Sisters

Sisters

So, this will be a totally rare time I include the name of a business/company/service, I currently use. You will notice I don’t ever mention the name of my favourite café? Yeah, most of my followers are on foreign soil, so it’s irrelevant, but sometimes it’s hard enough to get a seat as is. That’s the only reason why though.

So, today I will mention one of the Care Providers I use, same reason as above, but it’s relevant to the story. This is also a likely example of how life has a tendency to go in full circles.

Ok, Circa 90’s when I worked in clubs with Malcolm (you can read about him here)

https://hellonwheelslifeonehanded.wordpress.com/2017/09/01/gdg-grand-daddy-goth/

He had (just like any DJ of that era) Yes, Yes what was generally referred to as a toilet song. You hear a certain song come on. Don’t get in a DJ’s way. It’s usually a rather long song/track that is long enough to get to the toilet, the bar and back to the DJ’s booth.

It was usually this one

My Carers come from Mercy Health. They manage the homes where all the retired nuns live. There is a women’s hospital (Mercy Health).

I am by all means not suggesting they are the best, but I’m never going to bother mentioning the ONLY agency that didn’t ask for me to participate in the regular NDIA audit and provide feedback about their services. Am I correct?

So, anyway, my carer today was telling me where she had to go after me. Most of my carers visit the nuns. I hear about it all the time.

So, my carer today said she was going off to the Sisters of Mercy and everything after that went straight over my head.

Back in the 90’s when I worked in clubs, I was NOT GOTHIC. But sometimes, I wore more, shall I say, socially acceptable styles to not ‘offend’ the Goths. There was always a boy with this…..

It was the era after all and sometimes I would just outright wear my dungarees (because they were light and comfy) and other times I wore my bright coloured raver street wear.

I miss those days.

However, The Sisters of Mercy (the band not the nuns.) is touring later in the year. I’m debating about seeing them. The play at The Forum, two days after my birthday.

Dreams

Dreams

I had a dream yesterday; well I dream a lot. But mostly I have weird dreams where 3 or 4 crazy things are smashed into.

I dream, it usually includes house that are apparently my home, there is definitely a feeling of this is my home to it, but they are places I don’t recognise, in area’s that remind me of the 90’s, my earlier days but yet not in areas I would live in now.

At such times the details are insane, a door handle that isn’t working properly, reminds me of houses I have lived in. Opening a door to the outside and seeing an abundance of plants hanging from the eaves with bright red tomatoes in abundance. Then my sister is there. Well, either of my sisters would be strange.

The other times I’M ON ROLLER SKATES. Anyone else having these dreams? Yeah, I did roller skate when I was a kid and I’ve a friend who does Roller Derby.

But my dream, I was roller skating around the city, around Federation Square and I had some speed, was cutting in and around people and not hitting anybody and still managing to stay upright.

HOW? I don’t know…

Then I got to the top of some stairs and I just flew down them, my wheels catching the platform in between the second drop of stairs and still UPRIGHT. People cheered!

I guess I am not prepared to try roller skating as I imagine I don’t need scrapes and wounds to add to my drama. But it was a nice dream with a feeling of freedom, success and achievement.

 

Twenty – Three

Twenty-Three

Today, I’m going to take everyone back in a time capsule or a time travelling machine to when I was about twenty-three.

Ah, good times, right? Well, we shall see. I’ll let you decide.

As you know, when I was younger in my twenties, I worked in nightclubs in Melbourne. Until recently, I thought I’d worked in clubs for a whole ten years, but when I did some ‘hard maths’ I realized it was only five years.

My club ‘work’ (it’s still the right team if my output of hours and efforts did not equal my income) was several day’s a week and as many night’s as 2-5 nights a week. Despite my best efforts, at one point I found myself without a roof over my head. I had been living with my older sister and when we finished the lease on a house, she found a place quickly and moved out and then I struggled.

Apparently, it’s really hard to imagine when I said ‘I don’t drink, so won’t becoming home drunk and vomiting’ and don’t lay around all day is not much of a sales pitch when promoting one’s self as a prospective housemate to strangers.

Having a good club network of friends, I managed to find a space on someone’s lounge floor for a small amount of money so I wasn’t out on the street.

These kids were younger than me and the meals I cooked and shared were the only meals I saw concocted from their kitchen. Needless to say, I maintained my day/night sleep deprived routine.

After a month or all of my house-hunting efforts and my day/night work routine, the kids I stayed with asked me to go stay elsewhere, as the landlord (one of the girl’s father) didn’t want me there.

On the Tuesday, my day routine of distributing night club passes, took me to Chapel Street South Yarra and Greville Street Prahan. I dropped into visit my sister, who worked in that area. She gave me a very hard time, that I hadn’t found anywhere to live.

I then ran into my cousin with her shopping bags of groceries. I was so happy to see a friendly face. I asked her to go get a coffee with me, as my sister had so upset me. When I saw her friendly face, I burst in to tears. When she went to put her groceries in the car and come back to me, the weirdest thing happened.

I got a splitting migraine and plus I peed my pants. What? I know!

Briefly, visited the café to use the toilet, then my cousin gave me a lift back to where I was staying. I made it inside feeling very seedy. I hadn’t eaten all day, other than my spirulina (for breakfast). The toilet was occupied, so I threw up on the carpet. What? Are you not meant to do it there?

Have you ever had a headache so bad you couldn’t make a simple decision not to throw up green spirulina on cream carpet? Yeah! It was that bad.

I made it into the toilet only to collapse on the floor, one of my temporary house-mates actually had to come into the small toilet to lift me and get me out, because I just couldn’t move.

Thankfully, they put me to bed, closed the blinds and turned off the light and with a little instruction from me they rang my mum.

To this day, when the shit hits the fan, I call my mum. Have I mentioned, I love my mum?

Mum was on the road within an hour to come get me. Back then, mum still living in my home town in the North East of Victoria. So it took her three hours to get to me and once I was bundled in the front seat with a bucket (that I don’t remember using) we headed back home for another three hours. I don’t recall having much to say all the way home.

Now, to be clear, at the time we put my migraine down to MSG food poisoning as it was and still to this day, THE WORST MIGRAINE I’VE EVER HAD.

I was bedridden for a week and I didn’t eat. I remember visits to a chiropractor most days and on one visit being muscle tested to work out what I could eat. One morning mum insisted I eat and she bought in some green grapes. Good, right?

Mmmmm, we arrived at the chiropractor’s office, not far from mum’s in time for me to fling open the car door and deliver those grapes onto his driveway. A woman was doing her gardening and commented I really needed to see the chiropractor.

One morning mum insisted I get in the shower, I remember getting into the small shower and just standing there unable to move. Eventually, mum came to help me. Did I mention I love my mum?

During that week, you might wonder whey my mum didn’t take me to a doctor or emergency room? Yu know, those moments when you realise a ‘higher power’ (I refer to it as The Universe looking after me. I have few Catholic types who follow my blog) they will think it was odd but anyway. Every time my mum went to call the hospital or the doctor, they were engaged, so we got the message not to go.

I did notice my head hurt less when I rested it on one side less than the other. Weird right? After a week, I all of a sudden felt a little better, at least good enough to eat something. What did I eat first? I’m such a wog, Salami, then Cabana, OMG I think mum thought I’d be sick, since I’d not eaten for a week.

I remember being very slow to get my energy back, all in all I stayed with mum and my younger sister a whole month. My older sister visited once, insisting I was being lazy and to get my arse back to Melbourne to get a job, so I could find a place to live.

While at home, you might wonder if I heard from any of my club friends, since I would normally be there from opening (10pm) until the end (5am), I was usually out in those days from anything from 2-5 nights a week. One night, I started to my ‘good-byes’ to friends far earlier than normal and one guy asked me if I was dying. I’d had a cold, Ok. Can’t a girl go home early once in a while?

Correct! No one called me while I was sick to ask how I was. Admittedly, it was before the era of everyone having a mobile phone.

Interestingly, the Universe really was looking after me while at the time we thought it was MSG food poisoning, after my diagnosis, when I was thirty-four, one of the specialists I went to, was in Sydney and the young lady (who actually hailed from Melbourne) suggested back when I was twenty-three, I likely had a bleed or a leak from my AVM.

My mother and I agree if I’d been diagnosed back when I was twenty-three, the hospital I was born at in the country, would have had the attitude of ‘No Worries, we can fix that’ and it would have been the worst experience of a guinea pig ever.

Ironically, when I collapsed that day back in Prahan when I was twenty-three, I wasn’t very far from ‘The Alfred Hospital’ which is eventually where I had my radiation treatment. Mum and I both agree that I was diagnosed at the right time, because the early treatment options that were available to me came to the Alfred and was covered by Medicare.

So, all in all, I think I was really lucky and my sister, to this day has no idea how serious it was.

Family – Part 2

Family Part 2

So, it is to say, I think health issues, brain injury, disability, all of it takes a toll on families. I’m lucky, I still have both parents, however my relationship is different with both.

Divorced how for over twenty-five years, my mum will drop everything and has to come and be with me, sit by my bedside, drive me all over the place, move me countless times and on one occasion even shower me. (Yeah! Yet to write about how that came to happen) Yet my father whom I love, I have to guilt him into helping me, which is usually in the form of well, most recently, bond, removalist costs. So, nothing to sneeze at, but guilt into helping me.

I also have two sisters (surviving), one older and another sister much younger. Despite the closeness in age between my older sister and myself (two years) we don’t see each other often and the two times in my twenties we lived together has put a wedge between us.

My younger sister is almost sixteen years younger and keeping in mind she was young, I changed her nappies and as a youngster our experiences as siblings as children and “whatever” we have all had very different experiences.

My younger sister, you could say has been raised by a single parent with older Aunties (I’m the cool one, of course). Also, I’m the second child, a confused second child, as when I was eight (exactly) my younger sister was born and died fifteen months later. After being the second child again, I was the middle child again, at almost sixteen, hence the confusion.