Patches Beach

During Work Safe Week our team received the usual list of stress relief remedies.  Boy, do we need them at times.

One piece of advice I don’t remember seeing before was to have an object that reminded you of something good and peaceful nearby.  I think in the past I would have dismissed this notion.  But that was before the stone.

In the first week of January my family rented a house at Patches Beach.  On the beach, in the middle of nowhere, the weather was crappy.  We walked the dogs on the beach, watched lots of DVDs and my daughter and I repainted our nails everyday – testing out the nail polishes she got for Christmas.

All, in all a very quiet and relaxing holiday was had.

The beach was home to some nice flat smooth rocks.  As a gift back to the house and its future occupants, we used nail polish to paint ‘Patches Beach’ on a rock and left it behind.  I also bought one home with me.

Then hell broke loss.  Literally, the day we came home the flooding began.  Then the rebuilding began.  The long, long days.

Somehow, clutching my smooth painted stone brought back the relaxing quiet holiday.  It was possibly the only relaxing week we have had all year.

Flexible

I can touch my toes easily.  Not a second thought.

Inflexible people are frustrating.  Especially when it is an inflexible way of looking at the world, or an inability to do things differently.

So, I have no oven.  It died an untimely death.  Actually, its pretty old so death was where it has been heading for some time.  My kitchen is old.  Early eighties green laminate with wood veneer chipboard that is flaking at the edges.  Essentially a new oven before a new kitchen is planned is silliness.  Inspired by my friend Terri, the best cook in the universe, I bought a BBQ with a hood instead.  I learned from Terri at our Easter camping trip that there is nothing that can't be cooked on a BBQ.  Steamed pudding, pizza, corn on the cob, baked vegetables...

I am practising  flexibility on my recipes.

Not quite ready to try cooking a cake though.  What to do for the Birthday Boy?  Buy a cake? But lets be flexible.  Here it is...the ice cream cake.

Flood Stories

I have had a long hiatus from my blog.

The Summer of Disasters interfered.

I started the year in survival mode. Instructions to my interstate visitors: “Make sure your kids know how to wash their hands in a bucket so they don’t get sick. “ My life reduced to this basic hygiene.

The electricity came back and we saw our business in Rocklea under water.  We couldn’t get there for days.  So started the months of rebuilding.

I return to work, 12 hour shifts doing  Community Recovery.  To me, every application for help is a real person, not a pile of paper.  I have nightmares about losing applications.  I am living, breathing and sleeping disaster.

I come to crave normal.  I am told not to expect normal.  I am told I will find a “new” normal.  I wanted the new normal.  I wanted to do regular grocery shopping.  I want cooking and cleaning to be a normal inconvenience, not an alien activity sometime after I have remembered to brush my teeth after I eat rather than before.

People, somewhere out there, other “unaffected” people wondered why we keep harping on, keeping telling our stories, keep talking nothing but flooding and lack of warning and please pick up our rubbish and when will our grant money come through and insurance company has become a swear word.  A seemingly intelligent man said to me, they just need to get over it.  I was stunned into silence.  Would it be appropriate to punch him?

This is what I have learned.

During the chaos, and sometime afterwards, people need to, I mean really deeply need in the way they need water, to feel like they are helping.

A community with leadership is a healthy community.  But then the rifts will happen.  It is inevitable.

Never, ever, start a conversation in this town without first asking, “How did do you with the floods?”  Under people’s skin is still wet with silty mud. And sometimes sewerage.

I have learned to accept hugs from strangers.

I have other’s stories tattooed into my being.  I am living my story.  I sometimes wonder will I ever live any other story.

I have learned that eleven months isn't long enough to stop me being angry.

But I have found a normal.