Why I still haven’t written
Sometimes life just seems to rush on completely out of control, like being caught in a wave and tumbled over rocks in a tangle of raspy seaweed. So here I am, with sand in my hair and spitting out seawater, saying, "now where was I?"
I was about to tell you about a dinner with my grandmother, which made me think of her in a different – and not particularly rosy – light. Then I was going to write about the week in Adelaide, which I’d then told my grandmother about over dinner. And then I was planning to fill in on what various bits and pieces had been going on in my life since – oh – probably the beginning of the year. That’s how little I’ve really written here this year.
Before I could do any of that, however, I opened a letter from Centrelink and discovered that my three-yearly medical review is up. That means I have to get my doctor to fill in a big form many pages long to convince Centrelink that I still need my disability pension. If the doctor doesn’t want to, (because, for instance, he knows what my illnesses are, but not how severe the symptoms are – he never asks) then I’m screwed. If he does fill out the form, but Centrelink isn’t convinced, I’m also screwed. When the last medical review was due, back in 2007, I ended up with massive health problems for six months, due mainly to anxiety. And I had panic attacks for over a year every time I went into my doctor’s office. So. Not-so-happy days.
After that I ended up going to a planning meeting for a big family reunion next year. I – perhaps unwisely – put my hand up to help with a couple of things. Catering arrangements. Putting together a family tree with pictures, and an evening of icebreakers. Yeah, probably was not wise at all. Then I got violently ill the next day and have not even managed to do simple things like wash dishes or do laundry. So. Lucky I have somewhere to eat tonight and nowhere to go tomorrow, because I have no clean clothes or dishes. I am such a disaster area!
While I agree that men don’t seem to enter into modesty so keenly as many of them enforce on thier womenfolk, and I can tell you this: the womenfolk are fully aware of this hypocrisy when it occurs … I am tired of all the sneering taht goes on about women who genuinely dochoose to obscure the amunt that strangers can stare at them in public. If theya re forced to wear clothing they don’t wish to wear, in our country there are ways to avoid that .. difficult to do, I know, but how do we help them by banning their emerging outdoors at all if that is the household regime they live under?
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Good luck with Centrelink. It’s too bad there’s not a box to check certifying that if they deny your disability, it will make you more disabled and expensive to treat. There’s no catering for my family reunions. My aunts have always been very adept at stuffing large numbers of people full of food. They’re happy to do it, too. When my mother’s little brother died I was reminded where I learned to over-eat as a child. “Eat, eat. Can I get you some more? Don’t you like THIS? I know you LOVE that. Here, take some more.”
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