Where is the room to grow and develop? Does this mean I've reached the pinnacle, scaled the dizzy heights? How do I improve on perfection?

Suggestions? (Except for working for AOL - I already work for an evil empire)