Twenty ‘kin years….

Posted on August 16, 2008 by borysSNORC

It’s my high school reunion tonight. Twenty years since we left the not so hallowed halls of San Sisto Ladies College in 1988. Yes. 😐 A private Catholic Girls school…. and nothing quite dates you like a high school reunion. It also marks the exact 20 year (to the day) anniversary of our high school formal which was apparently a coincidence. I being the strange little anal retentive nutter than I am was the one to point this out. In my defense the only reason that I remembered our school formal was on 16th August is because it also happens to be the day that Elvis karked it in 1977…. whatever.

I was looking forward to going and I had hoped to be able to do my best Joan Cusack impression when I got home: Marcella: Yes, I went. It was just as if everyone had swelled.

But I’ve been struck down with the dreaded lurgi and am unable to attend. Thinking about about my high school years brings up mostly apathy from me. I wasn’t the most popular kid in school (we never had enough money for running with the ‘in’ crowd) but I certainly wasn’t disliked. I was a bit of a floater…. I used to frequently have lunch with different groups of kids depending on who I felt like speaking to that day. I was friendly with the athletic kids because I was pretty good at sports. I also used to hang with the art kids cos I was pretty good at that too. I never really hung out with the smart kids – I never bothered working work hard enough at school to fit in there. I was just the sort of girl who would talk to everyone had lunch with whomever on any given day and got along with everyone.

I didn’t really identify with any of the cliques and really didn’t go out of my way to fit in with them – quite the opposite in fact. I remember on free clothes days (uniforms being de rigeur in Australian schools) where the ‘in’ kids frequently turned up in all their designer duds (Jag, Country Road and Stuart Membrey being the designers of choice in the late 80s in suburban Brisbane) and I would turn up in a denim miniskirt, studded belt and a black singlet top with “Jim Beam” splashed across the bust. In my free time I was in the army cadets and hung out with boys who were into cars and guns…. so no I didn’t really try to fit in. I was also not a fan of Michael Jackson, Duran Duran or Boy George so strike two on that count as well.

I think from a very young age I’ve had a ‘this is me and if you don’t like it … fuck off’ sort of attitude. I’m not sure where that came from?!?! I’ve never been one to curry favour for some reason and mostly no one had anything bad to say about me (well not to my face after that time I rounded up on one chick for speaking out of turn about me). I got in trouble a few times for wagging school to hang out with Edourardo on his RDOs but mostly I paid attention in class got fair grades in the 70-80% range with minimum effort and just floated through high school.

So the reunion? Yes I was curious to see what the years might have brought everyone. See who was skiting about their fabulous lives and see whether some people had changed. But looking through an old school group photo… I didn’t see any faces that I missed having in my life these 20 years…

Looking at this photo reminded me of things…. Mr G the faggotty English teacher who was litterally hounded out of class by our laughter when he turned up to work with peach coloured trousers and sporting a new perm. Mrs V the tyranical Vice Principal who seemed to ALWAYS catch me out when I wagged school (I swear that woman really did have eyes in the back of her head). Sarah F who got up the duff months after finishing senior. Rebecca P who used to skive out of swimming with girlie troubles every fucking week. Katrina H who burst into tears when I got better marks than her for a book report on a book I never read. Colleen M whose mother used to drop the two of us to the local pub on her way to work night shifts as a nurse (we were fifteen … eejit woman). Linda B whose mother was killed in a car accident on the Cav Rd and Nursery Rd intersection when we were in Grade 10. Kylie C who got suspened for getting a lopsided punk hairdo. Catia B who demanded a recount when I beat her in a vote for House Captain. Katie S who was disowned by her family for anouncing she was a lesbian (and who subsequently suicided in 1991). Cassy B who I saw in the mid 90s in skimpy gear promoting Strongbow Cider at Fisherman’s Wharf. Angela M who used to complain about her $20 a week pocket allowance (my family’s mortgage payments in the mid 80s were $90/month). Celia T who talked about nothing but Bon Jovi for a year and a half. Julie B who missed a year of school with agoraphobia. Melissa S who had arthritis since she was kid. Shannon M who was the snobbiest bitch of a thing in the whole class and who I understand is largely unchanged.

Nope. I can honestly say I don’t miss any of them.
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Swingin’ Safari

Posted on July 30, 2008 by borysSNORC

I was out doing grocery shopping today … a task I absolutely loathe.. and yes, yes, yes… I checked the fucking eggs with the same little disheartened sigh that I always do. But I’m not bitching about checking the fucking eggs – for a change.

Today when I walked into the shopping centre I heard a very familiar tune playing on the PA system….

My Dad used to play Bert Kaempfert’s Swingin’ Safari when I was a kid. Which on it’s own sounds like a fairly innocuous sort of statement but it masks a gross understatement. My Dad played Bert Kaempfert’s Swingin’ Safari EVERY single time we had people over for dinner… since time immemorial. This album embodies all my most enduring social memories of my childhood… rabidly cleaning the house up before guests arrived, putting on our nicest dresses, running amok while the adults fixed dinner and sitting at a kids table in the lounge room. Dad must have been playing that record from the early 70s – long before I was old enough to be allowed to touch the record turntable and we were throwing it back at him right up until he passed away. I can still hear him telling us not to jump or dance on the (timber) floor because the record player was on and he didn’t want the needle to skip.

Over time it became the quintessential Cross Family Dinner Music and would be faithfully trundled out not only every time we had company for dinner but eventually for family dinner gatherings too. I remember hunting down the album on CD in the mid 90s at some point and I can still recall the curious and incredulous looks from the HMV staff when I ordered in 5 import copies of a dodgy old fashioned album they’d never heard of …..one for me, one for BigSal, one for Edouardo, one for Equinom and one for Dad of course.

I remember too giving the CD to the DJ at my little sister’s wedding and insisting he play the album during dinner… which as it turned out was all together too complicated for the idiot DJ and when the silly guy changed to something else after only the first song Edouardo had to go over ‘sort him out’ until he understood that he had to play it right through with nothing else. We also played the album at my wedding and at BigSal’s wedding too (DJ’s properly briefed this time so Edouardo didn’t have to play music Nazi).

It reminds me so much of my Dad that I only just realized that we haven’t really listened to it since he passed away and I was quite taken aback to hear it at the shops this morning. It was quite unsettling actually.
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This’ll be the day that I die….

Posted on July 3, 2008 by borysSNORC

I’ve got a disc of MP3s in my car that has a whole pile of random favourite songs on it. One of which is American Pie – the Don McLean version not the nasty arse Madonna one. Angel who I think has maybe heard the song about three or four times has decided it’s one of his favourite songs too and strangely enough seems to be able to sing along to most of it…. which is rather impressive for a little guy 🙂

I have a few old memories that pop up whenever I hear it. One… my first boyfriend’s Mum (who’s name was Dixie) told me it was on the radio when she gave birth to A1 (said boyfriend) back in 1972 so I often think of him when I hear it.

The other memory that usually comes to mind was from my first trip to Europe back in 1995. We were in Rome and had been sight seeing for the day… taking in the Vatican, St Peter’s, the Colosseum, the Spanish Steps and the lion sculpture (you know the one Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck put their hands into in Roman Holiday). At the end of our sightseeing we were being picked up by our fantastic double decker bus ‘Freckle’ and the bus was late and we were waiting under a ledge of a building near our pick up point in the pouring rain.

Half the people on our bus were standing around grumbling about the rain and bitching and moaning about the driver keeping us waiting… but there was a group of us who had had a great day out, checked out all the fabulous art, saw the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel, visited the ossuary of the Capuchini monks, watched the Pope out in the forecourt of the Vatican give a blessing to a bunch of foreign priests, got into St Peter’s when it was dead empty of people which was unreal, walked across the Ponte St Angelo, climbed St Peter’s cuppola and admired the view…. all that AND ate more gelato than we should!!!

View from the cuppola at the Vatican

What does all this have to do with American Pie you might ask? Well those of us who fell in the latter category of packs waiting for the bus were standing in the pouring rain singing American Pie at the top of our voices and laughing like idiots as we kept trying to remember the lyrics and largely failing miserably 🙂

Good times…. good times. Luckily most of the locals would have taken us for Sepos!! 🙂
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It’s your Birthday Budddee.

Posted on June 26, 2008 by borysSNORC

Small Child had his 7th Birthday today. I know parents the world over are fond of saying how quickly they grow up – but it’s true. Feels like barely a couple of months ago that we bought him home from the hospital. He was tiny 5lb7oz with a head hardly the size of a largish apple that fit in the palm of my (little though they are) hands and the little bugger wouldn’t breastfeed to boot… so, well… to be totally honest I was scared shitless. I know we all expect the sickly sweet Johnston and Johnston version of instant mother-baby bonding bullshit and we’re not supposed to admit it if we don’t immediately love our babies… but my experience of early motherhood certainly didn’t resemble the brochure.

He went from being in a Special Care Unit for premature babies and being watched over 24/7 by well qualified midwife/nurse types to being handed over to me to take home. Honestly?!? What the fuck were they thinking? I was in hospital for 9 days after a c-section delivery and most of that time Angel spent in the Prem Unit until the last two nights where they roomed him in with me and I was supposed to demonstrate that he was feeding okay and would be fine to go home.

I can’t remember why I was so frightened that they might send me home without him, but it was the last thing I wanted so I did what every terribly neurotic and hormonal post-natal woman with extremely bad judgment does in a situation like that … I lied my arse off. I told them that he’d fed well and that he slept for about 2-4hours at a time. The Truth™ was that he definitely wasn’t feeding properly and he was sleeping for barely 20-30mins at a time before waking up hungry again…. which means that I was waking up every 20-30mins and attempting to feed him each time.

At the end of the two sleepless nights where the Small Infant flatly refused to sleep the pediatrician came to see me to assess how things were going and decide whether or not we could all go home together. So now we have a SLEEP DEPRIVED terribly neurotic, hormonal post-natal woman with extremely bad judgment lying her arse off to the good doctor so they’ll let her go home – all I remember of that particular interview was that I was trying hard to smile and make it seem like everything was okay while simultaneously fighting a concrete certainty that everyone around me was talking to me under water! I struggled and I mean REALLY struggled to keep my mind on what the doctor was saying and I was convinced they would see right through me and would decide to keep the Small Infant in hospital.

The only other time I have ever felt even remotely that sleep deprived was on my way to London back in ’95 when our 28hr long haul flight turned into a 46hr long haul nightmare due to an overweight business man on the flight having a heart attack over Tehran which necessitated in our being unceremoniously re-routed to Bahrain for several hours before being eventually dumped in Heathrow feeling like rung out dishrags. Ah.. but I digress.

Post-natally hormonal, more than usually paranoid, extremely stressed, totally inexperienced, positively exhausted new Mom who felt like she’d just come straight from a week in a ‘well lit room in Gitmo’ and thought people were talking to her underwater got handed one tiny underweight, 4 weeks premature Small Infant with no suck reflex, that refused to feed, slept only in 30min blocks and would go into infant shutdown on not infrequent occasions with an admonishment from the pediatrician that if same Small Infant didn’t put on weight over the next week he would be readmitted – a recipe for success if you ever heard one! Ah… Good times people… good times.!

It must have been night on 4 months before I started to enjoying having him around and I like to think I’ve gotten better at all this since then. 🙂

Seven Dirty Words

Posted on June 23, 2008 by borysSNORC

George Carlin passed away. He was one of those comedians that my Dad used to watch up late with my Uncle Dave when we were kids. Dad never let his ‘young ladies’ swear and there’s no way we were allowed to see any adult type shows on the tellie when we were little. Sometimes we’d sneak down the hallway and lay low where we could see the TV but Dad and Dave would be laughing so hard they wouldn’t notice us. I remember seeing the ‘Seven Words You Can’t Say on TV’ sketch – I’m not sure how old I was and I think it was from about 1976 but Down Under we were always so far behind the times I doubt it would have hit the TV when I was that little. I remember being wide eyed and going ‘Um-ah!’ at all the naughty words but mostly I remember seeing my Dad laughing his arse off with his lopsided grin and tears rolling down his cheeks 🙂