Both 37… one month only…

Every year M and I are the same age for precisely one month between our birthdays.
We celebrated his on Sunday with a winter picnic where he got to try out his new camera.

Enjoy 37, Father-to-my-rabbits!

…so this is what 37 looks like…

I turned 37 yesterday and had a day of balancing trying to keep a low profile at work with feeling deliciously swamped by a lot of affection from all over the place. Last night Matt and I ate fantastically good food at our favourite restaurant. Matt bought me a beautiful silver pin shaped like a happy fox and rabbit holding hands and skipping and a DVD of one of my favourite films, Sante Sangre (previously only owned on an aging VHS tape). Sometimes I like to start shouting ‘Holy blood, it’s holy BLOOOOOOOOD’ as a cathartic device thanks to that film…

At 37 I generally feel like a very lucky girl. I feel healthier and smarter than ever before. On the downside my confidence is probably at it’s lowest.. Believe it or not I once was actually a more heady cocktail of cocky and snotty all at once. Sometimes I still manage snotty but it get’s rolled in with bratty these days… and a little sleepy too…

On my birthday last year I was wandering lost with loved ones around a formerly communist housing estate in the Czech Republic. We circled a cemetary, got back to where we first lost our way, and ended up having a
beer in a Czech MacDonalds where it was cheaper than soft drinks or bottled water.

7 years earlier on my 30th, I was winning money on a horse at the BC cup, in Vancouver and drinking my friend Jamie’s delicious chocolate martinis.

While in Melbourne, the other week, Mum and I went to see the Guggenheim Collection: 1940′s to now at the NGV. It took quite a few rounds of me saying ‘oh yes – there is another edition of that work in the Pompidou collection, I saw it in Paris’ or ‘Ahhh I remember seeing that one when I was in NY just pre-September 11…’ before, in a brief moment of astral travelling outside my own body, I realised that I sounded like a complete wanker!

But I also realised that I’ve been living a life I never would have imagined 20 years earlier when I was just kickin’ out into my first home away from my family with a totally unsuitable boyfriend and a really dumb job.

It’s a pretty cool life and that’s a pretty good feeling, actually. Even though 37 does look kinda tired…

Hi Sean and Angie + Happy Birthday Matty

Yesterday was Matt’s birthday and with his presents still air-mailing their way towards us I thought I’d better take him out for dinner. We haven’t eaten Mexican in years even though our lovely friend Aaron cooks at the local cantina + it’s one of Matt’s favourite food groups (cereals, fresh fruit and veg, dairy, mexican…) so after popping quickly into Pip Staffords show opening at Inflight (nice one too – ‘Waiting Room’) we hauled ass to Amigo’s and got ourselves a table. Mucho beans and rice (and one large Marguerita) later we were stuffed to the gills and trawled home to get more coats and digital camera before heading off to meet old friends at the Republic.

About ten years ago, Matt and I were part of an electronic media collective called Empire Studios that we founded with Art School pals, Sean Bacon and Tim Stone. We were later joined by Stefanie Carnivale for a while. We bumbled our way through some ridiculously large-scale projects that funding seemed to keep miraculously appearing for: I guess we seemed to hit all the funding target marks at that time – young (ha!), emerging, new technologies, public art… We did three projects ‘Empire Public Art Project’ ‘Empire State’ both public outdoor projection and sound events and “Two Cans and a Piece of String”, a video booth project, before we disbanded. Tim and Stefanie were moving to Melbourne and I got a little cranky about stuff that, in hindsight, never really mattered and called it quits.

Sean, Matt and I kept working together for a little longer, with Deborah Pollard at Salamanca Theatre Company mostly, then Matt went to Canada. Sean and I did a couple more and then a really traumatising project down the Huon Valley for the Tasmanian Trades and Labour Council before we wished each other well and I headed off to join Matt in Vancouver while Sean and his beautiful girlfriend Angie headed to Paris.

Matt and I got married after about a year in Vancouver, Sean and Ange got married about 2 months later in Morrocco.

Our early experiences with Empire taught us all so much – It’s an opportunity that gave us each the chance to nut out some big, big ideas within a tight and skilled support network and the collaborations continue today. S & A settled back in Sydney while we returned to Tas but Matt and Sean continue an ongoing café based deejay/veejay project called ‘Caffeine Broadcast’ with an event staged every couple of years. Deborah Pollard is now based in Sydney too (now with Urban Theatre Projects) and Sean continues to work with her as does Matt. He flies up on Monday as a matter of fact, to spend a week developing audio for her new project.

It’s a great network to be part of and one that has invaluably set me up for everything I do now – I learnt so much from my Empire compadres and Deb Pollard combined and it remains one of the most fertile times of my life when I also seemed to have had boundless energy to make it all happen. What happened to that? Oy…

Anyhoo – Sean and Ange have a baby due in October and were in town for a flying visit to show of the bump which happily coincided with Matt’s birthday so we got to coo and hang. They are about to buy a house in the Blue Mountains. It’s all ‘grown-up stuff’ as Ange said to me (now a successful TV producer in her own right and about to complete post-production on her first independant documentary about her indigenous bloodlines – *sigh*).

It was so good to see you guys, good luck with everything and I’m sorry I misheard your proposed baby’s name as ‘Beaker’.

Health and Happiness

It’s been such a huge week.

Mr B was given day release for his son, Toby’s, first birthday.
Birthday boy is pictured below.

‘Get me away from this crazy dame!’

The next day B was reassessed at the horsepital and is now back at home. He is walking with a cane and his facial muscles are starting to work again so he even smiles a bit. He is stuborn about his inability to cope with steps. He turns 37 on Friday and his lovely Madame M turns 36. They have the gall to be going out to dinner without me but Matt and I shall cook them a birthday feast here over the weekend instead.

More distant pals are Bon Anniversaire-ing on the same day and also yesterday. I wish I was cooking them a birthday feast over the weekend too.

The Lymphoma Warrior was always just living with the threat until now. Thank heavens a friendly oncologist took a personal interest. His spleen-the-size-of-a-planet finally caught someones attention and a liver biopsy on Monday has shown that it is indeed a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma for which he will now receive rare and agressive treatment.

While our collective response hasn’t exactly been ‘Hooray. It IS cancer!’ all are relieved that he finally has a firm diagnosis and he can be treated for something. He has suffered from SLE all his life (another immune disorder, but very different to the one B was knocked down by) and until now and with no definite answers better than ‘it might be lymphoma’ no one has been prepared to do anything other than fill him with painkillers that have done very little for the immense pain he has been in.

The poor mite has really been suffering. The day before the biopsy he came to visit as he just couldn’t stand being in bed anymore. We giggled and ate pizza and salad. We could see his enlarged spleen sticking out from under his ribs even through the usual, multiple layers of black metal merchandising (t-shirt, long sleeved t-shirt, another t-shirt…)

… and I built a fishpond.