I used to work with a bloke whose sister, Kim Farrant is a film-maker, and I met her about nine years ago when she was making a doco called Naked on the Inside. We met because my friend Ricki was one of the people featured in the film, and I was filmed for a bit of it. Unfortunately I ended up on the cutting room floor. So there goes that Oscar. Sooo close.
Kim has made another film, and from the little bits I can bear to watch, it seems like it is her life’s work. You see, Kim was molested by her Father for most of what should have been her childhood. She has made the film ‘Between Me’ which is about three adults, showing the ramifications childhood sexual abuse has on them.
In order for the film to go to the next level, she requires funds to complete the package (final edit, musical score etc). For a few more days you can donate on pozible to get this important film over the line. If you can, go have a look at the site.
I believe this is a film that will start a discussion that needs to be had, about guilt and shame, and hopefully also, survival and strength.
If you are able to donate, there are some perks, including tix to the premiere. It will be a chance to rub shoulders with someone who will soon be an even greater force in the movie world: Kim has just gotten the green light to make her film Strangerland, starring Nicole Kidman, Guy Pierce and Hugo Weaving.
Kim, you are one tough cookie, and I am amazed at your resilience and your courage and your bravery. You are a shining star, and I hope that the healing you have gone through will inspire others that they too can move through terrible experiences, and move ahead with their lives.
All the love to you, you gutsy chick.
This is not a sponsored post, I just reckon this is an important project. The stats on child abuse are truly shocking.
(Even if I am still a bit cut about being cut out of the last one)
1. Blood donors. “Bloody” legends. And lifesavers. Our life is completely different this end of the week, with Coco all topped up with the claret. Can’t thank all those anonymous donors enough. Call 13 14 95 to find your nearest donation spot.
2. The music therapy lady at Nambour Hospital. I’ve got be honest, although my face was saying “Oh yes, music therapy whilst my screaming child gets treated like a pincushion, what an smashing idea”, my head was saying, “FFS you crazy bloody hippy, piss off and leave us to our misery and our work you friggin’ lunatic.” Turns out, she was right and (gulp) I was wrong. The music did help. Go figure.
3. Oh hello coffee delivery, yes please.
4. And to go with said coffee, check out this mug. I have no idea what or why this was invented, but who wouldn’t want one?
For the person who gives you the shits?
5. These new shoes. I know, I know, they’re bloody ugly, but in my other life I have a real job (No I’m not a highly successful and award winning author- who knew?) where I spend the whole day on my feet. This week I finally chucked my old pair, and got these babies. Just like going home. Thanks Get Set Footwear on Gympie Terrace… (Tell ’em I sent you, they’ll give you a good deal.)
And a late entry… After my anti-bird rant, this popped up in my Instagram feed. Oh Jamie, I already love you, and then you wear this. Not sure if its a turkey or a giant penis, but I like that you don’t look impressed. #birdssuck
What are you loving this week?
And what do you think of Hitwave Alison? Should I also be including my top 5 shits?
I live in Queensland. We can’t have daylight savings up here, because: cows and curtain care, so sometime around 5am an INFERNAL RACKET starts up. No, it’s not the kids sneakily turning on iDevices to play Minecraft (that starts at 5.28am), it’s BLOODY BIRDS.
Billions (yes, that’s right, billions) of them.
Outside.
How dare they? You’d think they bloody owned the whole of outside, they way they carry on.
I hate birds. Yes, even Rainbow Lorikeets. Yes, even Doves. Yes, even tiny little Finches. Yes, even your cute little pet that is so friendly and cute and wouldn’t peck anyone and for some reason you have taught how to repeat inane phrases. All.Of.Them. Winged rats they are, spreading disease (maybe) and poo (definitely) and making noise, and waking me up every.single.morning. They are vermin and they should be stopped.
The good news is, I have a cat. Woofa, her name is, and although I don’t want her to go around killing birds (maybe), I got her to be an effective bird deterrer great pet for the kids. Trouble is, this is Woofa:
Woofa the Shitcat
and that is what she does all day. Finds things (in this case it is Kid 2’s reading folder) and lies on them, sleeping all.frigging.day. Putting long white cat fur on the dark coloured stuff, and long dark-brown cat fur on the light coloured stuff. You could be forgiven for thinking the cat has no eyes, because you never see them. But this is not a post about that shitcat, it’s a post about birds and how much I hate the infernal pests.
Did I mention I hate birds? It’s not Ornithophobia, I’m not scared of the bastards (any more), I just abhor them and their stupid little pointy mouths. And their ugly little stick legs. And their beady dead eyes. Evil, beady eyes.
So, the morning birds: they suck, but today a new horror began: afternoon birds. Some kind of huge, black, cockatoo things have come to roost and shriek like Nazgul in my front tree. They scream and squeal and decimate the bottle-brush and chuck the bits they don’t like all over the drive way. Or, like today, onto my head. It bloody well hurt. I may have been seriously concussed mildly stunned.
Birds=1, Me=0
Tomorrow I’m gonna fix them and this terrible situation. I’m getting a hacksaw out of Nath’s trailer and I’m gonna hack off every one of those bottle-brushes so they won’t have a single thing to eat.
Yeah.
Birds=1, Me=1.
But then: birds starving and die, so,
Birds=1 (and dead,) Me=2.
I win the bird wars.
What do you think of birds? Ever been pecked by one of those filthy magpies?
I found out that a lady who I have been reading for the last year or so, has had a tragic suicide in her family. I don’t know this woman, not really, not IRL. But I have been following her life for over a year, both on her blog and in her tweets, and so I feel like I know her. I’ve watched her travel, seen her grieve, been sad happy glad scared relieved, as her life has been laid out before me. I have laughed and cheered and cried right along with her for quite a while now. In fact, I suppose I feel like I’ve shared more of her life than some of my IRL friends. I even know things about her past. Her wedding day. Her childhood.
We have corresponded a few times in the comments section of her blog, and then via email. Not much, really, but I feel like I get her. And so when my friend Hayley died, I made sure I told her. Because I feel like she gets me. And she did. She said exactly the right things (typed exactly the right things). Just like I knew she would. She cared about the right bits.
Today I’m so sad for this person I’ve never even met in the skin. I want to make it better for her, disappear some of her pain, just like I would for a flesh-friend.
I suppose she’s like a pen-pal in days gone by, but accelerated due to the immediacy of our post. We can get to know one another so quickly, in 140 characters, click, send.
Today has reminded me of the power of the written word, in the ways that it can touch our hearts and make us feel. Transform us even. Make us laugh. Or cry. Wring us out.
Letters, books, emails, posts, tweets and texts. Somehow we can get a sense of knowing someone that we’ve never met, not in real life.
It’s a strange thing, this brave new world we’re in now. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar. (John Lennon: prescience?)
By the time you read this it will all be over, and my girl, will be tucked up tight in bed, dreaming of who knows what. She usually stirs quite a bit, this night. If sleep is the subconscious downloading, then I guess she has loads to down.
When she was a bub, we would have fractious nights in the lead up to a transfusion, but the night after was always the worst for me. Leaving the hospital that night was always wonderful. I’d sink into the seat of the car, Coco all bundled into her capsule, and I’d just sit. I would bask. In the relief and the relief and the relief. There was no other time in my month-or-so quite like it. In that car, at that moment, we were as far away from the next transfusion as we could possibly be. Every second from then on moved us closer to the next one. So I would bask. I would waste some of those precious moments, allowing the soothing to trickle over me, knowing that the night ahead would be long and strange. That she would wake and cry and stir and wake. She would need feed on top of feed to try and rehydrate after the mid-transfusion diuretic. Nappies soaking. Mind churning.
Things are easier now of course. We have grown used to the process, and the procedures. She told me today that if she looks at the cannula before it goes in she feels “all funny in her tummy” and that even though she can’t feel the blood actually going in, it hurts if we move the tubing too much. These are things I haven’t known before. So perhaps it will get easier still.
She has a good memory, my girl. She recalls all the parts of these two days.
On the first day we get the blood taken for cross-matching, and she remembers the time her skin got pinched and drawn into the tourniquet and had to be pulled out. She remembers the time blood went spurting everywhere. And she remembers all the times, like yesterday, when it takes one or two or three attempts to get that sample out. So sometimes she might cry when it doesn’t seem necessary. Because she remembers well.
On the second day we receive the blood. We present to the hospital and we wait until hand-over is done and rounds are completed and then, at last, it is our turn. She is on edge until then, my girl. She knows what is coming, and that no amount of playing in the little park, or watching the fish in their tank will blunt that feeling of foreboding, or the feeling of that needle piecing the plump baby flesh, just near her dimpled knuckles.
She remembers well, my girl, so she tells the doctor that her right hand is the best one for puncture. “This vein, right here”, she says, tracing the blue feint on the dorsum of her hand. They hear but don’t listen, so the left hand is tried first. Then back to the right. Usually she starts crying at a reasonable volume, well before they take the first stab. I lie on top of her, and hold her arm firm at the shoulder, to make sure she doesn’t move, but she never does. Even as an infant, when they wanted to wrap her up like a cat in case of writhing, she never did. I know without looking when the needle goes in, and then, when they blow that first vein, as her screams spike and spike. He eyes widen, as big as the moon, as if she is surprised, still, at how it feels.
This day, it was different.
Earlier on, the music therapist had spent some time with us, singing to Coco, playing and showing her instruments. Calming her. She asked Coco’s favourite song, and I said: The Lion Sleeps Tonight, regretting it instantly, as the therapist played that stupid song over and over, those wimmewehs scratching on the blackboard of my jangled nerves. But it soothed my girl. She snuggled into my arms, and as that beautiful hippy played and played, and it was true that music is a salve for the soul.
When we went into the treatment room we played the wimmewehs on the iPod, and as that first vein was blown, she cried, but perhaps not as much as she used to. Calmer or not, there’s only so much sleeping one lion can do, so we changed to Green Spandex. The funeral song, from the when that feels like yesterday. We stared into each other’s eyes, my girl and I. I think she was expecting me to cry, and I know I was expecting her to, both for different reasons. Blue eyes locking onto brown. We couldn’t be more different sometimes, my girl and I, but we held our eyes, and we held our strength. I’m sure we both felt like weeping, for some reasons different, and some the same, but we didn’t. We breathed deeply and we held each other and we waited for the pain to pass. It hurt. But we got through another little bit.
Sometimes we couldn’t be more alike, my girl and I.
Blue eyes and brown
If you have already donated blood in the last 3 months, Thank you, From The Ashers.
If you haven’t, you could call 13 95 96 to find out how.
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