All the small things.

Yesterday I saw ‘The Hobbit’ and without ruining it for anyone, let me just say that it was great. At the end I felt empowered and whimsical and happy - some of my favourite feelings to feel.

Somewhere towards the end of my choc-top but before my Twisties (long movies are the best!), Gandalf gave a monologue that stuck. It was all about the small-things being the things that make life nice and lovely and chocolate-filled.

If you’ve read this blog before (or met me, which no doubt you have Mum) you’ll know that I am well into things that are nice, lovely, and particularly chocolate-filled. WELL into.  And as I get older, I am losing will and ability to hide it. Basically, I’m getting dorkier and I’m ok with it. (In an effort to prove this point, I took a look back at my original Facebook profile from 2008. Five years later I’m still quoting Frente! in my status updates... so apparently I was always dorky, and now I’m just ok with it.)

I’ll admit, there are lots of small-things out there that are less than chocolate-centered. I’ll reflect, just quickly, on a few of these things and then I’ll get to the point. Or at least a point (maybe).

Small-things that get, or have gotten, my goat:

1. Shop-keepers who talk to me when I’m having a bad day
2. People who let their dogs off the leash in areas where you aren’t supposed to
3. Seaweed when it’s in the shape of scary things in the water
4. Cappuccinos that don’t come with chocolate on top
5. Anything doesn’t come with chocolate on top, when I think it will (or should)
6. Pants that fit perfectly except for that annoying ‘gap’ at the back
7. People who swear at other people in traffic

I both resent and worry about people who swear at other people in traffic (PWSAOPIT). Do they go through their whole lives yelling at other people who make small-mistakes? How much of their existence do they spend unwinding windows and thinking up things to say that are both hurtful and swift? Seems like a waste of time and arm-energy to me. And surely it can’t make them happy (It certainly doesn’t make me happy when I’m the one being sworn at).

But maybe PWSAOPIT are really just the same as me with my poor attitude towards shop-keepers. Aren’t I just winding down my brain-window and swearing at them from my mind-car? (wow, Kathryn). They probably wonder why I spend so much energy moving coat-hangers so aggressively.

Perhaps the world would be a better place if I just assume PWSAOPIT are the result of small-things that have gotten their goat. Maybe they’d had a run in with some seaweed. Maybe they’d tried on some ill-fitting pants. Maybe their cappuccino came with no chocolate on it.

Or maybe they work in a shop where I’d got aggressive with some coat-hangers.

Imagine if Gandalf had decided Bilbo wasn’t worth any energy because of his initial attitude and wariness of adventure (uh oh, this could get dorky). There’d be no adventure at all, and certainly no reason to eat both a choc-top and Twisties (long movies are the best!).

I figure if Gandalf can give Hobbits a chance, then I can give people a chance. Even if they give me small-reasons not to.

That guy is a wizard, after all. So probably smart.

Me and my anonymous friend Rochelle. It's worth noting that I forced her into this.

Soundtrack.

I’m sitting in a café in Fitzroy, and a beautiful song has just come onto the sound-system. I'm jealous I didn’t write it, but also happy someone else did (see previous post ‘I hate you, Regina Spector').  I don’t know who it is, but if there was a soundtrack to my life, I’d like for it to be in the mix.

I write music and play it. I also sing it, dance to it and generally enjoy it’s being around.  Like most people, I associate bands, songs and albums with the people and events that have populated my life. Like any good soundtrack, they have enhanced these experiences and relationships.

And they are mostly folk-pop (kidding… maybe).

Since I was very little, the soundtrack to my life has been quite nice.  I can remember watching my anonymous mother Susan dancing around our lounge-room to Paul Kelly’s ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ (there were many large and repetitive arm movements involved). I knew dinner was ready when ‘Passionate Kisses’ by Mary Chapin Carpenter came on the stereo (a great dinner song, I swear).

To me, home sounds like Paul Kelly, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys and The Indigo Girls. Family holidays sound like Crowded House and Things of Stone & Wood. Holidays with friends sound like Paul Simon, Flight of the Concords, and the Big M ad (“Amy was a girl on the side of the road, I picked her up and away we go, I 'm leaving home without you I know…”). Trips overseas sound like Bon Iver. Ex-boyfriends sounded like Ball Park Music, Laura Marling and Vince Jones.  High school sounded like Harvey Danger, Blink 182 and Something for Kate (maybe just a smidge of cheeky Hanson for good measure).

My liking of nice music (please ignore earlier Hanson reference) (…actually stuff it, they were awesome - you know it and I know it) was largely influenced by my anonymous father (my mother’s only record being the Beaches soundtrack). He regularly sang to my two sisters and I at bedtime, in a vocal style that I thought was purely ‘Dad’ until I released it was mostly ‘Neil Young’. Our favourite lullabies were James Taylor’s ‘Sweet Baby James’, Jefferson Starship’s ‘The Baby Tree’, Donavan’s ‘Circus of Sour’. And strangely enough, ‘Big Ted’s Dead’ by The Incredible String Band. It wasn’t until I got a little older that I realised that these were interesting choices of lullaby. My sister even had a Big Ted. Must’ve been tough to sleep after that…

He also played guitar (though mostly this was limited to The Beatles’ ‘Rocky Raccoon’), which I thought was pretty darned-freakin’ cool until the 'my-dad’s-a-rock-hero' illusion was recently damaged when, while “jamming” (and I use this term so so loosely), he shared with me his theory that all songs are made up of just two chords: G and C.

They are not.

But apparently Rocky Raccoon is.

I was surprised, in 2005, to find out that my father was a music-bully (MB). I was visiting his brothers and sisters in the US when they decided it was the perfect time to tell me about this  One story (told with not-just-trace amounts of real bitterness) involved him chasing his younger sibling with a chair, threatening her safety should she attempt touch any of his records, with particular emphasis on his Bob Dylan collection.

I can relate.

My relationship with music, particularly CDs (I know I know… ‘streaming’, ‘internet’, whatever)  is quite emotionally charged (though perhaps not ‘chair-wielding’ charged). Many of the bands and CDs that I have mentioned throughout this post are ones that I now own, simply because home doesn’t seem like home without them. And so I feel pretty lucky that home was filled with such great music. 

But then again, quality is in the eye of the be-listener.

…because no matter how hard I try not to, I freakin’ love Taylor Swift.  Freakin’ love her. 

She can be in my soundtrack for sure.

Today was a Fairytale, Taylor Swift

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUqnrjSFXtE

Passionate Kisses, Mary Chapin Carpenter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7l8lz4Urn4

Private Helicopter, Harvey Danger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFaAxlNjCUA

Circus of Sour, Donavan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFfy2fNEFQM

Rocky Raccoon, The Beatles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNRH7_Kd5Yc

Signed, sealed, delivered.

Yesterday I received a little piece of cardboard in my mailbox, which told me that the postman had visited while I was out. It told me that I had a package waiting for me at the nearby Australia Post, and that at my convenience I could go and collect it. 

What fun! A Surprise Present (SP), to be received at my leisure! Maybe a love letter from a secret admirer!? Maybe I’d won a prize!? All that was certain was that it was bigger than would fit into my postbox.  A lengthy love letter, perhaps? Perfect!

Thanks to the wonders of modern email and online banking, the only reasons I would ever go to the post-office these days is to either collect something, or to send something else. Both activities, in my opinion, are exciting - and provoke similar feelings to Christmas.

Current financial challenges aside, I really like giving gifts. My anonymous mother tells me that when I was little, I used to wrap up little objects (gum-nuts, twigs, dried flowers) in paper, and leave them around the house (in my parents bed) for them to find and enjoy (to stick in their backs while they slept). The joy that I got out of this activity was very real, as was my anonymous father’s resulting hay-fever. Presumably this behaviour continued until I got me some cash (although maybe now is the right time for me to re-discover the art of twig-giving).

My family has a certain system of gifting at Christmas. It lasts a very, very long time, and generally ends with us all sitting around in a lethargic fashion as though we have participated in some kind of endurance-based sport. 

It starts with one person collecting a gift from under the tree (a real tree, mind you... don’t try and fool me with any fake tree b*llsh*t), who gives it to another family member/hanger-on-er-er, who opens it while others keenly observe. After an appropriate amount of admiring/holding/trying-out/on, the open-er goes and collects a gift for someone else. The whole process is peppered with comments from my anonymous mother, such as “Oh, did that say ‘Bridget’? Actually that one was for Meghan/Kathryn/Oscar (the dog).”

Let me tell you: parting with a gift that you’ve opened is emotionally difficult.

Anyway…  so I have just received a slip-de-joy and off I go, slip in hand as though I’d found it inside a chocolate bar. 

One of the major things I think I find so appealing about the Post Office Experience (POE) is that the whole idea so straightforward.  Something needs to get from Point A to Point B. How often are problems as simple as this? If it’s big, you put it in a big box. If it’s small, you put it into a small box, or perhaps an envelope. If it’s breakable, there are a plethora of cushy-options to choose from; from bubble wrap to shredded newspaper, to those little peanut shaped beans that seem like a good idea until you spill them everywhere by accident and then have to pick them up while they make a sound that you feel in your stomach. Either way, the problem can be solved, and generally is solved by way of stationary.

Just imagine if all issues could be solved through delightful and satisfying foldy bits of cardboard! As someone who’s head generally thinks about things all at once and not ‘through’, finding the right box/envelope for the right occasion makes me feel like I have really achieved something. A small success to tick of my lengthy life-list.

Anyway. 

I waited in line. I showed my ID. And in the end I did receive my package. Turns out it was something I’d bought for myself on eBay. 

And I couldn’t care less.

Maybe I’ll start posting myself love letters.

The Docklands Market. A nice (if not slightly obscenely warm) way to spend a Sunday. 

Yes, that’s a lot of dresses. No, I am not ashamed.

When I was quite little, my anonymous sister Bridget told me that I had no sense of style.

It hurt. Not only because it was delivered with the kind of purposeful flippancy that only an older sibling can bestow, but because, in my opinion, it was not entirely true.

I’ll elaborate.

When I was about six, my anonymous mother Susan bought me what can only be described as a purple clown suit. Onesy. It was a fiesta of spots and stripes, had smart black buttons down the front, and a comically large pointy collar.  I loved it. Not only was it stylish, but it also had the practical element of disenabling me to wear my usual tracksuit pants backwards; a scenario that, at that time, happened more often than not. Perfect!

I wore my purple clown suit (PCS) around the house and to school, and the love affair continued until one day my friend’s pet mouse ran up the sleeve and could not be extracted.

Throughout much of my early adolescence, my wardrobe choices revolved around a pair of overalls (a similar idea to the PCS, but with greater access for removing unwelcome rodents), a skivvy, and a pink and white striped hat that my anonymous Aunt Sara had bought for me at a local Geelong market. I thought I looked great. Hell, I did look great.  I was Alex Mac. 

I wore my ‘ovies’ most days, apart from school days when I was forced to turn into a blue school uniform.

My school uniform was a prison in clothing-form. It consisted of a blue boxy dress, blue jumper, blue socks, blue shirt, blue tie, blue kilt, blue socks and - the bane of my adolescence - a blue blazer. Sports days were for blue tracksuits (at this point generally worn the right way around). I still struggle with ‘blue’ as a general concept.

So, with all this blue to deal with five days a week, high school clothing decisions were mostly restricted to ‘boxer shorts or bike shorts’ under my school-dress, whether my ‘royal blue’ scrunchie was close enough to the ‘sky blue’ outlined in the school’s dress policy, and what to wear on casual dress days (overalls, of course!). For one glorious month in 2001, (to my seemingly easily evoked delight) the school trialed a ‘no tie’ policy, which led to such an immediate flurry of wild behavior among the ‘ladies’ that ties were swiftly re-instated. And just in time, no doubt.

It was when I started university that I decided that I would become a dress wearer. In those days (the olden days of 2003), dresses had not yet come back into fashion (though my mother’s LL Bean catalogue would say that tracksuit dresses, and skorts, had never left!). So I decided that if I was going to wear dresses to uni, I would have to do it from day one, so that people who didn’t know me (and my overall inclined behaviour) would just assume I did that kind of thing all the time. “No big deal guys, that’s Kathryn Kelly - she wears dresses”. Totes.

Like they cared.

My first dress was a pink floral number. I wore it on my first day (and by that I mean second day… I forgot to turn up on the first day.), with my carefully practiced guise of confidence. I felt summery and pretty and special and I loved it. I wrote songs about it. I never looked back.

Luckily, the rest of the world was watching (as I had evidently assumed they would), and so dresses came back into fashion quite soon after.

So it comes to the point where I reveal I spent the next nine years accumulating enough dresses to be able to quite comfortably wear a different one every day for one month, and still have quite a few left over to keep my wardrobe satiated. 

Yes, that’s a lot of dresses. No, I am not ashamed. (Note that I am slightly ashamed.) I love them all. And if you go back through the ‘Coming Up Kathryn’ archives to October last year, you will find dorky and sentimental dedications to 31 of these dresses. 

If only there was some kind of month-long celebration of overalls.

www.frocktober.org

 My first dress. And some chickens.

Cool Change

I’ve never been very good at small talk.

…nope.

At parties, you are most likely to find me in the kitchen trying to spend a lot of time deciding between different kinds of sandwich. A well-placed fruit platter can add a couple of minutes to this process, and also opens opportunities to discuss seasonal fruits with fellow kitchen dwellers (KDs).

It’s lucky for me that I live in Victoria, Australia, where if all other topics of conversation fail, I can rely on one that is foolproof. I mean other than seasonal fruits.

My dad, who arrived here about thirty years ago from the USA, has always said he can’t believe how often Victorians discuss the weather. We talk about the weather so much that even questions that don’t specifically related to it, do. “What’s it going to be like on the weekend?” really means “what is the weather doing on the weekend?”. “It’s going to be nice tomorrow” isn’t a statement about one’s love of Wednesdays. Imagine where we’d all be if we had no rain, hail or shine to discuss. We’d be endlessly awkward and conversationless. We’d be clogging kitchens everywhere.

When I was little, I clearly remember most summer-weather small talk revolving around what seemed to me to be the unicorn of the summer season: the cool change.

For those who don’t know (and by this I mean dad’s sisters: the only people reading this who live outside of a 100km radius of me and my computer), a ‘cool change’ is the point in a summer day when a breeze lifts from the ocean and blows on over to your place, dropping the temperature by a few degrees. The climatic equivalent of comic relief. 

It’s the point in the day that you get to stop surviving and start living. Once the cool change comes through, you are free to do all the tasks that somehow seemed unmanageable and unrealistic before: watering plants, cooking dinner, strolling down the street or getting out of your chair. When I got old enough to drive it meant going to the beach for an evening swim. The specific time of it's arrival is endlessly discussed throughout the day, though it normally arrives about dinner-time (presumably for a free meal). 

Maybe talking about the weather is the conversational equivalent of a cool change. Something that brings comfort and ease. Something that makes really horrible, tedious exchanges manageable.

And if that fails... 

you can always go to find some more sandwiches. 

Are strawberries in season again?

Perfect boiled eggs.

Owning it.

Last Saturday night I sat at home like a kid in a candy store.

I don’t know at what point in my life I got so excited about staying at home, but I sure am into it. I was happily doing all kind of home-ish activities; wearing loose pants, eating multiple ice-creams (I assume that is the reason they sell them in packets on six) and determinedly not leaving the house even to go to Video Dogs (No I still haven’t got the hang of downloading things – what of it?), when I decided to take a closer look at some TV.

Gosh, I love TV.  I just love it.

I know it’s not cool to love TV. In my defense I don’t watch a lot of it. Partially because I am pleasantly busy in my life, and partially because there is nothing on that’s any good. Mostly it’s just a choice between boring reality (shows), and different flavours of CSI. And let’s face it, the only CSI worth watching is Miami. That Heratio does an outstanding job.

So I was flicking through channels on my happily lonely Saturday night, when I stumbled upon a film called ‘Some Like It Hot’ on the ABC. 

At the point when I channel-stumbled in, there was slap-tastic scene going on, which involved multiple women (in their underwear!) having a party on a train. One of these women was in fact a man, which to me was quite obvious, but somehow not to any of the underwear clad women.

But maybe CSI has boosted my detective skills.

Now even though I pretend to have somewhat of a sense of culture (please disregard CSI Miami comments from earlier), I must admit that this is my first real experience of Marilyn Monroe. I mean, other than Marilyn played by Michelle Williams (it’s now more official than ever that Dawson was out of his league with both of his female co-stars). Culture.

Some quick maths and Googling tells me that when SLIH first hit the screens in 1959, my academically inclined mother would have been picking up her first crayon. Which to me is interesting, because for as long as I can remember, Susan Kelly has been well on top of drawing with crayons. So this tells me that SLIH came out a while ago.

And let me tell you. That Marilyn is amazing. Not ‘amazing for the time’. I mean actually AMAZING. In all senses of the word.  If I hadn’t been determinedly couch-bound, I myself would have been rioting in the streets. Those were not dresses. Those were sparkly bits stuck onto rude bits. In an amazing way.

What I also found interesting, was that her character (named Sugar!) wasn’t solving crimes with test tubes and an Alabama accent like women do these days (Wow, I am really digging myself a shallow CSI grave here aren’t I?). No no, she was far too busy playing with beach balls, wearing kickin’ outfits, and generally trying to catch herself a rich fella. The dumbest of blonds. (I mean that in ‘Don’t complain if you are blond because YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN’ kind of way).

The cool thing was - she was totally owning it.

She didn’t change who she was in order to appear smarter - no way. And you know what? She did get herself that man. She even sailed off into the sunset. And at the end of the film I felt nothing respect for the lovely Sugar. She got everything she wanted - and in sparkles to boot.

So I have decided to take a leaf out of her book and ‘own it’ too. 

I have decided to start by bravely declaring my love for TV. Maybe no sparkles just yet.

 What is this????

Orange Leaves & Cafes.

As I grow older and ‘wiser’ into my full-sized grown-up self, I appreciate winter-time more and more. Now it could just be my love of accessories talking, but doesn’t winter just seem more romantic (in that non-romancy sense of the word)?

Winter is a time of fire-places, rain on windows, and multiple-movies-in-a-sitting. It’s a time when drinks are mulled, and you can eat fish and chips in your car while you watch the surfers and secretly think ‘Suckers, better you than me’.

Summer does, of course, have its summery perks. Just a bit showy, maybe? Sunshine… exposed-skin… sitting outside… fish & chips on the sand (and the host of sand-related issues involved with that). Whatever, summer, I say – give me a car that smells like fish & chips for three weeks.

In the last year I have moved from a small seaside town, where summer meant one thing – tourists.  Personally, I enjoyed being able to complain about tourists. All Locals secretly do. (NB: I am only able to refer to myself as ‘Local’, but not ‘A Local’. Very different.) It brings us together in an annual bonding ritual known as Tourist Hate (TH). Truth be known, the only time I noticed it was in line at Ryan’s IGA… which was fine because my coveted ‘frequent customer tag’ implied my superiority at check-out.

‘Schoolies’ are a particularly enjoyable breed of tourists to complain about. These are the ones who have just finished Year 12, and are looking for some frivolity before they start pretending to be grown-ups (as we all are I am pretty sure). They are young and do silly things that Locals love to hate – from the more traditional trampling of flower-beds, to stealing my recycling bin. Which, is a gift in itself really. Because: a) it gives Locals something to justify their TH, and b) it warrants a trip to the local Council Offices –a Mecca for small-town complainers. (Apparently they use the bins to stow illicit alcohol – the scallywags.)

Winter in a beach-side town is a whole different story. There is something pride-provoking about living in a town other people pass through only on holiday and special occasions. In winter, Locals get to rejoice in the privacy, quiet and beauty of their place. A different sort of beauty that other people miss because they are busy living and working somewhere just that little bit too far away.  The incidental loveliness that is there every day when you step out of your front door.

After almost 8 months of living in this big town of Melbourne I am beginning to see the loveliness that exists here as well. Beautiful old buildings and secret parks and orange leaves and warm cafes...

But WHERE are the good fish and chip shops?

Out my front window. How can this be bad?