Into the 6 months +

Well ok its 4th day of the week after my original 6 months. I am starting to feel like i should go back to work, but i've committed myself to 4 more months. I sleep really badly & fail to proceed in the days. Think i need something to distract me & learning a whole new IT system would about fill the bill.

But i haven't gone to Paris yet, or even to Canberra properly, so maybe i should be planning some of that & getting on with it. Sadly, someone is borrowing my car so that i'm left adrift for a bit. Sadly too i'm first spending a few days getting it fixed so that it doesn't get left up in the mountains with a busted tranny etc. Waiting around endlessly, i guess this might be a reason why i feel a little antsy about the week. And now the tax ppl want my tax. Dang they expect it every year???

Maybe i should throttle off, make like a fence & get over it all.

Food poisoning this morning. I cooked half the dinner & bro cooked the other half. So if the rest of the family, once they arise, are also a bit unwell we can flip a coin to blame.

A mate said its a good idea to keep a notebook, like you're doing a Masters', to keep your brain in order while you attempt a project. I reckon i will do that, cos i'm spending a lot of time away from the studio & if i had a notebook i might feel a bit less distanced from actually doing anything useful. It might help put my mind back on track maybe, give it a go anyways.

BTW only me is unwell. I ate exactly the same as everybody else yesterday. Guess i just lucky.

6 months plus a bit

Thusly the title of mine Blog boots itself into illogicity. What i mean to say is, its not 6 months anymore. When dad got sick i asked for an extension on my 6 months of bludging & they gave me one. So in total i'd have 10 months leave. Not gonna change the blog title, cos to tell the truth the bludging part has never been true either, since i seem to be working 7 days/nites a week, so its all a bit of an untruth in the end innit.

If it were still 6 months leave i'd be back at work in 5 days. So technically i could make it, all my commitments are committed. But luckily its all arranged that i won't. This is good, i don't feel ready to go back, feel like yesterday i left... like, where's the 6 months?

Botulism delivered to yr door

We have some funny old rellies. One brings us ancient used food at the moment. It is tradition to take food to people in bereaved situation. Today we were gifted some crossaints & some meat soup. How ever u spell that... croassaints. We ovened the cross-aunts to make em nice & took em outside & mum was the lucky recipient of the green one. Sadly we hadn't checked em over first. Oh yes, they were in my fridge since last week she sez. There's a gift that'll keep on giving.

We carefully drain her meat soups down the sink & never actually consume anything she brings, except her kugloaf, which being a baked cake like thing, you can't go wrong with. And a good kugloaf is worth a bit of staleness & think it would turn to concrete before it mouldered anyways. My bro sez the meat soup pot had tide lines, like its been heated & a bit eaten, then reheated & reheated & reheated. Thank G-d we don't attempt it out of good manners. We have probably saved her a bellyache too by taking it off her.

Nice of her to bring all this mountain of food, for sure, but she does complain she has bad tummy sometimes. People who been thru the war, they are sometimes funny about food. Never throw nothing out, eh.

In the back yard

Its been sunny every day since dad passed away. We all sit on the back porch thing in the morning & absorb rays. My bro is putting in loads of plants, the kangaroo paw is my favorite. He's adding creepery things where mum always wanted them & loads of flowers.

After the funeral

Well dad passed away wed nite, 11.15. Things happened really fast in the last few days. It was a massive effort from everybody, including dad, poor bugger. We did night shifts the last few nights cos we wanted always someone should be there. mum & sis were there when he went. We then had to do shifts again cos the body shouldn't left alone. Incredibly, there is only one doctor who can come to yer house in this entire side of town, & he was busy, gonna be til 5.30 am when the next Dr was due on. Piss poor service, what can u say. I didn't mind minding dad though, it seemed kinda fitting. Bro did the first few hrs, i slept on the floor. I woke & harangued him to bed at 5am. The morning Dr come at 6am to give us a bit of paper & then the funeral guys could take him about 7. It was a rainy day.

The funny thing was everyone wanted to be woken up for the Dr, but nobody responded at all when i knocked on the ceiling 3 times & even went upstairs to get people it was pitch black & not a breath of stir. In the past few weeks everybody would have instantly leapt up at any moment 24/7 when they heard a piece of paper fall downstairs or a pin bend in Tasmania, but they were totally knocked out now. It was over.

Funeral was yesterday.

Today and the next week we just hang around the house, people visit etc. Catch up some sleep.

Radio Arse

Moving dad this morning with the radio on... as we start proceedings, the pleasant classical melody segues to Schubert's Funeral March. We flick off the radio. We turn it back on when he gets to his chair in the front room. A few min later as he's nodding off, Margaret f'ing Throsby starts to harp on about friggin euthenasia. Its not fucking safe to listen to the fucking radio.

Attempt a shift

I dunno how other families do these things but we are doing ok i reckon. We've kept dad out of the hospice & hope we can keep him. He wouldn't get better care in there anyway & he gets it faster with 4 people waiting on him. This is the first night we done shifts, sitting in the kitchen minding him. I got the midnite to 3am. This seat is arse & my back hurts & i don't move cos it creaks. but i got the wifi working & with the laptop on my knee i'm downloading missile silo plans & line drawings of machinery. I fancy doing a full exhibition of sculptures based on the cold war. That would sure be a challenge. Its probably not gonna happen, its just my current ploy to keep my mind off things. i kinda feel guilty to have something else to try to think about, but got to have something to think about besides the usual cos this situation is, like they sez in the papers, untenable. The oxygen machine is going like the clappers with slight change of tone sometimes, which seems to be when a breath is taken, but i found out later its not. It makes a helluva noise really. Its even audible over the noisy fridge kicking in right next to me. Its in the other room going like you'd expect a small air compressor to go, like a fast little motor poppin away.

People are moving around the house now at 2.45am. We're going to attempt a roll over or at least a small shift.

That went reasonable-good. dad a bit stroppy to be woken at 3am just to be irritated, but we did what we needed. Its good he is stroppy.

Landscape changed

The house has become an unfamiliar landscape where nobody is in their right room or their correct bed. Dad is in my single bed in the dining room. Mum is in the lounge on the floor. I'm in their bed in their room (with a tv! which is an upside), bro is in sis' room on guest bed & sis is in my double bed in bro's room. How simple is that.

I'm sorting out my old bedroom to somehow turn it into a sitting room, as there's no bed in it anymore so we could use it as another living space maybe. Someplace for me to do my tax, anyway, and maybe some painting. A lot of stuff is in storage but yet everybody is still at me to put *more* stuff in storage. Sigh. Never happy with half finished jobs, some people, bugger it.

Sculpting wise well not much happening. i have an overwhelming idea for a theme that will come out when i get time maybe. I spoke about that in the last blog entry i think but anyway still leaning that way. I have a book called Wasteland that i try to read sometimes, its a bunch of short stories about the Apocalypse. I dunno why they are such depressing stories though. Since when was the end of the world so relentlessly a bad thing? Science fiction used to be about twist endings, sudden reversals, new ideas. Well, wouldn't be surprised if the committee that put this book together didn't actually think much about it. Youth of today- shonky job at bloody everything they do...

Future

I been reading a book about the cold war & the archaeology left behind in America, all the bomb shelters & the missile silos that go down many hundred feet & sometimes you can buy one, in the middle of no-where, and live in it (maybe some decontamination later, anyway). The Nike missile & the Titan & stuf like that what was sposed to be saving the duck & cover kiddies in their schools. The Nike bases were near every city in America, or that was the idea anyway. People have grown up with them things nearby & never really thought about them. Cool huh. Or horrible. Or both. Anyways i'm gonna do some sculpture about it. Not sure how, but thats the fun bit i guess.

Back in reality againe

Survived the speechifying, and the subject really liked the sculpture. I tell you what, doing live people sculptures is a very nerve wracking business. It don't matter if other people like it plenty, there's really only 1 person u really care about liking it.

Have had a week of being home mostly, my sister arrived from OS & we're all working to make dad comfortable. We got oxygen in the house now so its full alert for smokers etc & learning curves all over the place. I get funny looks from buying tons of morphine down the chemists about every 2nd day but i dunno what u sposed to look like when u buy that stuff anyway. I got some storage & emptying the house into that so there's room for wheelchairs & oxygen machines & other furniture & my sister & my bro too when he arrives. Phew. I'm working on the basis of moving mainly *my* shit out & resettling everything else. I got a lot of books & a heaving ocean of clothes that make me feel like the Imelda Marcos of clothes cos i won't part with em even tho i don't even know where i got em, or when i'll ever wear em, and they don't even bloody fit me. And i got a lot of weird things, but some of em i can't part with even to storage anyways. There's so many books i *intend* to read, i got to keep them at home. To save about a billion dollars (how can 1 cardboard box cost $5 at the storage place?) i'm pinching old boxes from the boozatorium in Mato.. they are very small boxes.. but with books thats enough.

Sculpturally speakin i got some awesome tools... i had to finish a wax for the life sized man, & forced to go buy a particular tool that made a particular mark. Tiranti "C" was the one i needed. They only sell them in a bag of 6 different ones for vast amt of bux, tho. Anyway i bit the bullet & got em - and guess what - they are so great. Wish i'd done it 10 yrs ago, tho 10 yrs ago that amt of money was probly a whole dole cheque. The excitement of a new type of tool is intoxicating & need to use them on everything. Anyway- half way thru a very cute little bloke in wax now using the smallest tool. Need to get back to the studio.