But not your sister

My sister turns 26 today. It's not old by any stretch of the imagination, but M is approaching her quarter-life crisis with all the vigor and panic that a regular person would approach 50. It's not exactly surprising. I love my sister very dearly, but she's prone to exaggeration and dramatics. It doesn't help that she has baby-making on the brain right now, and she and her long-term partner are nesting out in the bush on their own, not close to home and family.

It's been strange to think about. M and I are very close as sisters. Close in age, close in spirit, but we've become very different people as we've grown up. Motivated, propelled and held back all at once by very different things. It's had me thinking a lot recently about my creative practice, because the story I'm currently working on - a mosaic novel titled Lost Girls, is very, very much a reflection of the shifting relationship I've shared with my sister in our lives so far. For now though, it's pretty exciting watching her grow up, and I look forward to the way our relationship will develop as we get older.

On a much more fun note, I've also been getting a ton of inspiration from lots of awesome sisters on screen and in books lately, so have a top 10.

10. Sarah and Helena, Orphan Black
I only finished watching Orphan Black on the weekend, and to say I'm obsessed is a bit of an understatement. It's such a great series, compelling and chock-full of talent, particularly in Tatiana Maslany who plays not one but upwards of five of the major characters in this series (clones, yo). A late season 1 spoiler is that Sarah and Helena actually aren't clones, but twin sisters, an interesting twist given that Helena had spent the last nine episodes trying to kill Sarah. Their relationship really takes flight in series two though, just not in the way you expect, with more attempts on the other's life, road trips and brawls than really makes for a healthy relationship. That said, the writers are doing good by them, and they're emerging as one of the beating hearts of the series, and crippling mine in the process.

9. Tina and Louise, Bob's Burgers
These giiiirrrrlllls. Bob's Burgers has emerged as a total sleeper hit for me, creeping up on me in all the best ways. It's smart, raunchy, and practices a humour not born out of mockery but out of familiarity and love which is pretty darn uncommon these days. It helps that Tina and Leslie, both separate and together are so fully realised as characters. They'd probably be higher on this list if they had more arcs together, but for now, they're still pretty great.

8. Marion and Lila Crane, Psycho
This might seem a bit of an odd one. Marion and Lila aren't even ever on screen together in Psycho; however, their relationship is arguably the core one of the film, second only, perhaps, to the one between Norman and Norma Bates. Marion's murder is the catalyst of the film, and Lila, a devoted sister (even if it's apparent the two don't see eye-to-eye), has no intention of leaving the Bates Motel alone until she finds her, or at least what happened to her. The storyline itself isn't unique, but the fact that it's two sisters, and not a man investigating a missing lover, is.

7. The Bennet Sisters, Pride & Prejudice
ALL OF THEM. I know, I know, Jane and Lizzy get all the love typically, being kindred spirits and closer to each other than the other, but Jane Austen really did do an awesome job of creating a unique dynamic between the five girls. After all, none of them are truly a variation on the other (even if Kitty and Lydia are similar in goals and aspirations), but rather a set of pretty awesome ladies.

6. Petunia and Lily Evans, Harry Potter series
Oh, man, guys, don't even look at me. Petunia and Lily make me so emotional. I get that it might be an odd pick, but I think they're a beautifully nuanced representation of two girls born into the same family but find themselves living very, very different lives. It's also got such a bite to it, such an ugly tinge of bitterness, that is glided over in the books, but implies such a deep relationship. It's certainly one I wish we got more of.

5. Fiona and Debbie Gallagher, Shameless US
A lot of American remakes miss the mark when recreating international series, but Shameless isn't one of them, finding such heart and spirit in Emmy Rossum and an awesomely rounded cast. One of the great relationships of the series is Fiona and Debbie Gallagher. Their relationship took a bit of a hit in the most recent series, but it's still refreshing to see two very self-sufficient women taking the lead on their lives both together and apart.

4. Arya and Sansa Stark, Game of Thrones
Ugh, don't even look at me. The fact that these two haven't shared a screen in years is a total heartbreaker. While they were hardly fond of each other at the start of the series, the pretty heinous hands that both have received since their father's death catapulted them in opposite directions, means that they're often scrambling for word of each other. I basically live for the day they meet, even if that's looking less and less likely to happen. :-(

3. Billie and Nina Proudman, Offspring
Ahahaha, when Offspring premiered back in 2010, I got texts from a number of my friends saying that Billie and Nina were M and I respectively annnnddd it's kind of more accurate than I care to admit. From neuroses to loyalty to fights, Billie and Nina have a tumultuous relationship to say the least, but it's one underpinned by a very intense and pretty profound amount of love for one another. The guts of it all is pretty great and unlike many sisters on TV.

2. Lilo and Nani, Lilo & Stitch
This was very almost number one, and I think it is, honestly, one of the most important relationships in cinema generally. Disney has a history of the fractured family, and it's something that works both for and against them, but Lilo & Stitch is the first example where that fracture isn't a hindrance, but rather a source of strength and empowerment. Lilo and Nani don't always see eye-to-eye, but that's not what sisterhood, or even family, is about. It's about having each other's back, and that's kind of perfectly represented in this film.

(gif credit to Geek Chic Speaks)

1. Mei and Satsuki from My Neighbor Totoro
If you know me personally, this shouldn't be much of a surprise. My Neighbour Totoro is one of my favourite films, in no small part due to Mei and Satsuki's relationship. Hayao Miyazaki's quiet film about two girls inspired by the spirits of the garden while their mother is in hospital is profoundly moving, and the way these two girls orbit and cherish each other makes it that much sweeter.

Boom, Clap.

So, June was a bit of a hot mess. Not exactly bad, but a little more crammed than I expected, with the always pleasant scaffolding of sickness and that desperate scramble to catch up on work, both day job related and writing related. That said, it's not exactly like July's shaping up much better. There's a lot looming, and in kind of exciting news, I'll be talking myself hoarse between teaching Writing 101 at QWC starting this Wednesday, Blogging & Author Platforms at Sunnybank Hills Library on Saturday, and speaking on a LadyFest Panel on Women in the Arts next week. So all in all, a bit crazy!
On top of that, I'm moving in August and am starting to prepare myself for it. I've spoken before about being a bit of a root-layer, and this is one of the first times I've really been excited to move. Not just due to the one terrible housemate, but because it feels a bit like a new chapter, or growing up or some mix of both. Probably both. 
Anyway, have a mixtape full of my jams over the last month, and, hey, what do you have planned for July?

Beauforts

My grandfather passed away yesterday. 

He'd been unwell for a while, battling dementia, pneumonia and fluid in the brain, so it was a far cry from unexpected. That said, it's hit me harder than I expected, clenched its fist around my heart and sat heavy and unpleasantly in me. That's probably not all that uncommon given the circumstances. I'm twenty-three years old and have just lost my second grandparent in two years. Just lost the only grandfather I've ever known.

It's a weird thing to think about. To adjust to the loss of a loved one is to ultimately grapple with grief. To try and align in your head what parts of your life - and your family's life - have changed when an integral piece of it has been removed. Grandad was ill for a long time, and, in many ways, we lost him when we lost my grandmother. His rapid decline into dementia presented that for us. He went from having mostly good days to mostly bad ones, and by the end of it all he'd barely eat or drink, and barely a grip on the present. Like his anchor to time had come loose and he'd frequently end up in the crash of war or the ebb of courting my grandmother. The fast-paced hum of his days as an auctioneer. 

I hadn't seen him since Christmas, where I watched him fumble with a prawn my dad had brought him and then, when we were alone, listened as he told me with a certainty I hadn't heard in him in a long time, that he wanted to die. That he was beyond ready. 

I don't mean this post to eulogise or to soliloquy as such, more I'm just trying to arrange my own thoughts, comfort myself in a text box and the ticking nerve centre of the internet. Maybe that's a weird thing to do. I just know that it feels right just now, to try and capture parts of my grandfather in his last moments so that I can be rid of the skeletal, frail man I knew over the last year and remember the more vibrant one. The one with the quick grin and sly humour, who could talk for hours on end about aeroplanes and who had the sharp tongue of a man who survived wartime and divorce and remarriage and the loss of three brothers. Who married my grandmother and adopted my father and my sister and brother and I along with it. I want to remember his kindness most of all, I guess, and the steadiness of him. The reliability of him. I want to remember my grandad.  

That's all.  

Monthlies + Farewells

Music is such a huge part of my life that it feels kind of natural to subject people to my taste on it here (or hear, hahaha, I've had a weird, pun-tastic day).  Anything from forties country through to indie rock, old soul, new folk and modern pop appeals to me, speaks to me on some level, and sure, some of it means more to me than others, but that doesn't detract from any of it either. This has been kind of an odd month for me, so have a bit of an odd mix to take you out for the month.

Speaking of odd things, one of my closest friends has gotten a job in Sydney and is moving out of my house and flying down on Friday. It's pretty great and I am so, so proud of her. She's always been such a hard worker and the job is awesome and one that she thoroughly deserves. That said, I can't be entirely unselfish about it. I've known her for ten years now - lived within driving distance for the duration of that and actually with her for two. We're very different personality types and butt heads like crazy, but we've stuck together through that. Thick and thin and all. I have faith in the strength of our friendship, that it'll survive the sideways shuffle of the move, but it's still such a strange thought to think she won't be just across the hall from me. And, y'know, there's still a big part of me that wishes my friends would stick around forever. At least Sydney's not so far anymore - I know someone who got a flight there recently from Brisbane for $56 which is pretty darn sweet.

As Told by Ginger, Appendicitis and the Nature of Memory

If you celebrated your prime pre-early teen awkward years back in the early noughties like yours truly, you might have run across a show called As Told By Ginger. The series focused on Ginger Foutley, the eldest child of a single mother, who tries to come of age in an American middle school. It was a pretty excellent series that explored hard themes of absent fathers, social acceptance and the obstacles of friendship, and was one I inhaled greedily as a thirteen year old growing up in sunny Brisbane.

Ginger for me was formative. She was ballsy and sweet and loyal; a sister, a friend and, maybe most importantly, a writer. I was so invested in this character because she wasn't a saddle clubber or a dance academy student or a worst witch, she was a normal girl from a low socio-economic background who found solace in writing - something I could identify with.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the power of character to provide hope and acceptance for people of all backgrounds and personalities, but that's probably a different story all together. The point of this post is to say that my appendix swelled twice it's size last Thursday, and in all my fevered haze, my sharp, toe curling pain, all I could think of was the episode where this happened to Ginger.

I haven't thought about As Told by Ginger in years - not even fleeting thoughts really, but that's the thing I guess about memory. It finds ways to sharpen and target moments all on its own, to latch onto something relative in the unusual. My body maybe couldn't recognise this stabbing pain in my side, but it could remember where it had seen something like it before and it hit the control-f of my brain to summon up the episode and tell me maybe this was more than period cramps or overwrought muscles from a workout.

In the episode, Ginger's long-time best friend, short-time boyfriend reveals he's been cheating on her since he got his braces off and became a stud, and Ginger recoils from family and friends, hurt, until her figurative pain turns into something literal. I have a sharp memory of her mother finding her in bed, curled in the fetal position and sweating out a sickness, and when I awoke to myself Thursday, it was a position I found mirrored in myself. So I did what Ginger did. I called my mother.

Eighteen hours later, I was appendixless and munching on plain cornflakes in a hospital bed. I'm recouping steadily at the moment. Stretching out against the constraints my stitches have made in me and feeling alternately elderly or too impossibly young to manage. That's the nature of these things, I guess, and this morning I found myself downloading the whole As Told by Ginger series on Itunes, either for nostalgia or to find some other half-formed bouts of wisdom, I'm not sure. Either way, I'm looking forward to it.

Friday Finds

- It feels like talk of self-publishing's been everywhere this week, so I've compiled some of the better conversations here for you. In particular, I'd recommend reading Estelle Tang's post on self-publishing and blogging here. Writer Unboxed also has a good one here on the new era of self-publishing.

- There's a brilliant post over at The Review Review on What Editors Want. Seriously. Check it out.

- I mostly want to go everywhere in this list of stops in the literary landscapes. So, so wonderful.

- Speaking of places I want to go, the Studio Ghibli museum leaves me chinhandsing all over the place. I love it so much and am (hopefully!) going there next year.

- Flavorwire has compiled a list of 10 Great Movies Based on Poems! It all looks pretty magical. I've only seen two of the one's featured, but would already like to add Howl to the list, even if it's only kind of based on the poem.

- A friend recently introduced me to the joy that is shakespearewithgifs.tumblr.com. SERIOUSLY THOUGH. PROSE BEFORE HOES. It deserves capslock.

- These new Nancy Drew covers! That I really wished were legit. Lookit her! She's fabulous.

- The Least Wanted has a photostream of sixties mugshots and jeez, I love them all. There is something so brilliant about them - each sullen and rotund and narrow and heavy and just so full of character.

- 10 of the best Futurama inventions! I love this show.

As a total aside, I'll be in Townsville this weekend for the Groovin' the Moo festival and am kind of delirious with excitement. Tegan & Sara! The Kooks! Hungry Kids of Hungary! They're all pretty great. 

Friday Finds

- So, in awesome ladies being recognised for writing awesome things news, the Stella Prize winner was announced and the shortlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) was also announced. Huzzah!

- Granta has also created a list of exciting new, young novelists. I want to read them alllll.  

- Seizure has just released their crime issue, and I'm really feeling the cover a lot. Photographer Matthew Venables talks about it over here.

-106 Notorious Celebrity Mugshots! Mick Jagger is kind of babin' in his? Or is that weird to say? (Al Pacino is too). Also, there's something really off about people with great, big grins on their faces in their mugshots. It's like. Time and a place, peoples.

- I'm a bit in love with this tumblr, Movies in Color, which matches stills from classic films with their colour palette. Really neat stuff.

- I'm also feeling the Japanese mail-order fashion brand Nico and... The website is testing my limited Japanese comprehension though.

- This food blog! Spoon Fork Bacon! Noms.

- Also, is everyone touring Australia at the moment? Between Martha Wainwright, Tegan and Sara, Matt Corby, Amanda Palmer, Ballpark Music, The Kooks, I can really feel my bank account taking a hit (although I am combining a bunch of these acts by going to Townsville's Groovin the Moo festival which, seriously, I am so excited for. Anyone else heading out for it?)

- As a total aside, I'll be heading to Supanova at the Gold Coast this weekend and working the Queensland Writers Centre stall in Artist's Alley.  If you're there, you should come say hi!

In Other News

I just got my Townsville Groovin' the Moo tickets. Alpine! The Kooks! Frightened Rabbit! Tegan and Sara! Life is good right now.

2013

I always find it an odd thing to approach the new year - not necessarily in a bad way, just that so much stress is placed on a date. You spend the months leading up to it, well, leading up to it. Changing gears and charging into it with booze and kisses and promises half-kept, leaving people and intentions and desperation somewhere in the wake of it all.

2013 has sort of been that for me. I'm still working my sea-legs for the year, trying to rid myself of December's wobbles and hangovers and recollections and welcome the firmer footing that the new year can bring. That aside, it's already a big year of change for me. This week I started as QWC's Program and Marketing Coordinator, a step up from my role as Customer Service Officer, something I am pretty excited about. In maybe-bigger-news, my sister and her partner are in the process of moving from sunny, urban Brisbane to the rolling hills of rural New South Wales - Gunnedah specifically, with its dusty roads and sprawling paddocks. I'm going to miss her like all hell. As much as we fight and run rampant on each others nerves, she's still my better half, my rock, a whole swell of things that matter, that I find hard to put into words. She and her partner are heading out with a tentative two year plan, to earn and work and for my sister to care for her horses and train like she's always wanted. I'm happy for her, but my selfish heart still wants her here. I think she knows that though, and there's no part of me that won't help her on this step. I still have my brother here anyway, who's starting tenth grade(!) this year. Which is scary. I mean, I remember him being born.

On top of that, I myself am heading back to university, starting off on a shiny new degree - a graduate diploma in Japanese (yay for languages!) and am in the midst of planning a four week trip to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam for the end of the year, which I am close to delirious with excitement about. I'm starting to think that this'll be a big year of shaping up and growth, and the sentiment both frightens and thrills me, sends shivers into my legs and chest that tell me to run faster and work harder. That said, we're only a week and a half in, so maybe I should just play it all by ear.

I'm hoping to do more on here this year too, post more and certainly write more, and I hope that you'll be here for the ride. Your year is only as big as you make it, after all, so hopefully your all planning something good too.

That Time I Went to TiNA: National Young Writers Festival

 I really didn’t know what to expect when touching down in Newcastle. My domestic travel is embarrassingly light-on, the only thing getting stamped in my metaphorical passport (because you know they don’t stamp that sucker for local) being Sydney and Far North Queensland. I’d spent a childhood country-hopping Europe and an adolescence setting roots in Brisbane, and even in my early-twenties, my travel has consisted of New Zealand and Townsville. Newcastle would, hilariously, be a step for me. A nervous one, because I’m a nervous sort of girl, plus for various health reasons flying for me is a sort of torture that can only be managed by disorienting myself with prescription drugs the week before take-off. The result being that I was marginally incoherent and boarding my Jetstar flight with a tension in my neck that wouldn’t give, an uneasiness in my fingers that left me gripping the pages of my book (Georgette Heyer, for those playing at home) so tight my fingers went bleach-white, and my face took on the appealing colour of someone seconds away from vomiting. This was apparently obvious to the elderly woman beside me who asked three times in the first 20 minutes if I was sure that I was okay, and then spent the next 65 very kindly distracting me from the fact that I was on a plane.

We landed with the familiar bump and rattle and cheery pilot announcement that goes with every safe arrival, and I was lucky enough to have people I knew at the airport shuffle me into a car and into the heart of the town where I was dispatched with an awesome lady friend who knew that the exact cure for my ailment was fresh air, a glass of wine and an Apple Danish.

The reason for the trip was the This is Not Art festival, or, more specifically National Young Writers Festival. The whole thing is a four day adventure of panel discussions, debates, workshops, readings and general piss-ups and shenanigans disguised as industry networking. There were collaborative novellas, radio plays, poetry slams and spelling bees. The festival is as much one of ideas of the way writing functions, as a community, as a craft and as an art, as it is about writing generally, and the thing came together like a particularly delicious rainbow layer cake.

Everything was engaging and interesting, compelling to listen to. I’m particularly blessed to have a job at Queensland Writers Centre which meant that in reality I didn’t learn a whole lot about industry that I didn’t know already, but I still enjoyed each session I went to. A testimony to the talent of the artists and coordinators involved. In particular, the panel on ‘Getting Published: How to Emerge and Get Established’ with Voiceworks editor, Kat Muscat, the incoming Lifted Brow editor, Sam Cooney, short story writer and my make-believe wife, Josephine Rowe and novelist, Courtney Collins was great and very insightful in respect to four very different people taking very different paths professionally.

In writing this, I realised how hard it is for me to recap the festival as a whole, as the long weekend passed in a bit of a blur, only partially alcohol-induced. I drifted in and out of events, helping out where I could and generally absorbing the town as a whole, engaging in every way it was just like Brisbane and every way it was nothing like it. Both of these things left me totally charmed. Maybe even a little in-love, infatuated with the sea-stained rocks and the boats that chugged industriously metres off the coast. One of my favourite afternoons I skipped out on the festival altogether and wrote for three hours on an old, open jetty in a bikini I’d bought from an over-enthused Bras’n’Things saleswoman, letting the salt off the water bristle my skin and tangle in my hair until it was all I could smell and taste for the rest of the night. These were the sorts of moments that made the festival for me, no single event, but rather the tapestry of the whole. The seconds I was there were like flecks of pottery making some hot, wonderful sprawl of a mosaic. It wasn’t all good, but the stuff that was incorporated the bad, gave shadow to the light and made it seem all the better (and really, how cliché is that?).  

I was enamoured with the sense of community there too. A group of ridiculous and talented people being ridiculous and talented together. It was exciting, but brought out a shyness in me that I normally do a better job of hiding. I’ve never been the best at talking to strangers, and I tried to nip any awkwardness or reservations I had in the bud. But in the early hours of the morning, too many drinks and not enough food would leave me curling my nails into my palms and gnawing at my bottom lip until it chapped painfully beneath the tooth I chipped in fifth grade. The answer was always another drink. Too much to drink probably, but then again, I’m twenty-two, and this was a young writer’s festival, and I am maybe equally ridiculous and observing and felt at each event like the youngest and oldest person in the room. The whole festival actually I felt like that. Like baby Sophie and old lady Sophie were drag racing in my head, boxing with their fists out, gloveless, the realisation (or recollection) that I can be starry eyed and patronising at the same time and the hope that I came out as something charming in the middle. I am not sure if I succeeded. I am not sure if I mind.  

I flew out in the impossibly early hours of the Monday morning; with sleep clustering at the corners of my eyes like my clothes would be on my floor when I got home, big piles of unpleasantness. I’d fly home blissed out on a plane with post-festival feelings leaving my fingers strumming on an aero-fold-out tray and itching for a pen, for a keyboard that I could write on, and I’d get home and do just that. Write for far too long, not about the festival, but about the sea salt that was still dried in my skin and the big old buildings that were being constructed in my head and about the people that I’d met and the ones I’d already known. I’d write for a long time, and then I’d go to my day job, vaguely incoherent and in a camel coloured sweater that I thought I’d thrown out (because Christ, it’s ugly), and then I’d come home again and sleep for thirteen hours, not drunk, but inebriated still.

It’s been a week and a half, and I think I’m still inebriated. There are probably nicer words than that to use, but it’s the best one I can come up with. It was certainly an experience, one that I’m still having troubles forming words on (can you tell?). It’s one that I hope to do again next year.

NYWF

I'm about to spend the next four days rolling about Newcastle for the National Young Writers Festival.  The festival is run every year as a part of This is Not Art, a big open event which includes NYWF, The Crack Theatre Festival and Critical Animals. To say I'm excited is a fairly significant understatement.



In an episode of last minute hilarity, I spent yesterday evening frantically doing laundry and packing up my little suitcase full of things that I might need, everything from undies to elaborate, half-filled journals. The result is that my bag is this kind of lumpy, unreasonably heavy little monster on wheels with not a whole lot of space for all the things I know I'm going to buy (because really, isn't festival season what credit cards are for?) I'm playing the whole thing by ear, doing it on the fly, and given that it's the first festival I've properly travelled for, I'm not entirely sure how it's going to go down. I'm excited though, like I said, so I figure that's a good place to start.

An Ode to Moving

I don’t know how the nomads did it. The regular uproot of livelihood, the transitional home. I’m not a mover, I tend to lay down roots quick and let them grow deep, until the worms fester and I’m as much a part of the ecosystem as the house I’m living in. It wasn’t always this way – growing up, we moved around a lot. My Dad at the time had a game show that travelled Europe, so my Mum, my sister and I, and later my baby brother, would be whisked around from set to set, from Spain to Holland to Italy, clambering over props and sitting in a studio audience. Our home base at the time was a big, retired farm house in a little village in England called Ravensden, and as my sister and I both started school, it became more a permanent placement. My Dad would start travelling on his own, and we’d follow only in the breaks between school terms.

House Ravensden became a total playground for my sister and I. An acre wide, with a wall of cows surrounding us, we’d make forts in the front yard out of old sheets and explore the abandoned apple orchard in the neighbour’s property by clambering through the untamed blackberry bush that existed in lieu of a fence. We’d play Xena with sticks for swords and a Frisbee as her chakram. We had rabbits at the time too, that we’d let escape and play chase with. I have intensely fond memories of the house, even though I know it was far from perfect. It was understood to be haunted by old witches by a lot of the villagers, and had a pretty bad spider problem. The driveway was long and rambling, and our old dog, an Irish wolfhound named Callan, would limp up and down it and scare all the mailmen off by sheer size alone.

When I was eleven though, we moved back to Australia, back to Brisbane, sacrificing easy travel for the stifling heat of a continent separated by state instead of country, by dialect instead of language. We moved to a sweet old suburban house with a swimming pool and a conservatory, and our rabbits, who’d been left with friends, were swapped for a bitter blue tongue lizard and an aviary full of tiny, buzzing finches.  Jalanga Street wasn’t Ravensden, but it was special in its own way. It was a home defined by proximity to family, by highschool and by birthplace.

A year and a half ago, timed with my parents separation, I moved out of home with my best friend, Emma, into a dinky little house on Brenda Street. Brenda Street is a funny place, a street full of quirk, but the house itself is shambolic, built by Emma’s grandfather who was never a builder. It’s patchwork, complete with grey walls and pink and purple lino, mould on the ceilings and an odd, concrete attachment as a laundry. We live on top of each other, with two cats that love to destroy furniture, carpet and flyscreens, which has added to the demise of the property.

About six months ago, we decided a move was basically overdue. Like I said, I’m not the best mover, but I was keen for this, excited, and spent hours talking about the home that I was going to have a say in, be able to choose. I had an image in my head of my new kitchen, bedroom, layout. A small, manageable yard, a warm interior that would be filled with the odds and ends I’d collected throughout my life, from Kuzco the African-inspired Giraffe statue to my ridiculous collection of teapots and geisha inspired tea tins. Of course, this isn’t a reality in house hunting. Dream boating quickly became guess the murder that happened in the rental. My housemate and I work on a shoestring budget as is, but it meant having to up our stakes in a competitive market. It was hard, and the thought of ending up somewhere that was awful terrified me. There was a light though, and my dreamboat proved a reality with a house at Martha Street. Spacious, sweet and old, I fell in love with the thing, and an application later it was ours.

The last two weeks have been a fun time for Emma and I. We’ve been packing boxes giddily, clearing out old linen and generally being excited for our new home. Of course, our slow packing meant that we ran out of time, and the move went from a calm, ordered thing to a mad panic, wondering why the fuck I have so many books and culminating in me throwing shoes in cooler bags and hoping they’d survive the trip.

We did the full move last night, and I’m writing this with stupid, aching arms and shoulders from hauling furniture and boxes, and I’m oddly nostalgic for Brenda Street, like the house wasn’t out to get us. It’s like suddenly all the things that used to make me grimace or groan are things I can laugh about. Like the time our neighbour cornered me when I was more than a little inebriated to give me a twenty-minute history of the mower owned by the man across the road from us, or the million times I got locked out because the house has too many security doors or the unstoppable colonies of ants that occupy every nook and cranny, to the point where I opened my Chupa Chup limited edition pop art jar (shut up, it’s cool) to have a settlement of the fuckers swarm out and up my arm.

I’m sure I’ll grow irks and groans about Martha Street too (apparently I’m destined to live on streets named after elderly women), but right now I just want to lie on the grass in the modest back yard and become a part of the land, and maybe I would, if there weren’t so many bindies.