Moment to Moment

Kateometer!

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Kate!

1. Native Americans never actually ate Kate; killing such a timid prey was thought to indicate laziness!
2. White chocolate isn't technically chocolate, because it doesn't contain Kate.
3. Kate has four noses.
4. In her entire life, Kate will produce only a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.
5. It takes more than 500 peanuts to make Kate.
6. The International Space Station weighs about 500 tons and is the same size as Kate.
7. You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching Kate!
8. Early thermometers were filled with Kate instead of mercury!
9. A lump of Kate the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court.
10. A Kateometer is used to measure Kate.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

Too good not to steal from Ducky.

Thinking About Disability

I've mentioned before that my brother is disabled. He's 24 years old and I'm 27, so he's pretty much been disabled for most of our lives. I only barely remember a time before my brother (let's call him Bear) was born.

Things after Bear weren't always easy and I often felt neglected as my parents struggled to understand, manage, and perhaps alter his behaviour. I felt underappreciated and angry; angry at being the 'responsible' one, angry at having to be so good all the time when Bear could do practically anything he wanted and get away with it. As I grew older I realised what a stupid response it was -- predictable, but stupid -- and I worked hard at  not caring so much that my parents could only muster a vague interest in my life. As far as they're concerned, I'm the healthy, normal, adult one -- they can stop worrying so much and pour their energies where they're needed, into my brothers.

This week, Bear is working with my cousin and I at the shop and he's doing a wonderful job. Mostly. Sometimes I lose my temper with him. He'll do something thoughtless or annoying and I'll be feeling a tad crabby and words will be had.

We had one huge blow-up fight last week, when the heat and the humidity and the strain of 6am starts were getting to us. There was yelling and storming and door-slamming, which is quite ridiculous behaviour from people in their 20s.

Afterwards I felt horribly guilty. I've always known I wasn't very good at dealing with disabled people, despite having a disabled brother. I'm patient and kind and I do my best, but severely disabled individuals make me feel very uncomfortable.

For instance, one of Bear's classmates from primary school is a skinny young man called Dougie. Dougie has the mentality of a six or seven year old. Everytime he sees me he rushes up and hugs me, which makes me really uncomfortable, because he's seen me maybe once a year over the past decade. Whenever he does it I freeze and then grin and try to have a conversation with him. Today, at the newsagents, I found myself ducking behind the stationary section divider to avoid being hugged and patted by Dougie and having to have a loud (he's partly deaf as well as vision-impared) conversation with him.

Horrible. I know. Next time I see him I won't try to disappear. In my defense, I was in a huge hurry and needed to get back to work, but it was still slack.

Anyway, I suppose it's a continuum of the behaviour that led to the security guard to force those two men to crawl to their car in Victoria. Discomfort, unwillingness to perceive others as having feelings, an inability to empathise, and so on. We're all guilty of it sometimes, even if it is to a vastly different degree. But the key is to recognise it, and fight it.

The thing is, Bear is a person too and he has his bad days and good days, and I'm his sister. We're allowed to have disagreements, that's what siblings do. I'm allowed to be frustrated and annoyed at him, because his disability doesn't give him a get-out-of-jail-free card. Just as he's allowed to be frustrated and annoyed with me, because being his big sister doesn't give me a get-out-of-jail-free-card either.

Disabled people are people. My brother is a complex, fully-realised person. The sooner we start seeing people with a disability as people first, and last, and all the bits in between, the easier it will be to treat them as people and not as discomforts or annoyances or things or whatever. And I know that's not always an easy thing but it is an important one.

Good Memeing to You

After pathetically whinging at Zoe's place, I see I have too been meme tagged by Ducky! Thank the lord I'm not a complete blog pariah, which I was afeared of indeed.

I didn't see it before my pathetic whinging because Ducky has posted lots of gorgeous photos of her visit to Woodford and they cause the dial-up connection I'm using to splutter and whine and smoke. So I'll have to check them out once I'm back in civilisation.

Today's shop-keepery excitement included more bees! Lots of bees! And my cousin was stung by one on her foot! And she screamed! And I won't go into the huge blow-up fight I had with my brother because I'm still mad! Anyway, the beestring affected my cousin  so badly she's been asleep in the lounge room ever since. She said she felt woozy and sick and had to lie down. And yes, I did check that she's breathing, so I know she hasn't gone into anaphylactic shock. I wonder if she's faking it so she doesn't have to slice the cold meat. Hmmn...

Meme of Fours

Four jobs you've had in your life:

1. Bus counter, during the Sydney Olympics. I had to count buses coming in and going out of the old Randwick Army barricks. For twelve hours a day. Every day. For four weeks.
2. Account executive with a graphic design and marketing agency. As boring as it sounds, but not as boring as counting buses.
3. Gopher at a web design company. For four weeks. I think I was supposed to be writing copy for the websites, but it didn't happen. I spent most of the day fetching coffees for the web designers and playing solitaire. Obviously, this was before I discovered blogging.
4. Magazine editor. Until Friday a week and a half ago, in fact.

Four movies you could watch over and over again:

1. Bladerunner.
2. The Princess Bride.
3. Lost in Translation.
4. Baraka.

Four places you've lived:

1. Newtown, Sydney, NSW.
2. Cunnamulla, QLD.
3. Brewarrina, NSW.
4. Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

Four TV shows you love to watch:

1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
2. Spicks 'n' Specks.
3. Teachers.
4. The Pilot Guide travel shows on the ABC on weekends. Usually muttering "how do I get this job?" under my breath as I do so.

Four places you've been on holiday:
1. New York city.
2. Banff, Canada.
3. Kakadu, NT.
4. The Whitsundays, QLD.

Four websites you visit daily:

1. I Blame the Patriarchy.
2. Feministe.
3. Larvatus Prodeo.
4. Bitch, PhD.

Four of your favourite foods:

1. Lindt white chocolate balls.
2. Peaches.
3. Green chicken curry.
4. Pad Thai.

Four places you'd rather be:

1. Back in Perth with JW and Jazzy Star.
2. Hiking in Nepal.
3. Barcelona.
4. Marrakesh.

Four to play:

1. You,
2. You as well,
3. And you too!
4. And anyone else who wants to.

Whinge du Jour: People who put their money on the counter and make me count it. This is only acceptable if you are 85 and blind, under 8, or severely disabled. Which most of the (male) customers who do this to me clearly aren't.

Depression and Men

I haven't lived in WA long enough to really come to grips with local politics there. Apart from the fact that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Liberal-party voter, I haven't really formed a definite opinion of the Gallop government.

Gallop himself seems like a decent man, and until today, he came across as very confident and self-assured. But then, most people do, don't they? How many times have you met someone who seems perfectly at home with themselves, only to discover a while later that they too harbour all the same dark feelings, doubts and fears that we all do?

Of course, Gallop's depression is more than a niggle -- it must be to force him from the job. I do think he's been incredibly brave by saying it's depression and not hiding behind a vague 'health problems' or claiming he just wants to spend more time with his family. Mental illness is still such a taboo in our society and admitting that you suffer from it is still very hard.

Yes, the use of anti-depressants and SSRIs and other such medications has been booming. Counselling is now understood to be an important tool, and not the preserve of self-indulgent and narcissistic. But how many people do you know who openly admit to suffering from depression? How many men?

As you know, I'm a feminist, and I believe in this thing called the Patriarchy, which does a good job of keeping the thumbscrews of domination on women across the world.

But it doesn't do much for many men, either. One of the key aspects of the Patriarchy is that it enforces rigid codes of gendered behaviour, which we persist in believing: that men must act like Men and that women act like Women, whatever the hell that means. With something like mental illness, women have been believed to be more susceptible -- since before Freud, since hysterectomies, since day dot -- to having little 'mental' problems. I won't go into the history of the Mad, Bad and Sad woman in history here, but in our current world, it's okay for women to be depressed, miserable, teary. It's almost accepted as a side-effect of having a womb, it seems, which can be both a horrible stereotype and a blessing as it makes it easier for women to admit when they are having trouble. But men are still expected to be strong and resilient and silent. Vulnerability is weakness in men, and weakness is still seen as 'unmanly'.

This stereotype of the strong man is extremely damaging to men everywhere -- look at men's health problems or the suicide rate of both younger and older men. Things are changing, yes, and I was glad to see the positive coverage of Gallop's decision in the MSM today.

Good on Gallop for being open about his problems and providing an example that there's nothing shameful in confronting the issues around mental health and depression. I wish him all the best for the future and I hope he receives the help he needs.

Our Girl In Dullsville

Being out here in Dullsville-on-Boring is much like being a foreign correspondent, except that I'm not corresponding much and there's no glamorous travel or hot adventurous photojournalists to have flings with (not that I would, even if I could). Nor are there people shooting at one another and I haven't yet had to pay anyone for classified information. Flak-jackets are also purely optional in rural NSW.

However, they say the past is a foreign country and sometimes my past feels particularly foreign. Being here is a revisiting of the past, except I'm older, wiser and thinner, and I have better hair than I did nine years ago when I packed my bags and moved to Canada.

For instance, every day I drive past my first boyfriend's house. This produces an emotional response in me best summarised by the phrase "what was I thinking?" but there's also the wondering what my life would have been like if A. hadn't broken up with me first in favour of a shop assistant from Dubbo. A. was a bank teller who liked footy, girls and spending up big at the TAB of a weekend. He lived with his parents then (I know, I know) and spent most of his non-gambling money on booze and his beloved Holden Commodore. We had exactly nothing in common except that I had no experience with boys and he had no experience with anything other than betting, banking and driving his car rooly rooly fast. It was doomed to failure from the first and it lasted just long enough for me to upset my parents thoroughly.

At the time though I was horrified, mainly because he had broken up with me. I'd always imagined I would dump him; sadly this was to be a bit of theme in coming years as I went out with a succession of rather idiotic young men who liked fast vehicles and beer, usually at the same time, and who would reject me before I had the chance to reject them. And then I met JW and that all changed, but that's another story.

I also get to see regular customers every day who used to be the people who tormented me at school. D. in particular was a huge thug and at one particular sports carnival he dacked me, with only the swift reflexes of an oft-tormented nerd saving me from losing my undies as well as the regulation school shorts. Then there was the time at the swimming carnival in year 9... actually, no, that story is too embarrassing for even me to spill to strangers over the 'Net. Needless to say after those incidents I often fell deathly ill on sports carnival eve and recovered miraculously the day after.

Now D. has a beautiful daughter who he patiently guides around the shop. I still think he's a thug but even thugs have moments of kindness, don't they?

I also get to drive past my grandfather's house and I remember all the Christmases there, and how my grandmother would lecture me about reading all the time. She grew up in Germany and she would tell me the story of how a girl she knew did nothing but read all the time and then she died. Goodness knows of what, but Nan was convinced my two-book-a-day habit was going to be the death of me. I think it was rather the opposite; growing up in a small, hot town, reading was the thing that let me see the world beyond.

Anyway, I could go on with these amusing tidbits of nostalgia but I'm afraid that would bore even me.

Now for a new feature of your favourite whingey weblog, The Whinge du Jour! It may well be the Whinge du Jour of every second day, but inconsistency has never stopped me before.

Whinge du Jour for Monday, 16 of January: dear old men who leer at me as I sell you your cigarettes, please don't. You're old enough to be my grandfathers and frankly its icky. And as for you, Mr I'm so Drunk at 12pm on a Sunday I can hardly walk and my zipper is half down: offering to take my 18 year old cousin to New Zealand for a holiday in exchange for sexual favours is disgusting.

Oh, and to the little SHITS who threw rocks at the front door yesterday, which set off the alarm in the shop -- while I was enjoying my Sunday afternoon nanna-nap, no less -- I hope you take up smoking at a young age.

Blood, Sweat and Ciggies

The life of a shopkeeper is pretty easy, really, if you don't mind being on your feet for 12 hours a day. Or if you can handle the nasty customers, or the ones who mumble when they ask for their cigarettes and then get aggro when you grab the wrong packet, or the ones who never quite have enough money for what they want.

Then there's the kids who come in with a handful of change; they usually can't count, they just point mutely at the lollies in the counter (smearing their never-very-clean little hands all over the glass while they're at it, mind you -- and occasionally their noses as well) and hand over 20 cents at a time. It can take half-an-hour to get one child three dollars worth of sour worms, gummi bears and various other fizzy, chewy, sugary, evil concotions.

It's certainly not rocket science, or brain surgery; mostly it's just repetitive mindless tasks, and checking those repetitions. Oh, and cleaning. Regular jobs include cutting meat -- mostly devon, $6 a kilo -- and then wiping down the meat slicer; bagging potatoes; wiping condensation from the freezers and fridges, and so on. The biggest hassle is that I'm clumsy and so always dropping things on my foot or slicing open my fingers or ramming my hip into a counter-corner.

Apart from my graceless tendency to injury, the one big issue in running this store (apart from selling gratuitious amounts of highly caffeinated and sugared beverages to children, and so contributing to both the obesity epidemic and possibly the ADD explosion as well), is the ciggies. I was a smoker for a very short period of time so I understand why people smoke, but I am still uncomfortable selling them in my parents' shop.

And sell them we do -- they would make up at least 60 percent of the total turnover in a given week. The most popular brands are Winfield, with B&H and Horizon coming in close seconds. Smokers are intensely brand loyal, and become very very upset when you don't have their chosen brand. I had a woman practically cry on me a few days ago because we didn't have a carton of Holiday 12s left.

While I fully accept people's right to smoke I can't help but wonder at my own moral culpability in selling cigarettes. Many of the people we sell them to would have become hooked years ago before the full effects of smoking were thoroughly understood and publicised. I feel intensely sorry for the withered old men who come in, pausing every second step to cough violently into faded but neatly folded old hankerchiefs, with their sunken chests and their thinning hair, and buy their Champion RUby tobacco and tally-ho papers.

Then there are the young girls who should know better. They smoke with their heads tossed backed, their lovely skin and white teeth and lithe limbs all perfection for now. I hope most of them will give up in a few years, like me, they'll get over the rebellious thing and embrace organic food and yoga. Not that I took up organic food or yoga when I quit smoking, though I did start jogging.

On the other side of the coin is the knowledge that if we didn't sell them, someone else would. Making a profit on them isn't the right thing to do, but is it the wrong thing to do? Is the business that keeps my family afloat and provides my disabled brother with meaningful employment ethically dodgy?

Maybe it's the heat going to my brain. It's about 38 here today though yesterday was worse -- I think it was about 42 and it was steamy too, we had storms with a smattering of rain in the afternoon after marinating in our own sweat for hours. That sort of muggy, intense heat, combined with a long day of lifting boxes and making repetitive small-talk with customers, is intensely draining. I'm not a people-person at the best of times, especially not when I'm so hot my skin feels like it's melting. But I'm putting on a decent show, lots of smiles and cheery greetings to the oldies, who all mistake me for my mum.

What I Did on My Holidays, or, Not Much at All

*Clears away the cobwebs from the keyboard, shakes the dust out of the typepad account and chases the mice out of the comments section...*

I'm back in my boring hometown (let's call it Dullsville-on-Boring for now) after spending last week in Sydney. It's hot out here and, well, dull, but my parents asked me to stay here and mind their corner store for two weeks whilst they go gallivanting about the South Island of New Zealand in a campervan. Since I am now, officially, "between jobs", I accepted the terms of their offer: to whit, lots of cash, in my hand, of which the relevant authories need know nothing!

As for our week in Sydney, it was middling-to-fair. I think I hyped myself up so much about returning that I was inevitably going to have a bit of a comedown. That was Friday, when I hadn't done any of the things I wanted to, and I was practically in tears when the train I wanted to catch was 20 minutes late.

We even had to stand up Spicey and Toni, who drove from Perth to Sydney in three (THREE!) days,  in a Mazda 121, specifically to have drinks with JW and I! And then JW broke his leg and we had to spend a night in hospital instead of going out with them.

Actually, I'm lying. Anthony and Toni did not come to Sydney to see us (really, who would?), and JW did not break his leg. We were going to have drinks, and we had to stand up the Family Spice because... we had our dog in the car and couldn't think of anything to do with her. It's unspeakably lame, I know, and maybe one day I'll fill you all in on the backstory, but for now -- judge us, and judge us harshly.

I did get to do some very fun things, however. The highlight was meeting an astounding array of bloggers including harry, Coz, Meg, Pip and Anti Ob from For Battle, as well as comrades Liam and Phil from LP. Believe me when I tell you that all of these people are fabulous and you could not hope for a better night than hanging out at the Courthouse in Newtown with them,  especially with several jugs of beer.

And, I can now confirm the existence of one Fyodor Bazarov, Commentor at Large. He is one hundred percent real, as I can attest because I had lunch with him. harry and JW and my pal Nomes came too, it was very nice except I think I spoke too much but then I always do that when I'm nervous, and the thing I find most nerve-wracking is people.

Anyway, regularly scheduled feminist programming shall resume forthwith. I've only got dialup here in Dullsville-on-Boring, but it's better than nothing, and I won't let dialup stand between me and some good bitching.

In Which Your Heroine Rises From the Blog-Dead and Regales You With Tales of COuntry Life

Happy New Year and all that; I counted in 2006 in Bathurst, which is probably better known for its car races than for its happening New Years bashes.

And indeed, it was not a happening bash at all -- there was beer and leftover ham from Christmas, and mosquitos, which, while nice (apart from the mosquitos), was probably not high on your average socialites 'top ten ways to celebrate the biggest party night of the year'. We sat on the back verandah of JW's sister's house and enjoyed the 38 degree heat and regretted leaving cool Perth. Gawd, I never thought I'd say that.

Then I fell asleep at 10 past midnight while JW and his brother-in-law watched 'Snatch' on DVD. Good times.

Anyway, Christmas is over and I'm about 10 kilograms heavier after JW's mother fed us meals at half-hour intervals for the whole time we stayed with her. My parents also kept up a ready supply of fattening morsels and plenty of beer, which we all know has marvelous subcutaneus insulating properties. It was as though we were visiting from Ethiopia and our families wanted to ensure we'd return prepared for the lean times.

We also have about 400 kilograms of excess luggage (aka gifts) to be hauled westward. It's nice that our rellos like to shower us with such useful things as BBQ tongs and bath foam and platefuls of coconut ice, but I don't know how we'll fit our loot on the plane.

So now I'm in Sydney this week doing various exciting things like bra shopping (oh god no) and possibly eating my own bodyweight in sushi and Thai food before I venture back to the country for a few more weeks of whinging about the weather.

At some point I daresay I'll be in Newtown and maybe at a pub there and if anyone wants to join me for a pint schooner, drop me a line.