Shadow Shot Sunday 2:

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

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You know you’re alive if you have a shadow.

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I don’t believe how irresponsible I was: Trog and other animals

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

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Jodie and Boris grew and the garden flourished as my marriage festered, withering the love that once was there. Paul blamed work. He was now a train driver and working shift work. It wasn’t long before he started just not turning up for his rostered time and not unexpectedly they fired him. Life then became very difficult for me in many ways. The dogs, cats and fish being my only friends; no-one was welcome at our home and his reaction, if I went out alone, more than unpleasant. We did see his mother which kept us in touch with Sasha our dog from Chatswood days.

Sasha and me

Sasha and me

The other person we did see was Paul’s brother and we often took the dogs to Windy Banks, a good nine kilometre walk. Downhill was easy and the dogs enjoyed a swim at the bottom. Coming up tested the lungs but the dogs loved it.

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Before I started doing my intensive care course our life had further deteriorated. Paul was jealous of everything and anything that might take me away from him, even the housework. Things went to rack and ruin as nothing got done. It was just easier that way. In this environment I discovered that not one, but both cats were pregnant. How could I have been that irresponsible?

 

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Habit

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

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The start of my day is the only habitual part of my life starting off with coffee in bed between 4am and 5am. Following coffee are my habits: Breakfast  – the same whether I eat breakfast out or in. Muesili, yoghurt, cherries and coffee (constant),  eaten whilst reading my current book (fleeting). Followed by walking Zac  (constant), the place walked (fleeting). Amount of hair he has (depends whether summer or winter) After this who knows?

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Would I want to change my habits: no way.

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I finally gave in- twice: Trog and Other Animals

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

Whilst the fish numbers were increasing Paul started really hassling me about getting another dog. Our life was a little rocky to say the least and with only one of us working I really didn’t want to put extra pressure on us.

It was at this point that our next door neighbour asked if we would consider adopting a cat that she knew of that needed a home desperately. That I thought I could manage and Kimberly came to live with us. Snuffles took to her with no problems and they became firm friends.

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“They are not dogs. A house isn’t a home without a dog.”  Paul continued to insist. I tended to agree with him. I really missed my long walks with the dogs and at the back of my mind I thought that perhaps his happiness depended on having a one: if we did have a dog, our life would return to being pleasant. His elation when I finally gave in made it worth it and we immediately started looking for a german shepherd dog.

With our financial status on the low side we couldn’t contemplate going to an expensive kennel and resorted to looking in the local paper for a cheaper dog. We found a delightful sable GSD puppy whom we named Jodie. Again the cats were happy with the new addition and all ran smoothly until the puppy was nearly six months old.

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Paul had just got a job as a trainee train driver and as a result he seemed a bit brighter,certainly it was easier to pay the mortgage so when he told me that he wanted to get another dog I didn’t protest too much. His argument was that Egor and Sasha were great company for each other when they were at home alone and now that he was working this would be happening more often. I could see his point.

Again we went out looking and this time came home with a delightful boof-headed puppy which we named Boris. I thought our menagerie was now complete.

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Out of Control: Trog and Other Animals

Posted on November 7, 2013 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

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Our local aquarium happily traded in our goldfish and in their place we bought 2 red and black Oscars,  3 Angel Fish in a variety of colours and a number of red and blue neon tetras. It did not take long to discover that a three-foot tank was not big enough to cope with the aggression that the oscars showed the other fish, the tetras having been eaten early in the piece.

Easily fixed. We bought a 6 foot tank and put it in the lounge room and put the three-foot one in the dining room. Thinking that 6 foot would be big enough we bought some gouramis and convict cichlids to put in the smaller tank. Still the oscars and the angel fish did not get on. The oscars were constantly attacking the fins and trailing bits of the angel fish.

The solution: put another 6 foot tank in the bedroom. This housed the angel fish and we added to this tank five discus, a disc shaped cichlid of extreme beauty.

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This worked well for a while until we came across another six-foot tank that was being sold very cheaply. It would replace the three-foot tank we thought, but, of course we made the mistake of buying yet more fish. All the fish we bought were cichlids, some fire mouths, one Jack Demspey and some jewel cichlids. Before long aggression was rampant in this tank not only between species but amongst their own as they started to pair off.

The three-foot tank was recommissioned in the garage along with a four-foot tank and another 6 foot tank. Our fish keeping had got totally out of control. Paul wasn’t working and he could have done the water changes and other maintenance whilst I was at work but he waited until I was there to help him. It started to become a real chore although watching the fish was a joy.

Cichlids have real personality and I struck up a real friendship with our oscar who had by this stage grown large. I would come home from an evening shift, exhausted and flop on the lounge, the only light being that on the fish tank. Oscar would come down the end near me and in my weary state I convinced myself  hewanted to play and communicate with me.

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Cat Flu: Trog and Other Animals

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

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Snuffles snuffling became more and more pronounced with nasal secretions constantly dripping from her nose and her eyes started to weep. There was no choice but to go to the vet who diagnosed cat flu and suggested that she had been infected for some time and that the cattery proprietor certainly would have known.

“You should take her back and demand your money back” he told us. Of course we didn’t do this as by this time we had already taken Snuffles into our hearts. She was an absolute delight, if not a bit naughty as she climbed the curtains and  jumped onto the kitchen bench to eat the meat thawing for our dinner. Luckily she was trainable and she soon knew what was and was not acceptable.

She was like a dog in the way she followed us wherever we went and seemed to enjoy gardening as much as I did. When I would dig a hole in the veggie patch she would do likewise. She survived her flu without deteriorating further and her eyes and nasal drip disappeared completely. Her snuffling remained with her for the rest of her life which in some ways was good as there was no mistaking when Snuffles was about.

Shortly after Snuffles became part of the family we obtained our first fish tank. It was a three-foot tank on a stand  which we filled with gold-fish. We enjoyed the relaxation afforded by watching the fish swim idly around the tank but became after a short time enamoured with the  variety of tropical fish we saw at our local aquarium. We decided the gold-fish had to go. We would trade them in.

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Moved by Music

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

When I first read this challenge I thought how on earth will I ever choose  a piece of music as I have so many melodies in my head that evoke wonderful memories of times past and present and others that get my toes tapping and my body straining to jive, rumba or quickstep. Or should I choose something classical where the music fills your very being with a climactic type explosion as it reaches its height, such as Beethoven’s 1812 Overture and then it came to me in a flash, however, that perhaps the piece of music which is highly emotive for me is Chris Isaaks’ There She Goes.

This is the piece of music that I have chosen for my funeral.

I first heard it when the album Forever Blue was released in the early 1990s. It was not the most popular song on the album but to me it was a well executed piece of musicianship with lyrics that struck a resonance within me. It travelled with me and gathered memories of happy times along the way. Times of road trips up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia, a couple of camping trips to Switzerland and France and many, many  long, drawn-out meals where we would solve the problems of the world over a good bottle of red. On my mornings alone, when my husband had gone to golf, I would put it in the player, turn the volume up and sing along as I did the housework.

I have always had a morbid fascination with death. I guess it comes from being exposed at an early age to death. As a child I sometimes had to attend funerals as my mother played the organ and my father conducted the service. I was fascinated by coffins and people sleeping in them but I didn’t really understand the concept of death. This understanding came during my nursing training and I became a bit obsessive about it. I had decided that the perfect ending for me would be to float in a formalin filled fish tank in the lounge room.  Not surprisingly this idea was not taken up with any enthusiasm and so I tossed up between burial and cremation.

Chris Isaacs’ song gave me the answer for the first time. I would be cremated and as the coffin starts to slide out of view the song would start.

There she goes there she goes.

All dressed up and walking you found somebody new.
I don’t want nobody I was happy with you.
There she goes.

I never said I love you but you know that I do.
I can’t believe it’s over I keep thinking of you.

I see her everywhere everywhere I go.
I see her everywhere everywhere I go.
There she goes there she goes.

There she goes.

Don’t know why she left me, don’t know what I’ll do.
I don’t want no council, I was happy with you.

I see her everywhere, everywhere I go.
I see her everywhere, everywhere I go.
There she goes, there she goes.

I want to cry, over you.

There she goes, there she goes.
There she goes, there she goes.
There she goes, there she goes, there she goes.

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Snuffles: Trog and other Animals

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

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There is no point being angry for long, I have discovered, as all you succeed in doing is getting a reciprocal anger back and Paul’s anger was always much more dangerous than mine ever was. So my up and down life went on with Sasha, Egor, Macarra and Whiskey. After a particularly difficult period, Paul suggested that we should get married and for a honeymoon go to Qld and find work. Things would be different if we did that. Why I agreed I don’t know but I liked the idea about things being different. We had to find a home for Egor as a result of this plan. I wish I hadn’t done this but I found it easiest to take the line of least resistance. We found a good home for him on a farm and I felt his life would be idyllic but there was a real hole in my heart. Paul’s mother was going to take Sasha and the two cats and we would collect them and take them to our new home in Qld when we knew where we were going.

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Whiskey went missing  a few days before we were due out of our house. I frantically looked for her everywhere but couldn’t find her. The day we were leaving Whiskey arrived home, paralysed from the waist down, sodden with urine and in pain. The old woman next door had tried to get her but the cat scratched and bit her. When Whiskey saw me she started purring. Such a loud, strong purr. I took her to the vet who confirmed that she must have been hit by a car. Her back was broken and there was little that could be done except put her to sleep humanely. I held her whilst the needle was given and she purred the entire time until she took her final breath.

It was good having the distraction of travel to take away from my missing pets but a little part of me was gone. This was the start of a time of constant move and upheaval but this post about Trog and other animals is not the place to go into it. All I will say at this point is that you  can run and keep running but you can never escape from yourself.

After a few years we settled in Cowan. Although I had resigned from work to travel I soon had work again, now  working in ICU which I loved. Although we couldn’t save much on one wage I managed (with the help of my parents going guarantor) to buy a tiny fibro cottage in the northernmost suburb of Cowan in Sydney. It was run down and shack like with only one bedroom but it had a great backyard.

Paul wanted to get a dog. Sasha had stayed with his mother as had Macarra. I really didn’t want a dog at this point but I agreed to a cat. To make it easier not to have a dog we decided that a cat with dog-like behaviour was the way to go and decided on a Burmese. After perusing the advertisements in the paper we visited a litter and chose a sandy orange kitten. We did comment to the woman selling that the cat sounded like she was having trouble breathing but she told us this was quite normal in Burmese kittens and would stop as she got older. Not knowing better we believed her. We bought her and took her home; the noise of her breathing giving her name, Snuffles.

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8 weeks of exhaustion: Trog and other animals

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

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It didn’t take long before the puppies were able to stand on their hind legs at the front of the whelping box, each desperate to be the one picked up and cuddled. As they got bigger Sasha turned to skin and bones, despite the extra food we were giving her. It was with relief that I started to supplement the puppies food as this gave Sasha some respite.

For me though it turned the experience into a nightmare. We had decided that I would do permanent night duty so that some-one was at home to do the 2 hourly feeds which changed to 4 hourly after a couple of weeks. Paul had his first job in years and we weren’t going to risk him having a day sick to give me a little uninterrupted sleep. So I would work all night and come home and try to sleep between the feeds. The puppies had reached a stage where they would noisily let you know exactly what they wanted. I became totally exhausted.

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It also fell to me to do all the cleaning up of doggy done-its and the sodden paper where they widdled. I was a nurse so my stomach could tolerate these things. We also had to have vet checks for hips and vaccinations. It was not a profitable venture by any stretch of the imagination. The curly-haired black and tan puppies were adorable however, and this made up for everything else.

At 7 weeks we started advertising them for sale. The owner’s of the puppies father had already chosen the female that they were going to take which left seven puppies for us to find homes for.

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Finally we were down to two. This was a controllable number and I started to enjoy the puppy experience. When they too went to new homes I was really quite sad.

Not for too long though as anger replaced my sadness, the day after the last puppy went, when Paul told me he had thrown in his job and was no longer working.

 

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Eerie

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

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The eeriness of the Champagne pools is due to the steam vapour which sits over the area because of its high temperature of 74 degrees centigrade. The bubbles are due to CO2  which gives its name to the 700 year young pool, as this is the same process making the bubbles in champagne.. The heat is palpable as you carefully traverse this 65 metre diameter pool.  The fragile sinter crust would be no protection if you were to fall into the boiling 62 metre deep water. The orange colour is from the presence of antimony. Minerals present are gold, silver, mercury, sulphur, arsenic, thallium, and antimony deposited in the sinter ledge at the edge.

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