The man has been quiet this last week we have been apart.. Both of us embroiled in family occasion after family occasion. I don’t call [what if he is in the middle of time with his kids?!] and he doesn’t call. But at times he sends me suggestions of things we can act out when next we see each other.. Yes. I am excited about the things, and the promise that ‘next time’ will come soon..

But.

I don’t want to be an ‘acting out’ partner solely.. I want something else, yet I think maybe I have set my mould now.. that is who he thinks of me as..

Oh jingoes.. I don’t know. We need to see each other soon so I can figure out what is real.
I think sometimes women [or maybe it is just me?] attempt to emulate the two dimensional sexually available examples the media protrays.. and the fact that we [or is it I?] undervalue the whole package that we are.. Yep.. I am overthinking again.. and I so hoped I wouldn’t do that with this man..

I need to call him. I am grounded when I hear his voice.

We’ve all done some things we wish we’d done differently..
My mother is in a constant cycle of adrenalin and regret.. Well maybe not constant.. but.. she cycles through those emotions regularly..
In the lead up to Christmas she was in a full on regret phase.. with tears and threats of suicide [I doubt she'd ever get anywhere near killing herself. She'd try and choke herself on vitamin pills.. or ride her pushbike under a car.. or ballroom dance herself to an exhausted death if she had to choose her method of mortality.]

The regret is linked to something she has done and done and done.. [yes, she has been in this scenario three times now]. The latest boyfriend she has bought a house with, now wants his money back.. and she wants to give it back.. but she can’t afford to. So. Yesterday we held a family meeting.. and I put up my hand to take out a loan to pay the man back. I am very possibly going to be a third owner in my mother’s house in a month or two. If all goes to plan.

Now she is cycling high on adrenalin and she says she has the best freaking kids in the world.. [we are pretty nice.]
Makes a nice change from the overweight, relationship losers with overprotected or delinquent kids she makes us out to be 97% of the time.

Do you know why I save all my shopping until the last minute? Because it costs me less that way.

A few months back I bought my mother a lounge suite.. [dysfunctional relationship much? we can't spend 24 hours together, yet I can spend freaking hundreds of dollars on her in a snap]
This is your Christmas present.. I said then.
Then I went and bought her ‘a little something’ just to put under the tree a few weeks later, thinking how clever I was to be starting my shopping in October.. THEN yesterday I tell her about the new moisturiser I have bought [in preparation for clicking over into the middle aged stakes next year]..
Ooooh I’d love to try that, she says, but it is SOOOO expensive.
So today I go and visit her at her work, and the women at the shop she works at all crowd around and coo and smile and love me up.. and say what lovely things mum says about me to them.. and so.. then.. I go to the freaking Chemist next door.. and spend a billion on skincare for her. So all tolled she has a loungesuite, full size expensive moisturiser, toilet bag, night cream, face mask and cleanser, a blown glass perfume bottle.. hmm I think that is about it.
Even though I had bought her things.. substantial things.. I felt like I had neglected her, because she wasn’t on my pre-Christmas shopping list.. and therefore I felt like I NEEDED to buy her something else.
And, I know she is my mother.. but far OUT I wish I could get over this weird mother / daughter guilt thing I have going on cos it is costing me a bomb!

In other news.

At the chemist.. the sales lady was feeling the texture of my [apparently well hydrated and line free] skin. How old are you? 34? 35? she asks.
40. I say with a smile..
I fucking said I was 40 [and I am not, yet] and I smiled. How’s that for a freaking hurdle jumped?!
Thanks to you flattering chemist lady!

I have a private space.. [waits while the male readers pick their minds up out of my knickers].

I write there occasionally – when I need to – it is a place I write about insomnia, depression, anxiety, disappointment. Not a place anyone wants to visit, I can assure you. it’s kind of like the nasty devil on my shoulder and this place is the other one.

I smiled when I read a line in the other blog [from a September post] where I describe this blog [disdainfully] as being all razzle dazzle and penis stories.. because it is, really, when we dissect it.. that is what it all comes down to.

Thinking of re-naming this place as razzle dazzle and penis stories.. what do you reckon?

Last night walking with my friend and Taz and his girlfriend, Shelby.
Shelby is in love with Taz so fierce that when she is with him.. she won’t go anywhere without him. There is never an easy saying goodbye at the corner and going our seperate ways.. We always have to walk her home or she’ll sit in the middle of the road and refuse to move.. her pads drag on the bitumin if she is pulled.

Ten years ago I was in a Shelby / Taz relationship. I am not proud of it. It fucked my head right up, in fact. When the relationship finally ended, I wished the man dead with all my heart. I had no idea who I had become while I was with him.. and then when I finally extricated myself from him, I was brain useless.

[Inevitably each time I write about this man I search for him on the net to see if he is dead yet - a clairvoyant said it wouldn't be long..... and see that he is doing humanitarian work in PNG, he's married and has a child and I want to SCREAM! hmm.. still affected..]

I know there were a whole lot of contributing factors and a pretty weird context for me to end up with that man in the first place. My situation is different, my desires and needs are different now.. and my experience is much broader, now.

So.
Now at Christmas, friends and family are asking me where is the man? Where will he be at Christmas? How much time will we be spending together?
Umm.. he has his own family.. and I won’t see him for at least two weeks. We are busy and have seperate lives.. and it has only been a few weeks that we have known each other.. and I have the feeling that this is supremely normal.

There are a billion reasons why my co-depency has diminished since that relationship ten years ago that was so awful and controlling. But truly. One of the reasons for it is there is no-one here in my life that is a close friend. I have no-one with whom I hypothesise and hystericalise or to compare. My galpals are all in the city now, I hate using the phone more than I have to, therefore I have learned to be more self contained in the last 8 months.

I like the man pretty hard. When I see him, I want to see more of him. When I don’t see him I don’t get depressed, needy.. I don’t need to know all about his days away from me.

Writing my blog is the closest to a confessional and external process for working through things.
I feel strong and self dependant.. and absolutely freaking normal.

Nothing much going on.. just happy.

No news from the man. He is embedded in family this week, and coming down from a full week of night work. I don’t expect to hear from him for days.

I started Christmas shopping today.. and the wrapping.. the wrapping makes you a special kind of happy doesn’t it? That is when holidays begin for me.. when the wrapping starts.

I am tired. My house is a mess of wrapping paper and boxes. My brain is not at all working.. must off to bed – so I can get up and keep wrapping in the morning.

xx

I called my sister today to discuss this year’s Christmas strategy. There is always a strategy.

I ask after mum’s boyfriend [will he be there this year?] Predictably. No. After two years she has decided she can’t bear the sight of him.

Backtrack – a brief history of the last ten years.. After her divorce my mother bought a house on her own, met a man, sold the house and bought a property with him.. broke up with the man, considerable financial loss.. bought a house on her own, met a man, sold the house and bought her current house with him.. broke up with the man.. and we are on track right now for a considerable financial loss again if the pattern isn’t broken.

My sister tells me my mother cannot buy this man out, not with a reverse mortgage.. nada.. and we are worried that something needs to be done. I put up my hand.
You know how I am nearly 40? In real time, that means that although I remain the youngest in the family.. I am an adult.
I have a steady income. I think I could help her out here.

Oh! We didn’t think of you!

No. That is what I am saying. Decisions get made at the top end of the family and I am never included. I have decided that financially I would be stupid to buy in my hometown.. It is not thriving. Yet her town would be a good investment. We need to call a family meeting. Meet with a financial consultant and also get the legals straight on the house. The latest boyfriend is in her Will as her primary partner.. that needs to change for a start.
If we can cure her of this co-dependency she seems to have with strange men, I think we can make it work.
She is 75. In ten years time we will be needing to make some decisions about her finances anyway, we may as well help her out now if we can, so she doesn’t have to move again and she can stay in that nice neighbourhood.

Oh well yes.. that makes a lot of sense.

[sound of me beating my head against a fucking wall..]

I have tried to call you, and I can’t get through!

She has been saying this for the last 8 months. Mum too. The truth is that they never call. I don’t rate. I am not important. But when I call, they both self consciously tell me they have been trying to call me and it is lucky that I called because they so wanted to get in contact with me..
The only people who complain about not being able to get through to me are my family. Suspicious, no?

Yeah yeah yeah yeah..

He comes.. Red eyed, exhausted but somehow still energetic. I see him this morning immediately after his work shift has finished.
We lay in bed for hours.. upon hours.. and talk.
I rub his head, stroke his belly and his arms and he tells me about family, vulnerabilities as a father.. about friends and plans for the next two weeks.. Right then I feel closeness [because we are all touching] but distance as well. These confessions come while we are in bed together.. not elsewhere.

He goes to shower, and as I dress I see a bag at the foot of my bed, with wrapped presents.
As he dresses he hands me the gifts, and apologises for not finding something more ‘arty’.. that he tried to find something ‘arty’ and that he has no idea where to start looking for something ‘arty’.. he has a mass of present anxiety as I unwrap each of the three parcels. A cup, saucer and a spoon. Cute. I like that even though they are one of the same gift, that he has had to wrap each item separately, I understand his man brain in that way.

He leaves, and I walk to the cafe for a coffee and breakfast alone. While I order, my phone rings, it is him.
I forgot to tell you, I saw Bunjul [Eagle - creator spirit for Australian Aborigines] when I was driving to your house this morning.. and now he is circling me on the road. That’s good isn’t it?

I paraphrase what I know about Aboriginal lore, and what I told him on that first night we were together.
It’s very good. It means he is looking after you, and you will have a safe trip.

What it really means, though, is that I am in his mind as he drives to the city..

I have figured my photography style.

Kind of like this but with less clouds and more wheat coloured sheeps.
It’s kind of like colour field photography – I am so in love with great expanses of land with no trees, sheep who blend into the wheat.. and solid skies..

oh and pics like this [albeit this one is blurry]

Imagining my first exhibition.. just wish I knew how to work the bloody camera.

He will be here first thing in the morning. With his growling voice, penchant for sexual yoga and ability to make me [sexual nirvana number 1] six or more times in the one.. lay..

At the risk of sounding petulant.. I am a bit over the sexual gymnastics.. [she says now]
I want to go out for breakfast, I want to chat over a table somewhere.. I want our timetables to permit a concurrent ’social-life’..
But after working 12 hours overnight, I can’t expect anything too bright from him in the morning.

I am reminded again how shallow and difficult I am to please.. [well, quite easy to please.. but I want to be pleased and pleased and pleased and pleased.. but pleased in the way I want to be pleased, you know? and then ignored enough that I crave the pleasing cycle to start again.. good god I am complicated]