^ Unknown. Ps. I don't really feel this way.

Being ill is so all encompassing. I want to be getting ready for our trip and cleaning the house, but all I can seem to manage is hobbling from one room to the next, knocking myself out with painkillers, sleeping for hours and barely being able to sit, lie or stand without a great deal of pain. Needless to say when I'm sick I'm a very vocal, complaining person. C seems to be enjoying being my nurse, holding back my hair when I need to throw up, making me food, cleaning up, etc (he does all of those things regardless). My mum and her boyfriend came over this evening and we ordered pizzas and ate them in the park and wandered around, it felt good to get out in fresh air.

Tomorrow if illness subsides I'm going to Bird In The Hand's zine making day - I got some awesome zines from there a few days ago. One in particular I really liked, called 'Statistical Analysis Of The Things That Happen But Don't Matter And Everything Else', is full of all different types of graphs measuring mundane things;



Zines I picked up;
♡ Statistical Analysis Of The Things That Happen But Don't Matter by Sarah McNeil

♡ By The Time You're Twenty Five by Flying Machine

♡ Nuns I've Known by Prunella Vulgaris

♡ The Second Side

♡ Berlin By Bike Or and some mini zines by Maddy Phelan

Receiving lovely mail was some consolation from the sickliness, a letter with a great decorated envelope from Chandlerguera. I always enjoy her mail;





And one little outgoing;





And I saw these pillow cases on Sylvia's blog today and I adore them, the Australian dollar is meant to overtake the US dollar by a few cents next month so maybe I should lash out. I'd make C sleep on the queen side;



And I think I really want one of these strange ergonomic kneeling chairs. They look oddly comfortable and seem much better for your posture;

^ I love this, but I have no idea where it came from.

I spent the majority of today wincing in pain. Over the past few years I have had a recurring cyst on my tail bone which tends to flare up at inopportune times, especially in Summer. Sitting, standing and lying down are some of the things that are made very difficult by this condition. Uncomfortable, painful and gross are words that accurately describe the ailment. I went to my doctor and of course I had to pull up my dress and have her poke and prod me from behind before she'd hand over the painkillers and antibiotics. The painkillers made me go pretty woozy. I had a lot of trouble forming sentences and it felt like my tongue wouldn't fit in my mouth and I occupied myself by decorating envelopes with psychedelic patterns for a few hours. C bought me our favourite pizza for dinner and upon eating two slices I felt disturbingly ill and retreated to my bed. The trouble with those really heavy painkillers is that when they wear off they leave you with a headache and create a need for themselves. Anyhow, for the time being I'm just going to endue the tear-inducing pain and sit on my sore, sore tailbone. Tomorrow I'm going to try to hobble my way to Bird In The Hand distro to pick up some zines to take with me to Tasmania and buy a new pen (I go through a pen a week).

C was quite jealous of my mail haul today. A gorgeous little Halloween themed package arrived from a girl called Wendy from Ohio. The very batty card reminded me a little of Missive Maven. It actually has a hologram on it, but my scanner had a bit of fun with it. She also sent me a whole bunch of cute Halloween stickers that I couldn't get a scan of. If Australia won't celebrate Halloween I'll just have to infiltrate through the post by sticking Halloween everywhere;





Plus a sweet little package from the lovely miss Julie, which contained a great letter, some sweet post cards I've already used up and the 'Woman In Black' letter set from her Etsy that I won in the giveaway she held at her blog, We've Got Paper. I've already written a letter on it today, and the paper is great to write on, soaks up ink well and I had lots of fun decorating the black envelope. Ps. You should probably send Julie a birthday card;





And a cute postcard from a lady named Anu in Santa Fe. It gave me deja vu when I saw it, though I have no idea why;



I only have two more mail-receiving days before I go to Tasmania :( Of course, I will be taking my computer on holidays and will thankfully have internet access, though we'll be keeping busy and seeing the sights. I am so grateful to be getting away from this heat. When we return on the we'll be staying in Sydney for a few days before seeing my favourite band Why? at the Annandale on the 16th of December. C often talks about when you want something but you don't think you can afford it or obtain it, that you 'send the idea out into the universe' and wait to receive it. Of course, being the sceptic that I am I did no such thing, but a lovely lady named Jade bought me two tickets out of the blue and I am ever so grateful and excited :)

C brought me home 8 stamps today and I'd used them all up within a minute. This is one of my outgoing today - I took part in a Tumblr Secret Santa, and I sent my recipient a mix cd, letter and some postcards. Hope she likes;





Hope you're having a lovely Wednesday.

^ martello brasile

The last few days I've been planning out our trip away (we go away on Sunday and won't be back until the 17th of December - I am fretting about all the mail I'll have to wait to read!) and reorganising going back to uni next year, as a full time day student. I'm still in my Bachelor of Arts degree, but I've chosen subjects all from Visual Communication Design, and once I've completed some of the subjects hopefully that will make it easier to transfer degrees. I am a little bit excited, though not so excited about the three really early mornings I've worked out on my timetable so far. Why put lectures on really early in the morning? Surely there would be a larger turn out and more people paying attention if they were slightly later?

Here's some lovely mail I received today from the lovely miss Lauren;






And just one outgoing, a kind of blue collage I made;



Now, please allow me to post a gratuitous wishlist;



Fluevog Bellevues, DREAM SHOOOOOOES, $359.


Present and Correct, Old Domino Stamps £3.75


Anthropologie Brigadier skirt, $78


16 Sparrows Paddingken stationery, $12


Frankie calendar, $30


Tiny bazaar happy mail clear stamp collection, $22


Anything from Paper Valise


BoutiqueRuby (a ridiculously priced helmet for my imaginary Vespa).

^ unknown & king of popcorn.

On this day, nine years ago, a police officer drove an hour and a half from Wallsend to our house in the country, knocked on the door, I answered and the inevitable unpleasant news to come was communicated through the gesture of him removing his hat. I think I remember my sister and I were not long home from school and were watching Rugrats on TV, sprawled out on lounge chairs. My mum took the police officer into another room, they came out a minute later, he left and she turned off the TV and told us.

My dad and my mum had an arrangement that required that he call her and tell her that he was "okay" in order for her to drive us down to visit him every second weekend. He wasn't okay for that whole year. I can remember the last time I visited him and he was different, he didn't smile, didn't say much, spoke quietly and his eyes looked paranoid.

Our more regular visits preceding this involved weekends of window shopping at the mall, trying on lipsticks at David Jones, nightly walks along the break wall, listening to the radio, helping him with crosswords, drawing pictures, Bubble 'O Bills, listening to him play guitar badly, swims at the 'little beach', Golden Books before bed, two dollar packs of textas, checkers and snap, softball in the backyard, two minute noodles, fish fingers, Milo, Nutella and all of the glorious junk my mum refused to buy us. He had long 'j-curls' of dull blonde hair, sun darkened skin, big hands with wide flat fingernails, green eyes and a little gap between his square teeth. He had one laugh when he was laughing with you and another when he was laughing at you and a little saying for every occasion, to my frustration. He was vehemently anti-religious, extremely fit, a keen surfer and his hair always smelled like what he'd been smoking.

The more time that distances me from him, the less I remember, and the more I feel like my memories of him could just be something I read in a book or watched in a movie a long time ago, and he was just a character in it.

This far in time, I don't know if I can say that I miss him, or that my life is any better or any worse without him, because so many years have passed, a lot has changed and I don't remember much. Often I feel angry at him for the way he lived his life, for having children when he never had his life together or like I "missed out" on much because of his absence. I think about what a good father he was considering the circumstances, and the good ten years I got to spend with him. I could never ask for him to be anyone other than who he was, because his addictions had taken hold of him at least a decade before I was born.

Although it is fruitless, I can't help but want to cry because of what could have been, because I didn't have a conventional father, because I have struggled to fill that void. To have experienced his death, to drugs, before I really understood what death or drugs were was, and still is, frightening, bizarre and felt like it signalled the end of childhood. My mum described how he had died as him having taken a this drug called heroin and it put him to sleep and he didn't wake up. Years afterwards, I still don't know why he didn't wake up, why somebody wasn't there to wake him up, if it was intentional and if I'll ever feel a peace about it. Nine years feels like forever, but it also feels like just yesterday. I think about the transient, unpredictable, intangible nature of life, and death, I think about his death being the first of many I'll experience in my life and that it's all part of something much larger that I'll never comprehend. To grieve feels pathetic, fruitless and very human.

I feel a need to commemorate this date, though I have often used it as my one day of the year to cry about it and be done with it until it comes around again.

I'm sorry if this has made you feel bad or if you didn't enjoy reading it. It did feel good to get it off my chest. I guess I just didn't want to internalise it this year and although it feels unwise or unprofessional to put it into a public forum like this, I wanted to share it as it's a large part of me. I don't have a resolute, happy conclusion to close this with except that I'd like to thank you for reading.