Category: Off Topic

I’m in this weird space where it feels like it’s been both a long time and no time at all since I last sat down to write a regular blog post for this blog.

Not that this is going to be regular as such. Anyway.

I was going to write a ‘Done, Doing, Dreaming’ post, but it didn’t feel quite right for this sort of catch up. I’m sitting in a strange place, mentally, and I really just want to do with the flow.

Eight days after being admitted for emergency surgery to remove his ruptured and abscessed appendix, I was able to bring Wanderer home. The space inbetween was confronting, to say the least, with Wanderer’s complications both leaving us terrified that he might lose his life. (There were a lot of ‘we’re not sure what’s going wrong with him’ times.) The important thing is that he didn’t, and he’s okay. But neither of us want to pretend that it didn’t happen, so we’re taking the mentality adjustments slowly.

I want to give my heartfelt thanks to everyone who guest posted, liked guest posts, and/or sent best wishes in one way or another. I appreciate it more than words can say.

There is another guest zine review going up this week, and then I hope to get back into a regular schedule – at least so far as the reviews go – next week. I am very thankful to past Nyx (haha) for working so hard on the weekend calls for submissions so those stayed (and will stay) as normal. Regular posts should come back next week as well, but I don’t want to make any promises while we’re not fully settled.

To those who have asked, Wanderer is doing quite well now that he’s at home. When he made (and succeeded) in his third go at recovery, he quickly became eager to come home. He’s settled in quick and is already moving around a lot better than I thought he would be at this point.

Thank you everyone again. I look forward to getting back up to speed here and to applying the lessons learned about not having ‘spare’ emergency posts just in case…

Best wishes.

I hope you’ve all had a wonderful day. 🙂

Why is it that the most popular, longest lasting search on my site is ‘handwritten grocery shopping lists’?

Strange.

If you follow me on Instagram (@seagreenzines), you’ll know that Wanderer and I took a quick drive over the border into South Australia. To talk about building a house.

*gasp*

I haven’t wanted to say much about because I’m a pessimist at heart or, at least, a cautious realist. A home of my own is something that I’ve wanted for a very long time. I certainly never felt ‘at home’ while I was growing up, and renting doesn’t exactly grant the one the flexibility to make a place feel like home. So there is certainly a lot of emotion tied up in this possibility.

But we went, we got the ball rolling (and the paperwork shoved in the right direction), and now we wait for a few weeks to find out if we can do what we’re hoping to do.

Crossing fingers.

If you’ve recently received one (or more – probably more) notifications involving me liking your post(s) and/or replying to comments, well… That’s because I’ve been writing on this blog for yonks and only recently discovered this:

It’s not that I didn’t know it was there, it’s just that I didn’t pay much attention. I get emails every time someone likes or comments on something, so I didn’t see the point in checking that thing.

Nobody told me that I can, you know, do stuff with it. Especially not that it keeps track of the times when someone replies to a comment I’ve made. Or that I can comment back right then and there.

Yep, my mind exploded into a bunch of glitter and confetti.

However, now I can say – with a confidence I’ve never had before – that I’m for real caught up on comments and such now.

It’s the little things. I may be turning thirty soon, but I’m still a colouring with crayons on the wall kind of gal.

So today is the day! I said that my 100th review is this week, and… it’s not up.

I’ve been running on low fuel these past couple of weeks with all the health tests and such, so I fully own up to being behind already when I woke up this morning. It was all going to work out anyway – I have my 100th zine to review picked out and everything – but then Wanderer and I received a phone call this morning…

Wanderer and I have been seriously pushing forward in the journey to move interstate and buy our own house for what seems like at least a year by now. (The interstate part of that being a longer story for another time.) The call this morning started a rollercoaster of emotion that ended in some excellent news.

However, to get there, we had to deal with additional phone calls, lining up times for things, interviews to confirm details, so on and so forth. What was going to be a quiet day turned out to be sooo busy in the best of ways as it’s all looking like green lights for a move this year!

The pickle of it is that I didn’t get my 100th review up. Oopsie. However, it’s kind of fun because my 100th review will go up on Friday the 13th!

Okay, so maybe ‘fun’ isn’t the word everyone would use, but I’m going to leave it there anyway.

For now, I’ll leave that drum rolling for a smidge longer, and I’ll see you tomorrow with my 100th zine review.

I always feel a little strange when it comes to ANZAC Day. Not about the day itself but about my standing within the context of the day. I feel like, for me, it’s a ‘stand back and keep your mouth shut’ kind of day. I may be Australian now, but I didn’t grow up here, etc, etc. Americans aren’t exactly known for knowing their own history (outside of the Civil War, that is) let alone anyone else’s.

It’s one of those situations where I feel like it’s not my place to feel the feels about this. Americans have Memorial Day, after all. But I do feel it, if only in a way that someone who wasn’t born Australian can feel it.

Even so, I chose not to stand back and pretend that it’s not happening. I may feel how I feel about war, but that doesn’t mean I don’t also feel for the people who fought in these wars. For me, it’s about the individuals and what they went through. And regardless of how I feel about the bigger picture of these things, the individuals deserve at least a moment of silence.

I’m hitting a blank here.

I think I’ve hit the Monday evening slump. It’s a little after 5pm as I’m typing this, and my get up and go has definitely got up and gone. Whoops.

More and more, I’m coming to see that 2016 is going to be, well and truly, a strange and occasionally emotional year for me. I got on Facebook this morning to find many people had posted pictures and memes in celebration of Siblings Day. I did smile, even while I was trying to remember if so many people had posted about it last year. But then my smile died a little when I thought about family, and how that word means something different to me these days.

I posted this:

Apparently it’s Siblings Day. So here’s to all my sisters from other misters and brothers from other mothers. Blood is biology; family is time, effort and giving a damn – a big, important damn. Here’s to each and every one of you who invited me to be part of your lives and showed me what family truly is.

What I didn’t post was how it took my breath away when I remembered that it’s been nearly ten years since either of the men I used to call family have spoken to me. I gave up writing letters a long time ago, but in that moment of clarity, it hit me exactly how long ago that time was.

I don’t know how many biological nieces and nephews I have, though I could guess. I don’t know all their names or how their doing. I don’t know if they realise they have an aunt who loves them even if their parents don’t let me get to know them. I don’t know what those men look like or who they are in their thirties. They are forever frozen in my mind in their early twenties.

Maybe it’s better that way.

But there are people out there who love me. People who would adopt me even at my age. People who are proud to call me sister even though biology says it isn’t so. And the thing is, I AM an aunt to two boys and a girl who have never met me but know their aunty in Australia never misses a birthday postcard (even if they get there a little late sometimes).

So here’s to siblings, by blood or by love alone.

And here’s to a strange, Monday evening soapbox speech because sometimes even a zine blog needs a bit of variety. 😉

Last week I talked about depression starting to get the better of me. Thanks to the power of scheduled posting as well as knowing when to give in and sleep however much I needed to sleep, things are looking brighter.

Not literally, though. It’s quite overcast and dreary out. You win some, you lose some.

I did go out for groceries with Wanderer and almost completely melted into a puddle of tears, so I know that I need to take things easy on myself and not rush back into ‘normal’. I let go (mostly) of what I thought I ‘should’ be doing and went with the flow. A flow that led me to sleeping more on Easter than I have in a long time, but that’s okay.

A lot of good things have been happening, though, to help lift things. Where I may not be able to help some friends in dark times, I am able to help others in need. The generosity of people who donated to my Kickstarter so far is wonderful. I might not reach the goal, but I’ll still have a good feeling about the generosity of strangers.

Onward.