Practice

Flannel flower, hyacinth, rose, snowberry

Mood killah

 

…this week at work has been abysmal. I have been dreaming of higher things, and distracting myself on the internets. Allow me to share with you the fruits of my frustrations.

- In trying to think up a name for my nonexistent floral business, I discovered that the Aztecs ate dahlias and that people still eat them today.

- Edible Mondrian and Matisse – but my favourite is Christo and Jean Claude – thanks to Melbourne Gastronome.

- Lost myself in a pile of luscious blooms in an imaginary garden thanks to Ginny and Tracey

- Tried to remember that I need to be more like Ozzy and Slash.

- Rediscovered my Edward Gorey collection. This picture is from The Gashlycrumb Tinies. My first and favourite.

 

The start

You guys, I’ve done it.

I enrolled in night school. I am learning floristry.

My first bunch of flowers. Next week we get to go on a field trip. And I have a student card! Yippeee!

2007

…was the one year we tried to get into Valentine’s Day. We booked a restaurant with a set meal, dressed up, held hands walking to the restaurant. We were served pink champagne and given gifts of heart shaped soap. It was the ultimate in cheese. I can’t remember why we did it. I suspect it was the first year J and I were going out and had been in the same country (that’s a story for another time). We hadn’t really scoped out each other’s Valentine expectations. After that, it dropped. One year I made cookies.

Since then, it’s been a good night to get a takeaway pizza and a bottle of red, and not think of venturing out into the outside world. However you like to do it – celebrate it or ignore it – I hope you had a nice Valentine’s Day.

Social niceties

On the weekend, I went to watch J play baseball. Owing to the absolutely rubbish Sydney weather, they hadn’t played for 6 weeks, meaning it was a reunion of sorts.

It’s a mixed group. Some of them are good friends, and came to our wedding. Some are new friends that we’ve met through the team and are decent guys. Some are die hard baseball fanatics, and others are just in it for the exercise, or to hang around in a male atmosphere, I guess. Because, like any team sport, there is a lot of testosterone flying around. Insults abound. Tempers flare. Some guys stay quiet, most take it on the chin and some are loud and brash, to prove themselves. One guy in particular maintains a constant bleating about anything. Insult to the guy who didn’t quite hit the ball. Smart alec comment about the other team’s pitcher. Raised-voice snarky commentary from the dugout. He really gets on my case.

The wives, mothers and girlfriends usually perch themselves on a picnic bench and ignore it, chatting about new restaurants, life with babies, who got married to who. It’s all very cliché. It’s usually me who misses the games due to being on tour, but this week, there was a shift. Life had happened. Two brand new babies and a honeymoon meant that I was the only one with a free Sunday, and so I found myself sitting, the lone supporter, next to the dugout.

This doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Armed with two books (fiction and non-fiction), a box of sushi, a mini mudcake and my iPhone, I was very comfortable, thanks very much, and in nobody’s way. I cheer when balls are hit off into the hazy green distance, I urge on runners sliding to home. I am a part of the team.

Constant Bleater carries on with his usual foghorn. The circles around the bases were painted wrong. The other team wasted 5 minutes by wanting to change pitchers. Can we have some glasses for the umpire, he booms from 1st. How about a sock for 1st base, a fellow teammate mumbles audibly. I find myself sniggering. I wield my chopsticks and chew on my salmon sushi with relish.

And then.

During a break, he saunters past to go to the bathroom. He stops in front of me, the shadow of his bulk blocking the sun. I look up at him.

It can’t have been THAT great of a honeymoon, he says sarcastically. I force a weak ha ha! but the confusion must be apparent.

Well, you’re eating raw fish, SO. He gives me a salacious crooked grin, and stomps off to the bathroom.

I… wha… WHAT? The number of ways I find this offensive is astronomical. I wish I had stood up and spat this repost in his face:

Wow, you’re so clever making a witty comment about a woman who just got married eating raw fish! I’m pretty sure that coming home pregnant from your honeymoon is something that was the norm in the 1950s, for starters. How dare you nonchalantly comment on something so private and make it a tawdry, satin-sheets affair? In what world is it ok to comment on the sex lives of a couple you barely know?  Also, idiot, if I was pregnant (which I can’t possibly be, because I had surgery for polycystic ovaries, have a contraceptive implant to control their regrowth and I’m going to need fucking help to get there at all once it’s taken out IF IT IS ACTUALLY POSSIBLE AT ALL, that’s right, I could be infertile, you JERK), but if I was – I wouldn’t even know it yet, smart arse! I would be at most 4 weeks, unless I got pregnant the night of the wedding, and I assure you I didn’t. Don’t even get me started on the fact that you’ve just assumed that the one reason for getting married is to procreate immediately. Phew, we’ve got our certificate, now let’s bring our spawn into the world, post-haste! You know what? My very dear friend came home pregnant from her honeymoon and miscarried. It was the most heartbreaking thing. And that could be me. I could be sitting here numb, trying to sort through the memory of cold tiles and blood and tears. How does that make you feel?

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It thrills me that we have years of idiot comments like this in store for us while we try to live our lives just being married. It makes my heart ache for my friend, who must have had many similar comments whilst she was going through that horrific experience. I marvel at the fact that some men still can’t relate to women as anything more than reproductive machines. And I can’t believe that comments like that happen every day, make women uncomfortable every time,  and society has learnt to just laugh it off and deal.

There will be people who will look at this interaction and observe that it was just a male being uncomfortable around a strange female and trying to make a friendly comment to connect in some way. To thank her for being at the game. To make her feel welcome. And also, if I was pregnant, well, first of all I wouldn’t be eating raw fish, but, I would most likely be quietly thrilled that someone had noticed and made a comment. But the fact is that you never know the other person’s situation 100%. So best to err on the side of caution, yes? Which is me uttering a fake laugh to smooth over an awkward interaction, and should have been him not commenting on a very private thing. Talk to me about the weather, ok?

It is not ok to comment about a woman’s fertility or a couple’s childless state. Not in a flippant, casual, faux-joke manner, or in any other way.

It’s just not ok.

Schmooze it or lose it

Bouquet by Sarah Winward. Photo by Jessica Kettle.

So, careers. I think I don’t like mine, and this is not a happy realisation.

I’ve worked in the same industry (costume for theatre/film/tv) for 8 years, and for the same company for 4 of those years. I did really well with them last year. Hit a peak that I really thought was not achievable for me. And now, this year, I find out that for several longwinded reasons, I don’t have a job with that company any more. I feel let down and disillusioned. Four years of hard work certainly hasn’t paid off. But the worst thing is, it means I have to find something else. And to do that in my line of work, it means you have to go and chase people, flatter people, make yourself memorable, chat easily at opening nights and parties, and know all sorts of random folks who worked with Johnny Depp on that little indie film but don’t like to talk about it.

Basically, you have to be skilled at fakery. And that is something that has never sat well with me, that I have never been able to do with any confidence. It is something I loathe doing.

And so, I find myself at this point where I am in search of a new role. The fear of it all is crippling – fear of falsely arranged facial expressions and “of course, darling”. Of sitting by the phone, hoping that the assurance that “yeah, she needs someone, I’ll pass on your name” wasn’t just a nicety. Of “Oh yes, I worked with him on _____, I’d LOVE to work with him again, he was such a(rude arrogant wanker) fun person to work for!”

My stomach seizes up at every thought of it. So a different little thought has snuck up on me.

I feel like I don’t want to keep chasing. I also feel like I don’t want to live the next 30 years going through this fear every time a contract is up (on average, about 8 weeks – my 5 year role was extremely rare). Is the actual work worth the chasing? I’m not sure anymore.

Maybe it’s time to change my path.

Once this little thought took hold in my mind, it wouldn’t let go. I thought of things that I have fantasised about for years – owning my own shop, working with flowers. I thought about the gorgeous work of women around the world that inspires me daily: Saipua, Bourgeon, Floret, Lotte and Bloom, Amy Merrick, Aleksandra. I went to the library and took out books on running a small business.

I panicked.

I have no money. I have no qualifications to work with flowers. I have no business training. I have no contacts in the industry. I would be abandoning whatever position I have scraped myself to over the last 8 years (though where that position is, in the scheme of things, is dubious). I have no family or friends who would want to go into this venture with me.

And yet somehow, these fears are valid. They are gratifying. They are reassuring. Because amongst these feelings swirling around my heart, there is another: excitement. Excitement: something I have only felt fleetingly at my work over the last few years. It is time to change. It is time to stop feeling apprehensive and nervous about the year ahead, in the way that makes me lie awake at night with a heavy, cold stone in my stomach.

The next little while will be scary, but hopefully in a good way. Lots of me trying to put a great swirling mass of ideas into an orderly timeline. I wonder what will happen.

The 4pm cookie

Yesterday, I was hit with the 4pm munchies. Lunch is a distant memory, dinner is just too far away to contemplate, and something must be done to rectify the hunger IMMEDIATELY or so help me, I might just throw something (I get cranky when hungry).

This recipe is always the one that springs to mind in these situations. Just 20 minutes after you catch yourself thinking, “I could really murder a cheeseburger”, you can be indulging in the contentment that is hot jam with buttery, crumbly cookie. My grandma used to make these when we would visit in the summer holidays, and my mum would make them on weekend afternoons, filling the house with the smell of sweet baking cookie dough. It helps to have a great jam – I had a jar of raspberry from Jackman and McCross, the most wonderful bakery in Hobart, Tasmania.

Jam Drops

Makes 24

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2 cups self raising flour

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter

2 eggs

Jam

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Beat butter and sugar to a cream. Add the eggs, beat well, and the flour and mix well. Roll spoons of dough into little balls. Set on a lined baking tray with enough room to spread. Press small indents in the top of the balls and fill with jam. Bake in a hot oven (200°C) for 12 minutes.

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Love.

It’s February, bitches

I KNOW. But I just couldn’t go without posting about my awesome Nosy Bitch Gift, as organised by Mrs Bunny.

It was to be done by early December and guess what else was happening in early December? Oh that’s right, MY WEDDING. And then our best man had his engagement party weekend, and then it was Christmas, hurrah! Time spent with family and everyone gushing about the flowers/food/dancing/drunken guests/weather (we had the one sunny day in a month of rain). And then, phew, we went on our honeymoon. It was such a relief to not have anyone to see or anything to do that we proceeded to get absolutely trolleyed on our first night in San Diego (at The Tipsy Crow, if anyone’s interested) and hence missed our flight to Cancun the next morning.

ANYWAY. My point is, it was so damn busy before we went away, and we spent so little time at home, that it was only last week that I opened up my fabulous gift from the super wonderful Lyn. What is it, what is it??

It’s a… pretty bag! And an envelope with cool lettering. Hmmm…

Lyn, lady, you have card and wrapping paper choosing SKILLZ.

And then: two of my most favourite of life’s simple pleasures. A divine smelling tea and a soap that I want to eat. They are from Juniper Ridge, which is an awesome company making delicious mountain and desert infused things from Lyn’s neck of the woods. I got the Big Sur soap and the White Sage and Wild Mint tea.

At this point, I’m going to go ahead and assume that Lyn is psychic. Things that I have never written about, here or on twitter:

1. My addiction to buying fancy soap, usually from here

2. My very large and highly treasured collection of tea. I don’t drink coffee, so tea is my thing. I love trying new flavours and I have a cupboard full of old teacups and saucers to drink them in.

Thankyou so much, Lyn. I love my gift and it was super fun receiving a present in the mail!

Thoughts on expectations

There is so much written about the expectation of your wedding day to be the best day of your life. So much hype and build up about preparing all the details in such a way as to make it the best day you have ever experienced, and then, on the flip side, making sure you’re clear that it doesn’t need to be.

As brides-to-be, we are fairly well informed about this faux-fact. It does NOT have to be the best day, we hear. It would be SAD if it were the best day of your life, because what then do you have to look forward to? However, you really should research and plan and make sure you track down every perfect thing for this day, so it is totally YOU, a pure expression of your selves, your relationship personified – a PERFECT day.

To a point, I took all this with a grain of salt. We aimed for something in the middle. No, we didn’t want the best day of our lives, but we certainly wanted a damn great day. We chose things that we wanted, and we wanted things that were a little bit indulgent. We wanted a glimmer of perfection, and we certainly wanted the day to celebrate our relationship. We also hit a point where we wanted and needed to stay sane.  At 8 weeks out, I wrote about everything being sub-standard and then slowly, I realised I would just have to deal. It was going to be great. We had chosen well. It was not going to look like some crazy florist let loose in a circus tent with a visiting troupe of Mexican carnies. But neither was it going to be a glossy, magazine cover wedding, or the one from 500 Days of Summer.

And that was ok, that was good.

OH MAN do I wish that I had had the foresight to keep that outlook going after the event. Because then came the next expectation, the natural follow-on:

The honeymoon is supposed to be the best holiday of your life.

And… it wasn’t. I’ve made you a table.

Holidays taken by Emma and J

Now, don’t get me wrong. It was a fantastic holiday. It was five weeks of not working, for one. And we did some amazing stuff, ate amazing food, and stayed in some cool places. But the whole time, there was this subtle awareness that we HAD to have a good time, the best time, because this holiday was supposed to be better than any holiday EVER! Because we got married!

This little voice, pushing us to get out and have the best day every day, remained unspoken of until the last day of the trip. We were in a bar on Sunset Boulevard, having gone for something to eat and gotten distracted by the bourbon and rum. A few drinks had loosened our thoughts. We reminisced about the trip. I got into my thoughtful “you know what?” frame of mind. And it came out. Had we enjoyed the holiday? Yes we had. Was it fun? Yes, in places. Was it better than other holidays we had? No.

And it’s our own fault! Because when was the last time you had the best time ever when you woke up in the morning and said to yourself, “I am going to have the best day ever today?” Never, that’s when. It has to be a spontaneous, unplanned occurrence. And in all our planning and expectations of the trip, we didn’t leave too much room for spontaneity. We always have fun together, planned or unplanned, so it didn’t at first seem obvious. But the weight of so many great holidays in our past had put pressure on this one to live up to the standard.

It’s ok. We’ll deal. Hell, we had five weeks of awesome food and places and met some great people. It would be shameful and spoiled to whinge, and I don’t want to whinge. That’s not how I feel about it. I wish I had just taken that hint that the wedding gave me – that it doesn’t need to be perfect, that it will be what it is – and run with it through the honeymoon.

A bit of light reading

I have a problem. When I travel I buy books. Lots of books. I see them in shops and I cannot resist, even though it is perfectly well known to me that I could wait and order them when I get home. No no! I must have them then and there. It starts at home, packing for the journey, when I have a freak out about packing enough books to read on the plane because there is no greater Hell on Earth than having no book to read on a plane. Then I think, well, if I finish them all on the plane, then what have I got for the bus, train, return plane journey? So I pack a few more, with complete disregard to the fact that I KNOW I will buy books in whatever town I go to.

So it was a pleasant and quiet thrill to discover on our honeymoon that my husband has the same problem as me. I watched with hidden glee as he purchased book after book, with casual indifference to the state of his luggage.

And now today back at home, I am unpacking, and found the reason for our need to buy a fourth suitcase.

What’s that? It makes you cry to see books in such a messy pile? Me too.

This, my friends, is 19 books purchased overseas. 19 books we had to lug back to Australia. 19 books that we love. Featured with our Christmassy chilacayote (shut up, we just got back. Decoration bump out is tomorrow.)

Eight of these books were purchased from quite possibly the best bookstore on earth, a store we discovered mere blocks from our apartment in New York, during a wintery stroll one night:

The Strand Bookstore, 828 Broadway (corner of East 12th St). This place was heaven. We spent hours here.

So what was purchased?

Left to right, top row:

1. I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley. I bought this at Strand as it seemed like a smart girl’s observance of life in NYC, and I was feeling like a smart girl in NYC. I read it on the plane home, and it was indeed smart. And funny, and I read it in 4 hours. I will be buying her next one.

2. Chichen Itza: A Practical Guide and Photoalbum (one word!). Bought in a rush as we arrived to this most fantastic of ancient Mayan sites. We learned such things as: when a goal was scored in a Mayan ball game, the game was won and the scorer had the privilege of sacrificing his life for humanity.

3. The Mexican Wars for Independence by Timothy J Henderson. Bought by J at a little stall in Williamsburg. J is much more of a history nerd than me.

4. Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald. This was one packed from home for the plane. I read this immediately after the rush of Room, so it took me a while to get into it. Then when I did, it was one of those books that imbue your everyday life with their mood, so I walked around one day feeling like a depressed psychiatrist trying to analyse my life, and the next a nymph-like 1920s young girl with severe mental issues.

5. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides. Perhaps a purchase made as a direct result of reading #4.

6. Treatise on Elegant Living by Honore de Balzac. J bought this in the shop of the New Museum. It is a little book written in 1830 about dandyism. It did not surprise me at all that this was the book that called J’s name from the shelves.

7. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. J bought this at the airport bookshop when he realised that he’d done the unthinkable and forgotten to pack a book for the plane. I spent the majority of the flight reading over his shoulder trying to catch the violent bits, and kept getting lengthy descriptions of food and clothing.

Left to right, middle row:

8. Accommodating Nature: the Photographs of Frank Gohlke by John Rohrbach. This book was in the window of a little store called Left Bank Books in the West Village. I saw the cover photograph and immediately wanted to buy it. I had never heard of Frank Gohlke, but was quickly smitten by his breathtaking shots of cyclone damage and the American landscape.

9. Decade of the Wolf by Douglas W Smith and Gary Ferguson. After a crazy three days at Yellowstone that involved snowmobiling through snow and wind for 100 miles, driving alongside bison, and viewing the elusive 11 member Lamar Valley wolf pack – adventures that us Sydneysiders can only dream about – we got snowed in, had our flights out cancelled, arrived to a different airport and begged for a flight, got it, and proceeded directly to the bookshop, where we bought this book. Both as a good read and as a reminder of a world so far removed from ours.

10. Room by Emma Donoghue. Another one packed from home for the plane. It was the first book I read on the trip, and it was so absolutely gripping I was finished half way through the first flight. This is why I pack lots of books. I can’t tell you anything about it, because you should just read it.

11. Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago. J is a big fan and has quite a collection of his books, and annoys me every time I go to read one by saying, “Oh, you might not like his style of writing”. So stubbornly I haven’t read any.

12. Creole by Babette de Rozieres. I have wanted to buy this cookbook for YEARS. Years, I say. And in Australia it has always been about $70, out of my price range. So when we chanced upon the Phaidon bookstore in Soho, and they were selling it for $20, well.

Bottom row, left to right:

13. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. J’s purchase equivalent to #1. Replace “girl” with “boy”.

14. Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey. My third book from home. A really sweet coming of age story about a young Australian boy stuck in a small town. The kind of book you hope gets placed on high school required reading lists.

15. The Big Short by Michael Lewis. J is one of those lovably irritating people who read and loved Moneyball way before the movie came out. So he spotted this in Posman Books in the Chelsea Market and thought he’d give it a go. It’s about the stockmarket, which is about where my interest in the plot waned.

16. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton. While I was away, I spent a lot of time feeling low about my job. Or maybe just feeling flat about the future of my career in general.  I bought this to either a) reassure me or b) allow me to wallow a bit more in my job despondency.

17. Animal Farm by George Orwell. There is a possibility that I might be designing a theatre production of this book this year. I have never read it. It was on the Banned Books table at Strand which made it seem more interesting than a “I have to read this for work” purchase.

18. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore. I’ll be honest, I picked this book up because I liked the cover (which, in an aside, is a Cecilia Paredes, who was mentioned on Design for Mankind only yesterday… weird.) However, when I read the back, I was filled with the sense of fellowship that I might have with this woman. It reeked of a silent cry for help and I immediately felt I understood her.

19. American Pastoral by Philip Roth. Another J purchase. He had recently read Freedom by Jonathan Franzen and had just finished reading American Psycho. I’m seeing a trend.

~

Where possible, I have linked to the store where we actually bought the books. I hope I have inspired someone to go and read something. There are few things more comforting to me than to be surrounded by books.