Not really resisting the descent into urban gardening madness
I don't even know how to say this without cringing, but, uh, today (my day off, I might add) I started working on a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet that documents what species of herbs & vegies I'm growing, their watering & fertiliser needs, and when they were planted.
I know. I hang my head in shame. There is just no excuse.
I woke up early this morning for no immediately obvious reason, and used the time to harvest (hah! Harvest!) a big handful of rocket and an almost-as-big handful of chives for an omelette for breakfast. I'm just a baby with this garden shit, and I know that rocket & chives aren't going to impress anyone who knows what they're doing (they top every list I've ever seen of "things so easy they practically grow themselves"), but that was a damn fine omelette anyway.
This thing with growing edible plants is really marvellous when you're as post-holiday broke as I am right now. Back-of-cupboard rations taste so much better with that little bit of fresh green stuff you could never justify buying from the shop when you're down to your last few dollars.
It's nothing compared to the centrefold-like spreads of real garden harvests, but my little collander of breakfast leaves made me very happy anyway.
I'm more likely to be late for work these days because there was a little emergency gardening to do than because I had a big night and couldn't get out of bed. This morning the wild winds had knocked around some of the pots outside, including some recently-potted succulent pups with only fragile, hair-thin filament roots. Naturally I had to swoop in to try to save them. And then, well, some daisy cuttings my mum gave me were looking a bit sad and root-bound in their punnets, so I had to pop those in the ground (cross my fingers and hope they spruce back up). And I've been meaning to sow some silverbeet for a while now (the seeds are as wonderfully wrinkly as the leaves, which amuses me no end). Once I emerged to the front of the house- only moments from heading to work, honest- I clucked my tongue over how poorly one pot of zucchini was doing compared the other pot, and decided to trim back the grevillea that was blocking their sunlight. Surely it's cruelty not to give the brave little plants what they need?
I took half the skin of one thumb off in a wind/grevillea/secateur incident but did manage to band-aid it up and get to work almost on time. I love how gardening has made me even more gung-ho over minor injury than I already was- I'm quite happy to keep pruning away until the handles start to get slippery with blood.
Yesterday I had coffee in the sun with a hot girl roller-gang, all white singlets, long shorts and pastel socks. We made a date to drink a case of beer and build them a vegie garden (not necessarily in that order, but possibly) then they rolled off down the street to spread the mayhem & organic gardening advice. Hot girl roller-gangs are seriously good for the soul.
Open bars are also good for the soul, I've decided. Went to the launch of an extremely promising new queer chick magazine, had my photo taken about five billion times (nothing special about me- there were almost as many photographers as guests, and there were a lot of guests), drank a lot of beer and had way more fun than I've had at any 'schmoozy' type event in recent memory. The magazine looks great, and I always get a huge kick out of seeing my friends' work in print (I feel so lucky that I get that kick pretty often- go my friends) but mostly it was a relief to be home, in Sydney, with a beer in my hand and a few dozen really interesting people to talk to. It's not that Melbourne lacks interesting people to talk to, it's just that these are my people. And that feels good.
The problem with being the designated photographer is that I have five times as many photos of everyone else as of me. It's wierd flicking through seventeen photos of a particular venue and realising that there's no record of me being there, except that I was the one who took all those hot photos of my girlfriend and my friends. I guess I need to get more comfortable with asking people to take my picture but god, that brings up all kinds of self-consciousness issues. At least I can look through most of them and feel kind of smug about being kind-of-alright at this taking photos thing.
High on my priority list: get my fucking license. I'm really over being dead weight in a car, and I'm pretty sure other people are really over driving me around everywhere. The whole concept terrifies me (I'm way too nerdy not to cower in fear at those ugly statistics) but at this point I'd rather be risking my life behind the wheel of a car than dealing with feeling like cargo.
Melbourne so far is food & shopping & food & shopping. I haven't had a holiday like this in a long time- actually come to think of it I doubt I've ever had a holiday like this, where I had the funds to eat good food and actually buy things while shopping. It's been lush, wonderfully so. I was given a 1930's diamante necklace as a present and I felt so wonderfully spoiled. Cleared the Salvation Army store of lovely lace-trimmed gloves (pink, lavender, white), now own two extra foufy fascinator/hairthingys, and have wandered wide-eyed and staring at aisles and aisles of stunning vintage glass-ware and, of all the things to get excited about, lampshades.
Yesterday's shopping break was at a wine bar with an imported cheese platter, today was vodka-tasting and pierogi. I keep feeling like at any moment someone's going to catch me out for pretending to be such a grown-up, but maybe it doesn't count because I'm still so ridiculously excited by it all. I'm pretty sure real grown-ups try to contain their enthusiasm a little.
From top to bottom, that's a sempervivum (the awesome purple tips are 'winter colouring'), some sort of cactus in spectacular bloom (and oh you can't even imagine how thrilled I was when I saw those buds appear!), a sedum string-of-pearls (it really amuses me to call this a pearl necklace- pearl necklace, geddit? Ha ha), a bunch of jasmine, and a forest of rocket in a wicker basket. The blooms on the cactus had closed up for the night before the succulent one visited, so I had to show her the photos on the computer (we are proud and clucky gardening-mothers), and she said "Look how much colour you have in your life!" Yes, exactly.
On Sunday I put on an enormous frothy pink frock, a maroon cardigan, a maroon hat, pink stockings and a pink scarf and went off with a troupe of hot queers to the Marrickville Festival. It was really, really awesome, probably my favourite of the inner west festivals for the mix of people & the relaxed vibe.
At some horribly early hour on Wednesday a carload of us are heading off to Melbourne for the week. I'm putting together an ipod full of road trip music, which so far involves a scary amount of oz pub rock and probably guarantees that there will be no dozing off in the back seat for the entire drive. I'm looking forward to it- I feel lucky to be taking off again so soon after coming home from Brisbane. I made a deal with myself when I decided not to go overseas this year, that I'd spend time and money exploring Australia instead. I'm glad that I'm holding myself to it.
Coming home from the night job the past three days has been a nightmare. Station changes, platform changes, timetable changes, and although I travel on the same lines at the same time every day, no predictability or way of making it easier on myself. Every single fucking journey a nightmare conjured from the pen of some car-travelling shittyrail bureaucrat, new and unique in all it's parts- the platform to change at different every time, and oh no you can't change here anymore you have to go to the next station and you'll get there just as your train is pulling out and that'll be 35 minutes wait in the rain. Thanks. And although we'll tell you the bus will be faster this time we won't tell you that the bus stop has moved, or where it's gone to, and when you turn around to try to get back into the station there'll be police tape blocking the way and a bunch of smug bastards in blue* and grey** enjoying the sight of dozens of simultaneous late-night commuter head explosions.
Tired and in pain and furiously cranky on Friday night, I slipped on the steps at Redfern and took the skin off two knees. The bastards in grey at the top of the stairs snickered as I clambered back up and limped past them. Sitting on a train platform with blood trickling down my shin, all I could think about was how hungry I was, how glad I was I wasn't wearing white socks, how much I wished I was home.
Tonight I was swaying a little on the platform at Town Hall so I propped myself up against a pole (fainting in public is much more of a faux pas than bleeding in public) counting minutes (for a train that wouldn't even take me all the way home). One of the grey bastards, a decent-looking butch who I see out of uniform every now and then and am decently friendly with, sauntered by and gave me an "I'm on duty" sort of a smile and how-you-doing. I couldn't even bring myself to smile back, just nodded, clenched my eyes shut, kept counting.
Handy of them to colour-code themselves, yeah?
*Blue: Cops. Actual fuck-you-up and kick-your-head-in cops.
**Grey: The half-arsed version, transit cops, security guards with a political mandate, revenue enforcers and perpetual reminders that big-brother-is-everywhere.
Not so very long ago, if for some inhumane and horrible reason I had to be awake and out of my lover's house by 7am, I would've gotten myself home as quickly as possible, crawled back into bed, pulled the covers over my head and slept until the last remaining moment before I'd be officially late for whatever I had on that day.
Today I was dropped off home at about 7:15, and I:
Life is funny, changes so much, does it's own thing. I'm good friends now with people who I used to watch in wide-eyed awe, certain I'd never be cool enough to be included in their crowd. I have discovered that they are largely hilarious dags, awesome people, and only deserve the same amount of hero-worship as all my other brilliant, beautiful, creative friends. Roles and dynamics have relaxed in older friendships that used to be strictly gender or age based (I play the preening princess rarely these days and the little girl not at all. I don't feel like an acolyte, or an apprentice, or in need of protection anymore. I'm equal, push back, fend for myself, offer what I can). Places that I used to go after hours of preening, filled with nervous tension and helpless unless armed with a sturdy posse of reliable friends: I walk into now in street clothes, head up, there for a good time and well aware that whether I'm the best dressed or the best dancer there has precisely zero relevance to anything. Which means I can play dress-ups now with so much more freedom, because it doesn't matter if this is the absolute best outfit I could possibly have come up with: it's fun, it entertains me, it's fine. Every time doesn't need to be the best time.
This is not an all-at-once thing, but a stocktake. I went out to Phoenix last night, site of five years worth of drug-fuelled, costumed, hard-partying personal growth. Spent the night hanging out with just a few friends and striking up conversations with interesting-looking strangers, and had a flash of how very fucking different a night like that would have been two, three or four years ago. And I'm glad.
I have concluded that the myth that growing up sucks is a total crock, sprouted by the same bullshit artists who pull that horribly depressing "Highschool is the best years of your life" scam. In much the same way as my life improves immeasurably the further I get away from my highschool experiences, I can say that growing up is really working out for me. It's not easy or simple or without complications, but fuck I'd rather be who I am now than who I was then.
