A fortunate event?

Yesterday marked one year since I tore the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) in my right knee for the second time. A year ago today I was grimacing through the pain as I underwent scans, x-rays, poking and prodding. Last year on this day I spent most of the afternoon in tears, trying to convince myself it wasn't so bad, but knowing in the pit of my stomach that one wrong step would cause months of frustration and anguish.
I wasn't too far wrong. The damage had been done at work - a shoe sales job I'd had for a total of two weeks - but my claim for compensation was rejected on the grounds that the task I was doing - walking from the selling floor to the stock room - wasn't closely enough related to work. I was up for close to $8000 in medical bills and was now jobless.
After seeing a specialist I was immeidately booked in for surgery - I'd not only torn the ACL but severely damaged the cartilage around it. The whole area was already weak from a previous tear to the same ligament twelve years prior, meaning that would also have to be cleaned up and my recovery would likely be slower than average.
Twelve months later and my knee, while stronger than it's been in years, still aches on cold nights, or twinges if I move it at a funny angle. When it does, I remember how much heartache I've been through because of it, and the stress and frustration at having such a small thing cause so much havoc to my life financially, socially, physically, and emotionally. But I've also been thinking lately that maybe, even with all the tears it caused, this whole thing wasn't such a catastrophe after all.
I spent the morning setting up for a gala dinner for 1000 people. A lot of it was hard, hot work - moving tables, setting out chairs, folding napkins, and carting crates of cuttlery, crockery and glasses to and fro. But in the midst of all this, in fact while lugging 10kg of silverware from one end of the room to the other, I realised I was living my dream.
Ok, so not my complete dream. I'd much prefer to not be covered in sweat and dust, and maybe also to be in charge of the event rather than just part of the staff of extras, but the essence of the dream is there. I was part of the process. My hand was involved in creating this thing, this event that, for those attending tomorrow night, will hopefully be something more than just a dinner.
There's this overwhelming craziness that comes from seeing a decrepit cattle pavillion transformed from an empty hall into a 5-star ballroom, and knowing that you were responsible (even in a small way) for that. As odd as it sounds, it's almost like the birth of a temporary artwork, the creation of something for others to share. And pulling something off successfully gives me this incredible rush of ecstasy that I can ride for days!
Sure, there's bits that aren't so fun - the mountains of paperwork, insurances and licenses for a start - but every job has its downfalls, and the good stuff far outweighs the bad stuff.
The good stuff: playing with themes and ideas, creating the most outrageous things you can come up with, transporting people from the normal to the amazing, hearing someone talk about something you helped create months (or even years) later, improvising, imagining and innovating.
This time last year I'd been two weeks in a job I already hated. I was a recent uni graduate with no savings, no decent job prospects and far too much debt. I felt defeated, frustrated and lost. Now? I still have no savings, another year of study to get through and far too much debt. And I've still got a dodgy knee and a lot of things that frustate me. But I've also got a direction, and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be going in the same one had I not torn my ACL, and been forced to up-end my whole life and reconsider where I was heading. I don't want to give my knee too much credit, but maybe someday I can say this little drama is responsible for helping me become the Aussie version of Colin Cowie, creator of stuff like this: 


A Wedding in Cabo San Lucas

  

Fanta Pants

Last night two of my favourite Darling friends likened me to Botticeli's Birth of Venus:

They claimed, in all seriousness, that my hair was luxurious waves of copper-gold, or some such frippery. Now, I can't deny that the resemblance to venus in body is possibly there - Miss Venus certainly wasn't all skin and bones - but, being a redhead, I had difficulty believing her beauty or mine, lies in our shared hair colouring.
That said, I've spent most of the morning trolling sites devoted to redheadedness, feeling an homage to my fire-headed sisters and brothers is deserved.
You see, us redheads are a special breed, a race of our own, if you would believe Jonah from the hilarious Chris Lilley's Summer Heights High:

Doug: How is it ok for you to bully Ben?

Jonah: 'Cause he's a Ranga.

Doug: A what?

Jonah A Ranga sir. 'Cause he's got red hair. Orangutan, that's what we call him.

Doug: And does that make it ok for him to be bullied, because he has red hair?

Jonah Well, people are racist to FOB's...

Leon: To us.

Jonah So, so we can be racist to Rangas.

Doug: But red-heads aren't a race, Jonah.

Leon: But sir, there's heaps of them. They're everywhere.

Taken from wikiquotes

 
But we're also, it seems, a thing to be sacrificed, feared, and revered. Throughout history people with red hair and green eyes were said to be witches, warewolves or vampires, the Greeks sacrificed us to the gods to create fertile land, while a long line of esteemed leaders in history - including Queen Elizabeth I and the Celtic Queen Boudicca - were redheads. 
Botticelli, Modigliani, and their fellow artists throughout the centures have painted their fascination with flame-hair, the colour 'titian' deriving itself from the painter of the same name who often coloured the locks of his images in shades of red and copper. 
Literature delights in redhead rogues and burnished beauties also. Lucy Mongommery's Anne of Green Gables bemoans her tresses, stating "you'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair...People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble it is". Mark Twain believed that "while the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats". 
And even facebook can't deny a strange obsession with our kind. There's the Humans Against Redhead Extinction (HARE), The official Hug a Ranga Day page, and even a fella willing to legally change his name to Ranga (apparanlty he went through with it). 
Even with all the nicknames - carrot top, ranga, ginga, ginger, fanta pants, firecrotch, gingernut, just to name a few - it seems that everone either wants to know us or wants to be us, and who can blame them when we have the propensity to look this good:
 

1. Aussie Actress and Borat's wife, Isla Fisher. 2. The ever-handsome actor, Damien Lewis. 3. Prince of Gingers, Prince Harry. 4. Timelessly beautiful actress, Julianne Moore.
Of course, I have to acknowledge the most famous redhead of them all, the one and only, Ronald:
 

And the Legend who allegedly declared, "once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead" - Lucille Ball:
 

And, just in case you still haven't got enough fire in your life, and you think us bloodnuts good enough to eat, you can buy our sauciness in a bottle to slather on all sorts of things.
 
 
  

Mundane medicine

Even as a child I would make my bed every day. When all around is chaos, that island of smoothed sheet and plumped pillow can calm me more than almost anything. I think the ultimate thing in making a bed is that it allows at least one task to be completed, even if nothing gets done all day, and that gives my life some small semblance of worth.
I stumbled across this article excerpt on Wide Open Spaces and had to share it, because it's the only way I can describe what making my bed means without sounding insane. Of course, my life is sans the children, husband, and fabulous career, but nonetheless full of small moments of desperation and unsteady waters.

 "Making the bed":

The simplest, most satisfying activity I do all day is making my bed. In seven minutes or less, I accomplish something small but worthwhile. I give myself a new beginning.On a morning of chaos, children hollering, misplaced homework, and a husband looking for clean socks, it's the calm in a storm. I love the physical, methodical act of tugging sheets and plumping pillows. I sense my jumbled thoughts being sorted as I exact the length of the blanket along the horizon of the bed. If I am anxious, stretching my arms wide and lifting the sheets high in the air releases some of the unease into the universe along with the eyelashes and the lint. It's organizing in the most gentle of ways.


Life is hard sometimes - hard for everyone differently, but hard. For me, there are intricate blended-family calisthenics, concerns about overcrowding in my kid's school, money worries, children worries, parent worries, and wrinkles in weird places. It can be overwhelming, but I find making the bed is a good first step to getting a handle on it all. Being a mother and a wife, a writer and an actress, is wonderful, really wonderful, but I don't know that I do it right all the time. I make mistakes, feel in search of out-of-reach answers; but I can assemble something that has been dismantled, straighten what has been undone. When I make the bed, I am caring for something important to me and my husband (and sometimes, in the middle of the night, a child.) A made bed is good to come home to. It says to the world and, more important, to you, "I am not unhinged."


It's never to late to make the bed. If it doesn't get done at 7:45 am because I had to start over with the eggs or I slept a little too long, it will still be there later that afternoon. Sometimes I make the bed 15 minutes before I get in it again.
And, inevitably, while i consider if the sheet is on the correct side or pull out a down feather that has poked through the case, there is a moment when it strikes me how lucky I am to have a bed."

The article, published in Real Simple, was written by writer and actress Isabel Gillies. For those of you who loved this passage as much for the writing as the content, you should do as I am and track down her book Happens Every Day.
And in the mean time, make your bed - it'll make you feel good.

Pledging

My cousin and I both read a lot, but what and how we read is very different. She is devoted to fanfics and much prefers scrolling computerised pages, with the tv on in the background for the occassional break. She reads books as well, but only if she is unable to find the story she's after online first.
I, on the other hand, despise reading online - aside from obsessive blog trolling of course. For me the story is not just the words on the page but the whole experience: the cover art, the feel of the paper, the location it is read in, the history of the writer, the story, and the book itself. Reading online takes so many of these features away, the story becomes cold, sterile, almost hostile in its reading. It removes a level of connectedness that compells me to read.
I think I've mention once or twice that I love old things, and old books are no different, because they link you to the past in an amazing way. Their smell, their feel, their color, even their war wounds excite me and comfort me. For me, finding a book with yellowing pages, scribble marks, chocolate smudges and dog-eared edges is akin to discovering a Burbery trench - in just the right size - for 75% off. Picking up a book like that means not only is the story obviously worthy of reading (and maybe re-reading), the book was loved by the reader (or readers) and then passed on so that I could share in the goodness inside. It's the same reason I love good food, because sharing either is a chance to share with someone something more than an experience, something more akin to an adventure.
To me the outward appearance, the look, feel and smell of the book are just as important to the reading as the words themselves. With online reading you lose all that. Gone is the ability to put a face to the long-suffering victim on the front cover, gone is the mustiness that reminds you Dickens wrote these words some eighty years ago, gone the exquisite touch of thick, smooth pages that warrant the blowing of your monthly budget to live vicariously through an imaginary vixen. And gone the all-important ability to luxuriate in the reading in any location you choose (for me it's usually under the covers with a naughty treat).
Yes, I am aware there are now portable tablets that allow you to store and read hundreds of books, just like an ipod would music. I'm also aware that laptops can be moved from place to place. But this merely solves the problem of location, and perhaps cover-imagery if there is a photo available. And these factors without all  the others are not enough to prevent me rueing the dreaded day when printed word is completely usurped by the multitude of  media varieties available. For me, even cooking from a recipe book gives me more pleasure than scrolling the endless blogs I love for the perfect afternoon sweetness.
So you'll understand why, after noticing my dear friend Wabi had pledged, that I must do the same. And so I do:

Here I am

Here’s what I am. I’m 25. I’m Caucasian. I’m 165cm tall (although my license reads 168cm). I hover between a size 12 and a 14, usually closer to the larger end. I have red hair and milky-white skin swathed in thousands—if not millions—of pale chocolate freckles. I have small breasts and large, slightly manly shoulders. I have toe issues, foot problems, a dodgy right knee, a crooked pelvis, bad vision, cold sores, and endless teeth dilemmas from clenching my jaw while I sleep. I’m a catch, right?


You’ve picked yourself up off the floor, grasped your ribs in agony, and wiped away the tears of laughter? Well done. I’m sure there are hundreds of others who didn’t survive the torrent of incredulous guffaws produced in response to that last quip. Because, who are we kidding, I’m not exactly pin-up girl material. In fact, as far as 20-somethings go, I’m probably well below average when it comes to physical make-up. But here’s the kicker. I’m mentally and emotionally a bit under par too.

I have a quick temper. Yep, say what you like about stereotypes not being true, but this redhead has more fire than the aptly named matches. But I don’t just get angry. Oh no, I run the whole gamut of bad moods: melancholy, morose, discontent, disjointed, confused, and just plain lost. I’m can’t make decisions. (That’s not completely true, I can’t make decisions about my life—others’ lives on the other hand, I’m all over that.) I like control, but I don’t want it. I love spontaneity, but it terrifies me. I hate being stagnant, but change unsettles me too much. I want everything now, not tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, I want that sense of achievement that comes from working hard, but do I really have to get up before nine?

So what about the deeper me? What are my hopes and dreams? What do I really believe in? What do I love to do? I want to travel. But I don’t want to just see the world, I want to take it by the hand and say “how do you do?” I love to cook and I want to be able to do it well. No not just well, amazingly well. I want to effortlessly rustle up the best damn soufflé you’ve ever eaten, or the most mouth-watering roast duck you can imagine. I want to create stuff. What stuff? I don’t know. I can knit and crochet. I (occasionally) make my own clothes and jewellery. I just need to create, damn it!

You know what I want most. I want to have some kind of purpose in my life. And that’s what this is. It’s about finding a purpose. Something more than just a lifestyle, a dream, or a career. I’m not searching for my real self—I’ve already got enough personalities fighting for control. What I’m hoping for is to slowly untangle the hopped-up, flipped-out, craziness that is me. And take you along for the ride. Now I’m warning you, on any given day this may involve absolutely nothing. But it may also involve high-strung excitement at completing a knitting project, the blissful calm that comes from producing a perfect chocolate tart, desperate anxiety over another failed job/interview, and even complete and utter depression when everything just falls apart.

Welcome to the ride of my life. Strap yourself in, it is going to get bumpy, but I’m sure (I hope) we’ll all survive.