Post Six

Still Sunday, well for another hour. A day of reading and pottering. Finally threw out the over a year old vege laagne that I made for simon before he died.. The freezer was filled and could not bring myself to chuck it till now. I know it was just lasagne but it was also another link to the familiar past that is fast slipping away. Sometimes the sadness is overbearing. How true that you dont realise what you have until its gone.

post five

Another sunday. A week before the event. I was on his right at the last gasp as the ball bounced for the grand final, so maybe life is not all about the left. Last night I burned the midnight oil reading Mark Smith's book The Road to Winter. This morning I laid in bed till midday with a cup of decaf and a hot water bottle and finished it. Could not put it down. Excellent read. As it always is at the end of a good book I want to keep reading but the writer has finished, for the moment. The sequel next June, such a long time to wait. I began The Rosie Effect, a book I meant to read a long time ago and finally purchased a couple of weeks ago at the Geelong library where the author was talking about his new book, The Best of Adam Sharp, which I also bought!.. Anyway, The Rosie effect had me gripped for 60 pages, why have I not read this before... seems I will finish this one fairly quickly then have to get The Rosie Effect.
It is still sunday and the weather is like a disco outside the loungeroom window. Light, Bright, Yellow, Dark, Bluish, Showery, Sunny....seems it just cannot make up its mind. A bit like me today, till in jamies and only thinking of showering and dressing. Exercise should factor in there somewhere I know and so must art and cleaning the art room up somewhat so that it is a bit more user friendly, which it has not been like this long cold dark winter.

post four
Saturday in Werribee helping son in his cafe, TJays. I have been promoted and am now allowed to wrap the knives and forks in napkins and put them on tray, though it did take some begging on my part to be taught the proper way. Wonder when I will be allowed to make a sandwich? I think that is the top rung on the ladder and I am probably getting ahead of myself. I am content with doing whatever it takes when I am there, just nice to be involved, even if I am the underdog. You spend all those years raising children and then the tables turn and you are the child. It is the way of life.
Travelling along the highway gives me lots of reflection time, what is it about driving and playing your favourite music very very loud that spirits you away. I had in my sights the photograph of the You Yangs with the brilliant yellow canola fields in the foreground. Too dangerous to pull onto the side of the road so I moved into the service centre only to find from that vantage point there was a huge wire fence in the way. I am sure by the time I get it worked out the Canola will be flowerless for another year. There really is nothing quite like the expanses of bright yellow pastures that checker the highways around here in Spring.
Lou Rawls was Wayne, Simply Red was Simon, William Ackerman was Stephen and Bee Gees were Philip. How powerful is music for transporting you in time. Who needs a time machine?
Yesterday my ex next door neighbour,Emily, popped over, with tonsillitis. We talked through the door. I miss her. She always got me. Her friend, Rosie, lost her husband two years ago and is still feeling sadder each day. I understand. Somehow I thought that the pain and sadness of losing Simon would lessen as days go by, but they just move into another space. Reality is only just setting in after a year and that makes it all the harder to be without him. Mending a broken heart is for songs and lyrics. It is like being in a large paddock filled with boxes and I just move in and out of them...an endless maze. Too painful most of the time so distraction is the order of the day until I realise that that is all it is is distraction for distractions sake. Moments follow moments, days follow days, weeks follow weeks..............

post three

just returned from author talk in torquay at the library. Mark Smith's YA debut novel The Road to Winter has won him much acclaim. I had it signed by Mark to give to my grandson Cooper, hope he likes it. Of course I will have a sneak read before I send it to him as Mark promises that you cannot put the book down. It was interesting listening to Mark, an author with a passion for his craft and he is as excited about it as a kid is about christmas. That passion is infectious and although it is not a novel I am setting out to write, I have no idea what I am doing, probably at great risk of doing nothing at all other than my draft for my childrens book.
No matter, they say it is all about the journey and I am journeying all over the place at the moment. Without Simon to bounce all this stuff off of it seems to have less meaning but hopefully that is temporary. If I ever come to terms with the loss, the pain, the loneliness and sheer heartache to smile again on the inside then let it be a moment I never forget. Brett Whitely was staring at me from the bookshop tables in Torquay so now he is on my table, not that I could afford it really but the inspiration is an investment. So now with 4 new books to read, and those that i picked up at the library I should be kept entertained for some time. But now back to Words with Friends.

Post Two

My foot is soaking in Listerine water to attempt to rid my big toe on my Left foot of fungal nail infection. It has been black for a very long time and I refuse to pay a megafortune for the chemist brand remedies.Having said that it may cost me a fortune in Listerine instead. It would have helped to roll up my trousser leg before I plunged my foot into the tub of hot water. Never mind. I did warn that this blog is really about not much at all most of the time. Maybe my grandchildren will read it when I am long gone and see what grandma does with her days. Today, when I get started, I am venturing down the coast to look at horizons, maybe draw some and then onto the Torquay library to listen to an author talk about a book I have no intention of reading. I like listening to authors talk and it gives me a sense of purpose, go figure. Soup is made and bubbling away so that I can scoff it in the car after the talk and call it dinner. Must fit a walk in somewhere as well, perhaps the Torquay foreshore.Now, pay some bills, pack the car and be off.

Welcome to my first Post

If you have found yourself on my blog, Life is to the Left, then welcome. The intention of this blog is unclear other than for me to visualise the overload of drivel that circulates through my grey matter, very grey these days I fear. Yes, I could write all this manually in my journal but I have a particular penchant for typing, perhaps it gives the drivel a greater sense of importance as I see it appear before me on the screen. It makes me feel more like the writer I know I will never be because I cannot focus on one thing for too long before I mistakenly believe I have met the challenge and want to move on.  Perhaps I will write the beginnings of the many stories I think about writing or the family history I will never get finished or just write day to day stuff that will interest no-one but me, temporarily, in an attempt to validate my existence which seems a necessary thing to do.
I chose Life is to the Left as a title for this blog because whenever I am 'lost' or really lost then left is the way that I automatically go, Left seems safe, Left seems natural, Left seems right somehow. I will always find home and myself by going left.