Tumoulin Girl: June 2006

Thursday, June 29

The Countdown Begins

So I'd say something except my brain is fried. Thus lets start something monotonous.

Countdown: TEN DAYS until my eighteenth.

Monday, June 26

Here, There, Everywhere

Sorry about all this confusion! The server went down on my old website again and it's annoying me to no end so I'm shifting back to blogger. I might end up paying for a real server sometime but I'm not sure. For the time being I think I'll just hole up here.

Check back at my old address if you want to see anything from my old website (the server just might be working), otherwise most everything (posts and links) should be over here.

Saturday, June 24

Yay, I Always Have Wanted to Go to Sweden

Your Inner European is Swedish!

Relaxed and peaceful.
You like to kick back and enjoy life.

Who's Your Inner European?

Tuesday, June 20

12-Point Ramble

1. As I was sitting here thinking back over the last week it suddenly hit me that Bethany would already be in Switzerland by now. I've been so busy Friday completely passed me by without me thinking of it. Still, surely it must have happened and if you're reading this Bethy, I'd just like to say I hope you have the most wonderful trip. I'm so happy and excited for you.

2.My own life has been ever interesting. Matt drove in with Dad Tuesday night and it was so good to see him again. I hadn't seen him in over a year and though the others with Dad and Mum ended up showing him around the most as I stayed home and slept, the time I got with him was wonderful. There's something about catching up with a person face to face that so much better than talking on the phone.

3. There's so many fascinating things around here. On Sunday Matt, Becky and I drove around a bit and Beck was telling me how one of the lakes here actually has an old ghost town in it. Apparently during one drought the lake dried up so much one of the cricket fields appeared and everyone went down and palyed a game of cricket. Crazy, no?

4. And another thing, the pastor's wife was telling me one of the towns around here has a street named 'Lydia'. Imagine that. My very own street. I keep thinking I need to find it so I can get a photo.

5. I love my niece.

6. Next week looks to be good. Josh and Hannah are leaving for camp on Monday and then on Wednesday Mum is flying down to Sydney to see Rachel and Shelby, so Dad, the two little boys and I will be home alone for a couple of days before we go down to pick them up from camp.

7. I’m not sure yet where the rest of my life is going. It's been totally confusing trying to think through everything. To be an author or not to be an author. To be a doula or not to be a doula. Wait, just what is a doula? How about a brain-dead job while I think about it? This would be lovely, but what on earth could I do half sick? Type up articles for the law courts? Be a secretary?

8 I managed to think myself into a real mess.

9. But yeah, finally got through that intact (I think) and seeings as I had originally decided to apply for a writers course I'm going to stick with that. I keep questioning it: like really, how handy is writing going to be getting a job in Europe? But yeah, it’s probably a stupid thought. I need to start somehwere and if I stay doing nothing I'm going to go completely crazy.

10. I’ve just got to get a hold of the Christian Writers Guild office somehow. I’ve signed up twice online for their free starter kit but three months later and still nothing is here. Rachel convinced me I needed to chase it up so I rang them but because their base is in America I ended up speaking to an answering machine. That went well until I hung up and realized I’d given them the wrong phone number. Whoops. I rang them again but somehow ended up talking to a different answering machine. This threw me completely off guard and I ended up rambling on about all the mistakes I’d just made on their other answering machine. Now I’m sure all Americans living in the Colorado Mountains must be convinced Australians are completely off their rockers. I’d try to ring them again but I’d hate to ruin the reputation of all Australians for good. Maybe I’ll e-mail.

11. Job wise I might end up being a part-time secretary. Dad is looking into trading second hand cars on the side and depending on how successful this is I could end up with a job dealing with all the paper work. Already he's sold the truck we used for shifting up here and with the money from that sale bought a van and a ute. How these next two vehicles sell I guess will be the clincher.

12. In the meantime they’ve been just lovely to drive around in. Until last week I’d never driven an automatic before, now I’m hooked.

13. So yeah, that’s my life. I live in a place with underwater cities, I love being an aunt, if I can learn to talk rationally on American answering machines, I might manage to become an intelligible author (well, y’all can only hope).

P.S. BTW, I'm going to be eighteen in two weeks. How bizarre is that?

Thursday, June 15

Round Chairs and Baby Stats Winners

I'm wondering if any one of you random people could help me. I'm wanting to get a round kind of chair for my study but I can't for the life of me figure out what it's called. I did a Google image search and this is exactly what I'm looking at:

Round chair 1. Round chair 2.

Either like that, with the cane base, or from memory I reckon I've seen them with steel bases and funky fluffy material just like the Butterfly Chairs which you can see here. Does such a thing exist or could I be mistakening it for the Butterfly Chair? Mum and I have tried nearly every kind of name we can think of under the australian google search and nothing seems to be coming up anywhere. There's all these fun round chairs in the display houses but none in the furnitre shops. It's really weird.

~~~~~~~

In other news, I have a better photo of Shelby. Isn't she just the darlingest? I so wish I could pop down and see her. Matthew has two weeks off work and then after that Mum's going to go down for a week or so. Then the talk is so far that around October or September Rachel will come up with bub to see us.

And doesn't she just have the thickest mane of hair? It's quite a surprise as Matt and Rach were both born almost completely bald. Maybe it's some crazy throw back gene or something? My Mum's mum had gorgeous black ringlets so who knows...

I think I can figure out who won the stats competition now. The stats being:

Gender: Girl
Amount of hair: Lots
Date Born: 13th (one day late)
And for those interested in morbid detail-
Labour: 22 hours

In other words Cory and Stephen did win fact wise (but according to the mother-that-is that doesn't count). Andrew came very close. I came kind of close (ok, on the date only) and though Elyse did end up specifying the 14th, she orginally said it would be "later". Thus after much thought, pain, and chocolate eating I conclude that *drum roll please*

Elyse is winner of the CafedeFlores Baby Stats Guessing Competition!

Congratulations to Elyse! She said it would be a girl. She said it would have some hair (a terrible understatement but in this case very forgiveable). And she said it would be born "later" and thus at one day later it was (not to mention the bub in question does now have above mentioned winners name as her middle name. Irony, coindence or not? Who knows).

A thousand cyber chocolate kisses to Elyse. You know have full rights to gloat. Well done.

Tuesday, June 13

It's a Girl!

I have to admit I was shocked. I seriously thought it was going to be a boy. But still. Can you believe it? I'm an aunt!

She is apparently a girl. She has a full head of hair. Her name is Shelby Elyse. She was born at exactly 3:03am this moring the 13th of June and her daddy got to catch her as she came out.

This is her.

This is the happy little family.

Maybe...

I might have news. In a few hours I might have news. Big news. Historical kind of news. This is a fact. Actually it could be a fact. It will be a fact.

Just know this: entries are now closed for the stats competition. Sorry peoples. Nature doesn't wait around for late comers.

~~~~~~~~~

(three hours later)

No news, not really. But I've just been surfing randomly through old blogs of people I once kept up with more faithfully than I have recently (shame on me) and now, after touching base in these old familiar hangouts, I find myself full of a thousand more thoughts and feelings.

Plus my right hand is cramping with the cold. This is indeed an old familiar sensation and strangely enough, almost comforting. The smoke, however, is new. Half way through one blog post it finally hit me my eyes were smarting from more than just the glare. I got up to investigate, found the kitchen full of smoke and the flu shut on our wood stove. I open said flu and a window besides and things have improved from there. This typing now is helping to warm up my fingers.

One post by a girl I met on a forum upwards of three years ago hit me the hardest. Through events I won't try to explain, I found out about her Dad once...from her. She told me she'd never told anyone, not even her best friend of whom I also knew closer at the time. I'll always remember that. You can never pick them, you know.

I may seem crazy
Or painfully shy
And these scars wouldn't be so hidden
If you would just look me in the eye

It makes me wonder. Leaves me sober. When I was at my sickest and I was fighting the worse of my depression I remember once thinking just how ironic it was how close to a cutter I was without really being one. I didn't have to cut for the pain, I just let myself hurt; the physical was already there for the emotional. In fact, it all happened backward: in my own morbidness I remember thinking I didn't have to think about how to kill myself becaues I knew I was already dying.

I feel alone here and cold here
Though I don't want to die
But the only anesthetic that makes me feel anything kills inside

Then in moments like these I find myself back at Sara. A little more of the life she tried so valiantly to hide is revealed and here, within the depth of a cold night, I realise I know nothing. In light of her shattered world I'm a china doll with barely a crack, living and breathing in a near perfect haven. My Daddy's never been on drugs, he's never stolen from me.

I remember two other girls I've known in real life. One is one of the sweetest girls I have ever met. Her Dad was a salvation army minister. He turned abusive, alcoholic, and emotionally abused each of his children individually through e-mail after being banned by the courts to ever have contact with his family again. For ages they tried to get help but nobody would believe them because her dad was a respected minister at the time. Now her mum is an unstable alcolic and her sister is almost permanently in a psychiatric award.

I do not want to be afraid
I do not want to die inside just to breathe in
I'm tired of feeling so numb
Relief exists I find it when
I am cut

The other girl's father is closer to home. He can see her, she has to see him and even now at twenty-one she's still having to fight the emotional abuse he dishes at her. Both of these girls are terrified of their real fathers. They were on my Cambodian missions team and all the time we were away they lived with the fear their dads would have somehow managed to find out what returning flight they would be on and would be there in the airport upon their return to kidnap or abuse them. What gets me the most is how two of these three men were ex-pastors, the two worst at that.

A fragile flame aged
Is misery
And when our hearts meet
I know you see

If this is reality then the word in and of itself is ugly. I'm waiting to find out for sure that I've become an aunt while, on the other side of the world, a girl one year younger than I is wondering if shoving a knife under her dad's door would be message sufficient enough to let him know of her anger and hurt.

I'm not a stranger
No I am yours
With crippled anger
And tears that still drip sore

A guy once said: "Others keep saying how people now a days need to hear about Jesus so they don't do drugs, go with girls and all that other stuff. And I find myself disagreeing. They don't need to know about Jesus so they won't do those things...they need to know about Jesus because they need a saviour."

All this makes me wonder, you know. It puts my life in perspective. Leaves me sober.

Monday, June 12

Quick Note of Reference

I have a feeling this is going to be an historical week.

ONE: Rachel's baby is due today (this is your last chance to get guesses in).
TWO: My big brother, Matt, who I haven't seen in over six months is coming up for half a week on Wednesday.
THREE: One of my bestest best friends from America is leaving for Switzerland on Friday.

Saturday, June 3

Ten Pins Down

My experience with tenpin bowling went thus:

# First bowl I striked zero.
# Second bowl I striked zero.
# Third bowl I hit one pin.
# The rest of the game and next proceeded in a similar fashion...
# ...ending quite valiantly in two back-to-back strikes within the last four bowls of the last game (just to pile belated success upon belated success, my friend Becky also struck her first strike of the whole night at exactly this same point).

This has led me to two conclusions:

1. I'm really bad at bowling (duh!) or
2. I perform best under pressure.

Either way I'm sure going three years plus between bowling experiences cannot be beneficial to my average (and just for the record: it's really fun to bowl backwards (e.g. facing away from the alleyway and throwing said ball randomly between legs). This style makes above mentioned score look less terrible and, if by luck it manages to hit any pins, it makes the success look all the more spectacular.)

My Anti-Garfield Saturday

I have high hopes for this weekend. Firstly I woke to the yelling and stomping of half my family leaving for morning tea at the neighbours. Hannah and I revelled in the silence and then, remembering we were home alone for at least two hours, turned the music up as high as the volume would go. I do love listening to music from the opposit end of the house. It's almost like listneing to a CD for the first time, I find myself hearing all the smaller instruments and funky key notes that I haven't heard before.

My hair came out soft and bouncy after I washed it. This bodes well for church tomorrow.

Then I did something I haven't dared do in months: I stepped on the scales and lo and behold that cheeky little piece of iron and plastic tells me I've put on two kilos. I'm not sure I believe it.

In January when I started trying to put weight back on I defied my doctors wish to keep an eye on my weight and quit weighing myself. I'm a scardy-cat. I figured that at the worse if I didn't put any weight on I wouldn't have to know about it and if I did then I'd know the instant my cloths started fitting properly again. I still don't feel like my cloths are fitting any differently. But people keep asking me lately if I've put any on and I decided I had to face the scale.

I felt like the suspicious Garfield when the number of my weight showed up. Two kilos? I've been exercising regularly for at least two months now and I'm wondering if maybe the jelly in my legs is turning back into muscle and thus because muscle is heavier than flab it's pushing my weight up. I guess that either ways it's a good thing.

In other good things: it's beuatifully sunny and warm today; our lovely neighbour Robyn sent home dried mango and the smell is just heavenly; I'm off to watch rubbish TV; and tonight we're going bowling with the youth group.

Wonderful, wonderful. Beautiful, beautiful. Wonderfully beautiful Saturday.

Thursday, June 1

Wake Me Up Inside

It was strange when we first shifted. I remember feeling like I couldn't think anymore. For the first week I could barely even read a book. It was like the whole inside of me froze and it was just my outside left, walking and talking and doing things.

Now suddenly, after four weeks, it's like I can think again but all is in a jumble and I can't explain anything. People keep asking me how I'm going and I find myself thinking, "You know, I'm not sure. I haven't been thinking about it. I think I'm fine."

Even now I don't know where to go with this post. I'm just sitting here, all these emotions tumbling around inside me. It's like there's something there but I just can't reach it. The real me is there somewhere, lost way down low, and I only wish it would come back.

I don't know anything anymore. I don't know who I am or how I feel. For an afternoon or a day it will be like something familiar comes back, all is well and I'm secure in who I am; and then the setting changes, I'm in the car coming home from church instead of heading towards church and my whole inner self is caving in. I'm living on a merry-go-round where one second I'm whizzing past self-confidence, the next I'm falling off at confusion.

Is this life? Is there anyway to get back on? Is there anyway I can get back to the middle of my being where life spins around me instead of me spinning around helplessly with life?

I think about Europe. I've always wanted to go there. I have no wish to visit as a tourist; I'd like to stay there for a year or two, get a job, meet people and go to church. I'd like to live in Europe and be a part of it. One way I imagine myself doing this is sitting in the cafes. I thought that maybe I could do it here but it doesn't feel right. It has to be a cafe in a big city beside a busy street to work. No one would know me then, the throng would leave me inconspicuous and no passing person would even remember my face. Somehow life seems easier when I think of it in this way. There would be no expectations. I could laugh and cry without having to explain to anyone why.

Whoever said one can be lonely in the middle of a crowd was right. There's a solace in isolation and as I spin and fall so endless the safety of it's animosity beckons. Not so much because I hate right now, I don't think I do. I don't hate that we've shifted; in fact, it's exciting and ultimately I do love it. Maybe it's just overwhelming.

I remember writing a little while ago---probably more recently than I remember--about needing to calm down and simplify my life so I could give the myriade of coulours spinning about me time to meld and join together. Right now I only wish the picture would form. My brain would cease to spin, the random mix of emotions inside would calm, and exhausted I would lay my head down and rest. Maybe then would I be able to find myself.

Tumoulin Girl