images of you and me

"I can't write with my hands over my ears!"
"something about tendancy"
"...tennant?!?"

i love you kids

echoes of mercy, whispers of love

the wonder and beauty of the fact that
'you provide for those who fear you'


and I, for once, am not afraid of my questions, of my doubts.
For once, I dare to ask you.

What about the others?

The world is cold

I can't believe I just did that.
Let me lay out my last couple of days for you.
Friday : stressy parking practice, late for piano, frantically begin and finish VOC assignment, SLUM SURVIVOR, complete step into a different culture, and a different world. Begin with super intense slave labour simulation (causing me to be seriously traumatised and now afraid of newspaper) move on to begging the teachers for donations and building our lovely houses out of cardboard and tarp and whatnot. Dinner: none. Jojo read us a bedtime story, I became the mama of my little slum scum family when original mama had to go home. We piled into our lovely carboard 'houses' and tried to catch some Z's.

Friday night: finally get to sleep (to bed at half past six, with the sundown) after tolerating very annoying security light and wheelie doing people only to wake up an hour after, very awake. lie awake for a few hours, get up and wander for a bit. back to bed and back to sleep, only to be woken by a very genuine seeming jo, yelling and saying we have to get inside cos theres intruders in the school. rush into room, squish up away from windows, sit in fear for a bit, get told its just a scenario.Head grumpily back to bed.

Saturday: Predawn we are up and sent out rubbish picking, told that it will be very fortuitous to get lots of rubbish. so we hunt. It has been raining all night, everything is wet and muddy and soggy. we pick it up anyway, and return. Only to find that our family has the least, and we need to try and make stuff out of it and convince the teachers to buy it with the fake money we need for hypothetical medication and actual food.
Sit and sort through soggy disgusting rubbish, by this point have completely lost care factor that it is filthy. Make toy boat, jewelry, toy doll, paper hat, toy cooking set, battery baby and bat and ball set from rubbish and duct tape. Feel very proud of creations. Slight fail at spruiking and selling, considerable fail at getting enough rupees. could not afford 'medication' so all got crippled, pretend inflation meant that without the slum love of Middle McMuffin slum scum mum we wouldnt have eaten.

In the middle of selling, Jo says the LRA are coming and we gotta scram. much running and hiding around the school, in the rain. Then a hilarious time spent hiding behind the english block trying not to laugh while the mcmuffins farted. TOTAL hilarity. our slums got raided while we were gone, and when we got back we had to try to earn more rupees, some more failage on our part. due to the fact that we hid too long and missed the boat.

we had some VERY meagre lunch of a cup of rice and dahl between four of us and then we got organised for our peaceful protest up at the hub. we made signs saying 'keep your money,we want change' and scattered around the centre. it was freezing cold outside (where i was sitting) and we got quite a lot of interest, quite a bit of people giving loose change and whatnot. great stuff. then something amazing happened.
We'd given this guy a brochure as he went into the centre, then as he came back out a bit later, he said 'ive had a read of this, and i think what you're doing is awesome.' he pulled out his wallet and in my head i was like 'yaaay more loose change' then he vaguely pulled out a fifty, i thought he must have been looking for a five or something, a ten if we were lucky.
But no, he pulls out the fifty. and a second. he hands it to allana and says 'here you go'.
Saying our jaws hit the floor would be understating, allan cried and so did I, a little bit.

It was massive, cos one of my hardest hitting bits was in the slave simulation, making paper bags out of the pages of the paper, covered in the stories and pictures of people who don't give a flying crap what happens to the people who actually live like that.

And then this guy... he no joke restored my faith in humanity.
its incredible what a hundred bucks can do.


And one of the biggest things, is that not only did we get to go home at the end and they never get to go home, never get to know any different.

But not only do people really live like that, and for their whole lives. but the small change we collected today, and that hundred bucks, and that five, and that ten, and that two dollar coin.

They are real too, and they go to real people in the real world, in real pain.

We made a real difference, and thats the point.

Oh, and I finished slum at four, got home at 4:13, ate, showered, whirled into work like a tardy hurricane and didnt finsih until 9:30 cos it was INSANE (NB i normally finish at 830, 9 is late for me) and I'm still alive, and pumped to sing at church for my mum, practice at 830...woohoo.

And people try to tell me I do too much :)


and what a great way to finish this part of my weekend, with an unbelievably gun ho owen wilson movie with the most unsubtle music EVER. and saying 'oh he went there' at random inappropriate moments. good times. DUCT TAPE!!

Think of me, trying to hard to put you from my mind

Dear Stuff,
Dear last beer bottle into the fridge, I love you, you make me smile as you slide cosily into your position.
Much love,
<3glitter Dear people drinking only one of a type of beer that no one else likes I hate you, just drink the same beer as everyone else, k? Looking forward to not having to glass you in frustration, <3gliTter Dear self, You suck, you are not very good at remembering things or being organised. You really should use your diary, and get off your ass and do what needs to be done. You have parking practice, piano, slum survivor and a VOC studies assignment to do tomorrow. You do too many things. Stop. <3glitter Dear dreams, you are hurtful because you are happy and not true. You make me annoyed at myself for being half awake and deciding to stay in that dream place, cos it felt like pretty much all I wanted for a VERY long time. You make me sad and regretty feeling, because you have shown me that I still want what I used to want, ridiculous as it is. Ridiculous and non-existent, seeing I have built it up in my ivory tower of imagination. You make me sad, and afraid of heights. at least you did not torture me with blowflies. thanking you for minute mercies, <3glitter Dear Person, you suck. You are not, never will be and possibly never have been who I built you up to be. This is my fault. I don't care, you still suck. <3glitter Dear other person, you remind me so much of the first one that it is literally painful. you talk like he does, you have a jacket like he does, you have friends like his. You make fun of me like he does, but make it funny like he does. You deliver pizzas like he used to. i wonder if you drink as much as he does. i certainly hope not. Please do not pour your life down the drain even as he pours toxic liquids down his throat and i try I try so desperately to get his life back out of the drain, even though theres nothing anyone can really do but him. Please do not put yourself through what I hope so desperately is a phase. Please stay like him, but not him. Cos I will seriously go totally bonkers if your hair changes colour, you need glasses and start playing hockey. If you ever call me emo, I will undoubtedly snap and as we discussed this evening as I gritted my teeth and tried not to think about the other person, the laser shooting eye thing, meant to be a secret. Call me frenchy all you like (the beret was asking for it I guess), but don't call me emo. for both our sakes... This is random,I hardly know you, but still <3gliTter Dear Blogger, Stop taking out all my enters when I edit this post. And stop putting in labels i didnt want so I have to edit it again. You are frustrating and addictive, -sigh-

Living in your prewar apartment, soon to be your post war apartment

First of all,

Dear people who blog letters to things.
Sorry I stole your idea, I couldn't help myself

tata!

Second,

Dear Future,
I would stand in the rain to wait for you.
Sometimes it feels like I already am.
I would stand in hail for you, for a ridiculously long time.
Sometimes I think I have seen glimpses of you, but they are not my future, they are someone else's, zipping along down the line.

Do destinys have return to sender?
I would stand through a hurricane, I would wait for years.

But I get the feeling I would convince myself that my whole future consists of waiting, and walk away shaking my head.
I am certain this will happen, just as I am certain you will be shipped return to sender when it turns out you simply had to buy a bandaid to save yourself from the blister of your shiny new shoes and I have not had the faith to wait for you.

I'll kick you in the sins and in the face until you love me, papa, paparazzi

I love my mum, dont get me wrong.
and shes's a great mum.
But she picked the WORST day to forget about picking me up.
Half an hour.
In the rain, wind and freezing cold.
:P Love you mum

Because you say so under your breath

It comes crushing down on me sometimes, the realisation that you're gone.

You died.

You really, actually, died.

I went to your funeral, we filled it with crew.

We cried.

A lot.

The boys stood there with sunnies on, trying to be tough.

I hugged a lot of people.

I was sorry that I was quitting, I felt so much closer to so many people.

I really worked that shift where I could hardly serve for crying.

We really sat in the crew room and cried for an hour.

I really worked there.

You really existed.

I really knew you.

You really died.


istillcantlistentothepowerofyourlove

there's nothing after all

Continuation and expansion of previous blog.
If God asks me to be a spinster.

I thought of an even worse possibility.
What if I have a steady christian boyfriend who loves me and who i love.
and god still asks me to be a spinster.

I think that one is about eighty thousand times less likely, but still.


I realised something, sitting here enjoying how contented i am as i lie on my bed, blogging, eating sushi, drinking chai and listening to amber rubarth while it rains and blows a gale outside, that there is a gap in my contentment.


I am very nearly completely incapable of contentment without other human company.

I am never fully present in my life.
I'm always thinking about something else.

Honestly, even if I had a guy, I would imagine him into something more perfect than he was.
How scary is that...



and if God asks us all to be spinsters, we are SO living together.
if its just me, you still get to be my sanity :P

Don't make me close one more door

Retreat was mad.
Totally mad.
And I feel fantastic.

But,I have this nagging question in my head that I cant shake.

What if God asks me to be a spinster?

adam, who you been following?

i am sitting in my (still clean) room.
Lying on my bed.
Barefoot, in the comfiest clothes I own.
Blogging.
Listening to Kate Miller-Heidke.
Drinking Lady Grey


I wish I was a writer.

I see the way you smile at the TV
And I think of back when we had no TV
and all the times I made you laugh

which wasn't many

I see your eyes light up when you talk to your friends
They used to light up for me
Way back in 2006

I was all you could see