Fear

from here

When I was younger, I used to check my cupboards and underneath my bed every night to make sure all possible hiding places in my room were kidnapper-free. I’m sure I was on the fearful side even before I saw a segment on Derryn Hinch’s show about children being kidnapped, but the story and images stuck in my mind and kept me awake for hours over the years; I’d lie in bed listening out for strange noises and imagining myself being taken. I remember being terrified by Silence of the Lambs, which I somehow saw during primary school. I can’t remember where or exactly how old I was, but I still remember scenes from that movie and how scared I felt while watching it even though it’s been over 20 years now since I saw it.

Now that I’m grown up I censor what I see; I avoid anything that looks too violent or scary or distressing (and my threshold for what’s classified as ‘too’ is quite low). I don’t worry about being kidnapped anymore, but I do regularly imagine bad things happening to me or the people I love, and those thoughts are unpleasant enough with even my limited repertoire of Yukky Things That Could Happen; I don’t need movies giving me any more ideas, or adding gory graphics to the ideas I already have. My brain locks onto those situations in films or TV shows that disturb me the most and makes me picture it repeatedly and wonder how I’d act or respond if I was there, if that were me. It’s twisted, yes, and even I don’t completely understand it, but at least I know how to help myself now, and so there are whole genres of film or TV that I won’t even consider watching, no matter how classic or clever or critically acclaimed.

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Because I have such vivid memories of things I wish I hadn’t seen, or at least hadn’t seen so early in life, I’m quite cautious when it comes to introducing movies for Moses to watch. I figure he has many years ahead of him to learn about the world and to start having fears (and nightmares), and so while he’s 3 he can just watch movies that don’t say very much about very much; my search term while looking for potential films to show him (for those days when he’s sick or it’s too rainy to be bothered doing anything more than lying around like vegetables) was ‘benign’.

We let Mo see Cars but he didn’t really get into it, and then we tried Babe, with the same result. And then I did more googling and decided we should watch Mary Poppins, which I loved when I was young. Turns out, IT’S STILL GOLD, and Moses loves it too. It means he now refers to me sometimes as “Madam” and sings “Well done, Sister Suffragettes” while walking around Westfield, but this I can cope with.

More recently, we watched the start of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but after I mentioned that the car comes across some pirates in the movie (it says this on the back cover, I don’t actually remember it), Moses told me he thought that sounded a bit scary and decided he was too young for that kind of thing and probably shouldn’t watch any more. I told him it was an old kids’ movie, I was sure it wouldn’t be very scary at all, but he wasn’t interested in my opinion anymore (I had just tried to show him a movie with pirates in it, so obviously I could no longer be trusted) and we never saw the end.

Sydney, I love you but you're bringing me down

from here

I like living in Carlton. I like the fact that walking for five minutes or less gets me to a gym, a train station, two medical centres, a post office, a petrol station, a hairdresser, a much-loved park, a tattoo/waxing parlour, a mini supermarket, and a takeaway shop that sells a BBQ pork chow mein so delicious that I’m never disappointed when we get to 5pm and realise we have no food to eat for dinner.

I like it so much that I’d started thinking, “Why did we want to leave Sydney? I like Sydney! Maybe we could stay! Maybe our kids could be Sydney kids!” Our neighbour downstairs had mentioned that he might be selling his place soon, and he suggested we buy it so we could have three bedrooms instead of two. “How cool would that be?!” I’d thought. “We’d only have to move our furniture downstairs! We’d already know the neighbours and the area! We’d have a garage we could actually maneouvre our car into! And yes, property in Sydney is ridiculously expensive, but if we settle for an apartment rather than a house and don’t spend any money on anything else ever, it’ll be totally doable!” I daydreamed about the idea for a while, getting more puffed up with excitement each time I thought about it. And then I jumped online to check out prices of places in this area and promptly deflated.

Whoa. WHOA. W. H. O. A.

We’ve started daydreaming about Adelaide instead.

If everything went according to plan, we’d move down there by the end of next year (Moses starts school in 2016) and we’d rent for a bit while we searched for somewhere to buy, and then we’d buy a place, move once more, and then NEVER MOVE AGAIN EVER FOR THE REST OF OUR WHOLE ENTIRE LIVES. 

To stay sane at the moment, I’m pretending that things for us generally do go according to plan, and that this is probably exactly the way it’ll turn out.

A post for Jo

from here

Hello! I've been thinking of you, and then thinking how weird it is to be thinking of someone I've only ever met through comments on my blog and be wondering if their baby's arrived yet and worrying how well they're sleeping and coping with life with two kids. I hope you're sleeping well (as well as is possible with a newborn), and that you're coping very well with life with two kids. :)

(Apologies to everyone else who reads this blog, I have none of Jo's contacty information and thought I'd give this a burl. We will now resume our regular programming...)

The Sound of Music

I went to see the Rockdale Musical Society’s version of The Sound of Music recently, which reminded me how much I love the movie and wanted to see it again. The movie is so good - SO GOOD! - apart from the Climb Every Mountain song (booooooooooring, fast-forward) and the fact that they play How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria while (SPOILER) she’s walking down the aisle, which seems to rudely suggest they’re answering that question by saying, “You marry her off!”

The DVD I borrowed from the library was the 40th anniversary edition of the film, which had a whole disc of special features including all of the main characters reminiscing about making it and telling funny stories about injuries and getting the giggles and the fact that in the 1980s Ronald Reagan played Edelweiss for the Austrian ambassador thinking it was a traditional Austrian song rather than one that was written for the musical. I found all of the interviews and memories fascinating, and didn’t feel at all like an old lady for enjoying them so thoroughly. Not for a moment.

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I remember when I used to watch The Sound of Music as a teenager, I’d think, “Why would anyone want to be a nun?” Now that I’m older, I watched thinking, “Man, being a nun looks awesome. Thinking about God distraction-free all day! Wearing black! I totally missed my calling.”