Tag: Ramblings

Posted in D.S. Williams Worlds, Ramblings

And Just When I Thought It Was Safe…

Posted on by Nememiah

I started of 2023 with all good intentions, and thought we had a reasonably good chance of this year – 2023 – being a little less stressful than the last one.

If you’ll recall, 2022 was filled with a couple of big issues, and some little ones – all of which totalled up to mean the year didn’t go the way we planned. Planned renovations got pushed to the backburner, things didn’t work out quite the way we’d hoped, and for the most part, we stumbled through the year lurching from one catastrophe to the next.

And don’t get me wrong, I am eternally grateful that our catastrophes were painful, and awkward, and frustrating, but we were still much luckier than most.

Consequently, as I talked about in my last post, we started off 2023 hoping for a better, less stressful year. Which lasted for approximately five minutes before things started to get pear-shaped. First of all, my dearest SIL’s Mum passed away on New Years Day, not an auspicious start.

Then, there was that pesky hamstring tear in early December – the one I got when I went off adventuring on my own for the first time in ages. With one thing and another (Christmas, SIL’s Mum, a dose of COVID for the DH and the Bonza Babe and my beloved GP heading off on holidays) I didn’t go back for my follow-up appointment to discover the results of my scans until last Thursday.

Now keep in mind here, that while it’s still causing me some grief, it’s not particularly painful. I’m still relying on a crutch a lot of the time, but that’s more because I’m a bit nervous about giving it another yank because I never – ever – want to feel that sort of pain again and the grounds around our house, Wilyerup are notoriously treacherous to walk on. And to top off all that, the DH’s physio had told him that generally, they don’t both do surgery for hamstring injuries in people of ‘our age’.

Imagine my surprise when I rocked up at the beloved GP’s office, and lo and behold, she wants me to have an MRI, because the tear in my hamstring is nearly 5cm x 4cm x 1cm… and is unlikely to heal on it’s own. So color me delighted, because now I’m off to the Orthopaedic Surgeon to discuss what will be required to fix my hamstring and the recovery time will likely be counted in months, rather than days.

And that’s only the beginning of things which could go wrong in 2023. Because the DH, who was medically discharged from the Air Force back in 2020 had his own results to get from the beloved GP. Turns out that he is looking at the possibility of up to THREE surgeries this year. The two definites are his shoulders, to fix degradation resulting from years of pushing open hangar doors and lifting heavy stuff at work. The other, more serious one will be decided once he’s had some treatment next week – he has a lot of degradation in his upper cervical spine that in all probability will need surgery, but we’re going to try cortisone injections first.

Which means a couple of things going forward. For starters, we were off up to Perth this coming weekend for a 48 hour trip to celebrate the birthdays of the Bonza Babe, Son #1 and Son #2. Living in the country, its sometimes quicker to get medical issues dealt with in the big smoke, so our 48 hour trip has been extended out to nearly a fortnight so that the scans and the injections can get done in a timely manner.

And the DH and I are in negotiations regarding just what renovations will get done at Wilyerup this year – because our original plans have most definitely fallen by the wayside. But I’m hoping against hope that the shed (which we’ve had since mid 2020) might be the one plan that comes to fruition this year!

And moving forward, my New Years Resolution for 2024 is going to be that there will be no New Years Resolutions!

Posted in D.S. Williams Worlds, Ramblings

Some Thoughts on the way to a New Year

Posted on by Nememiah

Like many people, my 2022 was less than stellar. Fortunately, it wasn’t major, life-altering events, although my son’s two reasonably serious accidents were enough to add a few grey hairs to my head. (Didn’t have the same effect on my DH, who is practically bald anyway, but he certainly experienced plenty of stress.)

We certainly experienced our fair share of financial issues, although unlike many we were fortunate to get through them relatively debt-free. The renovations to our grand old dame of a house, ‘Wilyerup’ have certainly needed to be put on the backburner however.

As I said, we were among the lucky ones. Rather than life altering disasters on an epic scale, we were hit with regular and constant issues which drain the bank balance and had a detrimental effect on my mental health. We lost a treasured pet, the car shat itself to the tune of an almost $4000 bill, as mentioned Son #3 had a serious workplace accident, followed up six months later with a serious home-based accident, which saw him miss work for nearly the entirety of 2022. Son # 2 had some issues of his own, including a brush with the Black Dog, and some ups and downs with his workplace due to other health issues.

With one thing and another (and I’m not going to get into them all here) every month of 2022 held some new disaster, some new mess to sort out, some new issue which needed addressing. It meant that there wasn’t a time during our year when we weren’t under some sort of strain, some mental or physical issue which needed addressing.

To put it bluntly, it sucked.

But it didn’t suck anywhere near as much as many other people’s experiences in the past twelve months and for that, I’m grateful.

So now we face a new year, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a wee bit anxious about what it might entail, but one of the things I’m going to try to leave behind me is guilt, and worry about other people’s opinions of me. I’ve carried that shit along for far too long, and it weighs me down in so many ways that I need to find a way to offload it.

Relationships with my family are fractured, and I suspect now that they always will be. I can’t fix the relationships, not alone, and without help from those who feel I’ve somehow wronged them, there’s no way to heal the rifts. I made choices in my life regarding my mother which were the right decisions for me. They were very clearly the wrong decisions in the eyes of some of my family members, but I’m trying to accept that this is okay. This is their truth. Not mine.

I can’t fix what they see as wrong. I can’t be what they want me to be. I am who I am, and while that’s not always something I’m proud of, I’m learning to accept the truth of who I am, and I’m (almost) okay with that. I don’t need negativity in my life, I don’t need to carry the weight of other people’s opinions of me.

I am enough.

And in 2023, I hope to reaffirm this truth and spend less time fretting over those that would cut me from their lives without discussion or the opportunity to give and take. Those that would refuse to talk about things, but use passive aggressive wording to confirm they blame me for past events.

I won’t try and fight against the flow of the water any longer. I’m going to face each new challenge with hope in my heart and reminding myself that others have had it worse.

And with any luck, I’ll find some time in there for my passion, and write a few new books along the way.

Posted in D.S. Williams Worlds, Movies, Ramblings

Thoughts on a Movie…

Posted on by Nememiah

This afternoon, for the first time in my life I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ – a movie which has been on my radar for many years, but somehow I’d never gotten around to watching it.

By Designed by Macario Gómez Quibus. “© Shamley Productions, Inc.”

Filmed in 1960, some five years before my arrival on the planet, I’d gotten it built up into a huge horror/fright film – that music was what always got me, made me think I’d never sleep again if I watched it.

Turns out I was wrong.

While the movie is suspenseful, and the scene in the shower was well thought out and did have a little bit of a fear factor, sixty-odd years later it’s more ‘boo’ than ‘BOO’.

I think the movie did have factors which made it quite modern for the era, not least of which was the visual of a flushing toilet. I read somewhere that this was the first time a toilet had ever been seen in a feature film or television program. In this day and age, that sort of record seems to beggar belief as we all know and use toilets every single day and there’s no sense of it being impolite or in any way disgraceful to talk about them, see them, or mention them. But in 1960, it was.

There are other things in the movie which struck me as quite forward-thinking for the era, not least of which showing Janet Leigh not just once but twice, in her bra and slip (does anyone even wear a ‘slip’ now?) seemed a little risqué for the times. Add to that the motel bedroom scene with Janet Leigh and her hardware store owning boyfriend (played by John Gavin) which must also have been seen as fairly risqué as the world entered the sixties and you have a movie which I think was probably well before its time in breaking some barriers.

Was it scary? No. Not even the slash/slash/slash bathroom scene with that music which is so indoctrinated into our psyches could make the scene scary on a comparison scale between 1960 and 2022. We’re used to bigger scares, larger thrills, and I think overall we’re less easily freaked out by things.

But was the movie worth watching? Oh, absolutely. Just to see the nuances of the actors, the fashions, the vehicles, the behaviour of the characters and how they interrelated with one another – the morals, the manners, the trip back in time to six decades ago – even watching it all in black and white was an experience in itself and one I am glad I did. I’ll probably never watch it again ( I think, much like The Sixth Sense, once you’ve seen it, you’re spoiled for ever watching it again), but I’m certainly the better for having ticked it off my list.

Posted in D.S. Williams Worlds, Ramblings

Hallelujah! we’ve kissed goodbye to 2020.

Posted on by Nememiah

Oh my goodness, I’m glad to see the back of 2020. This was a year that wasn’t particularly kind to any of us, although we here in Australia have gotten off lightly in regard to COVID-19 – certainly when compared to our fellow humans in the United States and many other countries around the world.

Sadly, at this early stage of the year, it seems as if 2021 is not going to be much better, and I’ve been keeping up with the news regarding the terrible situation currently playing itself out in Washington and finding in myself a sense of disbelief over what I’m seeing and hearing.

But I digress. I’m not a lover of resolutions – don’t get me wrong, over the years I’ve made dozens of them, and in some cases, I’ve actually managed keep them, at least until near the end of January.

In recent years though, I’ve started being a bit kinder to myself, and I no longer commit to ridiculous promises to myself to behave in a certain way, or suddenly turn over a new leaf in regards to things I will or won’t do in the upcoming year. In fact, this is my current pegboard, which went up a couple of days ago.

So in the spirit of ‘casual promises to myself that I’m under no obligation to fulfil’ – here’s this years non-resolutions.

  1. Be kind to myself. Don’t focus on the negatives. Look for positives that will lead me to liking myself, if only just a little bit more.
  2. Write – for myself. Don’t worry about whether it’s good or not, or whether anyone would be interested in reading it. Write the story, enjoy the process and to hell with whether it meets anyone’s expectations. The only expectations which matter are mine.
  3. Try new things. I realized late last year (in that hideous 365 days known as 2020) that I tend to avoid things edible and otherwise, because I’m under the assumption I won’t like them. This year I’m going to choose the item on the menu I haven’t tried before, taste the flavors I’ve only assumed I won’t like. I’m going to use the items I’ve been ‘saving’ and write in the notebooks I’ve been hoarding. I’m going to visit places I’ve been too anxiety-prone to go and I’m going to try and focus on the positive and push away the negatives.

And hopefully, there’s some room for improvement in the remainder of this new year…

Posted in Uncategorized

Sitting on the flipside

Posted on by Nememiah

Well, that all went pear-shaped quite quickly. All the way back in March (March!!) I was casually thinking that I might be doing okay, that I could tootle along in my usual fashion and keep on writing.

That proved to be extremely optimistic. Along with the rest of the world, I watched the year descend into madness, with borders closed, hospitals overwhelmed, and rumor and innuendo only adding to the drama that was 2020. And it still continues, as we face heading into 2021 with the same COVID-19 issues we’ve had in 2020.

Foolishly, I was under the misapprehension that by the end of the year we’d have reached the ‘end’ of this saga, that we’d be facing the new year with optimism and the world gradually healing from this insidious virus which seems to keep popping up no matter what the world does to combat it.

Not so.

Back in March, I was feeling marginally optimistic, but that optimism got swallowed in a tsunami wave of anxiety and a wave of manic episodes which have pretty much sidelined me for most of the year. I’ve kept functioning (just), but those words which were still flowing in March pretty much died out about four minutes after I hit ‘publish’

But just recently… just in the past few weeks… the creative juices have started to flow a little, despite a bout of depression brought on by messing up my medication regime while we’ve rushed to finish renovations in our little old house (which we bought in July, shortly after the strict travelling bans were eased).

So I’m looking towards 2021 with a modicum of hope, and although it’s always a battle, a teensy bit of optimism. And I’d like to wish you all a bit of that same hope and optimism, and add a sincere wish that you can make the best of a Christmas and New Year which will no doubt look vastly different for all of us who inhabit this planet than it has in previous years.