we had Spike euthanised today.
it's been half an hour, and it just keeps hurting.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
one time around the ballroom slow
"sometimes things happen, and they're really scary." my usual eloquent, articulate nature is muted. from shock and gin, probably. a cool change has surged through, smelling of salt and relief. respite.
today Spike couldn't stand up, couldn't stand up and wouldn't respond. he's old, and deaf, i know i know i know, but he's never looked right through me and whimpered. i thought i'd be as sick as him, vomit all over our courtyard like he did. i let him lie on top of me while i called my grandparents and couldn't tell who was shaking more - me or him.
so we took him to the hospital, muzzled because he didn't seem to recognise us, seemed like all his muscles hurt. we carried him to the car on a towel, a neardeadwieght that had me nervyedgyscared, and my grandparents tensetersetightlipped. barely a wag of the tail from a dog who normally goes into overdrive when the chance to get in a car presents itself. and when we got to the vet's, he had to be carried in a stretcher, whimpering.
Dr Leah tells me it's probably heatstroke. my grandparent's tell me it's probably heatstroke. they all say he's going to be fine. they arrange to keep him in overnight, and i fork over $200 so that they can do blood tests to make sure he's ok. i want to ask if i can see him, but i'm aware that i'm twenty, not twelve, that i should be behaving more responsibly. so instead i go home and pick an arguement with my other grandmother about how if she'd let me keep him inside like i wanted to, he wouldn't be spending the night with strangers.
and i speak to Jason, who worries about my eloquence and articulation until we squabble about stress displacement. my family comes home from new zealand and in ten days i have forgotten how noisy they are. we eat pizza with blue cheese on it. despite six people hollering over it, the house seems like it's missing something. someone.
someone big and hairy and smelly.
x
this is very wentz-esque, i realise. tough shit, i'm upset. you try dealing with your dog being sick and see how you like it.
x
i just finished Schlink's "The Reader", which was quietly breathtaking. it's technically a holocaust novel, but i think it's more of a study of guilt and denial. i can't wait to see the movie version with Kate Winslet. also read Orwell's "Down and Out In London & Paris" which is so starkly lyrical and raw that it made it on to my top twenty books i've ever read. next up, that peter cameron and grace paley, please.
today Spike couldn't stand up, couldn't stand up and wouldn't respond. he's old, and deaf, i know i know i know, but he's never looked right through me and whimpered. i thought i'd be as sick as him, vomit all over our courtyard like he did. i let him lie on top of me while i called my grandparents and couldn't tell who was shaking more - me or him.
so we took him to the hospital, muzzled because he didn't seem to recognise us, seemed like all his muscles hurt. we carried him to the car on a towel, a neardeadwieght that had me nervyedgyscared, and my grandparents tensetersetightlipped. barely a wag of the tail from a dog who normally goes into overdrive when the chance to get in a car presents itself. and when we got to the vet's, he had to be carried in a stretcher, whimpering.
Dr Leah tells me it's probably heatstroke. my grandparent's tell me it's probably heatstroke. they all say he's going to be fine. they arrange to keep him in overnight, and i fork over $200 so that they can do blood tests to make sure he's ok. i want to ask if i can see him, but i'm aware that i'm twenty, not twelve, that i should be behaving more responsibly. so instead i go home and pick an arguement with my other grandmother about how if she'd let me keep him inside like i wanted to, he wouldn't be spending the night with strangers.
and i speak to Jason, who worries about my eloquence and articulation until we squabble about stress displacement. my family comes home from new zealand and in ten days i have forgotten how noisy they are. we eat pizza with blue cheese on it. despite six people hollering over it, the house seems like it's missing something. someone.
someone big and hairy and smelly.
x
this is very wentz-esque, i realise. tough shit, i'm upset. you try dealing with your dog being sick and see how you like it.
x
i just finished Schlink's "The Reader", which was quietly breathtaking. it's technically a holocaust novel, but i think it's more of a study of guilt and denial. i can't wait to see the movie version with Kate Winslet. also read Orwell's "Down and Out In London & Paris" which is so starkly lyrical and raw that it made it on to my top twenty books i've ever read. next up, that peter cameron and grace paley, please.
too hot too hot too hot
it's barely eleven am, which means it's barely daylight. and it's THIRTY FIVE DEGREES EXACTLY.
i'm melting. dissolving into a small puddle of goo. this is not good.
and erm, i'd be in the pool but, erm. it's gone green again and the pool cleaning machine that mum calls marge but i call EvilFountainOfDoom is evil and fountainous and doomy.
global warming appears to be soley focused on sydney.
x
10 Things I Hate About The Gym
1. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
2. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
3. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
4. Perkiness at 6.30am
5. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
6. The 30 minute walk to get there
7. The 30 minute walk to get away from there
8. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
9. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
10. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
i know, i know. i brought it on myself
i'm melting. dissolving into a small puddle of goo. this is not good.
and erm, i'd be in the pool but, erm. it's gone green again and the pool cleaning machine that mum calls marge but i call EvilFountainOfDoom is evil and fountainous and doomy.
global warming appears to be soley focused on sydney.
x
10 Things I Hate About The Gym
1. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
2. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
3. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
4. Perkiness at 6.30am
5. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
6. The 30 minute walk to get there
7. The 30 minute walk to get away from there
8. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
9. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
10. ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat
i know, i know. i brought it on myself
Saturday, January 17, 2009
most of my friends smell weird
when it gets too hot to sit outside, watching the pool turn green, we move inside to watch the cricket together, both irritated by tony greig, lulled to sleep by richie benaud. a wicket causes us to jolt upright, you indignantly so. movement causes a cloud of dust from your ears, bath time imminent (despite the last one being on friday morning). the loyalty in your mutter i wonder how i got so lucky, with your nose against my knee and magnetic fields on the stereo, cold beer in the fridge. makes the knowledge that tomorrow i have to get up at 6am to go to the gym a little easier.
this is spike, my airedale terrier. he's become oddly affectionate over the last few days, which is problematic because he smells bad. headbutting and catlike rubbing are his choice methods of displaying affection - he's not a licky dog. sometimes he does bizarre things, like get plastic pot plants stuck on his nose. when he was a puppy, he ate a plastic wagon over three months. he's scared of new years eve and doesn't like our kitchen floor because he slides on it. his eyebrows are really long. and he's currently lying on the grass outside my window barking at neutrinos, which he finds inherently annoying.
(also, it looks like i have a bald spot. this is my red hair growing back, i swear.)
(also, i never really realised how big he is - even though im sitting down and he's the runt, he's still a big 'un)
x
today i found a dead bird in the skimmer box of our pool. libby, who was in the pool at the time, went green, shouted something about murder and bolted. later my neighbour maria, asked me if everything was ok. maria lives across the street from us. libby is loud.
and mean. she's making me go to the gym tomorrow morning.
x
im running out of things to read - there's an e.e. cummings bio that looks interesting, but does anyone have any other ideas?
this is spike, my airedale terrier. he's become oddly affectionate over the last few days, which is problematic because he smells bad. headbutting and catlike rubbing are his choice methods of displaying affection - he's not a licky dog. sometimes he does bizarre things, like get plastic pot plants stuck on his nose. when he was a puppy, he ate a plastic wagon over three months. he's scared of new years eve and doesn't like our kitchen floor because he slides on it. his eyebrows are really long. and he's currently lying on the grass outside my window barking at neutrinos, which he finds inherently annoying.
(also, it looks like i have a bald spot. this is my red hair growing back, i swear.)
(also, i never really realised how big he is - even though im sitting down and he's the runt, he's still a big 'un)
x
today i found a dead bird in the skimmer box of our pool. libby, who was in the pool at the time, went green, shouted something about murder and bolted. later my neighbour maria, asked me if everything was ok. maria lives across the street from us. libby is loud.
and mean. she's making me go to the gym tomorrow morning.
x
im running out of things to read - there's an e.e. cummings bio that looks interesting, but does anyone have any other ideas?
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
new years resolutions are never that original
if i join a gym.....
can i afford it?
and will i actually go?
can i afford it?
and will i actually go?
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
apprentice
Et nous existerons en nous amusant, en rêvant amours monstres et univers fantastiques, en nous
plaignant et en querellant les apparences du monde, saltimbanque, mendiant, artiste, bandit,
— prêtre ! Sur mon lit d'hôpital, l'odeur de l'encens m'est revenue si puissante ; gardien des aromates sacrés, confesseur, martyr...
I remember a summer day in the Jardin de Luxembourg. An argument about e.e. cummings and taste. A stale cheese and ham sandwich. A feeling that the European sun doesn't have the same strength as the Antipodean. We thought we'd never go hungry again, but we didn't reckon on our tendency towards melodrama. The belief that we were somehow more fucked up than everyone else because we were young, we were in love with our own voices. I was etching out a story about being too small to talk to god, you were musing on my loyalty - and there were questions we didn't want to ask, because we were worried that we would like the answers too much.
Now there are no more questions for us to answer - just small grins across large oceans and promises of handwritten notecards. We want to live in Middlemarch, in Wuthering Heights. But not as protagonists. I've learned that I don't have to be the centre of attention and I think you taught me that, if only through the scrawled postcards you've been sending - suggestions of memory, that maybe the make up I left in your bathroom is still there.
And a parting at a train station that was made all the better by our passion for vintage clothing, our lust for pretentious snapshots (but it was slightly spoiled by my brilliant self deprecation). Now I sit at train stations thinking of delayed trains, instead of wondering where you are. Sometimes I read books you recommended, but mostly I sit and feel the sun seep into my skin. Sometimes I try to write, but the words aren't flowing as easily as they used to. I don't know you well enough to know what adive you'd give me to get my pen back on the paper. But that doesn't matter because you told me once that whatever I did, wherever I went, as long as I did it with glitter in my footsteps, then brilliance would be within my reach.
So I've taken to wearing feathers in my hair, and I'm rereading Decline and Fall. There's no worry in my footsteps, just glitter. And it's a summer day in the Sydney Botanic Gardens with Bishop Allen for company.Rimbaud sitting next to me with his trademark scowl. A blueberry bagel and the knowledge that sometimes the words write themselves. And even if the over fifties think that I'm trying too hard, that I'm not original or different from any other twenty year old, that I'm aiming true at my pretentious target, it doesn't matter. Because the future is mine, all blue open skies, new shoes, paperbacks and promises.
x
plaignant et en querellant les apparences du monde, saltimbanque, mendiant, artiste, bandit,
— prêtre ! Sur mon lit d'hôpital, l'odeur de l'encens m'est revenue si puissante ; gardien des aromates sacrés, confesseur, martyr...
I remember a summer day in the Jardin de Luxembourg. An argument about e.e. cummings and taste. A stale cheese and ham sandwich. A feeling that the European sun doesn't have the same strength as the Antipodean. We thought we'd never go hungry again, but we didn't reckon on our tendency towards melodrama. The belief that we were somehow more fucked up than everyone else because we were young, we were in love with our own voices. I was etching out a story about being too small to talk to god, you were musing on my loyalty - and there were questions we didn't want to ask, because we were worried that we would like the answers too much.
Now there are no more questions for us to answer - just small grins across large oceans and promises of handwritten notecards. We want to live in Middlemarch, in Wuthering Heights. But not as protagonists. I've learned that I don't have to be the centre of attention and I think you taught me that, if only through the scrawled postcards you've been sending - suggestions of memory, that maybe the make up I left in your bathroom is still there.
And a parting at a train station that was made all the better by our passion for vintage clothing, our lust for pretentious snapshots (but it was slightly spoiled by my brilliant self deprecation). Now I sit at train stations thinking of delayed trains, instead of wondering where you are. Sometimes I read books you recommended, but mostly I sit and feel the sun seep into my skin. Sometimes I try to write, but the words aren't flowing as easily as they used to. I don't know you well enough to know what adive you'd give me to get my pen back on the paper. But that doesn't matter because you told me once that whatever I did, wherever I went, as long as I did it with glitter in my footsteps, then brilliance would be within my reach.
So I've taken to wearing feathers in my hair, and I'm rereading Decline and Fall. There's no worry in my footsteps, just glitter. And it's a summer day in the Sydney Botanic Gardens with Bishop Allen for company.Rimbaud sitting next to me with his trademark scowl. A blueberry bagel and the knowledge that sometimes the words write themselves. And even if the over fifties think that I'm trying too hard, that I'm not original or different from any other twenty year old, that I'm aiming true at my pretentious target, it doesn't matter. Because the future is mine, all blue open skies, new shoes, paperbacks and promises.
x
stuff like what serious bloggers do.
They've gone!
This morning at some ugly hour, when the sunlight was barely there and I was still in my pajamas, my mother father brother sister piled into a cab and began their trip to New Zealand. They're gone for twelve days. My mother insisted they pack their swimmers, which tells you a lot about her. So anyway, they've gone. Our pool is green and causing me some consternation, the dog has his own entourage of flies, and my grandmother and I have had a fight already.
Oh, and I've discovered the joy of reading the newspaper in bed.
I've also been busy being cultured. (like yogurt)
I went to see Franz Ferdinand, with my brother. There was dancing and many sparkles. They've still got amazing precision with their beats, Alex's singing is just as cutting as ever, and Bob is still the cutest bass player I've ever seen. There's a new sort of venom in their new songs, a superior nod to all the bands trying to copy them in their absence. I'm looking forward to the new album.
Two days after Franz, I went to see Tegan and Sara with my bestie Eloise. This was always going to be a weird one, cos Elo and I had never met in person before - just six years of long streaming emails and handwritten letters and drunken text messages. Fortunately we clicked like castanets the moment we met and spent the night dancing and wondering why there were so many grumpy lesbians there that night. I know T & S are a band that lesbians like, but I'm not sure why the crowd was so grumpy. Still, T&S were great, especially So Jealous, which just exploded. Support band An Horse are awesome also - proof that Brisbanites can make music.
And then on Sunday, Lizzle, my siblings Jeremy & Claudia, and myself trotted along to the Sydney Opera House to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) which is one of the cleverest pieces in theatre history. This production was a bit more blokey than the other two I've seen but still very very funny. Although I could have done without the Ro-emo bit - or someone could have warned me. Getting double teamed by MCR and PATD simultaneously is not fun.
Continuing with the Culturedness, I'm reading Leonard Cohen and Tom Robbins, I'm listening to She & Him and Nicholas Jaar. All these are Very Good Things.
I'm also trying to put together a mexican food night for friday. Refried Beans!
This morning at some ugly hour, when the sunlight was barely there and I was still in my pajamas, my mother father brother sister piled into a cab and began their trip to New Zealand. They're gone for twelve days. My mother insisted they pack their swimmers, which tells you a lot about her. So anyway, they've gone. Our pool is green and causing me some consternation, the dog has his own entourage of flies, and my grandmother and I have had a fight already.
Oh, and I've discovered the joy of reading the newspaper in bed.
I've also been busy being cultured. (like yogurt)
I went to see Franz Ferdinand, with my brother. There was dancing and many sparkles. They've still got amazing precision with their beats, Alex's singing is just as cutting as ever, and Bob is still the cutest bass player I've ever seen. There's a new sort of venom in their new songs, a superior nod to all the bands trying to copy them in their absence. I'm looking forward to the new album.
Two days after Franz, I went to see Tegan and Sara with my bestie Eloise. This was always going to be a weird one, cos Elo and I had never met in person before - just six years of long streaming emails and handwritten letters and drunken text messages. Fortunately we clicked like castanets the moment we met and spent the night dancing and wondering why there were so many grumpy lesbians there that night. I know T & S are a band that lesbians like, but I'm not sure why the crowd was so grumpy. Still, T&S were great, especially So Jealous, which just exploded. Support band An Horse are awesome also - proof that Brisbanites can make music.
And then on Sunday, Lizzle, my siblings Jeremy & Claudia, and myself trotted along to the Sydney Opera House to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) which is one of the cleverest pieces in theatre history. This production was a bit more blokey than the other two I've seen but still very very funny. Although I could have done without the Ro-emo bit - or someone could have warned me. Getting double teamed by MCR and PATD simultaneously is not fun.
Continuing with the Culturedness, I'm reading Leonard Cohen and Tom Robbins, I'm listening to She & Him and Nicholas Jaar. All these are Very Good Things.
I'm also trying to put together a mexican food night for friday. Refried Beans!
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
like a beautiful dancewhore
my brother's a romeo, a harem owner, a sensitive new age guy.
this usually doesn't have any advantages for me.
except when his uber cool girlfriend gets the up-chucks, and i get the FRANZ FERDINAND TICKET for tonight.
i knew i bought my sparkly new shoes for a reason.
dance me in, darling :)
this usually doesn't have any advantages for me.
except when his uber cool girlfriend gets the up-chucks, and i get the FRANZ FERDINAND TICKET for tonight.
i knew i bought my sparkly new shoes for a reason.
dance me in, darling :)
Sunday, January 4, 2009
like castanets
i'd like to convince you all that i'm not a curmudgeon, or some sort of angsty poet wannabe who sits in a basement all day. so i did one of the things i'm best at. a list.
Things That Are Rather Nice
Things That Are Rather Nice
- Listening to the cricket commentary on ABC Radio - even if there's no real competition and Hayden really should retire.
- Buying CDs that come with lyric booklets - this makes me inexplicably happy. I bought Bishop Allen & The Broken String and Bon Iver's "For Emma, Forever Ago" today, and both cd's come with lyrics, Bishop Allen's being rendered in a beautiful storybook manner.
- Listening to said CDs - Bishop Allen are the perfect Sydney summer soundtrack (and if you're not in Sydney and it's not summer, its probably very good at helping you feel a bit warmer) and BonIver is currently a BIG THING, so go look at some serious blog to find out about him. Personally I just think he's lovely and the music is so quietly brilliant.
- Bushwalking - although I'd like it more if we didn't have to get up early to get to Moss Vale. Still, the Australian bush is picturesque and quiet and remarkable. Also look out for Birdwatching Ninjas (like my dad)
- Wasting hours on ETSY - the clothes on here are really very nice, but it's the Geekery and Houseware sections that keep me entertained for hours on end.
- Reading Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies is one of my favourite novels, and the movie version of it (Bright Young Things) is rather spiffy too. Waugh's sense of humour is wicked.
- Drinking Tea - my grandmother (who lives in my house. woe.) insists that I have more tea than I know what to do with. But I know precisely what to do with it! Drink it! There are few things more relaxing than Tea in the cup, Cricket on the telly/radio, Crossword in the hand and the knowledge that your plan to drive your grandmother nuts is working. Try taylors of Harrogates Spiced Christmas Tea - its what Christmas smelt like as a child.
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