Some interesting questions from Bev at Sunday Stealing but I'm feeling recalcitrant and might do it on another day of the week. So it's Tuesday and boy-oh-boy, what seemed like a fun Q and A has become quite emotional for me.
1. An unforgettable day in my life.
When my daughter was born. She started sending me rather strong signals of her intentions to enter the world at a dinner party on Friday night. It was all rather exciting and I was happy to share it with the other four guests. Our prenatal classes had informed us that early contractions are NOT like in the movies, with water gushing and being rushed into Emergency two minutes later, but to stay calm and time them. These were only occurring every twenty minutes or so.
At home that night though, I couldn't sleep and sat up buffered by every ornamental pillow we'd normally toss off the bed when we climbed into it. I wrote down the time and duration of each contraction and by Saturday morning, they were every ten minutes. I still knew to stay calm as our teacher had told us that hospitals sent many excited new parents back home until the contractions were every five minutes.
I tried to stand up against our mantelpiece and look nonchalant as Dean sold our tiny little Suzuki to a local florist, not wanting her to know that a) I was having contractions and b) they hurt like hell.
By 8pm Saturday evening, they were five minutes apart. The Melbourne Women's and Children's hospital was still located in Carlton then and a stone's throw from Lygon Street - the busiest street for bars, restaurants and shops in Melbourne. Dean drove around the block several times trying to find a parking spot.
Eventually we saw one, but so did another car - I wound down the window of our 'brand new' ex-government Mitsubishi station wagon we'd bought the week earlier in preparation for parenthood, and asked them if, because I was in labour, if we could take the spot. They kindly agreed and instant karma was bestowed on them as the spot in front of ours also became vacant.
Once in hospital, the contractions were stronger but I wasn't dilated enough. To avoid all the rather icky stuff, it is best to summarise the experience as having had three different marvelous midwives help us through it before ending their respective shifts. Epidurals, vomiting from bearing down so much and seeing poor Dean's exhausted, sleeping face smooshed up against the steel grey side of the bedside drawer. By lunchtime, our baby's heart rate was starting to fade and I then started living a Hollywood movie scene when they rushed me into surgery, Dean wearing what looked like a shower cap and tears in his eyes and he ran alongside us. Our daughter finally emerged via forceps and me numbed from the waist down in case a Caesarean was needed, at 2.15pm on Sunday afternoon.
She was blue, but rapidly turned pink, with a thin coating of strawberry blonde hair. We'd made a human being! I was also selfishly glad that I was still too numb to be moved because the infamous tar-like meconium poop she produced was left to be seen and dealt with by poor Dean.
That was 23rd May 1999. A week overdue, so if you're into astrology, our expected Taurus became a Gemini.
Chocolate. In my chocolate reviewing days, I was into dark chocolate, but after a decade in Switzerland, it's milk chocolate mostly. Not the particularly posh stuff either. Lindt never lets me down, nor the number that appears on my bathroom scales. However, nothing chocolate 'flavoured' because that's always a very poor substitute and a disappointment, especially chocolate milk, cake or ice-cream.
3. My biggest fashion accessory
My gold bangles (three) and perfume. I've adored bangles (plastic, metal, silver, fake gold, real gold) even as a child and my parents gave me a gold one in 1990 and Dean gave me two others in 2005 which was our tenth wedding anniversary. I don't take 'em off any more after one once broke, so I'm an automatic candidate for an airport security pat-down.
Perfume. Unbrushed hair and teeth, baggy tracksuit pants, old running t-shirt and stained parka are my 'go to' clothes during this never-ending French lockdown, yet I still give myself a spritz. My lifetime favorite is the original Chloe that I've used for over 30 years. It's hard to find and I don't like the newer versions, so Tiffany, good old White Musk from the Body Shop, Yardley's Violet, Chanel No 19, 4077 Cologne and a few of the Burberry's are also in use. Chloe is for the bestest of best days.
4. My biggest celebrity crush
C. Thomas Howell. Ponyboy in The Outsiders. That adorable face....! I spent a lot of my hard-earned babysitting money to buy imported UK teen mags like 'Tiger Beat' in order to find posters of him. He didn't reach the fame or cinematic heights of most of his Outsiders costars but that face.....
5. One hobby I would like to learn
I would have said 'learn French' but my old brain is always working in English. I can't help but automatically read every label, street sign and, to his great annoyance, Dean's iPad when he's sitting next to me. I love alliteration and thinking up things to write about, so when I did try to learn French my brain just....turned itself off. I know that you must give things a good hard try and nothing comes easy and you live in France and you're lacking confidence and, and, and..... If it could be 'magicked' into my brain I'd be thrilled.
Maybe a drama class for oldies? A fantasy would be to occasionally get to play an unglamorous but rude old lady who couldn't care less about what swear words she gets to say at shocked youngers. That seems like fun.
6. My OCD habits
Harrison Ford was a carpenter by trade and he once mentioned in an interview that he can't help straightening books or magazines on coffee tables so that they're in a straight line with the edges of the table. I do that too. Even before 'happy birthday' hand washing timings of Covid-19, my hands resembled scaly claws due to the dozens and dozens of times I wipe down the kitchen counter, sink top, table, coffee making machine, spills etc. The worst decision I've made was deciding on a stainless steel splashback for the stove top and sink because the calcium-rich water here shows up every single drop and I seem to spend every single moment wiping them off.
7. If I could eat one last meal
Dean cooks an amazing spiced coated chicken schnitzel that he serves with twice cooked roasted potatoes, onions, carrots and garlic. The soft roasted garlic oozes out of the skin and doesn't give you the dreaded 'ten feet distance away from me, please' breath afterwards. Add steamed broccoli and fresh asparagus and sweet corn. Dessert could be a good baked cheesecake or carrot cake struggling under the weight of the cream cheese icing. Add a generous handful of fresh raspberries. Moet to wash it all down with.
8. Working on my fitness
Both of my achilles and both of my (I don't want to say 'bone spurs' because I don't want to have ANYTHING IN COMMON with Donald Trump ever) plantar fasciitis thingies have finally ended my running. Even with a treadmill on a much slower speed and planned shorter distances, these flare up and I spend more time off recovering than doing any actual running. The treadmill is a good place to drape bed sheets to dry though.
I have a fitness DVD by Jillian Michael called the 'Thirty Day Shred' that I could probably recite word for word, but after the end of Lockdown One, I lost interest. My thighs sighed with relief.
During Lockdown Two, we adopted Felix. As a four year old dog, he's got the body of an athlete in his prime and, as an apartment dweller with a balcony for a garden, he needs and deserves long walks and the opportunity to explore and have a deep think for several seconds before deciding to pee on the wild chives in front of him. This has been a genuine gift for me. No, not the obsessive excrement eating or raging barks at elderly folk, but the distances we end up walking each day. I'm not seeing any amazing weight loss but, unlike Felix, no-one controls what I get in my food bowl per day, so that's on me.
9. What I spend money on
Apart from the mortgage, utilities, credit card and groceries? Wool for the scarves I've been knitting as a LGBTQI fundraiser. You can see some of them here at https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/EverythingWoolBeOk.
For some reason it's stuck in AUD prices which makes postage estimates from France (especially during Covid) almost impossible. I've had better luck selling them privately. I can't knit anything fancy or know how to follow a pattern but the repetitive nature of knitting is comforting and helps stop me from picking at my fingernails quite so often. Elmo's been an enthusiastic model, but as soon as I use up my last batch of wool I'm going to donate them to the French Federation - https://federation-lgbt.org/
10. My favorite recipe
No single one, as I'm not an enthusiastic cook, which means that sensible things like evening meals I have boring 'go tos' like spaghetti bolognese, various soups, various stir-fries and quiche. That's why Dean is the chef in our house: he enjoys it and is particularly good at it. Favourite recipes for me always involve sweets. That said, I'm still baking our lockdown bread because I like the hands-on habit of it and the process involved. But being asked to 'bring dessert' which means make a white chocolate and blueberry cheesecake, tiramisu, pavlova or carrot cake means a happy Saturday afternoon in the kitchen listening to ABBA as I bake.
11. The best part of each season
I'll apply my European view on these, as the seasons are much more distinctive from each other than where I came from.
Summer - fields of sunflowers, outdoor drinking, long hours of daylight
Autumn - the beautiful changes of the leaves. Cooler nights which are better for sleeping. Seeing cute little pumpkins sitting on ancient stone door steps and fences as decorations.
Winter - Snow skiing (if not shut down due to Covid as it has been this past season), seeing robins hop along the path ahead of where Felix and I are walking, Christmas decorations and traditions making more sense in the cold weather.
Spring - the violets, daffodils and snowdrops that have somehow survived the winter and emerge into the still not-very-reliable sunshine. Blossoms. Felix trotting on green grass dotted with tiny white daisies. Being able to sit out on our balcony again.
12. A life lesson I’ve learned
There's always a tiny grain of truth in stereotypes. They can be over-generalised and sometimes cruel, but they expose a commonality that a lot of us recognise. None of us want to be BE a stereotype, but we can sure recognise them.
13. My inspiration to blog
I did it pretty regularly as a way to recover from a full-on breakdown in 2005, before stopping in 2013. My daughter was then a teenager and it didn't seem right to mention her at that time of her life as it was her own. Plus, my older brother's wife emailed me to say that she'd always disliked me; didn't know why but had decided to therefore cut me, my husband and then thirteen year old child out of her life forever. Up until then she had been a regular reader and commenter on the blog and I figured that she didn't deserve to see what I was thinking or getting up to if she was OK with making my daughter cry every birthday when she realised each time that her aunt (and uncle) had completely written her out of their lives for no reason that has ever been explained to her, me or the rest of my family.
My daughter is grown up now; at university in Edinburgh and I'm trying to see if I can write stuff that isn't just relying on what a silly mummy I am. Therefore, starting up again has been a bit slow and painful. I'm not sure who still reads blogs as about 99% of my old links have disappeared and tiktok just doesn't seem to be the right option for creaky old me. I didn't know if I had anything worth sharing or saying - I still don't know - but I feel somehow, as though I want something of me put somewhere. If nothing else, having stuff to think about does help with my depression, self confidence and wondering just how and where I fit.
14. What’s inside my closet?
Pretty boring clothes, to be honest. Maybe two dresses, but the rest are shirts, t-shirts and jackets. As a teen/early twenty something, I was very much into fashion, but for me it was out of anxiety. I didn't have the movie star looks of my mother and it was my friend Jo the guys flocked to, not me. Fashion felt like a teeny tiny way to at least look the part. After doing the two-year working holiday stint in London, it was travel, rent and cider that was more important to me. These days, I just want my clothing choices to ensure that no-one runs away from me screaming.
15. Let me brag a minute.
You've got me on a down day, unfortunately. I have so much to be thankful for, but when the 'Big D' (my sad attempt at nullifying the effects of depression by giving it a disrespectful nickname) kicks in, it can seem like I'm dragging one foot behind the other, stretching my facial muscles to adequately resemble the socially acceptable expression and keep it up until bedtime. The good thing is that these days or weeks don't last forever. It has taken me a lot of time, mistakes and incredible personal pain to finally understand that.
So, maybe my 'brag' is that yes, I have depression. And yes, it does define me - how can it not? It is a part of me and sometimes wields a much larger and more exhaustive control over me than I'd like. Other days I'm only dimly aware of it, but am never in doubt of its existence or that it's lurking there, always waiting and watching. Maybe the best advice I can give myself - and lord knows I try to - is to say what I'd say to anyone I loved who was suffering.
"What would you tell your friend?" They'd invariably come up with some pretty decent responses and I'd say, "well, if it's good enough for your friend, it's good enough for you." Perhaps that advice is something to brag about.
