Light. Sweet. Crude.

Changing my mind so often I may have pulled a muscle.

We had my very good friend Vanessa over for dinner tonight.  I don't know about you guys but I very rarely keep in touch with people I used to work with.  In the 13 years (shit) since I graduated from University and started out in the Real World I've met countless people, but only a handful have remained in my life as friends.  These people all have one thing in common - a love of wine.  That's not a coincidence.

Vanessa and I worked together all last year.  We started within a few weeks of each other; I got there first and as the resident HR person was partly responsible for her orientation and institutionalisation into the department.  She's never quite forgiven me.  Seriously, though, I knew the moment I met her that we would be Friends Forever because her caffeine withdrawal symptoms kicked in at the same time as mine (10.20am).  And because she was having a shitful time at work on account of a couple of senior horse's arse's and I could, like, totally empathise because I have lived that nightmare.  That nightmare is the first chapter in my book.

The other thing I love about Vanessa is that she's insanely smart and well-read and well-informed and I could listen to her talk about just about any subject for hours on end  and not only be entranced but educated too.  The thing she loves about me is that I keep filling up her glass and I do it without her even noticing.  I'm so sneaky like that.

But another thing?  She lives very happily on 30-odd acres of pastureland outside Canberra and makes a strong case for moving our little family out of comfortable suburbia and onto The Land.  PJ showed her some of the video he took last time he went wandering around on The Block and she swooned and sighed and said oh my god what the hell are you waiting for and look!  You could definitely fit a few horses on those 150 acres.  And just like that, I was back on board.  I wanna live in the country.

Yesterday, in the office of our new financial advisor (who deserves a whole 'nother blog post of his own) I wanted to buy a house in the city.

Turns out we might be able to do both.  Yeah, my head's spinning, too.

So Vanessa has recently adopted a brumby.  His name is Artemis but she calls him Artie.  And why wouldn't you?  He's a baby.  He's such a small little brumby that the only blanket she could find at Horseland was the kind they make for the really little ponies.  The really little girl ponies.  Artie's blankie is pink and baby-blue.

(My spell-checker is telling me that it doesn't know what a brumby is.  A brumby is a wild horse in Australia.  A brumby is an Aussie mustang.  There's an organisation in Victoria that rescues wild brumbies from the knackers and domesticates them and sells them to people with vacant paddocks or, in Vanessa's case, lonely mares.)

Artie cost about $600.  That's less than a pure-bred Jack Russell.  Much less than a pure-bread Weimarana or Doberman.   It never occured to me that I could get a horse for a pet.  I wouldn't need to ride him, he'd just be like a pet dog.  A big dog.  Vanessa says that Artie is like a big ol' dog that doesn't want to come inside.  Imagine that?  A pet that wont shed on the sofa.  And horse pooh is far less offensive than dog poo.

I wanna live in the country.

The kids can have their horses for riding, and I'll have my Brumby.  My Brumbarana.   

This could work.

Early onset adolescence. And menopause.

Maybe it's because I'm getting older.  Perhaps it's because I'm grossly out of shape.  What if it's all the coffee?  I don't know what it is, but these days I seem to be getting awfully hot under the collar, awfully easily.  And by 'hot under the collar' I mean extraordinarily sweaty under the armpits.  I'm not kidding.  No amount of 24-hour heat-activated extra-strength ultra-sensitive anti-antiperspirant seems to save me from this embarrassing state of affairs. 

Fortunately the deodorant part of the antiperspirant is working - I don't smell too bad, I don't think - but seriously?  The wet patches?  What is going on?  And all it takes is a tiny, slightly stressful event to bring on the waterworks.  About to meet a new client?  Hello, super-soaker.  Getting pulled over for a breathalyzer test despite having had nothing but cornflakes?  Hello, Niagara Falls.  Putting my hand up to ask a question of the Panel of Experts at the Emerging Writers' Festival?  Hello, La Nina.  And put that arm down.

Our neighbours have an almost-teenage son who does a lot of sport.  There's no nice way to say this - he's starting to smell a bit, well, manly.  I've known Tim since he was a little tyke, so it's kind of cute to see him growing up.  I'll have to stop squeezing his cheeks soon, though, or I might inadvertently pop a pimple.  Anyway,  I guess when you're as active as he is, too much antiperspirant is never enough.  Ella seems to have noticed it too.  The other day I picked her up from soccer practice, and as she took her sweatshirt off my nostrils were confronted with the unmistakable odor of almost-teenage boy. 

Ella, you should probably think about wearing some deodorant, darling.  You seem to be sweating a lot at soccer.

That's because I'm working so hard, Mum!

I know, and that's great...

I can't help it!  I get sweaty, OK?!

I know, we all do, so that's why we wear deodorant.  It helps with the smelly armpits.

Huh?

When you sweat at soccer, your armpits start to smell a bit, well, yucky, but if you've got deodorant on it wont be so bad (I can't believe I'm having this conversation with a 7 year old).

Huh?

Your armpits, darling.  Can't you smell that?

(She sniffs her armpits)

Oh my god!  I smell like Tim!

Kids bounce back.

PJ took Ella to her riding lesson last night, and I went with Madeleine an hour later for her lesson.  When we arrived we found Ella cuddling up with her daddy on one of the benches, crying her little eyes out.  Oh dear, did she come off?

She was riding one of those little firecracker ponies, the ones who sometimes go off at a quicker-than-normal canter.  The kids were jumping over low poles, going over in two-point position (bum up out of the seat, like a jockey) but Ella lost her stirrups then she lost the reins then tumbled forward over the pony's head and landed heavily on the ground, rolling a couple of times and trying not to get tangled up in the pony's legs.  I didn't see it happen, but PJ assured me that it looked like it bloody hurt.

I took her home and she seemed very uncomfortable all the way home in the car.  I felt her tummy and gave it a bit of a squeeze and she yelled one of those yells that kids can't fake.  I decided a trip to the hospital for a second, expert opinion was warranted.

The thing with Ella is that she loves the attention.  All kids do (so do some adults) but she takes it to an extreme.  Not only will she sneak little side glances to see if you're watching, but she'll actually ask you - did you see me sitting on daddy's lap when you arrived?  Did you see my crying?  Could you tell I was hurt?  And how did that make you feel?  Were you scared or just worried? 

All the way to the hospital in the car, she couldn't seem to make her mind up as to how much pain she was in.  It makes it very difficult to assess whether she has suffered a serious internal injury, or just the general unpleasantness of falling off a cantering horse (been there, not pleasant).  When we arrived at the ER and walked up to the triage nurse Ella was looking like a kid who had absolutely nothing wrong with her.  She wasn't even pale.  I almost wanted her to vomit violently all over me, just so I didn't feel like an idiot there in the triage room, surrounded by other patients who all looked far sicker than Ella. 

The nurse asked me what happened, and I made a feeble attempt to describe the seriousness of her fall and the fact that she's come off before but on those occasions she bounced.  I said her tummy was very tender, it seemed to hurt to breathe, that she yelled when I pressed on a spot just below her ribcage.  Honestly, she was much worse before, I'm not making this up, I'm not one of those helicopter mothers, I promise.

They took us to the examining room and did some more pressing and prodding, none of which caused anything more than a slight grunt from the patient.  They gave her some panadol and told us to go and wait half an hour and see if that helps.

Within ten minutes she was completely fine.  Yes, a little sore, but otherwise back to her old self (nagging me for a packet of chips from the vending machine).  We waited the half hour, by which time I was completely sure that she had recovered, so we said thanks and goodbye and went home.

When you're a parent you need to be prepared for all sorts of unpleasant sensations.  There's the sleep deprivation, of course.  And the sore back from lifting the baby incorrectly, day after day.  The exhaustion.  The fear, the worry, the concern that something terrible is about to happen.  You have to be prepared to drink your coffee cold - because you'd forgotten you'd made yourself a cup or you were worried about it tipping on the baby.  And you have to be prepared for the sensation of not knowing for sure if your child has suffered an actual injury, or they're just being a bit melodramatic and enjoying the spectacle,  or they really are bleeding internally but don't know it because that can happen without you knowing... and you have to be prepared for the look the triage nurse gives you.  In our case, it was a look that said "Well, you WILL let your kids ride horses" and "She looks fine to me and clearly you're one of those mothers" and "I know I'm smiling and appearing to be all sympathetic and understanding but actually?  There is another kid back here with a real injury and I need you to stop wasting my time."

Good News Day

John Edwards has announced he's endorsing Barack Obama.  I'm about as excited as a housewife from the other side of the world could possibly be. 

I'm seriously thinking about going to New York again this year, and timing my trip to coincide with the election.  I was there for the 2004 mid-term (quite by accident)  and although the result wasn't quite what I'd hoped for, it was fun to be there.  I still have my Kerry | Edwards button.

Or maybe I'll go in January, and go to Washington to see the inauguration.  Now that'd be somethin'.

Ten Things I Learned at the Melbourne Emerging Writers' Festival

I got home this morning, brimming with enthusiasm and yes, a little hung over.  (There was a social event in a pub on Saturday night and I had a few too many Stellas.  Well, that happens, we creative types like to dive in the deep end.)

The Emerging Writers' Festival was a two-day event at Town Hall in Melbourne.  There were 'skills sharing workshops' and 'panel discussions' and other hour-long sessions to go along to.  I signed up for two skills sharing workshops and circled about eight panel discussions on the timetable, and managed to go to most of them. 

To cut a long story short, here are ten things I learned this weekend, and a few I didn't:

1.  The best way to be productive is to find a corner of your house that is entirely yours, and set up your computer right there, and call it your Office.  Get out of your pyjamas and go to your Office every day, at a regular time even if you don't have any ideas when you first sit down, and just write.  Respect the fact that you are a writer, respect your work and take it seriously.

2.  Don't talk about your writing, ad nauseum, to anyone who'll listen.  Don't talk; write.

3.  Plumbers don't work for free.  If someone asks you to write them something, maybe just a quick piece, 500 words on traffic jams or a couple of columns for their new blog... tell them sure, happy to help, here's what it will cost you.  Remember, you're a writer, this is your job, and plumbers don't work for free.

4.  Sometimes your work just isn't good enough.  If you've been rejected seven or eight times, it's possible that you just aren't good enough.  Get someone to look at it with a critical eye.  Rework the second half.  Be brutally honest with yourself or get some brutally honest advice.  What happened to JK Rowling (got rejected dozens of times) is the exception to the rule.

5.  Don't send your work to every single publisher and hope that someone bites.  Research the publisher, see what they've published in the past and if their past work is like yours, then send them your manuscript.  Don't send your sci-fi novel to the company that publishes vegan cookbooks.

6.  Get a manuscript appraisal, but find out who will actually do the appraising.  Make sure that person knows the genre.  If you send it off for a generic appraisal the advice wont be helpful, it will be generic.  If you're going to pay for it, make sure you're paying someone who knows what they're doing.

7.  If you write something, whether it's one sentence or five chapters, and you think it's  a little off, if there's a niggling voice in the back of your mind that thinks you could do better, then you should change it.  Don't leave it there for the editor.  Don't give your manuscript to an editor until you're as happy with it as you can possibly be. 

8.  If you can, get a mentor.  Find someone who knows about writing in your genre and ask them if they could help you. If you have the opportunity, go a Writer's Retreat.  It will be worth it.

9.  An Emerging Writers' Festival wont necessarily tell you HOW to write. It will tell you about the 'banquet of resources' available to you, the pitfalls and risks, the benefits of a good writer/editor relationship, the need to address your cover letter to Mr Publisher or Ms Publisher, not To Whom It May Concern, and that if you ever do actually get published, there's no other feeling on earth like it.  But if you're an emerging writer and you still aren't sure how to develop a character or write snappy dialogue, you're in the wrong place.

On Saturday night there was a poetry reading/story telling/live performance event for all the emerging writers to go along to.  Standing in front of me at the bar was a woman from a small, independent publishing house who had spoken at 'The Pitch' session, where publishers told the audience how they would like to be pitched to.  She had ended her four-minute spiel with "good luck!" and it occurred to me, staring at the back of her head in the queue at the bar, that she was the only person who had said something directly, deliberately, pointedly positive to the crowd.  By the end of the weekend, I'd heard it from a couple of others, but out of a couple of dozen speakers and professionals and lecturers and teachers and editors and publishers and screen-writing experts and facilitators at an Emerging Writers' Festival, only a few wished us luck and talked to us as though we are about to embark on an exciting journey and this is the start of something big and isn't it wonderful?  Everyone else told their cautionary tale or described the loneliness of the writer's life or the fact that you can't break into the business unless you know someone or just painted a picture so utterly bleak that we were left wondering if there is any way we could ever, actually, possibly come close to having a manuscript accepted by a real-live publisher, let alone published.  I tapped her on the shoulder and thanked her for being so positive.

A few hours later I sat by myself in wagamama's and thought about the purpose of an emerging writers' festival, and what makes an emerging writer different from an established writer.   I couldn't help thinking about my kids, and particularly about Ella, who has started playing soccer for the first time this year.  She was so nervous last week before her first game that she wondered if she was even going to be able to do it - this from a kid who can canter a horse and smash a baseball and leap tall buildings in a single bound.  She's good at many things, but they don't give her confidence to jump into something new; she has to be jollied along and encouraged and enthusiastically cheered from the sidelines, preferably with pom-poms. 

So who were these people at the festival, telling nervous, self-deprecating, doubting emerging writers that writing was hard work, that few people ever succeed, that you can try and try and persevere but there are no guarantees that a publisher will even read your manuscript, let alone consider it for publication or return your calls?  Of course we know the odds are ridiculously against us.  You don't need to tell us that.  So what can we do to shorten those odds?  Give us something we can work with.      

While waiting for my salmon ramen, I wrote the following letter to myself in my journal:

I will write this book not only because I want to get my story finished but I need to prove these people wrong.  I've got a 7 year old and a 10 year old and half my life is spent cleaning their clothes and cooking them dinner.  The other half is spent telling them THEY CAN BE ANYTHING THEY WANT TO BE AND THEY SHOULD IGNORE OR BE ENERGISED BY ANYONE WHO DARES TO TELL THEM OTHERWISE.

I'm going to write my story - I've never felt more determined - because I can. And I enjoy writing.  If it turns out to be shit, so be it.  But I'm not going to NOT write it because a handful of people at an Emerging Writers Festival subtly suggested (deliberately or not) that I shouldn't waste my time.   

Sincere thanks to the speakers at the Festival who were inspiring or interesting or just struck a chord - Karen Andrews (of course!), Daniel Ducrou, Matthew Clayfield,  Jane Gleeson-White, Shane McCarthy, Marie Alafaci and  the guy at the Pitch skills sharing session who said you can just send your story into The Age Travel section and get lucky, so what the hell are you waiting for?

If I write my book and get invited to speak at the 2010 Emerging Writers' Festival I promise to bring my pom-poms.  Which brings me to my final lesson:

10.  Emerging writers are just seven year old kids, playing their hearts out and hoping that someone on the sideline thinks they've got potential.    

word junkie

I've just discovered The Big Word Project.  It is like The Greater Meaning of Liff but online.  Goddammit I wish I'd thought of this.

The Greater Meaning of Liff is a book of words - they're actually placenames, with the capital letter changed ie chicago - with definitions.  A chicago is the smelly wind pushed along in front of a train in the subway.

The Big Word Project is about redefining regular, everyday words.  Did I say Goodammit I wish I'd thought of this?  Because you have to BUY the word, and it costs $1 a letter.

I just spent $13 on crude, nuts and pooh.

Goddammit I wish I'd thought of this.  Those lucky bastards have sold 4000 words of varying lengths.  Let's say for argument's sake that the average word is four letters.  That's four dollars, times four thousand.  That's a lot of money.  Goddammit.

(next post from Melbourne...)

This weekend.

This weekend I am going to Melbourne for the Emerging Writers' Festival.  I booked my ticket weeks ago then called one of my old school friends who lives in St Kilda and asked if I could stay in her spare room for a couple of nights.  She said yes, but that she was going to be away, so we'd talk later about the logistics.  I called her last week to arrange everything but it turns out she had already left on her trip.  So PJ, bless him, has booked me a hotel room in the city, just down the road from where the Festival is being held.  On Friday after lunch I'm leavin' on a jet plane and I don't get back until Monday afternoon.

I know I'm not supposed to get too excited about a whole weekend in Melbourne, sans kids, but I am.  Yes of course I'm upset at missing breakfast in bed on Sunday (Mothers' Day) but I can recreate the joy by ordering room service and putting the kids on speaker-phone.  What?!  It'll be almost the same!

And with a bit of luck I'll be back on Monday night, re-energised and enthusiastic about my novel.  I don't have any work booked for June, and that self-imposed deadline is looming (the one where I want the First Crappy Draft done by my birthday on the 25th) so maybe I'll hunker down and get it done. 

Fockers

On Friday night, or maybe in the wee small hours of Saturday morning, someone helped themselves to the number plates of my car.  I didn't discover them missing until we went to the markets on Saturday morning and I was opening the boot of the car (trunk, y'all) to get something out.  I walked around the front to check if they were gone as well, and they weren't.  No, Ella, they didn't fall off when we went over the speedhump. 

I spent 45 minutes and $30 at the motor registry this morning to get my new plates, and then this afternoon I went to a couple of different places to find some new screws.  Of course the Multi Pack of Theft-Resistant Screws only contain the kind to fit the front plate.  The rear plate uses different screws and - for added joy - the holes are in the middle and not at the corners so I'm going to have to figure out how to punch two holes in the new numberplate AND THEN find the right size screws.  I'm thinking this is a weekend job for PJ.

Funny thing happened on the way to Bunnings (hardware store).  I missed the turn-off so did a u-turn inside a driveway.  As I was leaving the driveway another car was coming in, and he stopped right in front of me.  What is he doing?  What's that sound?  Is that a siren?  Oh... the driveway happened to be the entrance to the Australian Federal Police depot or something.  The policeman got out and pointed at my naked numberplate plates and I laughed and said ha ha, funny story, I'm on my way to Bunnings right now... ha ha ha.  My mother in law, visiting from the Gold Coast, was sitting in the front seat, killing herself laughing.  What are the odds, after driving around since Friday night with no plates, that I'd finally get caught by the coppers, IN THEIR OWN DRIVEWAY, less than 50m from the hardware store?  (And yes, I'd reported the theft on Saturday, so I was covered).

Anyway, the moral of this story is GO TO YOUR LOCAL HARDWARE STORE RIGHT NOW and get yourself some theft-proof screws (they were in the screws aisle at Bunnings) and swap the regular screws that your car probably has now with these new screws that can't be unscrewed by fockers with screwdrivers. 

New Post over at Imperfect Parent

I've been quite busy with work this week, and school stuff, and the laundry, and I've just barely managed to squeeze out a new post over at The Imperfect Parent.  Please head on over and take a look at it because it's evidence that, despite appearances, I've been blogging really hard this week.

The search for inner peace.  And quiet.

You're so cool

The love theme from True Romance is my new ringtone.  You know the one?  It's played right at the start of the movie, a coupla times during it (I'm watching it right now, and Clarence is just back from killing Drexl, and it's on again) and again right at the end.  It's played on a xylophone and it was written by Hans Zimmer.  It's such a happy, innocent little tune for an otherwise bleak and violent and incredible film.

I'm waiting for a fellow Quentin Tarantino fan to hear my phone ringing and give me a nod and tell me I'm so cool.

Because I'm a 37 year old Kept Woman and I'll take whatever I can get.

By the way - PJ made it happen.  He's so clever.  He wanted me to tell you that.