In the unravelling of things once woven so tight,
each 
dismembered 
thread 
is drawn straight through the heart.



S.L

daily ritual by Sammy Rose · 365 Project

daily ritual by Sammy Rose · 365 Project

Repeat after me: Chicken liberation stories do not an essay make

There's one thing I know for a fact. When I stuff up, oh ye gods, do I stuff up - Big time.

We had to do some writing in school. The topic was that keeping animals in cages is cruel. It was supposed to be an essay.. I say 'supposed to be' because that fact only occurred to me after I handed in my personal chicken experience story.

Instead of a serious essay on the right or wrongs of caged animals, I wrote all about my real life rehabilitation of four battery hens.

Ah yes, you might cringe now, but it only gets worse...

Whilst everyone else was scribbling away about the pros and cons, legalities and moral bankruptcy of keeping live animals caged up, I was waxing lyrical about my four hens and how they faced life's challenges outside the battery cages they were imprisoned in.

I even spent a few minutes wondering if I should give the reader their real names or just replace them with pseudonyms eg: chicken 1, chicken 2 etc..  At last (mercifully), I realised that I should keep it more professional and not name them at all.

Yep.. Cringe away.

I was just getting to the point in my writing about having to teach an anonymous Henny Penny to perch (these birds had NO chicken skills what-so-ever, because they'd never set claw on soil before) when the teacher announces there's only five minutes left for editing...

editing?? good god... how about a total rewrite?

I'm sure my teacher's going to think I've been smoking weed, or dropping acid, or drinking red wine out of bottles in plain paper bags during my break...

Well, on the up-side (yes I'm optimistic enough to try and find an up-side) I suppose I'm a pretty unique individual. My writing is at 3rd grade level, but it's unique.

I sometimes (OK I admit.. often..) wonder why my brain is being so uncooperative in my adult life. Is it all the years I've spent out of school (29)? So many precious synapses lost to alcohol consumption? Is it the migraine preventer medication that leaves my brain a forgetful mash? Is it just that I'm not that smart? Is it that I just don't know what they want from me (besides a tear jerking chicken story)?

Maybe it's all that.. and more.

It's hard not to be harsh on yourself when you've stuffed up so bad - but as Deb pointed out, I learned a lesson about what I should have done. I should've written an argument featuring both sides of animal treatment and kept my own chickens out of it.

Ah well. As I carry on in my job of making other people feel good about their own stuff ups in life, I'll try to remember that I'm a unique soul with a different way of looking at things...

And then I'll keep it all inside and definitely not write about it.

My goals for today:

Keep calm. Keep breathing. Do not give into the urge to run around in a tizzy. Try to explain to others that you are actually remaining calm, because these people have never seen you in a real tizzy.

Smile when after 10 minutes of patiently explaining to the lady at the counter what you are there for, you are mistaken for the student's mother - not the student herself. Smile also when you're told that "you could do maths if you tried harder/if it was presented in a different way/even after 29 years of not using it/if "I" taught you how.. Because really what they are saying is -- even though I don't know you from Larry, I can tell at a glance that you could do maths because I can.

That last one really got me, I mean what sort of logic is that? It goes along the same lines as, "Hey if I can do a triple bypass operation, so can you - here's the scalpel." Seriously.

Smile when you're told that no one knows anything about anything. After all - why should they? They only work at the Senior** College! I think about the ironic fact that I could find out Port Kembla's postcode for someone filling out a form on the same side of the counter as me, but the people in charge on the other side have no idea I am an enrolled student; even after I've told them what I wanted to know five times, they still think I am my own mother -or maybe the lady from Centrelink who wants to get pregnant teens back to school. They even go through the Centrelink proposal with me, while I look for the hidden candid camera and tell them I'm a student. Seriously.

Calm blue oceans. Cloudless blue skies. Birds flying into a sunset. Gentle rain on mountain slopes.

'It'll be fine,' I tell myself. 'This is just all happening for some obscure and yet necessary reason that hasn't been made clear to me.'

And with that I drove home in the rain.  'Cloudless blue skies,' my arse.


** I have now come to understand that the term "Senior" is applied randomly and loosely. From what I can glean, a senior at this particular college is actually a person aged in their late teens. Old ladies like myself are automatically assumed to be the mothers of those "seniors" and not students themselves.

OK, so lately I've been doing that thing that I always do i.e. spending my time doing the one-woman internal debate routine. I swear if there was ever a medal awarded for the most internally undecided, it would go to me.

No one or nothing I know of can beat me in... well, beating myself up.

I have insides the consistency of jelly. I quiver and shake and fall into a gelatinous mess debating with myself about the pros and cons of anything I decide to do.

So you can see that the decision I've made to return to school has given me a major case of internal debating Olympics. Complete with Greek wrestling and ego archery.

One minute I'm 'out there' doing something brave, taking on school subjects that I would never in my right mind have ever contemplated doing back when I was actually at school,  mainly because I'd considered them totally light-weight.

Art? C'mon. Music? Pfft. Give me a break.

I was all about history and science and solid things.. factual things. Not rhythm and blues and weary looking boots..

All this internal too-ing and fro-ing is, of course, a field day for my inner naysayer. "How will you ever get a proper ATAR with those subjects?" She moans.. "You can't even play a musical instrument more complex than a comb and paper kazoo.. and as for art... dot -to dot ain't gonna cut it."

So I sat down and politely asked the nay-sayer to shut up for a minute while I quizzed myself about what the hell I was doing, because I never met anyone that could tell themselves how much they apparently can't do, as I can.

So what if I chose badly? I like music. I like listening to it. I respond to it. I can't play an instrument, but I can sing - quite well too for someone who's never had a lesson and was never encouraged to use a natural gift. I like art. I see things in paintings, I like how the artist transfers thoughts and feelings to another medium. I can't paint, or draw, or do anything arty. But I can appreciate it like mad.

And if I've made a huge mistake, I'll swap subjects. 

This line of logic shuts Ms Naysayer up for a bit. I can see her raise an eyebrow before she slinks off to think up another line of attack. 

Following my heart instead of my head has never been easy for me, and yet I think that my heart feels a wisdom that my head can never connect to. My mind is too busy thinking whilst my heart just knows what it knows.

And all the times I've followed my heart, I've been happy. Even if I stuffed up. Even if it led me to ruin. I sang all the way there and afterwards I called the disaster a lesson in life. Head talk always got me to a different place. I might have been secure. I might have been sensible, but I was restless and forever thinking about what could have been...

So I'll stick to music and art... and Ms Naysayer can just stick her kazoo where the sun don't shine.

That'll get us both singing.

Schooling

I'm returning to studies.

That doesn't sound that bad, does it? But I'm wary, leery and feeling nervous when I think about it all. The essays, the paying attention, the writing notes, the studying for all those different subjects...

BUT

I'm only doing a limited ATAR. I'm smart. I've got life experience. I'm mature (oh, how that hurt to type) and I have wisdom.

I'm up to this.

Plus, my back's to the wall. Which is usually incentive enough for anyone.

On the positive side, I'm actually old enough now that I don't care about doing well; life's kind of beaten out the competitive thing in me. I just want to pass and that's as high as my goal post is currently set.

It's been YEARS since I last did the formal schooling thing.  28 of them to be precise. It'll be 29 by the time I roll up on my first day.

That's a bit daunting... But...

What's life without risk? What good comes of living by the things you think you can't do?

Not much good at all... and total stagnation.

So I signed up. I chose electives - English, Family and Community Studies, Visual Arts, Music and... more English.

Now I have a timetable just like the one I burnt back in 1983.

But maybe this time I'll not give it all up so easily.

things I'd rather not think about.

It's hard for me to think about my parents ever having sex. Seriously. I mean I know I'm here.. and I have a sister, so theoretically they must've had sex maybe twice.

But.. in my mind they kept their clothes on during the act. And their glasses too. In fact the whole procreation thing probably went much like those two pigeons I saw going at it on my back fence last Spring. A quick hello, a whole lot of fumbling awkwardness, some lost feathers and... three seconds later - a baby bird!

I mean, a baby me.

Please. Don't spoil it for me. That's exactly how it happened.

The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love... A mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everybody wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many.

Carson McCullers
'The Ballad of the Sad Cafe.'

Word Energy

It's my  personal philosophy that words have a vibration - not only because they physically vibrate the air which they are spoken into, but because very single word has its own unique vibrational being and energetic substance. Each word spoken gathers intent and meaning with every utterance by every being, every single time it's used.

Next time you say you 'hate' something or someone, think of the resonance behind the word, the power it has gathered down through the centuries, the concentrated intent behind every single letter. Think how poisonous and powerful it is.

Words have life; they have an ability to influence far beyond mere consonants and vowels. Once they are formed and spoken, they vibrate; they reverberate and take on a life of their own. Once said, you can't take them back - like a stone thrown into a lake, each ripple echoes out and touches everything else. On its reverse journey back to you, that ripple in the verbal lake might become a huge wave of words that sweeps you away.

So choose your words carefully and use them wisely. They have the power to impact upon everything around you.

different strokes..

I always feel like cooking - especially baking. It's therapy for me. I love to see basic ingredients come together and turn into something entirely deliciously different. Eating and cooking gluten free has been a challenge for me and a huge learning curve - but I love it.

I made blueberry muffins a few days ago, and I tweaked my GF flour recipe and added some tapioca flour (it comes from the root of the cassava plant), it added a lightness and really helped the overall texture of the baked muffins. Proof positive? I baked my blueberry muffins and they were just about all gone that same afternoon!

When I first started out eating gluten free, most people had no idea what that term meant. I had to constantly explain what the word gluten meant and why I had to be free of it. Lately that's happening a lot less. Even being vegetarian and gluten free barely raises an eyebrow at most places - but I'd seriously like to see something other than a salad offered to me as a meal.. unless it's a roasted vegetable quinoa salad!

I think we've come a long way in accepting that people have, or choose to follow different diets, which I hope is a sign that people are becoming more open and tolerant. After all, how does it hurt anyone else if I don't eat wheat or animals? Why would anyone be affronted by that choice? If my partner chooses to eat beef, I don't feel personally insulted. Why should I? As long as she's an adult and she has a full understanding about her food and is knowledgeable about her dietary choices, then what she eats is up to her and is her own karma..

Now if I can just get people to see that same reasoning when it comes to legalising same-sex marriage, things would be perfect. I'd be a vegetarian-gluten-free-happily-married-same-sex attracted woman.

I think I'll try ordering that off the menu more often!

Well, bless me!

I got called "pushy" this week. I think of it as a kind of compliment in a way, because for so many years I'd not speak up.. or push, or ask what the hell was going on.. I'd just put up with another's unclear, rather muddy boundaries and hope things would improve.

They rarely ever did.

I looked up "pushy" in the dictionary and it says, 'excessively or unpleasantly self-assertive or ambitious.'

Hmm, I wasn't any of that. Maybe one person's persistent is another's pushy, depending on the circumstances? Or maybe people like assertiveness in themselves, but not in others?

But at least I know where I stand now.

No Capes

Feeling down, Sam? Lets play with Photo Booth on my iPad! I can do my "Syndrome" from "The Incredibles" impression for you...

See? THAT made me smile. Now you know why I love Debra so much!

My Gluten Free Banana Bread

Banana bread is yum. I’ve not had it in years because I’ve not seen a gluten free one in cafes. I decided to modify a recipe I’ve used for other things and see how it went with banana bread…

Basically I use my own SR flour recipe. That’s 1 cup brown rice flour combined with 1 cup of almond meal. To that I add 1 teaspoon of Xanthan Gum (praise the deities for Xanthan gum!) 2 teaspoons of baking powder (GF, of course) and 1 teaspoon of bicarb soda.

I mashed up two expensive (curse Cyclone Yasi) and very ripe bananas and slurped in 1/2 cup of honey and 1/2 cup of sugar mixing them through. I also added a dash of Maple syrup (just because), 2 beaten eggs and just under a 1/3 of a cup of rice bran oil. 

I added the wet mix to the dry and tasted it, pronouncing it yummo! But for some reason I went a bit mad.. I decided to add some coconut milk powder that I had left over (I love this stuff:). It added a bit of creaminess but wasn’t too full-on with the coconut flavour. You could also add nuts (walnuts, pecans..whatever) if you wanted to at this stage..

I scooped the bananary mixture into a loaf tin and baked it at 170C for about 50 mins. I watched it though because sometimes the top can brown up fiercely because of the honey content.

So, here ‘tis.

(sorry ‘bout the fuzzy photo. I’m no food photographer, I just cook things.)

Pooh.

We have termites, or had termites. Our back deck was falling apart because those little suckers chewed their way through it. We found out the hard way - when the deck collapsed under foot (or in this case under palm tree removal)

We've gotten the whole lot pulled up and taken away.. but we had to replace it with something, because what was left behind was a stretch of boggy mud patch, (BTW I'm beginning to think that the whole block the house sits on is a boggy mud patch) peppered with beer bottles left over from some previous owner's party that we weren't invited to.

Not wanting to give another generation of termites a free meal, I vetoed more timber decking and called in a guy to do some extreme concrete paving for us. Now, after loads of de-construction and re-construction using tonnes of roadbase landfill, sand and concrete pavers, the former mud patch is looking pretty good and non-edible.

I've given out plenty of compliments ("oh, it's a work of art!") to our landscaper and his construction crew; which consists of two apprentices who look about 13 years old, but of course our paver saviour isn't going to agree to me paying him solely by way of flattery, and so we've had to dip into our savings yet again.

I'm really bummed about this because our 'savings' consists of our travel fund - the one we were going to use to go back to America and visit Deb's lot over there this year. And of course this would happen the first time in four years that Deb's ever told me she's homesick wants to visit her mother, who's not been doing very well.

Seriously sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in the middle of this giant cyclone. Around me I can see all these issues and problems spinning round and round.. and somehow I have to make sense of it all and fix things. I have no idea why I'm in the hub, standing right smack dab in the middle of the the eye of the cyclone and why I'm the designated fixer-upper, but there you go. I must've asked for it in the cosmic pre-reincarnation meeting.

Today is just one of those real bad rotten days where I'm sure that as soon as I show my face there's going to be audible boos and hisses from everyone because I've been cast as life's chief party-pooper and person in charge of bringing in a large dose of reality to life's situations. I guess that's why I always felt sorry for Rabbit in the Winnie the pooh stories. I sympathised with him having to be the one to say, "ahh guys, I know that we had all these travel plans but put down your suitcases because the Pooh-deck has just collapsed and it's going to need fixing..."

So I think I'll go and join Rabbit in his burrow in the boggy mud patch and find a dry beer bottle to suck on until I feel better..

Migraines and other fun times.

So, I finally went for that CT scan. Yet more radiation. I swear I'm going to glow in the dark soon.. or that my head will, it's the place that's had all the X-Rays.

I often idly wonder how many X-Rays you can have before you start turning into a mouldering zombie look-a-like and what the warning signs of X-ray induced zombification might be. Maybe I'll wake up one morning and leave my top jaw and teeth behind on the pillow - now that would be a big clue, for sure.

But I digress.

The CT scan turned out normal. Which is a relief. I had wondered many times if all the stress on my old noggin' because of these headaches might've done some damage, but apparently everything in my brain is where it's supposed to be and the colour/size/shape it should be. Mind you CT scans can't diagnose migraine, they can only let the doctor know what you HAVEN'T got. So that means I don't have any aneurysms or growths or other nasties inside my head... thank goodness.

The headaches though, still continue unabated. The pain in my head is down to a dull roar right now and I've not gotten any work done on my Tarot "leaflet" (that's the codeword for my book) for a few days now because it's hard to concentrate when it feels like someone is sticking a screwdriver through the back of your eyeball and extracting it through the back of your head, temple, neck or jaw - Just pick a spot - they alternate to keep the fun times rolling!!

I also just learned why the pain medications I swallow don't work either. Apparently in some  people migraines shut down the sympathetic nervous system, which means my stomach stops digesting and the pain meds never get to where they can be used before the nausea caused by the migraine induced vertigo has them right back out again. Yay!! Go sympathetic nervous system!! You don't even notice it, until it stops working. Ugh.

For now I'll just keep on going and hope I wake up headache-free. That would be bliss. So would a good night's sleep, as people are starting to ask if I feel ok and they're commenting on how "tired" I look, which I know is code for, "you look like crap." At least next week Debra, my dear sweet hersband, has organised an aromatherapy massage at the Spa for me..  I may have chronic migraine right now, but I also have lots of love in my life - and I know that in the end love's going to win out and kick the shit out of the migraines - but very gently and armed with lavender oil.

Yes, I'm still an optimist. That's one thing that being sick has taught me, even if I have to wire my own zombified jaw back on with string.

Winter

Rainy, cold, bleary, cloudy weather.  One of those days where the sky seems very leaden, grey and impossibly low. Driving along it was like buckets of water were being thrown over my windscreen. My wipers were pretty ineffectual against the combination of wind and water and the car's speed.. not that I was going very fast - I slow down when I can't see as I don't seem to have that magical radar other drivers have that allows them to still travel at light speed on wet slippery roads (although I do think this 'radar" might be more aligned with sheer recklessness than anything extrasensory)

I slow down in winter and I yawn a lot. I want to stay in bed and I feel like my world shrinks. I know that's just a response to the weather, the cold and the inevitable bouts of illness that winter brings but it makes me feel shut off from the flow and that makes me feel like I'm missing one of my senses.

Winter has it's good points - making warm food, reading books, staying in and talking more to my family and getting to know myself better - it just seems to drag on about a month too long. I miss the blue sky and the warmth and the openness of the warmer weather.

I suppose all this dreariness means I will appreciate and give thanks for the sun when I finally see it. When the Earth's axis finally tilts our way so that we have summer here, I will not complain when I sweat profusely and get sunburnt in 5 minutes flat. Promise. Ok, I promise I won't whine the first time it happens.

The rain's back now and I swear the drizzling sky is so low I could stand on tippy toes and touch it...

When I cut my finger open on that same damn tile in the bathroom doing the housework for the second time, what do I do?

Put a band-aid on of course!

I give up trying. I give up investing in an emotional black hole. I give up crying over spilt milk. I let go of wanting things that can't be. I refuse to continue to participate in my own invalidation.


I'm never, ever again going to sit through another bout of bigoted, hate-filled, racist, hypocritical, cringe-inducing talk and be belittled because I don't agree. They don't respect me and the incident before they left proves that to me without a doubt. 


If you have to bend yourself into a knot to try and handle things, surely that's not really a relationship at all, is it? It's more of a slow and steady decimation of your self worth.


I'm making this contract with myself today after our lunch with my parents. We are from two different planets - no, actually make that two different universes. I know that now with crystal clear clarity. There's no middle ground between us and this afternoon I finally realised that my poor soul is pretzel shaped from being the only one in this tortured triangle that was actually willing to try.

Weird dreams...

another very weird dream last night about carpet samples that I took home and wore like peasant skirts (because I was too polite to say no to the sales lady) and extra fluffy carpet decorated with clouds and flowers that shed fluff so that your pets and kids could play with the shed off fur balls (what family fun!)…This is the day after I dreamt that I was looking after two gold fish that were swimming around in the bottom of a giant plastic chick feeder when a really nasty guy came along and scooped one out (my favourite of course) and threw it down, leaving it high and dry and flapping around on the pavement for me to rescue. Then my dad drove my car into a huge ditch on the side of the road that left us all stuck at least six feet under…

Issues anyone?

*sigh*

spot the rainbow

Story here: