Writing in Spite of Myself

23,794.86 Reasons Why I Need Xanax

2013-01-07T10:42:00.002-08:00

Everything's a season here in the good ole U.S. of A. We just got through the holiday season, which used to be called Christmas, so happy to see the end of all those "Happy, Princess Wonderland," commercials, which started I might add, back pre-halloween season! (oh and those sickening Lexus Season of Giving spots!) some one please stick a fork in my eye! no wait I mean in my ears... So we make it through Christmas Season and move right on into Tax Season and the Jackson Hewitt "This is how we do it," tax return prep commercials CRAP! every other commercial break on my favorite shows, run and re-run the same bloody bunch of idiots dancing around their office in that inane form of dance which I'm guessing is meant to appease the God's of the IRS ( I think the Greek God is called Givealltous and the Roman one is that lovely Blonde Goddess Itsmineicus) Point to mention here, Jackson-Hewitt I WILL NEVER USE YOUR SERVICE BECAUSE YOUR COMMERCIALS PISS ME OFFICUS! Oy-Vey still four months of this!

I'm sure we're also about to start seeing the marketing guru's kick off the Valentines Day campaigns alongside the Easter one! and all the while I am running my own seasonal campaign, the season for me to get off my ass and get a job. Not that I haven't been trying.
    I just opened my "Job's Applied for Folder," and after sending out three applications today, it now contains seventy-six applications in the last 2 months, some I actually received responses too, but most of those were the dreaded

   "After reviewing your information and our organization's needs, we will not be moving forward with your application for the position at this time. Should our needs change, we would appreciate the opportunity to speak with you in the future."

I hear the question running through some of your minds right now as you read this, "I thought you were going to make a living as a writer?" well guess what! I thought I was too, but after pulling on my big boy undies I realized that the world is full of people who think they can make a living as a writer, which, if you want to live out of the back of your truck, don't mind wearing Goodwill sweaters, drink rainwater runoff from the windshield wipers and can subsist on weeds and road kill cooked on the engine of your not so spacious accommodations you probably could make it! of course if your last name is King, or Rowling, or that chick that wrote 50 shades of embarrassment (just a little envious there!) then your version of the truck would be a rolling estate, and your agent would send you bottles of Jamesons Ultra Reserve after receiving your latest M/S, your personal Nordstrom shopper would deliver your seasonal wardrobe and Emeril Lagasse would prepare Duck A L'orange for you at the drop of a hat.

Ok, where was I going with all this? Oh yea, the season of job hunting, and why I need to shelve my fantasy of telling Lagasse to stop "BAMMING!" everywhere around my kitchen. It all comes down to benefits, benefits and the fact that I don't have that whiskey sending agent shooting over bottles of the good stuff. I need my medical benefits and this post was spurred on by the fact that I was in the middle of collecting my figures for our accountant to get the 2012 taxes prepped, when I added up my medical insurance premiums along with my prescription drug costs, City of Hope visits G.P. visits, I could hardly believe the little green numbers staring back at me $23,794.86 and I said to myself, "Self, you may be able to write a little bit, but the way things are in the book world, even picking up an advance for penning the next "100 shades of Bondage and Porn," (lets just call it what it was, ok?) isn't going to pay that bill.

So I'm on the hunt, the scavenge, the resume` sending, networking, job board searching, merry-go-round desperately trying to find employment that puts my endless skill set to use. Your What???? oops I don't have an endless skill set... I used to say "I'm not very smart, but I can lift heavy weights!" not so true anymore :( maybe this is where I should throw in some New Years Resolutions, (is that allowed even though it's not New Years Eve?) Must start using home gym, (that's still brand new after four years, unless using the equipment as a clothes horse counts as it being used?) Must alter diet, start eating that green leafy crap that I have such an aversion too (unless...does a leaf of lettuce on my burger count as being healthier, because I'll start putting it on if it does?) Must regain my sense of optimism and forge ahead and no matter what the obstacle remain positive. Must stay FOCUSED!

OK, that's enough resolutions for now, whoops, does eating my home made sausage roll as I'm typing mean I just broke the green leafy one? Oh well, bugger it, I'm not in the mood to loose weight now (there goes another one!) now I remember why I don't make those stupid New Years resolutions!

So $23,794.86 out of pocket this past year, I guess I should be thankful that I managed to scrape the money together to pay for it in the first place, and really, I would be but, that season was 3 months ago! I am thankful though, that it stirred me up a little and gave me something to write about, which in turn is making me think about the re-write I need to do on "Stitches." So after my ritual morning search of the job boards, I'm going to start working on the suggestions that my good friends Kathy and Kim gave me, and hope that I can get this bloody thing finally finished and that some drunken fool of an agent or publisher thinks it's good enough to advance me enough money to fill my next Xanax prescription, I'm running out!

Happy New Year Everyone

Jon
xox

Christmas Memories.

2012-12-12T11:09:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure how old I was when the Christmas Carol, Silent Night began bringing tears to my eyes, every time I hear it, but it does, tears that aren't accompanied with sobbing, or shoulder wrenching, or deep belly gulps and snot bubbles, just damp, rolling, polite, waiting in turn for the previous one to make its way down my cheek, tears.
It's not sadness that creates the tears, but I think it's more of a sense of expectations that this will be the year, no matter how bad or good the past year was, we get to wash everything away and hit the re-set button, it also really gets me thinking about the innocence of youth and the opportunity they face. So for me that's when the Christmas season begins, the first time I hear Silent Night being played, and this year it was actually the 1st of December, Andy Williams came on the radio and Christmas 2012 had officially begun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79iF6du9pHo

I don't remember specifically a lot of my Christmas Pasts but I definitely do remember the following one. What are your favorite Christmas Memories? What Christmas Carol is especially for you?

As most of you reading this know, I come from a crazy household, lots of fun times, lots of not so fun times, lots of falling outs between sibling and sibling, between parents and siblings, between parent and parent, but it seemed that no matter what was going on as far as the relationship boogie, Christmas was always a time for us to come together as a family and bury the hatchet, (just not like the time Adrian literally tried to bury it in Julian's leg, luckily it was blunt and only left a bruise!) So this one year when the whole family was living in the same little mining town way up North, there were a few of us "not talking," to a few of us, I forget who was pissed at who, but it had been going on for a while, my older brother, sister and me had moved out of the house, so when the first one of us showed up to mum and dad's we'd be given the assignment by a sobbing mum to, "Go get your brother, or sister, it's Christmas damn it and we should all be happy and together." Dad would huff and disappear to his bedroom, grumbling something along the lines of "I'm not talking to that feckin eejit or Jesus Mary and Joseph women, can you not just leave things be?" but you knew deep down he wanted the whole family around as well. So off one of us would trot to get the others that weren't there yet, and the negotiations would begin with the one that was on the outs, and no matter how long they went on, it typically ended with tears and hugs from the envoy followed once we got back to mum and dad's, by sobbing and hugging and apologies and where's the fecking whiskey?

So this year it was Linden who was the last to arrive, but when he showed up and all the bad feelings had subsided and the whiskey was beginning to work its magic he announced that for Christmas this year he'd splurged and bought himself (Linden loved buying gifts for himself!) an air pistol, and no, there is no line here that goes, "You'll shoot your eye out!" we'd never even heard of that movie in Australia.
Linden being Linden runs out to the car and brings in this very fine air pistol and the BB's that go with it, and dad who loved anything that made a bang or blew things up couldn't resist, he disengaged his crazy, mischievous, Irish brain and took dead aim at one of mum's old glass ornaments that she so lovingly transported the 12 thousand miles or so when she moved from England to Australia, he pulled the trigger, mum gasped and shrieked and screamed and cursed and managed to do it all with one breath in a single expulsion of air, and nothing happened to the ornament nor the air pistol, dad looked at mum, mum cursed at him again, dad held out his hand to Linden, Linden placed a dozen or so BB's in his hand, dad looked at mum, mum snarled, dad loaded the BB's, mum told him not too, dad smiled and took aim, all the rest of us sat on the blue vinyl couch, shirt backs sticking to it (it was always in the 100's at Christmas) Linden told him to aim a little high, dad did, and he nailed the green ball of glass, shattering it into a thousand little pieces, mum screamed, dad roared, Linden looked very proud and the rest of us smiled at dad and looked very concerned at mum when snapped her head to look at us.

Dad took aim and repeated the process only this time it was a little plastic lamb ornament, then he handed the pistol back to Linden and bet him, he couldn't take out one of the three Kings, extra points for the smug looking one with the box of gold. Mum finally recovered her senses after witnessing the carnage from the first two shots, and away she went, the yelling grew louder, the tears began to flow and then instead of joining in the row, dad just calmly proclaimed that "Your mother couldn't hit the fat end of a slow moving cow from 3 feckin feet, could ya Hazel?" mum, never one to shy away from a contest against dad, didn't give it a second thought, she asked Linden "How do I work the stupid gun?" he showed her and the next thing we knew she'd aimed pulled the trigger and put a nice little hole in the dry rock wall, dad smirked, mum squinted, Linden told her to aim a little high, and before you could say Merry Christmas, the smug, gold bearing King was history! Dad howled, mum told you so'ed to dad, Linden was proud again and we all smiled at mum telling her what a great shot she was. She looked at dad and asked which one next, and away they went, like a sniper crew, dad spotting, mum shooting, Linden reloading. We all took turns shooting ornaments off the fake green plastic Christmas tree and when they were all gone, including the terrified looking angel topper, we started on anything around the living room that presented itself as target, it was an amazing Christmas day, the walls were a little worse for wear, the Christmas tree was history and even though the linoleum floor was swept multiple times, months later when I'd come over there'd be another piece of sparkled glass floating around the floor. It was definitely a less traditional Christmas than most people enjoy, but it was such a great encapsulation of an Egan Christmas.

Love you Dad, wish we could have had a few more Christmases together, sleep in heavenly peace :)

Merry Christmas everyone.

Opie

2012-12-03T12:58:00.001-08:00

What can I write about, really, I know it's beginning to sound like a perpetual whine, but it's probably the first thing that goes through my mind when I wake up, and I know it's the last thing that runs through it before I finally give up and go to sleep.
I guess that's a good thing, especially since I eventually want to be a writer, actually I am a writer, so I should rephrase that, and say, since I eventually want to make a living as a writer. So as usual I woke up this morning and as I poured my first cup of coffee I tried to remember all those fantastical ideas that rattled around my head at one-thirty-three a.m. then I remembered, I don't write fantastical stuff, which is a shame cuz I had some rippers bouncing around in there. So I tried again and realized that all the fantastical stuff partying in my head was my defense against the realities that were prying at the chinks in my not so well constructed armor.

Every few seconds as I lay in my bed last night wishing that, for this one tonight, please let me just instantly fall asleep, I don't want that phase of pre-sleep where all the worries and stresses of the day get to amplify and rewind on a slow motion loop. Naturally, I didn't get that, instead I got to lay, eyes closed, brain synapses exploding and they were all about my little bugger of a cat Opie. Now, I know there are people out there who will read this and think or say out loud, "Are you kidding me? the damn cat, he's still on about that damn cat." and to those people I can say right now "Piss off, and go read some other blog," because if you can't or don't understand the bond between humans and pets then you're a little bit sick and I don't need to have you as a friend or acquaintance.

Opie was just the coolest cat, and so my post today is dedicated to him.

We just walked in, to grab some pounce,
And there he was,
We just walked past, ignored his meow,
And he simply stared,
We just walked on, and scanned the shelves,
And he lay down,
We just walked over, and stroked his back,
And he purred,
We just leaned down, and picked him up,
And he snuggled in,
We just looked at each other, and both said no,
And he understood,
We just went through the check out line,
And he watched us leave,
We just went back, for a second look,
And he perked up,
We just couldn't leave him there,
And he came home,
We just loved this ginger cat,
And he loved back,
We just had him with us for ten years,
And he had us,
We just couldn't bear to hear the news,
And he already knew,
We just cried and stroked and loved him up,
And he knew why,
We just wanted him to be at rest,
And he knew when,
We just didn't know when to call it quits,
And he did,
We just held his body one last time,
And he knows peace.

My Legendary Twenty-First Birthday

2012-11-29T15:01:00.000-08:00

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When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
~ Mark Twain

Twenty-First, normally equaled a big bash, a huge all in, three day drunk, even though in Australia the legal drinking age was and still is eighteen, there was just something special about turning twenty-one.

I’d been looking forward to my twenty-first for years, I mean literally years, it was quite a while ago but I think I was probably seventeen or eighteen when I began imagining the party I was going to have, I had the food picked out, I had the bar setup formed in my mind, I had the music and D.J. already selected, I knew all the pre-drinking tricks to use so I wouldn’t end up with a legendary hangover, it was destined to be huge, maybe even four days if my mates could hang in there.

Of course there’d be all manner of women, all the sheila’s in town and maybe even from neighboring towns would clamor to be on the invite list, they’d be dropping hints for invites, I’d have notes shoved under my door begging me to add them, they’d walk up to me in the street asking if they were indeed penciled in.

Legendary, that would be the word used to describe my twenty-first, yea legendary!

Aside from the party there were other thoughts of fantasy flashing through my mind, my old man, he and I weren’t that close when I was in my teens, truth be told we were never close in any of my younger years, the Coal Mans boy, that’s what he’d call me, sometimes with a grin, but usually not, “No son of mine,” Was a constant phrase, uttered under his breath, or spoken with venom, sometimes yelled accompanied with a glare of hatred, but my twenty-first would change all that, he’d probably call me early in the day, wish me a grand birthday, offer me a fecking whiskey and go on about how proud he was of me and my accomplishments… He’d speak about how chuffed he was watching me play football and he’d brag to the blokes at union meetings about my footy prowess, he’d tell me how he really always did love me, and only treated me the way he did so I’d grow up strong and be able to stand up for myself with my fists, “That’s the only reason I smacked you around a bit,” he’d say.

Yea we’d have a good old chin wag before the party got started, he may even join in, all my mates, for the longest time thought he was the best old bastard Irish man they’d ever met they’d love to have him swing by, and sing a bunch of the old ballads as he was apt to do when he’d had few. Legendary, yep no other word for it, Legendary.

Mum would for sure drop by too, she’d have the perfect card picked out, no present, I was never that big on presents, but a good card, that was always the best, nothing like a good soppy card, even if the verse wasn’t hers, the words she added were always heart warming, sincere and never failed to bring a tear to my eye.

I kept the big bash alive in my head for so long, the anticipation was almost unbearable, I’d get butterflies when I thought about it, I wondered if my team mates would make me deliver a speech, just because they knew how much I hated public speaking, they’d get a kick out of that, so I’d practiced in front of my mirror, speaking out loud, laughing at my own jokes, even choreographing the way I moved as I spoke, thinking that not only was my party going to be, ya know, legendary but my speech would be a highlight for all in attendance.

The year I turned twenty-one I quit playing football, not by choice, but by injury, I blew my knee out and never recovered, even if I had been able to play again I was told by my specialists that I should never pull the boots on again, my knee would never hold up to the strain, so I quit, I never did play competitive footy again, but it wasn’t so bad, except I stopped going to games for a while, hated watching from the sidelines, hated hearing people tell me how unlucky I was buggering up my knee the way I did, funny but my dad never said any of that.

I was working the mines and driving truck the year I turned twenty-one, I had a room in SMQ, Single Men’s Quarters, C Block, a two story building with about a hundred twenty 12 x 8 rooms paper thin walls, a bed, a desk with table light and a small hanging area, two shower blocks on each level, tenants organized by the shift you worked so afternoon shift workers wouldn’t wake the night shift blokes, stark white with aluminum foil on the windows so not only the light wouldn’t wake you but it helped keep the heat down. There were lots of shift parties in the blocks, usually when you’d finished your 21^st shift (3 blocks of days, 3 afternoons and 3 nights) because we’d get a four-day break before going back on rotation, those were some crazy, fight filled events that always, Always started out friendly always degraded into fighting and then swung wildly back to friendly before the obligatory passing out. (I never attended any of those.)

My big day arrived, my family, all of them four siblings, and my mum and dad lived less than ten minutes away, all of us ended up working in the mine, except my mum, we all worked different shifts and we never saw as much of each other as you’d think, but this was my twenty-first birthday, they’d all make an appearance, I’d given up on the legendary party months ago since I was scheduled to work the night shift, but I was still looking forward to seeing everyone, I was still like a kid on Christmas Eve, I felt like I was entering a whole new phase of life and I was looking forward to the words of encouragement form my mates and family. I showered mid-morning to avoid the rush and then I wandered over to the mess hall, it was weird sitting there at my table in a room of 70 tables by myself eating silently, trying to hurry so I could get back to my room in case someone came by, the Romanian bloke that bussed tables came by and smiled at me as he picked up my empty plate, I said G’day and he nodded back, I’d never heard him speak except when he was with other blokes that worked in the mess, he had no clue it was my birthday. I downed the rest of my cuppa tea and hurried back to the block, I passed a few night shift stragglers that were wandering the halls we ignored each other.

I let myself into my room and flipped on the radio, the announcer was spewing out the weather report, then went on to play a record without mentioning a thing about my birthday, I lay on my bed and listened to the music and waited. I waited all morning, and into early afternoon, no one knocked on my door, I got up and went for lunch turning the sign on my door to “Quiet Please, Night Shift.” The Romanian had finished his shift and a bloke from Scotland had taken his place, “It’s my twenty-first today,” I blurted out as he picked up my plate, he cocked his head sideways, “you done wi tha cup laddie?” he picked it up not waiting for an answer.

I went back to my room, locked the door and climbed under the covers, I woke when my alarm went off at ten o’clock, I dressed in my usual bib-n-brace coveralls pulled on my safety boots, sat on the edge of my bed and cried, before dragging myself to the bus stop to spend the night driving truck in a dusty, remote, iron ore mine where no one cared what day it was.

Would You Want To Read More?

2012-11-13T14:54:00.000-08:00

Chapter One

TARDUN

I heard the fading sound of the ute’s engine at the same time as I smelled the dust cloud it was leaving in it’s wake, and before I even opened my eyes I knew I’d messed up big time. I felt a chill run the length of my arms and tickle my finger tips, but still I lay there, how was I gunna get out of this one? No one else was moving; I thought about closing my eyes and pretending I hadn’t just missed my ride to the airport, but I knew things would only get worse the longer I willed time to turn backwards.

That truck was supposed to take me the hundred and eighty kilometers to Port Hedland where I’d catch the only flight of the day to what was going to be my home for the next three years. A hundred and eighty kilometers would be a long time to get over what I was sure was about to happen to me because I’d missed hitching a ride on that truck. Three years in a Christian Brothers boarding school wouldn’t erase the memory of the tirade I was sure I was about to hear, and I couldn’t put it off any longer. As I rose up on my elbow and peered through the tatty mosquito netting hanging loosely around my cast iron bed frame, I could barely make out the crown of my dad’s balding head three beds away.

Old Muccan Station Homestead


This, is a ute!

Frank must be Smiling

2012-08-21T17:42:00.000-07:00

Patty and I bought our first boat back in 2004, we nearly bought one in 1997 but Patty's dad, Frank talked us out of it. I can remember sitting in the living room shooting the breeze with him when I casually brought up the subject of boat ownership, he looked across the room at me and a cheeky smile began to unfurl across his handsome face, the smile became broader as his head began to shake, then he pushed back in his chair and began to laugh.
"Jon," he said
"The two happiest days in a boaters life, the day they buy a boat and the day they get rid of it."
I looked back at him with a puzzled look on my face,
"But Frank, I think it'd be fun to own a boat, the freedom of the open ocean, the fresh sea air, the ability to get away from it all." by now he was almost crying he was laughing so hard.
"Did I ever tell you about the time me and Don were up by Morro Bay with a fishing charter?"
I shook my head no, (he had been in partnership for a while with Don running a fishing charter out of Quivira Bay in San Diego, I never did get to know what they were doing up in Morro Bay with the boat.)
"We were cruising along in a decent swell and one minute we were looking at the land on the horizon and the next we were staring through deep green sea water before we bobbed back up to the surface, and that was on a sixty footer! Close your eyes for a second," he said "and try and imagine how that would feel, one second you're breathing fresh sea air and the next you're struggling to hold your breath as you're plunged ten foot under by some rouge wave." I did and I found myself holding my breath and then gasping for air as I thought about the scenario.
"We're not buying a boat," he stopped laughing and nodded his head at me, "Good Idea."

The lure of a boat though did get to us and so we began our search in late 2003, our intention was to find one that would be docked somewhere, where we could go hang out for a weekend and cruise around the bays, the whole open ocean thing was a thing of the past since Franks pep talk.
I wanted to find a boat that was big enough to be comfortable, but not too big to handle, one that I could steal a great deal on and eventually we found it. We had spent countless hours on the internet scouring brokers websites, running down to the beach every weekend, buying every boat trader magazine we could lay our hands on before we finally came across our boat accidentally, for sale by owner. It was a perfect size and it was a great deal, probably due to the fact that one of the engines wasn't running and we weren't able to sea trial it, nevertheless we had found our retreat on the sea. The broker warned us against buying it, "Don't buy someone else's trouble," was his mantra, did I listen, nope, not me, the greatest deal finder in the greater Los Angeles area if not the whole of California! so we bought it and many, many times Franks other little words of wisdom came flooding back to my mind.
"Boat, Jon, you know what that means right? Break Out Another Thou!"
Well we persevered and we spent more than we should have on maintenance and after owning it for seven years and spending a grand total of about 3 hours out of the dock cruising the bay we got rid of it and we were sorta happy, it's not that we didn't use it for what we intended, we spent many weekends on it and every now and then we'd crank the engines to circulate the oil and we'd sit in the cockpit sipping a cocktail or a glass of wine while the BBQ slowly seared our dinner and we'd stare out at the flickering lights on the hillside near our marina and we enjoyed life on our boat from the comfort of our dock.
When I say we got rid of it, what I mean is we traded it for a more manageable smaller, easier serviced boat that we now have docked in Franks old home port in San Diego's Quivira Bay and we truly are using this boat for what it's meant to be used for. We're actually cruising the bays and taking her out to open ocean and last weekend we actually dropped anchor off the coast, cut the engines and enjoyed the quiet of the open seas around us. We've had dolphins swimming alongside us as we powered up the coastline, we spotted a giant sea turtle that may have actually been Crush from Finding Nemo, floating along barely submerged under the waves, we've got a sea lion who comes into the channel we're docked at for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we have a Pit Bull named Maya who will swim around the docked boats, literally for an hour while her owner tosses rocks for her to catch.

One of the most pleasing things about owning a boat are the relationships we have with other boaters, there is no way to live the garage door opener way of life when you have a boat docked, you can't simply go about your business all day then come home, push the garage door opener drive inside push the door closed and sneak into the confines of your home without a wave or even acknowledgement that you indeed have a neighbor; when you own a boat you have no option but to interact with neighbors, and that in my opinion can only be a good thing, it's a joy to be down at the boat, people watching, chatting with neighbors, fending off out of control boats attempting to dock but somehow almost always finding their way into the stern of our boat (no wait that's what I do, although I'm getting better.) Simply put, we have fun, we barely get TV reception, definitely no internet so we are forced to go back to basics, listening to the radio, reading, talking, napping, relaxing, relating all things that play second fiddle when we have the comforts of home around us.

So why did I choose to write about boating for this post I hear you asking and whats the point behind all this? Well I'll tell ya, boating and San Diego and Quivira Bay, always get me thinking about Frank, Patty's dad, Frank, and whenever I think about Frank I usually end up with a smile on my face because he was a cheeky bugger who was always up to no good, he was a scallywag, a strikingly handsome larger than life bloke, who never told a lot of stories but when he did he was the kind of storyteller that you enjoyed listening too, he was a member of the Greatest Generation a WWII Marine Veteran who lied about his age so he could enlist and serve this Country and serve he did, he saw action, mostly in the Japanese arena and was involved in the Battle of Okinawa. One of the stories he did tell us that we'll never forget was about how scared he was coming in to the beaches in landing craft, his eyes got a little misty as he recalled hearing bullets hitting the loading ramps in front of the craft and how his buddies were throwing up around him from a mixture of sea sickness and fear and how he knew that once that gate dropped it would be a mad scramble for survival and the bullets that were hitting outside the craft would then be tearing into the flesh of the marines crowded inside,but the stench inside the craft was something that he had to get away from so he pushed forward in spite of rounds hitting marines alongside of him and how he saw buddies drowning because the craft dropped the gate in water too deep to touch ground and the weight of the packs dragged men to the bottom. (We still haven't been able to watch Saving Private Ryan) That was the only story he ever told about fighting in that war and I'll never forget it, he was all the things I said he was prior, but he was and always will be a hero to me alongside every person that's ever pulled on a uniform to serve their country.

Today I remember Frank Czarniewski because today he would have been his 87th birthday but in 1998 Frank lost his battle with Cancer and so even though I'm Writing In Spite of Myself, I wanted to dedicate this post to him and his Greatest Generation.

Frank Czarniewski

1925 - 1998

R.I.P.

Always Drink The Good Scotch.

2012-08-07T17:13:00.000-07:00

I hate going to City of Hope every three months for my quarterly cancer check up, but I love the people in there, with the exception of the CT tech, who, no matter how hard he tries just can't hit the mark with the needle and so I end up being stabbed two or three or, as was the case this go round, four times. Though in fairness, my veins can be as absent as an Aussie Olympic Swimming Gold Medal! (only one!!! Are you kidding me?)

This go round was particularly nerve wracking since three months ago my amazing young Oncologist Dr. Pal had told me "We're watching a bit of a lump in the right lung," and so I was fully expecting to get not so good news this time, which inevitably means surgery, so I was bummed as well as more than a little nervous about being there. My type of cancer is fairly aggressive when it hits, so they need to get on top of any recurrence pretty quick and although the survivability has increased it's still not a great prognosis when you have had stage 4 as is the case with me.

It's strangely weird living your life in three month blocks, you have no idea how quick time goes by when you are wondering if this visit maybe they'll find more cancer and what if it's gotten into my bones or worse yet my brain? Every little ache in my knee becomes a cancer hot spot, every little headache becomes metastasis to the brain, every new bruise on my body is surely recurrence... It gets old worrying about this stuff all the time.
So there I sat, all pouty and sore from the stabbings, waiting to go in and be given the news that they were gunna cut more of my lung out and I was working myself into a bit of a tizzy and couldn't even make simple decisions like deciding between watching the "Jerry Springer Show" being re-run on the waiting room t.v. or reading the 1979 issue of Sports Illustrated, Patty gave my hand a squeeze and nodded out to the hall; my amazing young Oncologist is located on the 3rd floor of the hospital and his waiting area is directly across from the Pediatric Oncology Clinic, so I look across the hall and watch a laughing bald headed 8 or 9 or 14 year old patient being wheeled into their amazing oncologists and it gives me a great deal of perspective.
What a light switch that becomes and it instantly transported me back five years earlier to when my older amazing Oncologist first took me on as a patient, Patty and I were completely into the whole idea of healthy living as an assistant to beating cancer and so we sat in front of him and Patty asked

"What can we do as patients?"
(I love how this disease is a joint thing, she's an amazing crutch for me.)

Dr. Figglin looked at both of us with a smile as crooked as a two bob watch and said

"Always drink the good Scotch."

When we can afford it (and sometimes when we can't) we pretty much do just that, but sometimes we need a little reminder and sitting there watching that young girl being wheeled into her appointment with a smile on her face was just the tonic I needed.

So, that's my post for this week, short I know but my mind has been in other places and I really struggled to make myself sit down and write this in spite of myself...

Oh, the lump they're watching............. turns out its only scar tissue! PHEW :)

It's Official Kardashians Filming show in Arrowhead in house Next to me...

2012-07-23T09:39:00.002-07:00

How cool is this, the producers contacted us and wanted to know how much of an impact there would be in our lives to have all this commotion going on in the house next door to us, they also wanted to get permission to park their service vehicles down below on our bottom lot, of course we said no problem go for it.

So they are working all the details out and we get to go down to the Kardashians home for dinner and a meet and greet next Friday.

Sorry, that's not entirely correct, nor is it true, neither is it honest, or forthright, or fair, or authentic, or real or any other word you can think of that would indicate a falsehood. I just wanted to do this to see if in fact I get a spike in page views.

As a country we are so taken by celebrity, so much so that Yahoo ran an article last week Titled "Unlikely Celebrity Children's Book Authors," and it just drove me nuts. These people didn't write these books, and seriously if they did actually write them, the editors basically re-wrote them for the celebrities.

Chris Colfer, from Glee... Self Written.
"Rehashing/retelling fairy tales is really nothing new in children's literature, but that doesn't mean that a fresh twist can't still be put on them. Unfortunately Chris Colfer doesn't do much to set himself apart from the rest of the pack."

Madonna, "English Roses." ... Self Written.
"You know, I actually expected it to be pretty good, as I figured she had probably hired someone to "edit" it into a well-written and fun book.
Nope, she wrote it all herself. The moral? That beautiful people have problems too, and that the children of single family households are stressed slaves without childhoods. Um, how did that bit get past the PC review board?
Poorly written and insulting to anyone with only one parent, anyone who is snubbed by the "in crowd" for reasons other than being beautiful and perfect, or with a sense of literary decency.
I'm appalled at how many people enjoyed this book."

John Travolta, "One Way Night-Coach." Self Written.
"This book is so poorly written it should never have left the editors desk without being covered with red ink. John Travolta is a wonderful actor, but would benefit greatly from lessons if he should want to continue his "writing" career."

Julianne Moore, "Freckle Face," series Three Writers.
"The boy (Windy Pants) in this story has two MOMS and there are family pictures depicting the same. I was not happy about being FORCED to have THIS discussion with my 7-year-old daughter. I purchased this book knowing it was about accepting other children that are different; but I wrongfully assumed it would be about freckles, hair color, weight, skin color, etc."

The reviews were taken straight from Amazon and I'll admit I haven't read one of these or the 8 others that were being praised by Yahoo, but really, seriously people, I don't wanna be a snob about writing and I think everyone should write something about anything at some stage in their life. The reality is that these authors based on the reviews I read on Amazon wouldn't have gotten past the slush pile if it wasn't for the fact that they are Celebrities. If Kim Kardashian were to write a book about "How to sit the correct way while while getting a pedicure." it would be picked up in a flash and would be rushed to the bookshelves in mere weeks!

So nothing astounding here folks, not even trying for writing gems, just wanted to see how many pages views I get because of the title... Please don't say anything on Facebook to distort my little experiment, I'll let you know the outcome though before I get back to seriously Writing in Spite of Myself.

I wouldn't do that if I was you!

2012-07-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

How many times have you heard that in your lifetime?

A couple of weeks ago I received my annual weed abatement notice from the County, instructing me to clear my property of weeds, fallen logs, debris, and general fire fuel, I have until the end of this month to comply, so as per usual I ignored the written notice, but filed the mental note in my overflowing brain, under "Don't Wanna, But Must Do," file.
Yesterday was my day to sort out that file and since weed abatement was the last thing in, it naturally became the first thing out.

The Correct way to Weed Whack

I put on a pair of old tennis shoes, WITH socks, ankle socks, and my favorite faded blue Life is Good short sleeved tee shirt, my threadbare khaki Cargo Shorts and my sunnies, not for protection but because it was pretty bright outside and then armed with my battery powered, newly acquired, 24volt Weed destructing, brush mangling stick of power I headed out to do battle with my sticker patches and weeds.

Jon's way to Weed Whack.

Now, while I was getting dressed for said assault on the hill I kept hearing Patty's voice rising from behind my "Don't Wanna, But Must Do," file and it was saying, "I wouldn't do that if I was you!" along with "Maybe you should wear long pants and long sleeves and how about a dust mask, eyeglasses and gloves? "
To which I of course replied, "Ha, long pants, long sleeves, pfft, dust mask? phooey! gloves? can't find em! and eyeglasses? whats wrong with my Oakleys?"

Two hours later after tearing of half my thumb nail, inhaling copious amounts of dust and debris, rubbing my contact covered eyes till they were nearly as red as my well scratched up and bleeding calf's and shins, I thought to myself, "I wish Patty was here to make me put all that junk on."
Just about then I heard the unmistakable buzz of a bee, followed very closely by the unmistakable buzz of a couple of hundred bee's and then like some old grainy black and white Tom and Jerry cartoon I was being chased and stung multiple times by this angry mob of pissed off bee's, they got me on my wrists, my neck, my chest (through my favorite faded very lightweight t-shirt) my head, sucks having a bald spot, ok I should say area rather than spot, and they tried for my mouth, but seriously I managed to flick them away like a Wimbledon Champion, wielding my hand instead of a racket.

I charged up my pretty steep hillside, bee's following me, dive bombing me, driving me to get my fat arse up the hill and I complied in a manner that could quite possibly have put me into the Olympics for the Triple Jump event. I made it to my driveway T-shirt ripped from my body, shoes kicked off, shorts half way down to my ankles, still swatting at imaginary bee's, my chest heaving for air, all the while wondering if I might die from this killer bee attack and not noticing the elderly couple that regularly walk their very cute Alaskan Malamute past our house daily. Of course I politely nodded in their general direction as I ran in my front door big white arse halfway out of my undies breathlessly trying to find the Benedryl and Patty's Epi pen. The Benedryl worked and here I sit still quite sore from the stings, but alive and wondering why did I do that?

This whole episode started me thinking of other times that I did really quite stupid things with complete and total disregard for my personal safety, like...

While finishing the partial remodel on our house here in Arrowhead, (I'm beginning to wonder if the house doesn't want me here,) I was using my table saw to cut the hard wood floor boards for the kitchen and was nearly finished with the project, when I heard not only Patty's voice, but my dad's as well saying "I wouldn't do that if I was you."
Of course I knew better so why shouldn't I remove the safety guard on the blade, it was just getting in the way of things and I was moving at a seriously professional pace, the floor was only four cuts away from being complete and the dogs were getting tired of being outside, so why not let them in while I make the final cuts? I'll tell you why, because dogs can get rambunctious and safety guards are there for a reason and when the rambunctious dogs mix with guard-less table saw blade, dismembered thumbs are pretty much the norm.
Just as I'm cutting the wood plank, one of the dogs decided it wanted the Plushie Killer Whale that the other one had and they banged into me, and my thumb banged into the blade that spinning pretty bloody fast and the next thing I know I have a trail of blood up my faded green Life is Good t-shirt and I'm looking at my thumb bone, it's really amazing how white bones can be while they're still attached to your body. Anyway I didn't quite loose my thumb but it was a close call. Now that I think of it, maybe I should stop wearing those Life is Good t-shirts?

I could go on and on about other times that I should have paid attention to the voice in my head, a voice that sometimes screamed at me "I WOULDN'T DO THAT IF I WAS YOU!" like the time I was working up in a gold mine outside of Meekatharra with my younger brother Adrian, we had been sent out to a mud field where the plant discharged waste from the gold treatment plant and our job was to rotate the pipes so they didn't wear out on one side from the abrasives in the discharge, (NO, I'm not talking sewage!) we would have to wade into these huge fields of mud in wellington or rubber boots and spend the day just turning pipes in knee deep slop, I'm not sure why we weren't issued waders, but we weren't.
The end of our shift comes and I had snagged and cut my palm on a piece of metal and needed to get it seen to by medical, so I wander over to the first aid building in my boots full of mud and ask the nurse to check out my hand, she tells me to get outside and take my mud filled boots off, I try and do just that, I go out sit down on the steps and can't for the life of me get the boots off since they were full of mud and creating a vacuum that I couldn't break, I stick my head back inside the door and ask for a Stanley trimmer or box cutter, she doesn't even ask why as she hands me a scalpel.
Are you already seeing the end of this anecdote?
I sit back on the step and proceed to cut the first boot from my leg which I do without a hitch, the whole time ignoring the voice in my head... I get to the second boot and as I'm slicing down the side of the boot I hit a weak section of rubber and it flies down the boot and right across the top of my big toe, slicing to the bone. Adrian looks at my toe and says, "Should I go grab you a bandage mate, looks like you might have cut the bugger off!"
I was worried that I might actually get fired for being so stupid so I pulled my toe toward my ankle and taped it up with electrical tape and to this day the bloody toe still works and I have barely a scar to show for it.

So as I sit here at my computer waiting for "Home Defenders," to come and rid me of the angry bee's so I can retrieve my weed whacker and get back to work I wonder how many times you've ignored that voice in your head saying "I wouldn't do that if I was you?"

I should really be out there watching the bloke eradicate the bastard, bloody, bee's that caused such embarrassment to my elderly dog walking neighbors, but since I haven't posted in a week I decided instead to sit here and "Write in Spite of Myself."

"Death of A School."

2012-07-12T16:34:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I spoke about one of the many incidents that happened with me (as opposed to, TO me,) and it was a lot of fun remembering that particular event. I sat here and laughed out loud while I relived the scene of the Brother driving up to me.

One of the comments from Sandra was that "And the School is still around grooming young farmers."
Sadly that's not the case, the school did close it's doors back in 2009 and I still remember feeling a great loss when I heard about it.

I attended the school back in the seventies and it was many things to me. I had my first non-sibling punch up there and I was terrified during the lead up to it. Of course after the fight (which I started like an idiot,) I had a nice fat lip, black eye, and broken nose to go along with the start of a great new friendship, Charlie Mac beat the ever living snot out of me, laughing with every perfectly aimed and landed punch he threw from the fists of a kid whose dad had been a Golden Gloves contender and was intent on his son following in his footsteps. Oh the choices we make sometimes!

I wont say I was taught discipline there, but it was most definitely refined by the Christian Brothers, my dad was an excellent disciplinarian quite possibly because practice does in fact make perfect and he practiced on me on a very regular basis. The Brothers brand of discipline though went beyond even what my dad knew, in fact with the Olympics just around the corner I dare say that if they had a competition for discipline the Brothers would win Gold and my dad would be a distant Silver.
Some people I'm sure will be horrified to know that part of their corporal punishment regimen was the use of old Tractor Fan Belts, literally right of the old crappy John Deere Combine that I drove. Depending on the Brother and the severity of the offense it was a quick march upstairs, lay on the bed, pants down, bare butt exposed and lay there like that while he went and fetched the dirty old fan belt to strap you with, that was Brother Morgan's favorite. Yes I copped a few of them and believe me when I say, I couldn't sit down for an hour or so. Others like old Brother Newman preferred a sharp right jab followed by a left hook, Brother Couch's weapon of choice was the good old fashioned cane, Brother Hanley he was very old school and would just tug your ear, funny as it may sound I preferred any of the others over the ear tug.

My point is, that although I copped my fair share of Brotherly Discipline, I deserved it and it didn't kill me, and it didn't leave any scars, and it didn't screw me up for the rest of my life, it didn't take away my childhood, it taught me in no uncertain terms that I was responsible for my actions and I was in no doubt at all that for example; when I was pinching a couple of beers from the Brothers dining room I had better not get caught, but if I did it was a fair collar and I knew I deserved what was coming.

Another great gift from the school was Hard Work. When I first got there I resented all the work we had to do, but man, it prepared me for later in life. I had just turned thirteen when I started school and here's a list as best I can remember of some of the jobs I had.
Baker, Slaughterer, Butcher, Steam Engine Attendant (we had a giant wood fed boiler for our laundry room,) Laundry worker (we took turns on Saturdays laundering the whole schools dirties...) Truck Driver, Front End Loader Operator, Bulldozer operator, Grader Operator, every imaginable farm implement you can imagine operator, Barber, Movie Projectionist (the old type where you had to continuously wind the arcing rods to provide the back light) Cook, Shearer, Painter, Mechanic, All the jobs related to Animal Husbandry and other than the painting I loved every job I did!

Back then we never had electives or options we did what they told us to do, when they told us to and every single boy participated, when it was Aussie Rules season, we all played footy, no one got to sit out, every single boy, good bad or indifferent played footy. Swim season, everyone swam even if it meant doggie paddling to finish the 50meter butterfly race. Annual Squash tournament, complete participation, Basketball, Cricket, Tennis, Track and Field... There were no onlookers, no bystanders and honestly, although I'm sure there were individual incidents, for the most part there was no mocking of the participants ability or lack of ability, we all just competed and at the end of the school year the Brothers actually gave trophies out to the individual champions, we never got team trophies, we never got participation trophies, the whole school would sit there and watch as the best athletes, scholars and citizenship awards were given to the best individuals.

99.9% of the time when it was lights out at night time, we slept, read our books under the blankets with a torch (Aussie flashlight) but we never gave Brother Morgan in 1st and 2nd year or Brother Couch in 3rd year any reason to crack open the punishment devise cupboard.
We were allowed to have a radio/cassette player but I swear the only time we could use them was on Saturdays while we did our jobs around the farm. We also wore school uniforms every day and on Sundays it included the tie!

So, whats my point to this long winded post? I already told you the School closed its doors in 2009.

In 2008 I took Patty back to visit the School, it was also the first time since I graduated that I had gone back and to this day I really wish I'd never visited after I left, some of the changes that occurred in my opinion and some of the Old Boys (Aussie for Alumni) I spoke to agreed, caused the closure and in my corny way it's heartbreaking.

They did away with Uniforms,
The kids like to show their individuality...
They did away with compulsory sports,
Some of the kids don't like to participate, and some of them aren't that good so we don't want to expose them to ridicule, so now we allow those that want to participate to travel into Mullewa or Geraldton to play on their school teams... Oh the cost is absorbed by the parents and the State
They did away with compulsory work,
We're a school now, the farm is pretty much done we survive on Government assistance instead of primary production...
They did away with the all boys aspect and turned co-ed,
It was felt that we were being exclusionary by not allowing girls to attend...
They did away with corporal punishment, Parent believe that they should be the only ones to discipline their children and nurturing is a far better method... Yea I know, but seriously, they never killed any of us!
There was rap music blasting from the dorms,
The students should be allowed to express themselves and a the cursing is actually freedom of speech so we don't like to interfere with that...
There were kids gathered in groups sitting on unmade beds,
It's their bed, if they feel like making it then they can but we don't actually enforce made beds anymore...
There were kids, literally smoking on the lawns and trampolines that I personally had helped install,
There was a complete and utter lack of discipline, farm equipment sat rusted in the sheds, the cricket and tennis courts were overgrown with weeds, the basketball courts were disintegrating, big chunks of blacktop missing, backboards hanging from a couple of screws, the picture screen half torn off, because the boy and girls have their personal DVD players now so we don't go to the expense of renting the movies for them... And on and on and on.

I know we need to move forward and progress should be seen as a good thing, but in this case they destroyed the very fabric that made me who I am today. That school formed me into me, molded the person I am, it helped create a person that I actually do like, I like who I turned out to be and it is heartbreaking to see it gone.I know if I had been blessed with kids and we were living in Australia they would have been sent to that school and they would have hated the first year and they would have cried when they were sent back after the three school breaks we got per year, but by the time they hit 2nd year, they'd begin to look forward to riding the bus down that dirt road and up to the Colditz looking buildings, and the smiling, disciplinarian Brothers that stood there to welcome them, and you know what, by 3rd year they would be in love with that whole institution and they would come home as men among boys, yes I know that's a bloody cliche` but if you ask me that's where the phrase was invented, by some Tardun Old Boy...

So to me it is a sad turn of events, and I think it's one that could have been avoided, and yes there are some Old Boys that will say the Brothers were too hard and maybe they were but I think if the system had been tweaked rather than overhauled Tardun Christian Brothers Agricultural College may still be open and I'd be planning my thirty something re-union instead of sitting here Writing in Spite Of Myself.

Bush Cooler

2012-07-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

My mate Rich asked me to share some stories about attending school in the bush at an all boys Christian Brothers boarding school, and since I'm back to working on my novel about that very subject I thought it was a cracking idea.
Then I thought what story would best exemplify my time spent there, and so after my headache subsided from giving this the proper thought and attention it deserved I figured the following would be a pretty good representation of my time there.


The Upper Floor were the Dorms, Building on the right is the Chapel

Tardun, CBAS, St.Mary's, Christian Brothers, the Big House... Some of the names that the "Tardun, Christian Brothers Agricultural School," was known by, was where I was remanded to for three years, yes I did say "remanded to," because that's truly what it felt like when I first arrived. Even though my parents paid for the privilege of me attending school it was highlighted in more than a few places on the application that this was a working farm school and the boys would be expected to engage in very physical and demanding work regime's which would do nothing but build the young mans character, oh and please sign this part ot the bottom of the sheet where it says that it's acceptable for the Brothers to engage in corporal punishment for the good of the child.
To be fair to my parents, they really didn't have many choices for secondary education since we lived in the bush and had no schools around that I could attend on a day to day basis. They probably picked the cheapest alternative and Tardun won.

Nearest Town --- Tardun --- Population 7 --- Distance from School approx ten Kilometers
Nearest Big Town --- Mullewa --- Population 200 --- Distance from School approx 30 Kilometers
Nearest City --- Geraldton --- Population 20,000 --- Distance from School approx 120 Kilometers

Nearest Capital City --- Perth --- Population about 1 million --- Distance from School - Light Years...
Average temperature when I arrived in February about 120 degrees --- Air Conditioning ?????
Average rainfall for the year 2 inches (we were in the middle of the Wheat Belt of Western Australia, attempting to be self sufficient by growing cereal crops and raising sheep and cattle.)

Student population 100 boys, grades 8 through 10
Farm Size 70,000 acres
Teachers 3
Farm Bosses 8
Jailers 2
Hours per week spent in class --- about 20
Hours per week spent working the farm --- about 40, except during ploughing, seeding, harvesting, and shearing, then it bumped to about 80.

Fun and exciting life experiences looking back on my time there --- Priceless and immeasurable.

So, I said I was going to tell you about one particular event in my time there and while I've been writing this I've changed my mind about a thousand times, but I've settled on this one.

As I said earlier we were a cereal crop farm and we would begin harvesting around the beginning of October and go through late December which is a pretty hot time of year in that part of the bush, pretty consistently over the 110 degrees mark.

The system was, around 4am we would be woken by a Brother carefully sneaking through the dormitory picking a few select kids to go out and spend the day working a harvester instead of being in school. You know how exciting that was to a 14 year old right? A day out of school AND we got to either drive the big rig collecting wheat from the harvesters or we operated the actual combines, they put a lot of trust in us.
This one particular morning Brother Morgan, Swifty (we had nick names for all the brothers and this bloke could run like the wind,) came to my bunk and shook me awake, which was pretty easy since I was laying in a mess of sweat soaked sheets and had spent the night tossing and turning trying to get some shut eye.
"Wake up Master Egan, we need you on a combine today, breakfast in 5 minutes."
"Yes Brother."

CBAS in Greener Times

You bloody little ripper...
Me and about 5 other kids met down in the kitchen for our burnt toast and rubbery eggs, seriously the old cook Joe, would prepare the fried eggs about an hour before we got there, he'd have them lined up on an aluminum tray, drop them and they'd bounce! then after breaky we headed out in the bed of a ute (Aussie for pick up truck) to be dropped off at various machines in the paddocks. We got no choice when it came to what machines we were allocated and we had everything from vintage John Deere's to a brand new Massey Ferguson which of course everyone wanted since it had an air-conditioned, air ride cab. Of course I didn't get the flash new shiny Red Massey, I got the old piece of faded green John Deere, no air con, no air ride, no enclosed cab, but no worries, I was out of school, I had about a 200 acre paddock of wheat to crop and I wouldn't see anyone but the grain truck for about 4 hours, till old Brother Synan (Goggles,) showed up with my frozen cheese and tomato sandwich, yep frozen, but it also came with a hot cuppa tea that you could dunk the frozen sarny (sandwich,) in to defrost it enough to bite through.

So, I'm dropped off with my big water esky (cooler full of iced water) which I leave strategically under the partial shade off an old gum tree and the ute pulls away. I go around my machine checking that everything's where it's supposed to be, grease a few fittings, and get to work cropping the paddock, by this time it's about 5:30 the suns coming up, the flies are out and the engine is humming beautifully life's grand. I'm already just two eye holes and a smile after being covered in dust from the ride out here in the back of the ute, and even though the sun just broke the horizon, I'm turning into a muddy pile of red dirt, first item of removed clothing, Singlet (tank-top) that gets laid across the back of whats left of the tractor seat and I feel a little relief although by now the open air cab is catching and trapping all the heat it can from the engine, and as per usual there is absolutely not one wisp of air movement except the flow of air that idles through the cab as I move along at a snails pace. My arms are in constant motion as I lift and lower the comb on the front of the combine, due to the drought conditions the wheat stalks had barely reached a foot tall, so I had to watch for logs, and bundies (big rocks) that had been missed and disturbed during ploughing and seeding season. The Brothers didn't like it when you dinged up the comb and they had no issue showing their displeasure with a swift smack to the jaw.

I'd been working for about an hour or so and was now down to being shirtless, shortless and bootless, boots were replaced with typical Aussie safety shoes, otherwise known as thongs, and I would have been barefoot except the floor of the tractor was too hot for my feet to handle, so other than my undies, I'm pretty much naked. The grain truck had just been by to unload me so I wouldn't see anyone for at least another hour, this was before the time of cell phones and we didn't have CB's so I was most definitely out there alone plodding around the paddock covering a lap about every 15 minutes, I pretty much had to ration my water so I'd stop and jump out for a drink every other lap, knowing that at lunch time they'd bring me a refill on my esky.

By about 10am it was sweltering and I was getting no relief from the heat even after guzzling down mouthfuls of by now, tepid water, the dust was caked on thicker than my mums foundation, my eyes were raw from the layers of red dirt that were getting harder to clear with each blink, it was as if I were rubbing them with sandpaper, my once tighty whitey's were now roughy reddies and were beginning to chafe my thighs with ever bounce of the old piece of crap John Deere, oh how I wished I were sitting in the comparative cool of the 90 degree classroom! BUT! an idea sprang to my mind about half way through my next lap... The truck had just been and lunch was still a good hour or so away, so I'd improvise in order to get cool, yep necessity the mother of all invention had just necessiterated my mind, and it was a good un.

I eased the rampaging combine to a grinding, dust cloud inducing, halt in the middle of the paddock just across the way from my old pathetic non shade covering ghost gum and proceeded to trudge through the grain stalks in nothing but my undies and thongs, my legs looking for all purpose that they were the result of a shrapnel attack, as the stalks ripped into the skin deeper than any of the canings I'd suffered at the hands of the Brothers, (did I mention they enjoyed corporal punishment at this place?) I made it to the tree and the esky and proceeded to put my plan into action, it went something like this.

Remove mud caked undies
Remove mud caked safety boots aka thongs
Remove 2 cup capacity cup from top of esky
Fill said cup with tepid cup from under-performing esky
Toss contents of cup high into air
Run naked through falling water thereby creating a cooling rain shower

It worked to perfection, absolute and utter perfection, with the first cupful I was a little timid and didn't fully commit but then with subsequent cups I became braver, my strength grew and my abandon became absolute, I was giddy, nae, intoxicated with pleasure at being cool, so much so that I never noticed, honestly, didn't hear, see or in any way whatsoever notice that Brother Kelly (Roo Dog) had driven into my paddock and was watching from a distance of about a hundred yards as this naked, semi delirious student, slash farm hard, slash inmate, was dancing like a banshee arms raised, legs pumping hollering at the sky in a Native American kind of rain dance.
As God is my witness when he actually pulled up next to me and I realized I had been busted for naked rain dancing I still don't know who was more scared. He looked at me, I looked at him, he nodded toward my undies and thongs, I stared at them, he nodded again, I walked over and sheepishly pulled them on, he nodded at the bed of the ute, I looked at him, he nodded again, I climbed in burning my ass on the side of the bed in the process, he drove me back to the School, no stopping at the still idling John Deere to get the rest of my clothes, straight back to school in the back of the ute, even though there was a perfectly good seat in the front next to him. We pulled up in front of the main building and I didn't move, he still hadn't said a word to me. Then the bell rings for lunch and out into the yard pour the 90 or so student that weren't working the farm that day. Roo Dog looks at me as he gets out of the ute, I look at him, he nods toward the dorms, I don't need another nod and I race upstairs in my dirty mud caked undies to the shower block.

Not a word was spoken to me regarding the incident from anyone other than the students, and surprisingly I was not called on for harvesting for the rest of the season. Never got my singlet back, but did get my boots returned to me! One time I was woken early by old Swifty a couple of weeks after that, but it was for bakery duty, not machinery operating, and do I have a great story about baking the weekly bread for the farm, but that's for another time. When I'm more in the mood to Write in Spite of Myself.

http://web.cbas.wa.edu.au/

2012-07-03T02:50:00.000-07:00

Trucker to Writer

How did I go from being a truckie to a writer?

A friend asked me to write a few lines about my transitional journey from driving to typing, and after a few weeks with that question rattling around in the empty space in my brain, the one that used to be full of McGuiverish tricks for getting road trains unstuck from dry river bed crossings and the such, that I no longer needed since I'm not chasing gears anymore I came up with a somewhat believable answer, maybe I should have asked if she wanted the fiction or the non-fiction version? I'll leave it to you to decide.

I was actually a writer in progress way before I became a truckie, my life went something along the lines of this...

Primary School, voracious reader ---

Boarding school, 1st year, voracious reader with knots on my head after getting hit with teachers sniper fired blackboard duster for reading under my desk lid, beginning poet, ---

Boarding School, 2nd year, Voracious Poet (mostly naughty stuff about the Christian Brothers with a somewhat hardcore following of my peers, eagerly awaiting a single page, double spaced hand scribbled Limerick about the Brother of the week. Intermittent reader generally with a flashlight under the covers in the dorm till my batteries died. ---

Boarding School, 3rd year, Voracious Political Satire, Boisterous Blathering Berating Bad Brothers, and some Serious memoir stuff. Books, what the heck is a book? ---

Newman Senior High School --- Girls, wow they have real girls here, books, they were only for marking up covers with the latest version of "Jon love heart ____ fill in the blank," Read many love letters of sorts, and wrote as many bad ones back. ---- Reading, sorry don't have time. ---

Footy --- No time to write, or read... run, run, run, sleep, sleep, sleep. ---

Mining --- Writing, Satirical poetry mostly Anti - (BHP) company, Pro - Union silly stuff but I had pretty much a weekly slot in the towns paper and wrote under the pseudonym "Smegan" bastardization of It's Me, Egan. I had fun doing those pretty much done on the back of a time sheet, but I had a little cultish following. Reading, not a chance. ---

Trucking --- Lots and lots of books on tape, since where I drove you were lucky to get radio reception so I'd buy and listen to wonderful authors reciting their books till the red dirt and dust destroyed the tape, and when that happened (with surprising regularity and pretty much always at some climactic scene,) I'd drive through the night with pretty much just my own thoughts and those thoughts became scenes and scenes became chapters and chapters began to multiply and then I'd hit a destination and those scenes and chapters would disappear right along with the dust destroyed cassette tapes.

After a writing a few books in my head over a couple of months and then always loosing them to sleep or a tough unload, or a breakdown three hundred miles from civilization I did an amazing thing, I actually remembered the next time I was able to swing my road train in through a K-Mart, along with my typical supplies of new thongs (for my feet! sheesh you people,) a couple of pairs of stubbies (short truckie shorts,) a few singlets (Always blue -tank tops-,) that was our unofficial uniform! 26 cartons of coke, 28 cartons of smokes, 4 packets of roll your own smokes in case I ran out of ready mades, couple loaves of bread, cans of beans (cook those beauties on the engine while you drive down the road,) a few steaks (BBQ was always a chance!) and 5 bloody great big bags of ice, and there at the checkout were lined notebooks, must of been back to school time for the kids, so I picked a couple up and they became my novel holders.

So now, I'd be driving down the road and when an idea came to me I'd jot it in my note book after a few weeks of consistently filling note books, then loosing them either in the truck or at home when I hit the house. I graduated to dictation machines and over the course of a few miles I ended up with pretty hefty stash of recorded thoughts and ramblings of an over tired truckie who probably should have been pulled off the side of the road napping instead of driving down the road yakking into a machine which for the most part seemed like it would have been more believable as the ramblings of a certifiably insane male inhabitant from the planet Drongo. The tapes were actually fun to listen to once I was rested up, but they were really gobbley-gook.

Even though I never really was able to salvage my notebooks or tapes from that time, I was always creating them, never ending actually, I very rarely listed to music or radio while I drove, I would spend hours and days just watching the road and the sky and the animals and the weather and the other very occasional truckie or tourist that dared to drive the roads at night with us. And the interesting thing from doing that, was the fact that everything I did while driving became a story, with a tempo and beating heart, the thoughts became words so easily and the smallest of things became gigantic players in my road stories even my hard working engine became a character, and I'd talk to her all the time, but weird as it sounds our most intimate conversations were when I'd been driving for maybe a couple of days non stop except for food and fuel, I'd pull off the road into a clearing in the bush somewhere and shut her down, then I'd lay in my bunk and listen as she'd slowly fall asleep the sounds of cooling components creaking, the sheet metal crackling, and after a few minutes the frogs or crickets or occasional mob of kangaroos eating nearby would dominate the air with their noises every now and then a huge heavy loaded road train would lumber by and you could hear it coming for miles, then it'd chug on past and you'd hear it slowly die out as it put miles between us and those were the most peace filled moments of my life, and those were the times I dreamt of one day being a serious writer and getting down on paper some of what my life had been about.

I emigrated to the U.S. and my life became for the most part pretty typical non stop, trying to make a buck and trucking was a major part of it for over fifteen years, and then one day about ten years ago I began to write again, I'm not even sure why, but I liked what I was doing, and the writing was ok, and Patty liked it and said you need to focus on writing instead of trucking and maybe we'll get to see each other more and maybe, just maybe you could make a living doing it, and so I dabbled a little bit more, and Patty prodded me gently toward writing retreats, and I wrote some more, and Patty prodded me a little harder to attend writing workshops, and I wrote some more, and Patty prodded me to get all Nike on my craft, forget about trucking and just do it. and so now thanks to Patty I have gone from Trucker to Writer and I'm beginning to get much better now at Writing in Spite of Myself.

2012-06-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

Our Boy Opie

There's a pretty good reason for me not writing anything here for the past week.

Tim Tam - Max - Opie

        About ten years ago Patty and I rescued a little ginger male cat. From the outset he was a little bugger, we already had two other rescue cats, four rescue dogs, two Barbado goats, and a momma sheep with her two babies.

This ginger cat, Opie, was a pretty disruptive figure, but he has always had a great personality. He was pretty much a loner, only coming out of his hiding places to annoy the rest of our menagerie. He was supposed to be my lap cat, but that never materialized, sure he'd make out like he was going to curl up in my lap for a few minutes, putting me through pure hell as he nested, I tolerated it since I figured he was fixing to settle down. He'd bury his claws into my legs, lay down for thirteen seconds then swagger off without so much as a look over his shoulder, leaving me with a tube of Neosporin and an aching, itchy thigh! As he headed for his hiding spot under our bed, he'd always look to smack Maxie, our long haired female cat in a maneuver not unlike a drive-by, a quick thwack to the back of her head never looking at her or breaking stride.

         Over the years we lost all of the other pets, mostly to the needle due to either age or disease, all except Max and Opie, we adopted another little cat Tim Tam and then rescued a couple of "Didgeredoodles," that we still have. It's always heartbreaking to make the final trip to the vet when the time comes, I know some people who can remain unmoved or cold with regard to having to euthanize a loved pet, note how I said "Know some people," those people will always, only be acquaintances and never friends, because if you are incapable of understanding the bond of a pet to human and human to pet then something is wrong and we could never be friends.

Patty with The Didgeredoodle's

We met our favorite Vet, Dr. Wayne, almost twenty years ago when we had a couple of Miniature Schnauzers, Harpo and Sacha, and we hit immediately hit it off, he could see how much we loved those little buggers, so for about the past eighteen years whenever he had an animal that needed a home, he'd call us up and say "Hey guy's I have a Miniature Schnauzer that would love to go home with yous," So we'd run down to his practice and there would be Wayne proudly holding the collar of a Rottweiler or a Catahoula Leopard, no, I'm being serious, and I'd curl my lip and bark at him and he'd say that he was pretty sure there was a little bit of Schnauzer in its bloodline and we'd inevitably end up taking it home. Our file wouldn't fit in his file cabinet, they used to keep it under the counter top, we ended up placing over fifteen animals and keeping a few ourselves and each one of them were precious to us.

Maxie

A couple of weeks ago we noticed that one of our cats had started to pee outside the cat box that we keep in the laundry... Side note here: I hate litter boxes, always have, always will, but we found a product called "The Worlds Best Cat Litter," and it really works, no smell, no mess, easy clean up so try it!... anyway, we would clean up the pee and disinfect and deodorize and sanitize and sterilize and every other ize you can imagine, but the next day, right in the middle of the laundry floor would be another puddle for us. It took a little while to figure out who was doing it, although my immediate suspicion was Opie, because he's, you know, a little bugger. Finally last Thursday I saw him saunter up the stairs from the laundry, pausing on the top step to survey his surroundings, then after licking his front paw, he made a beeline for the bedroom, smacking poor unsuspecting Max on the back of the head for good measure, I glanced over my shoulder and Tim Tam was asleep on her perch so I raced downstairs and there it was, a big ole puddle of pee right in the middle of the tiled (Thank God,) laundry floor, AaaahhHAaaa said I, it is you, you little basta...I mean Bugger of a cat.

Tim Tam

So immediately to the beholder of all knowledge, the gargantuan of good advice, Google ... Why is my cat peeing outside his litter box? Of course there were more than a few possibilities, everything from, Just being a bugger to Feline Diabetes, to Urinary Tract Infection, from the way he was acting we figured it was a UTI, so off to the vet with him, our new Up The Hill Vet... two days later, we found out our poor Opie has Feline Multiple Myeloma quite a rare cancer for cats and also no chance of survival. The vet, who by the way, is a great guy has no real indication of how long Opie will live, anywhere from a few weeks to a year, pretty much a guessing game, but, he's comfortable, we took xrays and he looks good as far as bone mass and internal organs. I hate to think of our place without Opie stealthily being in our lives, Max will probably be happy in a way, but I think Tim Tam will miss him, Wunya our male Didgeredoodle will miss his covert cuddles with Opes, and Yulara our female Didge won't miss the tormenting she had to endure from him. So we are going to love him up as much as we can and or as much as he'll let us, and when the time is right we'll make that trip with him and hold him, and love him and watch with tear filled eyes as he takes his last breath our biggest hope being that we time it right.

So there you have it, the reason I didn't write this past week, I was just bummed and sad, and already beginning to miss the little bugger, but today as Opie actually is sitting almost totally on my right foot I decided that it would be a great time to Write in Spite Of Myself.

Our Boy Opie

2012-06-15T21:23:00.001-07:00

John Christopher Egan

Whenever we leave town nowadays we have a friend of ours come over and house/pet sit; for which we are eternally grateful. The dogs and cats are much happier staying in their own environment and we feel a lot more secure having someone in the house. The only "down side," to having a house guest is the spring cleaning that comes with having that someone move in for a week. You know the general scurry of activity that accompanies getting ready for a trip? and then Patty wants me to get all Martha Stewart in preparation for a mate who could care less if the sheets on the guest bed have that Aroma Therapy Lavender Scent; seriously, as long as there's a cold beer in the fridge and the Direct TV subscription is paid he's batting a thousand.

Actually, I'm as bad as she is, but I still like to give her a hard time about it, so last week before we headed to New York, I went through the motions, cleaned the bedroom windows, dusted off the bed set, completely remodeled the downstairs bathroom (almost, I still need to grout the new tile and decide if Martha would actually paint the semi-gloss brown stripe above the accent tile or not,) threw the sheets in the wash, dried them, forgot the lavender scented dryer sheets, so dried them again, then tackled my desk area, Oh the perils of not having a door to my office!

Once I got into the chore of sorting through the piles of old Home Depot receipts, Online auction records, and expired Bed Bath and Beyond coupons, (actually they never expire, even though they have an expiration on them,) and last years copies of Martha Stewart Living! I decided that once and for all I would really, I mean really sort out the good stuff from the junk and so I settled down with a clear mission to find a place for, or dispose of every single scrap of ephemera in my office. It was all going according to plan, the paper shredder was performing flawlessly even when I exceeded the ten page limit, and then I came across something that halted my progress faster than a TSA agent sniffing out a 3.6 ounce bottle of aftershave in my carry-on. I found a stack of letters from my dad.

He passed away just a couple of years ago and I really miss the old bugger. I'm sure most of you that know me, know that he and I had a few struggles sorting out our relationship when I was younger, but in the end we did sort them out and almost right in the middle of sorting them out, I moved to the States. This was over twenty years ago, so writing letters was still acceptable, Oh and by the way, I'm going to make a pact with myself to actually start doing that again as opposed to emails all the time, honestly who doesn't love holding a handwritten letter in their paws? I recently received a surprise note card from one of my fellow Swagger writers and it made me smile the whole day (thanks Gina.) Anyway, I sat and read a couple of his letters and I got to re-connect with him again and I got to cry again, and I got to feel regret and sorrow again and then, I found the note he left on his bedside stand for Patty and I to find when we returned from taking him to LAX after he spent three months with us eighteen years ago. It was a short, beautiful, heartfelt, simple note, and it was a note that makes me shed a tear of joy again right now as I'm writing. My dad had a great way with words, especially the written word and he also had what I considered gorgeous handwriting, I ended up with my mum's hand, worse than an inebriated doctors scrawl. I wont bore you with the details of his note, it wouldn't mean anything to you, but to me that one and half pages encapsulates my whole relationship with my dad and the most important thing about it was the "I Love You Son," at the end.

        The other item I discovered which brings a tear to my eye is a Fathers Day card I purchased the year he died, this weekend is Father's Day here in the States, but in Australia it's the first Sunday in September, so for years I would always just call my dad on Father's Day because we could never find a card in the stores here, but the year he died Patty reminded me to pick one up to hold onto so we could send it to him, (as well as a call of course.) I forgot to send it in time and so it now sits in my desk with his letters. A day doesn't pass where I don't consciously think of my dad, especially if I'm doing a project --- re-modeling the downstairs bathroom --- I know he'd know whether to paint that brown stripe or not, he loved to build stuff and he was a great tinkerer, so much so, that the morning he passed away, my youngest brother Adrian and I had just gotten to the his room in the hospital and he was slid down in the bed, he immediately went into describing a piece of apparatus he'd designed that would fit at the end of his bed so he could push himself up that he wanted my other brother, Julian to make for him, Because "He's good with woodwork and you boys don't have the patience he does."

        So, my point in writing this is simple, it's Fathers Day this weekend and I want to wish my dad a happy Father's Day, and although I regret not sending that Father's Day card three years ago, I choose to love that I have it as a physical reminder of what he means to me still. I also choose to believe that he is sitting by my side as I pick away at this keyboard Writing in Spite of Myself.

Love you Dad

1933 - 2010

2012-06-11T17:08:00.002-07:00

Writing for the sake of Writing

I just got back from a short trip to New York, and I'm feeling kinda lousy, had the sniffles and a cough since we landed back in Long Beach, nothing major but enough to keep me feeling a little bit sorry for myself, (and of course looking for some well deserved sympathy from Patty,) It's not all bad though, I got to stay in bed yesterday till two-thirty in the arvo, now that's what I call decadence.

So, "big deal," I hear you saying, "you got a cough and a snotty nose, get over it,"
But, that's not the big deal, the big deal is I haven't stopped thinking about writing since before we left for NYC, which is a huge deal.

I just finished writing a post for the swagger blog,

http://swaggerwriters.blogspot.com/ and I also wrote a post as a guest blogger for Active Happiness, http://activehappiness.com/ so including this post, that's three different posts on three different topics and I'm over the moon about it. I was at first a little hesitant about writing a blog because it committed me to actually writing and seriously that's mostly felt like a chore, but the more I do this the more I find my mind is craving that creative morsel.

I had a conversation with someone who I consider to be a good friend while I was in New York, and over a beer he told me he'd read my blog if it wasn't about "where your cat sleeps on your bed," (oops!) or what I had for breakfast today or what movie I just saw, he said he would read it if it was about the writing process because that's what he finds interesting. I've discovered that that's what I find interesting as well, (At least for this blog,) I'm beginning to realize that writing is a process that demands I pull out the jogging shoes and take for a run around the block (Ok,Ok a snappy walk in my case,) and that it's not something that can be taken for granted, that a writer writes, and when the writer isn't writing the writer needs to at least dedicate some portion of the grey matter to thinking about writing, or else the writer is not a writer. I'm realizing that it's absolute arrogance to think that I, as a writer can just sit down anytime I want with any amount of absence from writing and just pound on the keys and *poof* magically a worthy piece of writing will appear, If I just let my conscious thoughts go the authors of years gone by will fill the page with words worthy of being read. I'm beginning to understand the importance as a writer to, no matter what, get something down on paper every day. A very good friend of mine constantly tells me, and has told me for the past six? years to get Ass in Chair Words on Paper and only now am I seeing the value in that statement.

What I'm writing here isn't Pulitzer prize material and it never will be, what I am managing to write here though are the thoughts of a W.I.P. --- Writer in Progress, and so regardless of how sick I feel (can I get some sympathy Puuulease?) or how few words I manage to pound out at least I know I'm beginning to not just write in spite of myself.

Was That An Urge I Just Felt?

2012-05-31T12:55:00.001-07:00

"You said that sometimes you get the urge to write & other times you don't. How about a post about the things that inspire you to write? What gives you that urge?"
Kathy Wiechman

I'm going to try and answer this question today, because I totally, completely and utterly have no urge to write.

Ok, so I just sat and read the opening sentence to myself about fifty-three times, not the quote from Kathy, but my first sentence. It took exactly eleven minutes for me to move on to what I'm typing now and I'm still at a loss for words, that's Cliche`isn't it? "At a loss for words," and we as writers should avoid the use of cliche`. I'm leaving it in here though because it gives a teeny insight into whats going on in my thought process. If I write the words and ideas that are dawdling around in my head eventually I should hit on a theme, or so I'm told (another bloody cliche`, or is it?)

So now it's been about twenty minutes since I started and I'm still searching for inspiration, I looked in the fridge to see if maybe my muse was hiding in there, but all I found was a hard boiled egg and some jack cheese bread. So, after brushing crumbs from my keyboard I think I'm ready to get down to business, hmm maybe I should title this post "The Art of Cliche`."

Seriously why is it that the urge to write isn't something that I can just will to be there? because if that was the case then this blog wouldn't be subtitled "Struggling writer." it may instead read "Successful Writer, Converter of Urges."

I do get urges to write, obviously, sometimes they come after I read a great book, and they actually even come after reading a mediocre book, although these days I really don't have the patience for a mediocre book, so if it doesn't grab me in the first few paragraphs I typically just give up on it. Reading for me should be fun and inspiring. In fact I think I get more urges to write after I've deposited said bad book on the overloaded bookshelf or on Patty's bedside table (looking for another opinion in case I was just not in the mood for "The life and times of the Dung Beetle," what made me buy it in the first place? IT WAS ON SALE!) Sure, the urge struck me, but being the recipient of an urge doesn't necessarily make the jump to words on paper, it mostly translates to characters teasing me with images, and lines and tongues sticking out at me, and then me rambling on talking out loud to the cheeky buggers who was just sticking their tongue out at me and then my dogs barking at me because they're confused as to why I'm alone talking to myself in the living room while Patty is engrossed by how Dung Beetle's manage to move huge balls of dung.

Occasionally I will however go to my desk or dining room table and start writing, it generally takes a lot of brain compartmentalization because now I want to write about the guy sticking his tongue out when I should in fact be re-writing the latest edit to "Stitches," so mostly what I end up doing is opening a new document and entering a few lines about that character...
You know who I mean right?
Yes, that one,
Nope I'm not going to write it out again, it's already in here twice and isn't that another rule? The fight then wears on a few minutes longer as I save the few lines ( About four hundred and twenty-seven... Dya like how I answered that question about how many one line pages of documents I have saved in my prompt file before you even asked? There's that writer again, answering unasked questions,) then I'll open up a couple of projects I'm working on, although "Stitches," always gets opened, and I'll scan them before deciding if I have the urge to write on one or the other. Sometimes I'll keep two or three open and work on them simaltaneously, similtaneously, simmaltan... at the same time.

That's one type of writing urge I get, another invariably comes often just as I'm laying down in bed, got the covers pulled up to my chin, flipped the pillow over for the cold side and kicked the cat off the foot of the bed. You know how it is right? Your mind is still closing out the English bloke on T.V. selling that stuff for $19.99 with the bonus gift, you're closing your eye's one at a time trying to figure out where that pinpoint of light is making it's way through the blinds, subconsciously stroking the cat that snuck back on the bed, when BANG! the writing urge hits me, Now I know why that character should talk with a lisp, and why her red hair is important to the story, and why when she sticks her tongue out that way it really does matter, (You thought it was a guy didn't you? silly, if it was a guy I'd have punched him the nose wouldn't I?) so I lay there and say to myself "Get up and peck away at the keys, this really needs to get on paper," and just then the Ambien kicks in and I drift away into deep sleep and miss that precious opportunity, but nevertheless it was an urge, an unfulfilled urge. Maybe I should stop taking Ambien, but then all the insignificant stuff from the day creeps in and dislodges the creative side of my brain.

Without a doubt the strongest urge to write comes from being in the company of other writers, and for me when I combine that with Boyds Mills in upstate Pennsylvania, the urge is no longer a wish and a prayer it's a full on assault. I wish I could replicate what happens when I get into that rustic little cabin back there or when I sit in the old living room of the farmhouse (I'm still reserving judgement on the Barn,) with other aspiring and successful writers.

So, I think setting has a huge impact on urges, I'm not alone in that regard, I know writers would sit naked in an icy brook if it meant the urge to write could be acted upon. We kept that in mind when we laid out my writing cave, but as comfortable as it was it still didn't conjure up the Urge Monster, I couldn't quite figure it out, I love my desk, my chair is beyond comfortable, the view is stunning and inspiring, I'm surrounded by my collection of old, smelly, page worn books in the bookcase that I looked for, for literally years, I sat and stared at the screen of the laptop and all I could think of is "Why does that bloody cat always get on my side of the bed?" One day I figured out the problem... My chair and desk were not situated in the correct manner, I simply needed to turn it more toward the staircase and less toward the view. It worked to certain extent, at least now when I sit down here I am able to at least think about writing a little easier.

I started this blog as a catalyst to help find the urge and so far a week into it I think it's working, I feel somewhat of a responsibility to write a little something a few times a week and so for now I'll try and summon up the Urge to Write in Spite of Myself.

Partner Sacrifices (no, I don't mean Mayan style!)

2012-05-27T14:31:00.001-07:00

I did get a couple of really good suggestions for my next blog post, but I decided to shelf them in honor of Memorial Day.

To say thank you to all the Veterans is an absolute must do that has become automatic, that's not to say it isn't heartfelt, because for certain it is, I especially think of my dad who served in the Irish army, and Patty's dad who served in the USMC during WWII and I am now and always will be eternally grateful for their service. Today though, I wanted to take a bit of a side trip and look at a somewhat unforgotten brigade, the partners of men and women who have to endure long periods without their significant other at their beck and call. Not just armed forces people but everyday parents and children, husband and wives, siblings, fiance's, friends, or what other else partnership you have.

It's a given that military separation during wartime is like no other and those people deserve special support and consideration, I'd like to write, though about everyday life separation, and how it impacts ordinary lives.

Patty and I will be married for twenty-two years this year and we have shared an awful lot of separation during that time. Mostly our apart time (once I actually became a legal citizen) involved me driving big rigs around the country making twenty-one cents for every mile I drove with freight on the trailer, and exactly zero cents when I was running deadhead or re-positioning the rig for it's next load. Given the enormous amount of money I was making (OUCH! That was Patty smacking me in the back of my head)

I did my best to,

A: keep the wheels rolling,
B: Keep the wheels rolling with freight on the trailer and
C: Keep Patty happy by "getting through the house."

Unfortunately that wasn't always the case, in fact come to think of it that was rarely the case! Inevitably what ended up happening was;

Her handing me my first days food (She made the best foil wrapped ham and cheese rolls that I would warm up in my heater chest and eat for breakfast somewhere in Arizona,)
Me kissing Patty goodbye,
Her yelling, "Be safe and call (Pre i-anything,)"
Me yelling, "See you in a coupla days."
Her yelling, "Stay away from the truckstops."
Me driving down to the yard and heading our for what was supposed to be a three day run, already knowing that it was going to be more like three weeks.

The only real benefit for me being a truck driver was that I had a job that; if I ran my ass off would provide a semi decent paycheck, if I could keep freight on the truck, run illegal hours, and stay away from the house.
I completely and utterly hated it, and here's why. My first experience as a trucker in the States went something along these lines.
I had just secured my C.D.L. (Commercial Drivers License) on the Friday prior to Memorial Day so I called every driver job opening looking for work. I found a long haul carrier close to the house and after a road test they hired me at about 10am.

Me: "Wow, I actually got the job, it's gunna be a great weekend."
Them: "Go grab your gear and we'll see you back here in 30 minutes."
Me: "Huh?"
Them: "We've got a load for you."
Me: "What about the long weekend?"
Them: "Welcome to trucking Aussie."

I drove home with extremely mixed feelings,
"I got the job, I wonder what I'm driving? How do I tell Patty I wont make the BBQ?"
"I got the job, I wonder where I'm heading? How do I tell Patty I wont make the BBQ?"
"I got the job, I wonder how long I'll be away? How do I tell Patty I wont make the BBQ?"

I made it home and it went something like this,

"Patty I got the job, can you help me pack, isn't this amazing?" My voice at fever pitch
"That's great hun, but why do you need to pack?" Her voice straining with disappointment
"Oh, I already have a run, isn't that great?" My voice kicking up the excitement
"You're leaving today?" Her voice cracking
"Yea Baby aint it great?" My voice full of contrived excitement.

And so started the cycle of disappointment and compromise between Patty and I.

I got packed and went back to the Yard, where the dispatcher assigned me my truck. He told me to go check gear out for the trailers (set of doubles) and that I'd be picking up road marking paint for the state of Nevada in down town L.A.
"You can run it up there tonight and be back by mid afternoon, easy first run for you." and so began the cycle of lies between my dispatcher and me.
I wasn't looking forward to navigating to a pretty shady area of downtown Los Angeles on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend driving a big rig to pick up a hazardous materials load and the get out of the city before the big getaway traffic surge. It went something like this.

11:30am Sat in traffic heading to L.A.
1:30pm sat in the paint supply yard once I got there,
5:45pm loaded and out their gate,
6:50 took wrong freeway and ended up in Hollywood Hills in a no truck zone with a load of HAZMAT on a set of double trailers,
7:25pm found my way accidentally to the 14 Fwy heading toward Nevada (the back way,)
8:30pm truck broke down pulling a hill just outside L.A. -----
12:10am made it back to the yard after using bailing wire duct tape and a drinking straw to fix the truck ---
2:10am "She's ready to go, make sure you're in Pahrump by 9."
7:10am, Pahrump NV. unchained and ready to unload and head home,
9:45am "Head over to Phoenix and pick up a load of roofing insulation, be in Seattle Monday by 5 the receiver has an emergency and they need the material, oh that, yea sorry plans change every now and then."
10:10am "I know babe isn't it great I'm getting more miles?' "So when will you be home?" "Oh, I'd say by late Tuesday night." "We'll be safe love you."
5:15pm Monday "Yea Sorry bout this but head down to Seneca Saw Mills in Eugene and pick up a load of lumber going to Fort Worth, TX."

You kinda see where this ended up right? earning twenty cents a mile I made nearly $1400.00 my first week which didn't give me much "home time," I got to speak to Patty maybe 3 or 4 times during the week by the end of the second week I'd earned about $3,000.00 total and the phone calls went up to about 5 or 6 times a week, but they lasted about 2 minutes per call and usually ended up with one or the other of us venting our frustrations at not being home, every call though did have consistency, Patty would hang up in tears.

I drove for that company for about a year and made some pretty good money, but one day after driving from Valencia, CA to Spokane, WA to Boise, Id then back to Los Angeles without a phone call home and over the space of four days and literally falling out of the cab of the tanker truck I was driving when I finally did get back to the home yard... I quit driving. They gave me a job in dispatch, and life at home returned to normal. The strain on the relationship during that time was almost unbearable, and I'm quite sure that if we hadn't both stayed true to our commitment and vows when we wed, to "Always work on our marriage," it wouldn't have lasted beyond the first month of me on the road. Weird how we both agreed that I needed to get work, and that since I knew trucking that was an automatic, and we both knew for the most part what we were getting into when I took the job, and we both counted the hours, minutes, seconds to when we'd get to speak on the phone and yet when the opportunity presented itself more often than not we were so disappointed that we weren't together that we almost went out of our way to sabotage the call, because at times like these when you love someone with all your heart and soul it became so much easier to be angry than to be happy.

I know from my situation, Sooooooo far removed from those of military partners a little of what they are going through and they, as much as the Service men and women need to be thanked for the sacrifices they make on a daily basis.

As much as I wanted to sit out with Patty who is sunning on our deck right now I decided that the time was right to Write in Spite of Myself.

What should my next post be?

2012-05-25T11:17:00.002-07:00

I need your help. I would like to post a new blog about three times a week, but I want to write about stuff that you want to read about, so what should I write next?

Leave me a comment and we'll go from there, I love the idea of writing on demand so it should be interesting!

Time to Write

2012-05-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

When isn't it time to write?

I know very successful writers that spend hours a day, every day writing. They don't always write to move their current project forward, but they write and that is admirable, and that is enviable, and that is the sign of a person committed to their craft, or profession and they write good stuff even when they're writing junk.

I know I can write good stuff, and I can write junk stuff that's not even close to good. I've actually written stuff that I'm proud of, I even finished a novel and have three more well on their way, so why is it so hard to be consistent?

I love to write, seriously, honestly, I love writing, but it's getting harder and harder to sit down in front of the keyboard and transfer thought to meaningful words on a page. Now I sound like I'm whining, right? I'm really not I'm just frustrated, I want to find the key that unlocks the secret to being a writer.

It's not merely having the time, I have more than enough of that. It's certainly not the money, since writers (unless your name ends in King or Rowling) would never dare to figure out their per hour earnings. It's not simply having a story inside you, my brain is body slamming me with stories desperately trying to escape. Maybe it just comes down to persistence and the ability to plow through and hit the keys, but if that was the case every man and his dog would be knocking out books, Yea I know Spencer Quinn and his dog do!

There is more to it that just wanting to be a writer, you need at minimum, a great work ethic, I'm great with a pick and shovel or an eighteen speed gearbox, not so good at transferring copious amounts of words onto paper... Strike One

You must have a passion, and I don't think passion is a learned quality, I look around at other writers I know and they have more passion than a Tango on Steroids, Sadly I'm more a Slow Waltz, with a Foxtrot rearing it's quickstep occasionally... Strike Two

You must have a command of Grammar, (unless you have an editor that wears blinders) I don't know the difference between a comma splice (apparently I use that a lot!) and a run on sentence or is that, sentance? ... Strike Three

So, you're saying to yourself, three strikes you're OUT... ahhhh but I'm not, I should be according to your rules, but I'm not. "Why aren't you out?" I can hear you saying, because I'm not, and because this is my blog and because

I want to be a writer because, I love to see the look of wonder on the persons face who has never been to the Australian outback.
I want to be a writer because, I love to see the look of fascination on a persons face that actually grew up in a functioning family.
I want to be a writer because, I love to see a tear form in the eye of someone who has no idea who I am and yet they get to feel my heart.
I want to be a writer because, I love to see a smile cross the face of someone who has never shot Christmas decorations off a Christmas Tree inside their home.
I want to be a writer because, I love to tell stories, so every now and then I'll get a spurt of energy and an inspiration and I'll write in spite of myself.