Brilliant people I associate with

My inspirational friend Hayley has just today been announced as one of the winners of the ABC Short Story competition. You can listen to the story here.

A house full of geniuses

Lovergirl's doing the WAIS on Jaye & Ally, who are visiting from Byron for the weekend. For those of you not lucky enough to live with a psychologist, WAIS stands for Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale. You know when people say 'I have an IQ of 135'? That's the result of the WAIS. In true lesbian fashion Jaye & ally are doing it together - it seems they have quite a high combined IQ. I have been banished as next she is going to film me doing the WAIS. I'm hoping to join MENSA based on my results.

Last weekend Lovergirl did the one for under7 year-olds on me. (The WIPSI?) I did quite well on that so I'm feeling quietly confident about today's testing. I'm very bright, for a seven-year-old.

No title

<--Lovergirl and me at a ballroom dancing competition. There, you learn something new every day.

I have a friend, let's call her Karina, from the North Coast. She was our ballroom dancing instructor when we lived there. Three weeks ago her husband Ry broke his neck in a rugby accident. He's now quadriplegic. He's been helicoptered up here for rehab, she's moved up and is looking for a wheelchair accessible house to rent and the four year old daughter has been flown to New Zealand to stay with her grandparents for this first crisis period.

I don't know Ry so well. One of the things I like about straight friends is that they don't come as a package deal - it's perfectly acceptable to have a friendship based on 'girls' nights' and not really exchange more than a 'hi, howrya going?' as their partner heads out for his own activity. (or, in the case of friends with kids, busily tucks them in while absentmindedly kissing his partygoing wife goodbye). So I never really spent any time with Ry, although he struck me as a good, straightforward, decent bloke.

Lovergirl and I took Karina out for dinner last Saturday night, with a couple of other friends. She took a few hours off and organised a close friend of Ry's to sit by his bed. It was an intense night, with Karina fluctuating between being wildly, hysterically amused by very mediocre anecdotes, and angry. Angry with the hospital, with the social worker (who does sound incompetent), with Centrelink, with the doctors' complete lack of social skills ('Oh, didn't we mention? No, he's probably not going to be able to swallow independently ever again' and the usual complete inability to introduce themselves before they start prodding and poking and making acronyms at the charge nurse).

In the weeks since the accident, two things have struck me. (I wish I was a more subtle writer so these would not sound like banal insights from some self-published self-help book, accompanied by a photo of a constipated kitten or whatever.)

One is that it's enough to live a life that doesn't have any major disasters in it. It doesn't have to be amazing. I just have to avoid the really big abysses (I spend a lot of time struggling with a sense of failure. Does anyone else ever get that?). And if this baby doesn't happen, well, that's not a big abyss. Just a different life path. (I'm serious, not trying to cheer myself up. I was offered some more film work yesterday, and while I said 'I'm booked til June - I'll let you know after that,' what I meant was, 'I have to wait and see if this baby sticks.' Being a filmmaker - that's not such an odious alternative to having a family).

The second thing was just the privilege of watching the intensity of their love for each other. Karina talks about Ry with so much pride, and planning for a future with him, even though those plans have taken a radical shift and that future looks very different from anything she's ever imagined. And that (okay, get your vomit bags out now) a great relationship is a rare thing. A relationship where you think your partner is sexy, and you can imagine them being sexy when they're eighty, and they're smart, and funny, and relaxing, and generous, and you are both healthy...I've spent a bit of time appreciating the small things, in the past couple of weeks.

quick blog

<-- We went camping on the weekend, to Lamington National Park. A lot like here - same sort of forest, only with neat rock-lined trails through it.

Mel and Mona are visiting for a few days so I can't blog long (I don't remember any specific etiquette instructions about blogging while entertaining visitors, but I suspect it's rude).

It's very nice to see our place through their eyes. They're charmed by the outrageously expensive local general store and pop down every day to collect the newspaper, stock up on groceries and keep up to date with the community notice board ("lost: bantam hen, pet, answers to Blacky" and "Relibale teenager will look after your children. ")

oop - they're back

Lilith & the domestic goddess

dolphins off Cape Byron

My friend Katya came up from Melbourne to visit me for the weekend. Katya was my closest friend at university, umm - seventeen years ago, jeez. She's one of the few friends I have who knew me before I was a lesbian.

I remember dragging Katya and my sister to my first ever lesbian night, in the basement of a pub on Cardigan St in North Melbourne. I didn't know any other lesbians and I couldn't go alone. First I had them braid my hair in a million little plaits, with beads on the end. (I wasn't game to cut it off but braids seemed suitably bohemian). We went too early, hardly anyone else was there and the few who were huddled in established clusters, drinking steadily, and not looking terribly interested in a be-braided baby dyke in the wrong clothes.

Old friends are mirrors, sometimes soft flattering ones and other times more like mirrors with flourescent lights blazing on them, showing up every flaw. Katya did a bit of flaw-showing-up, much to the amusement of Lovergirl, who laughed smugly at Katya's tales of my history of numerous disastrous relationships.

It was a delight to see my current home town through a stranger's eyes. Katya loved the python, and the bathroom frog, and the brush turkeys (bloody pests that they are), and the odd people, and the endless green, and even the pitted dirt roads. She coped admirably with our lack of a toilet. A market stall holder asked her rising sign (horoscope) and this made her laugh for days. We read her tarot and took her to a party where she met people who had named themselves after planets, places and states of being.

When I'm feeling guilty that I haven't turned out at all what my parents would have hoped for (despite knowing they love me very much etc etc), I imagine that they would want me to be like Katya. Married - properly married, by a minister, not by a civil servant, which my mother always implied was slightly sinful - with two gorgeous preschool boys, staying at home and creating a beautiful comfortable home... what's not to like about heterosexuality?

WHERE IS THE PERSON WHO WILL KEEP ME IN THE STYLE TO WHICH I WOULD LIKE TO BECOME ACCUSTOMED?

Where is that person?

Sorry Katya - moment of jealousy there. Now back to revelling in own life as exotic independent Northern Rivers lipstick lesbian, despite ongoing difficulty getting sperm to swim in correct direction.

Speaking of sperm...
We've been inseminating the past two days (thanks Dan). Lovergirl drives up to Brisbane after work, we meet outside Donor Dan's place, then race home with the vial of sperm tucked into the waistband of my pants. I do my highly important job of wielding the syringe, we fall asleep with Lovergirl propped up on three cushions to coax the swimmers to travel north, then the alarm goes off at 5.30a.m. so she can get back to the North Coast in time for work.

I got a wishing-jar for my birthday so I think we should be right this month.