Sharing My Workout...

I started off two weeks ago with a workout 20 minutes long and using 680g weights. I've crept it up to 30 minutes now and 1.13kg weights, and I plan to keep creeping... an hour is my length goal, and once I've conquered the 2.27kg dumbells lurking in the back of the cupboard I'll look at investing in something heavier. It's baby steps, but they feel awesome. I'm getting in a session on Mondays, Wednesdays and either Friday or Saturday each week depending on energy & privacy levels on those days. It's working!

One of the things I set out to counter with this particular exercise routine was my peculiar hatred of counting repetitions. Ask me to do twenty situps and I'll get annoyed with the counting by about 5. My brain does a lot of drifting when I exercise, and I think I need that to keep going, so counting brings me back to the physical activity in a way that actually makes the activity harder. To deal with this, I've used songs with distinct patterns, and I use those patterns instead of counting: e.g. I do star jumps for the whole of this verse, then switch to weight curls for the chorus, then situps for the next verse, etc. I'm cramming in a lot of different exercises targeting different muscle groups, and I can already feel it making a difference. I have more energy, stamina and strength, and I no longer ache post-workout or feel like I can't walk the next day. I've not exercised this frequently since I was a teenager, and it's really quite a remarkable feeling. I might even be becoming someone who craves exercise. Fancy that!!

I thought I'd share the 8 songs that currently make up my 30-minute workout. They're all songs in which I find the tune uplifting and moving; a couple of them have lyrics that also lift my spirit. The last one always leaves me with its eponymous emotion, even at the end of a hard workout, and the buzz I get from finishing on that high note always leaves me feeling I could go that little bit further.

1. Celtic Woman: Granuaile's Dance

2. Voices of Ireland: Star of the County Down

3. Enya: The River Sings

4. Celtic Woman: Mo Ghile Mear

5. Mediaeval Baebes: Return of the Birds

6. John Parr: St Elmo's Fire

7. Celtic Woman: The Sky and the Dawn and the Sun

8. Loreen: Euphoria

Enjoy!

PS: In story news, I am currently sitting on 12,957 words, with today's writing session yet to come. Pretty much double my expected total for this point. Oh, yes.

Awen

Awen (noun): poetic inspiration. From the Indo-European root *-uel, meaning 'to blow'.

I love the concept of awen. A wind blowing through your soul, bringing inspiration in its wake. I've only recently discovered the term, in reading about modern Druidic tradition amongst many other explorations of pagan paths. It immediately spoke to me, like few other concepts in any tradition have ever done. I know that feeling intimately, and seeking it forms a big part of my own search for a spiritual identity. For me, without spirituality there is no awen, and without awen there is no spirituality. The sense of connectedness and transcendence is something I have sought since I was young.

Music has always been one of my sources of awen. When listening I find it in music of all genres, from classical to new age to Enya to ordinary pop/rock ("Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel and "Steer" by Missy Higgins are perfect examples). I also find moments of it when singing or playing an instrument in a group - those moments of transcendence when the ensemble combines perfectly and the music itself seems to come to life. It's one of the major reasons why I still love Anglican church services - there is a magic in massed voices that defies artificial boundaries between faiths.

The natural world, and its weather and the turning of its seasons, has always been my biggest source of awen, and it is what led me to paganism. Red berries against a blue sky, sunlight across the plains, a crayfish scuttling under a riverbank, the wind in my hair, mist rolling up a valley, thunder on a hot night, the first frost of autumn... when I am out there in the natural world, awen is everywhere.

Of course, the man-made world is not without awen either. Buildings that are old or odd or quirky. Artworks I like for no better reason than that they speak to my soul. (Here is one - I have seen the original in the Tate and was captivated). Crafts that are nifty or cute. An uplifting book scene or a really clever joke. When I open myself to it, awen is everywhere.

My desire to write fiction has been driven by childhood experiences of awen. It was lacking in my real life - we were not a religious family - and my main sources of it, then as now, were music, nature and stories. My formative years were shaped by books and stories told in electronic media that blew into my soul, inspiring me to act them out, extemporise, adapt and retell over and over again out in the half-acre scrap of garden and bushland that was my childhood temple. All of the books I've tried to write and the stories I've tried to tell have contained elements of this raw need to channel, create, inspire and share the sensation of awen.

Age 9, glowing with inspiration

 I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as I try yet again to put words on paper, or on screen as it is these days (and perhaps that's part of the problem). The wind of inspiration blows into me, and I come alive with the thought of the story I have to tell. I envisage it whole in my head, see it, feel it, live it out in little scenes in my mind, but when the words reach the page they seem to lose their sparkle. How do I maintain that sense of wonder, and the fierce spirit of inspiration? How do I keep the fire of awen burning for the weeks, months and years it takes to craft a novel? How do you keep your spirit glowing with purpose when you're burdened with money worries, or the toddler is being irrational, or when the housework never seems to be finished? How do you teach your heart to be open to awen every moment of every day? Not just for novel writing, but for teaching, and cooking, and keeping house, and nurturing my loved ones, and hoping and believing and growing?


What are your sources for awen (or whatever you would choose to call it)? What reminds you that it's good to be alive, or feeds your creative fires? Where do you get your inspiration?

Still here ... honestly ...

I can't really apologise for failing to blog lately. I haven't even been trying. Putting words to my life right now just gives me flaily panicky feelings most of the time.

So here's some things that have been happening . . .

I leave for the UK in 3 weeks tomorrow. All the paperwork is done and I'm almost half packed (or something like that ...). Right now there is a lot of chaos around and bits and pieces of things I need to get done, which isn't really very much fun. I'm not having second thoughts exactly, but I'm finding myself frequently almost paralysed with fear that this will go horribly wrong.  My chief fear is running out of money. Logically I know that I will have work, and it is going to be steady work, and if the teaching work is not quite enough I can waitress or something too, but I'm terrified of being alone in a strange city with no money. Silly terror since I will plan to avoid exactly that and will know well in advance if that is a likely outcome, but still. I am so scared it hurts.

I just need to breathe. I know it'll be ok. I'll make it ok.

*

I got 82% on my first assignment for the year. It was a theology assignment so that's quite impressive - my first essay in a new discipline! When the tutor starts the comments with the words "your essay's only weakness...", you know you've done okay. I'm still enjoying both the theology and the literature units, and still thinking about doing higher level study in both of them. I just can't make up my mind which order to do them in! Master of Ministry first, or literature PhD? Hmm. Oh well, I won't finish the BA until mid-2013 so I have a while to decide.

*

I'm struggling a little at the moment with the feeling that I've managed to get my 20s and 30s arse-backwards. I spent the whole of my 20s chasing the dream of settling down and having a family, and failing at it miserably. Now I'm about to enter my 30s and getting to the age where time for that is ticking away rapidly, and yet I've suddenly discovered the joy of being free and untethered, and I want to get out there and have random relationships and new experiences and not aim to be tied down at all for a good while yet. And through that I risk running out of time to have a family.

There's nothing I can do about it except trust that it will work out okay (and remember that the women in my family have had healthy pregnancies well into their 40s so I shouldn't fear running out of time all that much), but I can't help the feeling of wanting to stamp my feet and shriek that it's not fair. It's like I'm trying to cram everything that my 20s should have been into the last few precious months before I hit my 30s, and I'm getting so confused about what I want and where I want it. I think, overall, that the London move will make this easier not harder - new people and places and contexts in which I can safely explore my real, full identity without the weight of peoples' presuppositions and past knowledge. I am determined not to hide anything about myself amongst my new friends in London. I've spent so much time concealing so much of me in Perth that I'm now hemmed in to the outer identity I've woven. There's a few people who get the full version of Christine (hi, Hilary) but not many. I want everyone to know the whole Christine from now on, and it's easier to begin that with a clean slate in a new city. I hope.

*

I'm currently enjoying a ... thing ... with a guy, which is very sane and comfortable and enjoyable and undemanding and affectionate and lovely. We both know it's going nowhere because I'm leaving the country, but it's enough for right now. How ironic that the "thing" that is ostensibly not a relationship is the healthiest relationship I've ever had. What was that phrase again? Oh yeah, "arse-backwards". That's the one. *headdesk*

*

My grandfather is in hospital with "multiple infections", after having been hospitalised for pneumonia and sent home again. He is quite ill and very uncomfortable. A small part of my brain is in full-scale freak-out over this, but the rest of my brain can't deal and has just shut the door and said kindly but firmly that we'll deal with that if and when we have to, and not before. I'm feeling a lot of guilt about this - afraid that it's an unnatural Aspie reaction that people would find cold and heartless - but it's the only way I can cope at the moment. I have so many things on my "oh hey there potential meltdown" list that the only way I'm surviving is by refusing to acknowledge them. I'm pretty sure there'll be an episode of rather cathartic stormy weeping when I hit a calm spot, but I'll deal with that later too.

*

I am trying to sell my car. I've never sold a car before. I don't really want to sell this one. Bah.

*

I have reached the point where I need to rehome my beautiful wonderful cat, Jemima. This is another thing I know I'll cry about when I finally let go, but I can't let go just yet. If you're in the Perth area and want a cat, consider giving Jemima a home. She is a darling. This is where she is right now . . . I was lying on the bed under a brown blanket doing uni readings, and she lay down next to me pressed right up against my body. When I got up and went back to the computer, she made a nest out of the blanket and curled up in it. D'awwww.

*

This song by Kelly Clarkson is where I am at right now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLUmlyuXonk

*

I think I've pretty much covered everything. Welcome to my life right now. It is complicated!

Now that I've got all of this out of my system I'm hopeful that I'll be back to regular blogging. I've been frozen in silence for a while, but I've broken through, so now there may be a flood ...

5 Words Meme

In which I avoid essay-writing by writing an essay.

Over on LJ, my friend Hilary offered me 5 words that she sees as representing me. I am responding to them here :)

She offered me: England, music, writing, church, archaeology.

England

"Why do you say 'one' like that?"

This question plagued me as a child. I couldn't mimic the way my Australian-accented peers pronounced 'one'; in fact I still can't say it "right". Although my mother had been in Australia for 15 years by the time I was born, her English accent lingered into a slight English inflection, and I picked it up.

I was about 18 when I discovered that I could get Right of Abode in England due to my mother's origin. This fired my imagination, and in my first year of university I did a lot of in-depth research about the possibility of doing my archaeology PhD (then an assumed part of my life plan) at an English university. I was stymied in my plan when I realised that I would have to reside there for three years first if I didn't want to pay fees. That didn't fit the timetable, so I abandoned the idea. I miss those days, when I was so innocent and naive and believed in timetables! At 18 the future was so nebulous and so LARGE. It was inconceivable that I would ever feel like I was running out of time. But then, when I was 18 I also thought I'd be done with having kids by the time I was 29 :S

England lives in my mind as a kind of Mecca - the centre of all things, the place to go, to experience, from whence all things come. I'm proudly Australian, born and bred, but England is the Homeland and the Motherland in a way in which Australia can never quite be. To be a non-indigenous Australian is to share in a cultural uneasiness about our rights to this land and the life we live here (and rightly so). But in England I can be English without apology.

I've longed for an overseas holiday for years (with the UK as the destination), but I have been perpetually broke, and nothing has ever come of the longing. I have often considered living there, but until recently I was too emotionally broken to even consider being that far from my family. I still have my moments of uneasiness when I'm not at all certain I'm making the right decision, but it's too late now so I'll have to stick to my guns and go through with it! And the larger part of me is sure that this IS the right decision, and can't wait to get on with it.

England, T minus 60 days and counting!

Music

My mother has a lovely singing voice, and I can remember her entertaining and soothing songs from my earliest childhood. Along with the usual children's songs and rhymes, I vividly recall "Annie's Song" and "Drink to Me Only" amongst her repertoire, as well as the Rolf Harris classic, "The Court of King Caractacus". She also played a lot of recorded music, and my love of classical music is due to her influence.

We had a small portable piano keyboard in the house, and I spent countless hours playing with it. My primary school was music-oriented, and I learned music theory and recorder from an early age. I still play the recorder today, and although I do now have a nice wooden one, my old plastic one from school is still kicking around here somewhere!

At a younger age I often told my parents that I wanted to play the French Horn, a request that received "hahahahNO" answers ;) By the age of 9 or 10 I'd switched my request to flute, and that one was granted, I think partially out of relief that I'd abandoned the brass section!

I'm not very good at the flute, but I've been playing for a good 19 years now. Throughout school I played in concert bands, sang in choirs and musicals, and took music theory and composition classes. As an adult I've also played in concert bands and ensembles, sung in choirs, taught class music in schools, and I still tinker with composition and arranging in my spare time (ha!). 

Music has always been a part of my life, and I can't imagine being without it. I hope that when I have kids I'm able to surround them with the wonders of music.

Writing

I've been known to tell people that writing isn't something I do, it's something I am. This is slightly poncy, I'll admit, but it's true. I can't give up writing any more than I can give up breathing. I've tried a few times, and it always gets to the point where I just HAVE to start again or I'll burst!

I have dozens of old note books filled with story ideas, some going back as far as the 1980s. In my earlier years I tended to act out my stories rather than writing them down. I lived in a world of imaginative play, and had many long-running stories that received a new instalment every time I was in the mood for that particular game. Two of these in particular are still major items in my 'plots waiting for inspiration' bank. Some of these 'game' stories were blatantly derivative, but others were surprisingly original and interesting.

In my teens and early 20s I wrote reams and reams of stories. My two favourite works from my teenage years reached 11,000 and 13,000 words before I grew out of them. The first of these owed equal parts of its inspiration to Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and M.M. Kaye's "The Ordinary Princess", with a dollop of C.S. Lewis thrown in for good measure. It didn't rip off any of the characters or ideas exactly, and a lot of it was wholly mine, but the similarities were unmissable. The second was completely original and I have no idea from whence the ideas sprang, but it suffered purely from the fact that the writer was 16 years old and was trying to write convincingly about a young, orphaned queen in a medieval setting. Oh, the stereotypes. Ouch! I can't even re-read a paragraph of it these days without cringing.

The major story of my 20s peaked at 20,000 words before I got stuck on a major plot flaw and had to abandon the whole thing. After the latter I lost my nerve for a while, but I have always come back to writing in the end.

Looking back on some of my earlier work (all diligently saved and transported to each new computer system since I first had my own machine in 1995!), I can see the potential there. The prose is purple, the dialogue is execrable and the characters stereotypical; but the plots are fairly sound.

At the moment I'm working on a shiny new version of the previous 20,000-word effort. The plot has been thoroughly scrubbed, honed and polished, and is shiny and new without losing the original idea. I have been poking it thoroughly and haven't found any holes yet, so it's looking good this time.

Church

Most people go to church because they have faith. My faith, on the other hand, has grown out of my involvement with the church.

I wanted faith as a child - wanted it badly. I read a lot of books where the characters were all Christian, living in exclusively Christian societies with faith as a given (the Anne of Green Gables series and the Laura books, for example). I knew there was something wonderful about faith, and I knew that I lacked it in my own Christmas-Christian wishy-washy culture.

When I was 20 I decided to start going to church, because, well, I was living on my own and no one would be there to laugh at me for it! I almost accidentally found myself in a Nine Lessons and Carols Christmas service at St George's Cathedral. That started a love affair with cathedrals and choral music that persisted even when my faith wavered.

I went through a huge period of disillusionment and rejection of religion in my mid-20s, a time of disastrous personal missteps and clinical depression. As I dug my way out of that hole my love of the church began to re-establish itself. I started going to church again, and began to develop stronger feelings about faith and belief.

In the past few months, the strength of my faith has doubled and doubled again. I've finally surrendered myself to it, and it feels as wonderful as I always imagined it would. I'm still thoroughly Anglican, but I do finally understand how those of an evangelical persuasion are driven to shout about their faith. The strength and purpose of faith is incredible. I have been blessed with the Holy Spirit, and now I actually know what that means :)

Even more fascinating, to me, is the fact that my increasing faith is compelling me to draw closer to the church, too. As previously mentioned I've taken on the units for a major in theology, and I think it's extremely likely that I will follow this BA up with a Master of Ministry and ask to be considered for ordination. I am already a teacher, and being a teacher of love, charity, hope, tolerance and joy . . . yes, I could see myself doing that.

Archaeology

My interest in the past was already well-developed by the time I hit primary school. I very rarely read anything set in the modern world. I read children's Victoriana or fantasy for preference, and was fascinated with ancient cultures after watching the 1980s anime The Mysterious Cities of Gold. In my confused, imaginative childhood I spent countless hours pretending that I was someone else, long ago and far away.

It wasn't until I was fifteen that I suddenly realised that I could make this interest a life pursuit. Some passing reference to archaeology set me on a new track and gave me a real ambition for the first time. I became single-minded in my career prospects, and at 22 I was a qualified archaeologist and museum curator.

Unfortunately, the dream wasn't the reality. The archaeology field, as I experienced it, was cliquey, profit-driven and client-oriented. Perhaps in the museums and universities it's better, but I found consultative archaeology to be soul-destroying and miserable (a state of affairs not helped by dreadful clinical depression and an unfamiliar environment when I was working in Sydney).

I still love the past, and still love archaeology. When I get to the UK I hope to join in some digs as an amateur, but I doubt I'll ever work as an archaeologist again. I think perhaps I've outgrown that idea of myself, and I can't imagine stepping back in time to fill those shoes again.

I do have many fond memories though. I excavated a spider once ;D

Dark Heroes

I watched the movie version of "Phantom of the Opera" this evening for the first time since seeing it at the movies back in 2005. I liked it much better the second time around, and was quite riveted despite having seen the movie before, read the book and watched the stage version twice. I honestly couldn't remember how they got out of parts of it!

When I first saw Phantom, on stage when it came to Perth in 1998, I was utterly entranced. Like many teenaged girls, I had a fascination with "dark heroes" - male characters who are heroic in some way (usually, by being the love / lust / serious attraction interest of the heroine) yet also the villain, agitator or in some other way diametrically opposed to the heroine. Jareth in Labyrinth, Angel/Angelus in Buffy, and of course the Phantom, all have elements of this. I used to have a whole list of them, and frequently wrote them into my stories. Kidnappers, usurpers and enemies who became love interests abounded.

Sometime in my early 20s, when I had internet access on my own computer, I googled dark heroes to see if anyone else was as interested in them as I was. I promptly stumbled upon a wonderful article expressing the opinion that dark heroes encourage women to believe that abuse is an acceptable price to pay if you really love someone, or that true love comes with control, etc. I'd already been in several controlling relationships by that stage, and the article made me deeply uncomfortable. I knew it was true. The fact that I felt such an intense yearning towards these fictional relationships, and the fact that I fell for men who treated me like that? Not such a coincidence actually.

It's taken me a long time and several more bananaheads to REALLY learn the lesson, and start fighting back against those beliefs. Dark heroes are not fun. Dark heroes are not nice. Dark heroes are not heroes at all. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Bang head against wall if necessary.

For some reason, this evening, I felt like dipping my toe in the Dark Hero waters and seeing how I reacted. I was going to watch Labyrinth as well after Phantom, but it got too late. As I mentioned, I was riveted. I also sang along as much as possible, albeit sometimes an octave below Emmy Rossum :D And I found that the bits that triggered a strong emotional longing were the bits between Raoul and Christine, not the bits involving Phantom.

As a teenager, I was almost unbearably attracted to the words of "The Music of the Night" . . . 'floating, falling, sweet intoxication' indeed! This time I was drawn to the clean, honest affection of "All I Ask of You" instead, but with nowhere near the intensity of my teenage years. Part of that is no doubt just growing up and being less emotional about everything lol. But I suspect progress nonetheless.

Catching Up

It's been a long and foggy week somehow (for a week with only four working days!) and I'm just now catching up and figuring out where my head is.

First up, the video below is so beautiful it made me cry. It's an animated version of the picture book "Blueberry Girl" by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Charles Vess. I desperately want to own this book if I ever have a daughter, and I shall attempt to give it to any friends that have daughters. It's just lovely.



Next, this is a wonderful, wonderful thing. It's the uniform jacket for the concert band I've just joined. The band is awesome, and they do high-profile events in Perth like the ANZAC Day marches and the Christmas Pageant. I joined last week and got this to take home. Squee! We also get caps :) And lookit the shiny buttons and the City of Perth badges!

Third in my show-and-tell is the ring I bought for myself a few weeks ago:



The fourth item is a bit of news. Last weekend I stripped my laptop and old PC of everything important to me and loaded it all onto Mum's mini-laptop, which I'm now using while attached to my PC monitor and keyboard. The reason for this is that the EdDept laptop needed to go back (and is now gone) and the PC had become hideously slow and noisy, to the point of being unusable. Mum is lending me her mini-laptop until I can get my own replacement laptop, which I'm buying with the $900 "economic stimulus" money that the government is paying out to anyone under a certain income in April.

I mentioned this state of affairs to my friend M, who promptly pulled some partner-of-his-accounting-firm-fu and is getting me a Dell laptop that is much more expensive than one I'd be able to buy retail, through their company Dell account. It'll be here in two or three weeks and then I can just pay them back when the money comes in. And I'll be on their corporate repairs account so they'll get it fixed for me if it has problems. I have no words for how awesome this friend and this arrangement are. And the laptop is going to be PURPLE. *SQUEE*

Quick check-in

Yes, I'm still alive :)

I've been at the new school for two days now and it's delightful. Everyone is nice, everyone is relaxed (even when they're frantically busy!), everyone is helpful, everyone seems to love their job. My co-teacher is great fun and my classroom is gorgeous. The whole thing just feels right.

And I scored an electronic organ! It recently stopped working and the school can't really afford luxuries like repairing an organ they don't need and only inherited in the first place, so they were just going to get rid of it until I sputtered and put my hand up and asked if I could have it. So I borrowed Dad's trailer today and brought home an organ. I'm still waiting for G (housemate) to get home to help me get the thing OFF the trailer, mind you. And I won't get it repaired until I've got the money. But once I've repaired it, it's mine! Mwahahaha!

Anyway . . .

I'm happy, the living arrangements are working out really well (G and I are two peas in a pod and we work perfectly as housemates, I couldn't be more pleased), and I feel like crying every time I reflect on how lucky I am. This is a good thing!

Adding: G decided to go late night shopping, so I decided to go get the organ off the trailer by myself, despite it being a huge heavy thing. This went fine until I stood it upright. I managed to catch my ankle with either the foot or a pedal as I was trying to prevent it from dropping the last 10 centimetres and slamming into the concrete. So now I've got my ankle elevated and an improvised icepack on it (farewell frozen beans, I never really loved you anyway). There's already a spectacularly blue line of bruising where it landed, and I'm just hoping I haven't done any internal damage. I most definitely do not have time for that!

I did, mind you, stop the organ from slamming into the concrete :D

Making Plans

I'm still working through those boxes, throwing away amazing amounts of stuff as I go. Whole piles of the stuff. Undergrad lecture notes from 10 years ago - I don't care how many funny apropos elephants I drew in the margins. Goodbye! Et cetera.

In between times I'm procrastinating on the internet and looking at various things I want to join or do after I move.

I've found the church I want to get involved with, a very active and progressive Anglican parish with its base in an adjacent suburb. Closely involved with that church, and located in its buildings, is a choir I want to join. The choir practises will take care of my Wednesday evenings rather nicely, and worship is at the very civilised time of 9:30am on Sundays.

The concert band I want to join rehearses in the city on Tuesday evenings, so that will be my once-a-week trek out of my normal area! That will be my flute outlet.

There are two local swimming pools, one in the same suburb as work and one in the suburb adjacent to my house. The former is an open-air one that is only open in the warmer months, and only has one swimming lane open when I'd like to be there, so I will probably go to the latter, which is indoor and has more room for laps. I'm aiming to stop and swim for half an hour on the way home from school on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It won't take long out of my day to slip into bathers, go for a swim, fling on some dry clothes, drive home and then shower and do my hair and stuff. So it should work pretty well.

So my week will look like this:

Monday - School 8am-5pm, swimming
Tuesday - School 8am-5pm, concert band 7:30pm
Wednesday - School 8am-5pm, swimming, choir 7:00pm
Thursday - School 8am-5pm
Friday - School 8am-5pm, swimming
Saturday - NOTHING! (well probably grocery shopping lol)
Sunday - Church 9:30am

On the days when I don't swim I'll probably aim to go for an evening walk at least, but I know that once I'm teaching again my feet will be very sore in the evenings and walking may not be a possibility (hence the swimming).

I'm really looking forward to all of this!

. . . and K-Mart has 30% off womens' swimwear if I try on my swimsuit and find that it's too big. Of course they do o_O

Undiscovered Talent?

As a teenager, when I was constantly around musicians of all sorts, I longed to get my hands on a string instrument. I didn't know if I would be able to play, but I just wanted to hold a violin or a cello, grab a bow and see what it was like to make a sound on one of them. Of course, being me, I never expressed this desire even to my strings-playing friends, let alone to my parents!

Recently, Mum bought a $10,000 Kemble piano for my 12yo sister, who is exceptionally talented and needed a decent instrument to practise on. The guy at the music store was desperate to make the sale, so he started throwing in extras. First he included a $600 guitar free with the piano (12yo sis also learns guitar). Then he offered to throw in a cheap violin as well. Mum was curious about whether 12yo could learn the violin as she has perfect pitch, which is required for the orchestral strings. So they got a violin too, and then drums for 10yo brother (who learns drums, obviously) at cost price. Mum took the deal (and is completely not sorry that my stepfather actually lost his job the following day due to downsizing - in fact she's glad, because otherwise 12yo sis wouldn't have the gorgeous piano!). So, 12yo sis has a violin just kind of sitting around.

Yesterday, some rellies came over to Mum's for lunch (it was Mum's birthday), and an uncle who used to play violin offered to tune 12yo sis' for her. It was gratefully accepted and he tuned it up for us. After everyone had gone, my stepdad played around with the violin a bit, and then I asked if I could have a go.

I've held a violin exactly once before, in the music shop when the guy was trying to sell Mum the piano. I got a decent note out of it then and was rather pleased with myself. This time I played around rather more, and was trying to see whether I could make the different notes off the one string. And I did. I did whole tones right up a scale. I'm not sure which scale I was playing, but I got seven perfect, clear, tuneful notes out of the lowest string of the violin. I have close-to-perfect pitch and so does Mum - not like 12yo sis' talent, but not bad either - and Mum agreed that the notes were right.

So now more than ever I'd really like to get my hands on a string instrument that I can play with and teach myself, or even get lessons. I can make nice notes on a violin, just like that - maybe I could learn to play well some day!

Another dream for the "when I'm debt-free" box, I guess :-)

Well That Was Interesting

This morning, when I walked into the school at 8:15am, the instrumental music teacher walked up to me and said "hey, do you want a job?"
Me: "Errr?"
Her: "I need a secundo flauto. Are you on duty at lunchtime?"
Me: "Uh, no?"
Her: "Good, that's when our one and only rehearsal is. We're playing carols for the senior citizens tonight, can you be there?"
Me: "Uh, yeah?"
Her: "Good, have you got your flute here?"
Me: "No but I can go home and get it at lunchtime?"
Her: "Great, see you at lunchtime"
Me: "Ok . . ."

So this evening I played Christmas carols for half an hour for the senior citizens' Christmas dinner. We got to practise half of the pieces at lunchtime, so I was playing those for the second time, and I had to just sight read the rest. And for added entertainment, I was sight reading the descant counterpoint, not just the melody, for half of them; and transposing up an octave as well.

It was HARD.

But it was fun, too. A huge challenge but really invigorating. And much better for me than watching TV lol.

Sometimes There's Nothing You Can Do . . .

I'll freely admit that my tiredness is often my own fault. I don't go to sleep early enough or with enough dedication sometimes. Other times it's insomnia, or just difficult circumstances, but most often it's just my bad sleeping habits.

Last night, however, was SO NOT MY FAULT.

At 9pm I was dozing off on the couch, so I decided I'd go to bed early and get a long night's sleep before getting up early. So I took a sleeping tablet, read for a little while then switched the light out. Despite the fact that the tablet was pulling me under, I had trouble getting off to sleep because the bogong moths were being noisy and the people across the road from me were talking out the front of their house and receiving text messages rather noisily. Just as I was dropping off at about 10:30 I heard a rumble of thunder. Then I awoke again at about 11:30 when a cracker of a thunderstorm went over. I was too much under the influence of the sleeping pill to wake up properly and enjoy it, but it was too noisy, between the constant thunder and the rain and I suspect hail too, for me to get back to sleep. Finally after about an hour I did drop off again. Then at about 4am I was awoken by a cacophony from my study, which is full of boxes and stuff I'm trying to sort into them. I went in and found a dead mouse in the doorway and Jemima chasing a very much live rabbit around the boxes. I chased the cat out, but I couldn't catch the rabbit so I shut the study door with the rabbit still inside, put the mouse in the bin and went back to sleep. About an hour and a half later I awoke to a funny noise and found that it was getting light and Jem had another rabbit, this one dead, on the floor of my bedroom. I hissed at her, put the rabbit in the bin (picking it up in an old cloth!) and went back to bed yet again. Just as I was dropping off, the sun rose, shining through my open window straight into my eyes. I groaned, rolled over, dropped back to sleep for about an hour, and then my alarm went off.

I really feel that the universe must have had it in for me last night - I did the right thing, went to bed early, and . . . argh!

(In case you're wondering, I opened the study door before I left for school this morning, and I assume Jemima has caught and dealt with the live rabbit! I don't mind her eating them as they're an agricultural pest, but I really wish she wouldn't bring them inside).

In other news, I'm very excited because I have a job interview at a Montessori school in the hills, in the suburb next to where Mum lives. I want this job so very much, but I have to get through the interview first and that's not for a couple of weeks! December 16th is the day. They've already spoken to my referees which is a good sign lol. I'd love to get back to Perth. I haven't lived in the city or suburbs with a car of my own before, and the possibilities are taking my breath away. Back with my friends . . . able to go where I want . . . NOT doing a 100km round trip every time I need groceries . . . there's even a choir I can sing in which I never knew about! I'm trying not to get too excited because it's by no means certain, but I'm hopeful.

What an evening!

I think I mentioned a while back that the choir I joined was performing today. The event was the finale of a nature festival - a combined churches thanksgiving service up on top of a hill in a nature reserve outside of town. As soon as they found out that I play the flute they asked me to do some flute solos - quite undeterred by the fact that I hadn't played in public for four years!

I was really nervous beforehand, but it went fine. I played "Younger than Springtime" from 'South Pacific', "Hello Young Lovers" from 'The King and I' and "Morning Has Broken" while people were settling into their seats, and then "Colours of the Wind" from 'Pocahontas' as the beginning and end of the service. It was a really beautiful service and I'm really proud to have contributed to it. I made a couple of mistakes because there were flies attacking me the whole time - I had one lady from the choir on each side of me, holding the music stand so it wouldn't blow away with one hand and flapping flies off my face their other hand, but the flies still distracted me enough to cause a problem a couple of times, and I flubbed a couple of notes when there was a fly on my lips! But overall it went really well and everyone was really appreciative of me having turned up and played as well as singing. I was shaking afterwards, but so glad that I did it.

On the way home, driving between towns in the dark, I said a little prayer of gratitude for the opportunity to play my flute again, and then something rather strange happened. First I saw some sort of small marsupial run across the road - I think it was a chuditch. I've never seen a chuditch in the wild before, only in the zoo! Then, while I was still thrilling over that sighting, I went past an owl sitting in the middle of the road, watching some sort of scurrying thing that was just out of my sight. Probably a mouse.

I feel almost like those sightings were a reward, for having the courage to stand up and play at the service and for believing in myself. I simply love seeing animals in the wild and it's a huge thrill whenever I do, even when it's something a bit creepy (like the BIG snake I saw crossing the road on the way to the performance lol). So many in one evening makes me feel like it was laid on just for me :-)

I'm performing twice around Christmas - once at Carols by Candlelight and once at a Christmas Eve church service. I can't wait!