Book Week: Favourite books for girls and boys

Okay, I didn't post yesterday. A deliberate choice, actually, and sort of a protest against separating books for girls and for boys.
Yeah, I get that many books are catered towards either gender, but I personally don't think that it's a good thing. I've decided, therefore, to do my favourite books for girls and boys, in the young adult (mid/late high school) category.

Because I feel bad, and because I just finished celebrating Australia Day with my family, I begged Daniela to contribute her favourite books as well.  Alexis gave me some honourable mentions (her favourites overlapped with Daniela's and mine).

Tomorrow, Katerina and Tamara give me some of their favourites (let's just say I'm not exactly reading many children's books now).

Clockwise, from top left:
Looking for Alibrandi (Melina Marchetta)

The Fault in Our Stars (John Green)

Harry Potter Series (JK Rowling)

Hunger Games Series (Suzanne Collins)

The House of the Scorpion (Nancy Farmer)

How I Live Now (Meg Rosoff)
Gallagher Girls (Ally Carter)
The Name of the Star (Maureen Johnson)
Gemma Doyle Trilogy (Libba Bray) 
Chaos Walking Trilogy (Patrick Ness)

Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants Series - now called 'Summers of the Sisterhood' (Ann Brashares)

***

Clockwise, from top left:

Vampire Academy Series (Richelle Mead)

Bloodlines Series (Richelle Mead)

The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)

Mortal Instruments Series (Cassandra Clare)

Mediator Series (Meg Cabot)

Heist Society (Ally Carter)

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (John Boyne)

Missing Series (Meg Cabot)

Shades of London Series (Maureen Johnson)

Infernal Devices Series (Cassandra Clare)

Maximum Ride Series (James Patterson)

A Series of Unfortunate Events Series (Lemony Snickett)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky)

Favourite faith-based reads

For today's post, I'm only going with non-fiction. I've gone on and on (multiple times) about my love for Christian fiction, particularly that of the historical persuasion, and I figure it's time for a change.

Apologies in advance for the quickly-made collage - here are my four favourites.

Going clockwise, top left:
1. God's Little Devotional Book For Teens: David C Cook
2. Experiencing God: Youth Edition: Henry T Blackaby & Claude V King
3. The Case for Christ/The Case for Faith [bindup]: Lee Strobel (now out of print in this format)
4. Every Young Woman's Battle: Shannon Ethridge & Stephen Arterburn

As I made the aforementioned quick collage, I realised something.

All of these books (with the exception of Lee Strobel) are aimed at the youth/teen market, a market which I can no longer say I inhabit.

Sigh. Time to upgrade.

Commentary time!

(I'm so sorry about how vague this commentary is; normally, I can flick through my books and it'll remind me of things I really enjoyed about them. However, books are in another state.)

God's Little Devotional Book for Teens: I have no other reason except for the devotional involving Ananias of Damascus, which has been bookmarked so often that if I fling that book onto my bed, it automatically opens to that devotional. That one story, of a man who did something because God told him to - something that, at the time, didn't seem like much in the greater scheme of things. It reminds me that whatever I'm doing, I should be doing it for Christ, and I should be listening to what He's telling me to do. It might seem insignificant to me, but may be very significant to someone else - or to God.

Experiencing God, Youth Edition: We did this as a study at Sunday School with Robyn and the lovely Sunday School girls. At the time, I recall it being quite confronting, and getting pretty annoyed with it. However, over the course of the study, my perspective changed - and my attitude towards my Christian life, too. Definitely worth the read. I also have the adult edition in my room, ready to begin. I intended to start this last year, but Christmas/shenanigans ensued and I have basically just failed miserably at it. Will update on that one as I do it, possibly.

The Case for Christ/The Case for Faith: When I was a teenager, I was not the most fond of Christianity. I was raised in a Catholic home, and my parents were rather relaxed about it. So relaxed, in fact, that when it came time for my brother and I to receive our communion and the like, they decided we could wait, and that the Catholic Sunday School the priest was urging us to attend was not as good as the one we were attending.

I then went to a Catholic school. Disgruntled at how we were being told by priests that the Bible was not completely true, and that things should be taken with a grain of salt, I got mad at Christianity in general and sat in a bit of agnosticism for a while. While this eventually gave way to me giving my life to Christ, I still had niggling doubts. Yay for niggling doubts (she says with her sarcasm hand aloft)!

I think it was at a youth group auction (end of year shenanigans) that I first came across the youth edition of The Case for Christ, and it helped clear up a lot of my niggling doubts - or, if it didn't give me complete assurance, I was able to pinpoint more doubts and ask Robyn about them so she could help me clear them up. She recommended reading the adult version, and as Koorong had it with The Case for Faith, I read both. I'm not hugely familiar with many apologetics studies, but I did enjoy these and found them helpful.

Every Young Woman's Battle: Oh. My. Gosh. 

If there is a book that I intend to foist on every young Christian woman out there, this is it. Seriously, if a crazy person comes up to you and gives you this book, don't worry. It's just me. BUT YOU SHOULD READ IT. 

(I've written about this book before - link here - but what I can also say now is that it sure beats sneaking into your brother's room and stealing the guy's copy because you're really not sure what else to do.)

There we are for that! If anyone has recommendations for me in this area, let me know. I'm always up for new things to read. 

What I'm Reading

Over the next few weeks - basically, when I get my act together - I'm going to be slowly migrating over to Wordpress. It's the next step in mastering All The Internet, and being able to add all my customised shebang to make my work look pretty. Tentatively, you'll be heading to tashacarolina.wordpress.com (trying to consolidate all the things).

In an attempt to become more organised, I've been checking out a wide variety of home-making blogs. 

I am the least organised person that could possibly exist. Actually, scratch that; where my computer and phone are concerned, I am as organised as could possibly be. In my physical possessions? No. Not at all.

Anyway, one of the blogs I stumbled upon was the delicious Jones Design Company, and while I loved all the pretty pictures and Things I Could Theoretically Do, I found something that was far more up my alley.

A Book Week Link-Up.

So, of course I stumbled upon this when the week was almost up, but what I'm going to do is do this in reverse order. Below this post, I shall post links to my other bookish posts, which shall come out once a day for the next week.

Click the picture at the end of this post, and you'll be able to see all the other readers that have joined in this link-up.

And now, Tash, you can get to the actual point like a proper writer would.

***

I'm imagining my lovely bookstore buddies gasping at me in horror, but as of late I've actually been reading on my phone. I use Bluefire, Kindle and iBooks. Kindle is great for free books (Pride and Prejudice has been getting a re-read thanks to the enormously wonderful Lizzie Bennett Diaries, which you should all be watching - that link will take you to the entire playlist). Bluefire, for my ebooks bought from Koorong. iBooks? PDFs, and books that I have stolen from friends. 

On my iBooks and Bluefire apps, I've been reading Janette Oke's Love Comes Softly series, for what would be the five hundredth millionth time (if my grandmother's taught me anything, it's that Chileans are allowed to exaggerate). 

I'd take a picture, but... it's weird to do that on a phone without it looking odd.

They're your typical Christian fiction, but something in me always enjoys reading these books, especially around Christmas. If you're looking for something light and in the Christian romance genre, go for it. They're set in the American pioneer-era (I cannot, for the life of me, remember actual dates). 

In addition to these (because I am physically incapable of reading one book at a time), I have also been reading an actual proper book with pages and things! Or, I should say, I read an actual proper book.

And along with a picture, you get a delightful shadow (yes, that is my handand my phone).

I bought this after an interview, knowing I had an hour on a train ahead of me. There's a discount bookstore in the Valley train station, and I made sure I had time before my train left to have a bit of a hunt.

Result? This book, for the astonishingly low $9.99.

Sarah-Kate Lynch is a New Zealander (so close enough to home that I feel like I'm reading local fiction). The prose in this isn't high-brow, but the story's nice, and I did find myself getting lost in it. The train ride from Brisbane to Robina went pretty fast. And, unlike most chick lit, the ending wasn't entirely predictable. It's described as a novel "in the delectable tradition of Chocolat" (another book I need to read), and the Tuscan surrounds made me feel like I wasn't heading through Beenleigh and Logan with a screaming baby in the carriage.

In addition, the old widows were brilliant. I want to be an old lady like them.

Time to link up! Click the picture below to check out Emily's read (yet another I need to start on), and what her readers have been devouring. Then, over the next week, below will be steadily updated with links.

Tash's Book Week links

Day 1: What I'm Reading
Day 2: Favourite faith-based reads
Day 3: Favourite books for girls
Day 4: Favourite books for boys
Day 5: Favourite books for baby (or, my favourite books as a kid)
Day 6: Winter series
Day 7: Summer reads

note: the last two are random categories I've made up so as to get a full seven days out of this.

About The Toes

This is a piece I wrote for uni, which has since been polished a tad (though if I really put my mind to it, I'd spend my whole life editing what I've written). As part of my Novel and Memoir course, I decided to write about the man who never fails to inspire me, and steal a bit of Sedaris' style in the way he rambles.

Upon assembling my portfolio a few nights ago, I came across it again (of course, my stories never have the correct titles as their save names, so I opened it going, 'What on earth is this going to be?'). Here it is, for my lovely readers. I know I abandon you way too much. Don't forget about me, please!

About the Toes

My mother apparently told my father – before she had the real notion of dating him, that ‘young kid’ who couldn’t really speak English – that she refused to stay in the city forever. She was from Tallimba, a tiny town out in the middle of nowhere that breeds spiders as large as horses and thistles with points on all sides that’ll puncture a tyre if they have the inclination to. Tallimba is mostly red, with greying trees dotting the horizon, and with a dam that’s a murky haze of blue and brown with sticks floating lazily on the top. The only real colour out there comes from her mother’s roses, and they have patches of brown lurking on the leaves, just waiting to conjure the pinks and oranges into their monotonous outback palette. My grandparents, too, have conformed to a sepia-toned life – my grandmother’s flowered housedresses are crafted in muted browns, while the colours in her husband’s neatly pressed trousers and shoes match the rusting tin found covering his work shed.

My mother must have tired of sepia with flashes of russet, tired of the people she’d met who were all one and the same. When she turned 16, she fled to Sydney to find someone different, to find something new. Unimpressed by greys and blacks, she decided to move further along the coast.

She was with my father in a pub one night, and it was there she told him about the town she had decided to move to. It was a place called Wollongbar. “My grandmother lived there,” she said. “It’s nicer than here, because there’s grass and water and the people are better.”

My father, having grown up in Santiago but occasionally visiting his grandma on a farm out in Concepción, liked this notion of a place with grass and water. (He liked my mother more than he liked that notion, however, but wisely decided to keep that to himself.) My mother eventually chose him as her ‘someone different’ (she couldn’t see a similarity between her father and mine, and decided that this was for the best). They had been married for 5 years before hauling my brother and I to Wollongbar.

It’s small, and certainly green. No matter where you go, grass is the preferred floor covering. They recently built a new bypass through a paddock, and as though to compromise for the wide expanse of bitumen now plonked where there were once cows and the occasional horse, they made the dividing wall – highway to bypass – from grass. Rather than roads commanding space and demanding that trees move for them, the roads snake around trees and hills politely. You physically can’t get to the shops without traipsing through grass. My father hated that. He fully embraced his new ‘country’ lifestyle when we moved, as though this move was the thing that set him apart from other Chileans in their quest to become Australian. He went driving around the little towns near our little town to find a proper Akubra hat, an act my mother was slightly horrified by. He bought a pair of thongs and hid his sneakers in the wardrobe, carefully encased in layers of plastic so spiders wouldn’t think to hide in them. He decided he wanted to become a farmer, and that we should buy some cows and take them to market. (Thankfully, my mother is a pragmatic woman and also frightening when she wants to be, so there were no cows in our backyard.) However, when it came to walking to the shops of a morning, when the grass was lusciously dewy and the magpies were coming out to warble on the power lines, Dad preferred to drive.

“But it’s a five minute walk,” my mother protested. “You just walk along the highway and cut through a paddock. How hard is that?”

“If it’s a five minute walk, it’d be a one minute drive,” he said, possibly thinking he could drive through the paddock to avoid the grass.

“You’re not taking the car. Honestly, Mauricio, just walk. Take the kids with you.” She gestured at us – probably wrecking all her good furniture, if her retellings are anything to go by – and returned to her book.

So Dad took us to the shops, shoes tightly laced and hats jammed on our heads, legs pale from years of being encased in Sydney smoke. We toddled along the highway, passing the twenty-or-so cars that we’d later describe as “lots of traffic”. And Dad’s step began to falter as we reached the paddock and as the footpath stopped.

My brother and I didn’t care, and we continued on through the paddock. Our sneakers were wet? They would dry. Grass seeds were caught on our neatly rolled socks? Mum was magic, so she’d probably get them off.

Dad, however, cared a lot. His brand new thongs were shiny, and he hadn’t lost enough of his city ways to not care about that. His toes were also dry. He liked dry toes. But he carried the wallet, and his wife was waiting at home for some bread and eggs. So, he stepped into the paddock, toes curled upwards, and tried to flee through the grass whipping around his knees.

Chris and I were prancing around in the car park, being the idiot children we were, when we saw our father approaching. The upward-turned toes method hadn’t worked, and he had (inexplicably) thought to inch across the paddock on tip-toe. Chris and I stared at him, all prancing forgotten, as his toes dug into the red dirt beneath the grass; each step looked as though it was causing him more pain. Worse, he had to go back through the paddock to get home, and the look on his face showed that he had also realised this fact.

When he finally reached us, we silently reached for his hands, and went to buy our eggs and bread.

Fifteen years later, he still has not gotten past this, and he gleefully bought a pair of steel-capped boots to brave the paddock. That, combined with an old pair of soccer shorts, his Universidad Catolica de Chile shirt, and his floppy sunhat (the Akubra mysteriously vanishing a year after he bought it), has led to vast amounts of amusement on all our parts.

I came home for a week recently, and Dad decided to take me to the beach. Lennox Head’s beaches have so many blues that there aren’t words to describe them. My father is the only male I know to own more shoes than I do, except that his shoes are actually useful rather than purely purchased for aesthetic reasons, and the day we went to the beach he wore a pair of grey mesh water shoes. I hadn’t seen a pair of those since he’d forced them on me as a child. “Shoes at the beach?”

He didn’t respond, but kept squelching along on the wet sand, dodging the waves.

“What’s the point of going to the beach if you’re going to wear shoes and not go in the water?”

He shot me a glare. “You know exactly why.”

Of course, there was only one outcome. I hooked my arm in his. “It’s nice to be down home,” I said, casually veering deeper into the water.

“I’m glad you’re back.”

“The water’s nice.”

And a wave came, soaking Dad to his knees.

I might have gotten dunked in revenge, but watching my father gingerly step across the sand on tiptoe as he futilely attempted to drain his shoes made everything worth it.

Of all the things my father protects, his toes take the cake. For reasons I still don’t understand, he feels the insane need to protect everyone else’s toes. I remember the look of horror he gave me when I returned home from a day in the park across the road from our new place. Maybe he suspected the park was laden with syringes and I’d come home, doped to my eyeballs and with HIV, but all that happened was my feet were covered in the Northern Rivers’ trademark volcanic dirt. I bounded inside, and Mum rolled her eyes. “Oh, go wash your feet.”

Dad stared at my feet. “How did they get so… dirty?”

“She’s a child, Mauricio, they’re meant to get dirty.”

The next day at the park, Dad accompanied me. He wore sneakers, with laces tied in a complicated knot that only he knows the method for. He had, much to my disgust, crammed my feet in my own sneakers, complete with frilly socks. “Your feet won’t get dirty this way,” he explained. “Your toes can stay clean.”

My mother, after seeing me leave the house like this one too many times, hid my sneakers.

He gave me my first pedicure, having had to paint his mother’s nails frequently as a teenager. “Don’t your nails look nice?” he said, gesturing to the red polish. “You don’t want to ruin that.”

Seeing my nails chipped in two days seemed to physically pain him.

But, despite my mother’s original reluctance to date my father, their eventual marriage seems to be something that works – and not only because they’re so different they cancel each other’s weirdness out. Dad and Mum went to visit her parents in auburn Tallimba with the Acromantulas (“Tash,” Mum sighs as I read this to her, “you sell this place so well”).

One morning, Dad walked into the kitchen to see my grandpa sitting by the open fire. Dressed already in slacks and a white button-down shirt, Grandpa was putting on shoes and socks. Dad stared, awed. Despite being a farmer since he was 14, Grandpa’s feet were lily-white. As he rolled on his thick socks, he met my father’s gaze.

“Don’t like things getting on my toes,” he said quietly.

Dad looked down at his own feet, in pristine white sneakers that wouldn’t stay that way for long. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

A ramble about God and his teaching

Two days out from Christmas, and I usually wake up feeling pretty happy. Not wistful, like I did this morning. I had rolled over, picked up my phone, and noticed I'd slept later than I planned. Then, rather than getting out of bed and making the most of the hour I'd almost slept through - or a the very least, pick up my Bible and finish off a couple of readings - I turned back over and hid under blankets.

In my warm cavern, I knew exactly why I was feeling like this. Hopes get raised, you let yourself get unnaturally excited - and then the things fall through. It's a pattern that everyone would be used to (or at the very least have experienced). I curled deeper under the blankets, wanting to sit and wallow. My mother used to howl at my teenaged self for wallowing when I was in the throes of depression, so I knew it probably wasn't the best option. But for once this year, especially seeing as it's nearly over, I felt like dwelling on just losing something - again - that I thought would come to pass by now. I deserved an epic time of wallowing, and my gosh, I was going to wallow and it was going to be glorious.

God, however, had other plans for my extreme wallowing session. As I lay there, possibly scowling at the body pillow I had shamelessly pilfered from my father's room, I remembered verses I was reading last night. It wasn't a case of "open Bible and pick verse that makes you feel better about the situation without any Godly guidance" (something I was guilty of doing as a 15 year old). Last night's reading was a set of Psalms, with a Proverb as well.

The Psalms, I can't remember where I started and where I finished. But as I read - these were Psalms I'd clearly gone over before, considering how little space there was to underline - one verse just sung out to me.

He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise the Lord! 
Psalm 113:9.

Searching for it right now, the NLT seems like it fits me more.
He gives a childless woman a family, making her a happy woman. Praise the Lord!

***

When I was younger (and only a few years ago, when I count back), I didn't want anything with family and children. I would be suave, would marry when I'd had a chance to travel and work on an illustrious career as a writer, and definitely wouldn't be having children - I mean, really? Why do it? The guy I had in my head as marrying was definitely not interested in children either. We would, much to my father's distress, live a life without children, and it would be pretty fun. Even as a child, I don't recall wanting to start a family the way I remember my cousins did. I remember looking at my height in comparison to a baby's and going, "Well, that's just too small. What is it going to do if it's that small?"
Yet almost overnight, this changed. I suddenly wanted this, and the only way I can see it is that God wanted it for me. Robyn - my lovely Sunday School teacher - used to tell us that God would work in us as we grew in Him, and that our desires would change to reflect His desires for our lives.
Last night, God was reminding me of that. This morning, He did the same. It's going to happen, daughter. Be patient.
Upon occasion, I regret asking God to teach me patience. I regret not being specific and asking him to teach me it in a textbook manner, rather than by experience. This was one of those times.
I don't want to wait, I protested. I want it now. SIAGAUONGONAIJOWR,QPWOMOIM. (Yes, I now frustratedly-babble as though I'm slamming my head against a keyboard. It's a fun way of doing things.)
No reply at this point. I closed my eyes, really not wanting to get out of bed. But I did. I dragged my feet out, reminded myself that in lieu of church this morning, I would be listening to music and praising, and I would be getting my heart in it.
I opened my phone, and the last app open had been YouVersion, still sitting there glowing at me. And the verse there?

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6

One that most every Christian would have engraved on their hearts. But God reminded me of it again. Trust me. Rely on me. Things will happen when they're meant to.

The awesome thing about God is that His timing is always perfect. The frustrating thing is waiting for it sometimes. But patience, they say, is a virtue - one that I am lacking. (I mean, it's a complete shock to me that I still haven't opened Trina's Christmas present to me, considering how it's meant to make me fangirl. Which makes me think God's slowly cultivating patience in me. Huh. Nice to see things growing, when I consider it.) Time to start praying that I stop being a goose, and just let God have it. In my far-future (which is probably where family and all that come); in my near, where I wonder if I'm meant to stay in Brisbane or go to Melbourne, or if I'm even meant to continue studying. All of it is His.

Why? Because He is truly amazing, and learning from experience has shown me that if I keep a hold of my problems, I just freak out all over the place. Best to give it to the Father who knows all.

Communicating.

Communication is a strange and lovely thing.
At the moment, I am craving it. I find I crave communication less when I'm in Brisbane, where it's busier. Still, in two weeks Daniela finishes school, and this will keep me sane for the ensuing two weeks I'm stuck down in Ballina.

Because it was playing on my mind, the conversation naturally turned to communication tonight at dinner. Tata, moaning about how he wouldn't always be my favourite person in the world, prompted a sharp smack from Nana.
"But it'll happen soon!" he protested, rubbing his arm where Nana's talons had connected. "She's twenty now, vieja, and she's been away from Brisbane for two days and is already missing it."
"Ay, viejo, stop it. There are different sorts of affection," she retorted. "She loves you like a granddaughter is supposed to love a grandfather. Of course you're not going to be her favourite forever."
Tata scowled.
"And niña," she said to me, "if you miss your friends, call them. You have a phone, no?"
"I don't usually talk on the phone."
"Eh?"
"I can talk in person." Occasionally. When I'm comfortable. When I'm not overthinking my idiocy. "I text."
She sighed, and pushed some flan towards me.
"I don't like texting," Tata announced. "I do it because you do it, nieta, but that's the only reason."
"Niña," said Nana, "what do you expect to do when a boy wants to talk to you?"
"Don't give her ideas, vieja!"
"What if he's far away?"
"I suppose I won't hear his voice for a while," I said, "not until I see him."
Nana whirled to face Tata. "Ay, amor, listen to her."
"I'm okay with what she says."
"When your Tata and I were - ¿como se llama, niña? - dating? We were far away. I wanted to hear his voice all the time."
Tata didn't reply, instead choosing to dig into his flan.
I chose to change the topic.

On the way home, I asked Tata about how he preferred to talk to Nana when they were dating.
"She lived in Concepción, and I lived in Santiago," he said. "I couldn't really call her, not often. I did. But I would write her letters."
"Did you prefer to write letters?"
"Of course not, niña," he replied. "Then again, it was easier to convince her I was brilliant that way. I wrote a lot of lies."
"Lies?"
"Well, not lies exactly," he said, for once remembering to put his indicator on. "But you write, and you remember it differently, with more heroics in the story. Then you reread it and you realise you wrote complete bull."
"But you send it anyway?"
"Por supuesto."
I asked him how they met.
"She was walking past me," he recalled. "Visiting someone, I remember, someone I knew. My friend stopped to say hi, and I met your grandmother."
"So how'd it continue, then?"
"I agreed to go dancing to impress her."
"You can't dance."
"Yes, but I was a stupid boy who did something I despise doing so I could make a girl fall in love with me."
"When did you fall in love with Nana?"
He turned to me. "The third time I looked at her."
"The third?" I clarified, wondering if he was toying with his expressions as he's so fond of doing.
"The third. I knew by the third glance."

In my family, communicating is a big thing. My Nana will steal my phone every time she sees me, flicking through the photos, demanding backstory on every person there. ("Y la Katrina? How is her job? Who is that boy? Where is this? Does this person live in Brisbane with you? How did you meet people from the Sunshine Coast?") We are loud and crazy, speaking over each other in English and Spanish and Spanglish. I am the most quiet in my family, it seems, though the loudest when I'm not overthinking. But as a result, I don't  share much with them unless prompted, or unless dealing in the written word.
In comparison, the other half of my family - the farming family, my mother's family - are quiet. Conversations with Nana on the phone are rife with questions about every single thing in my life; those with Grandma, on the other hand, will inevitably start and end with the weather. One question, that is it. We don't say much; we write more, perhaps, but still with an extremely stiff upper lip, one that I'm still not used to adopting.

When I am by myself and communication is lacking, it surprises me how often my conversations with God are held aloud, and how often I'll triple my conversations with Tuscany. Those two don't judge my stumblings and meanderings; perhaps that's why I stick to texting instead, because I can edit my words far easier.

But my conversation with Tata shows me something - when you're speaking in a foreign language, the literal is beautiful. "I knew by the third glance," he said. To me, there's something absolutely gorgeous in that.

God is amazing for creating languages, for giving us that longing to be heard and to share.

Just a spot of story.

This morning I was playing on my laptop and listening to Rick Astley. 

Incidentally, this song is amazing.

But anyway. Was playing on the laptop, listening to the Astley, and decided, "Hey. I might write something that isn't an assignment!"

So here you go. Very silly, very short, but I do also need to get out of bed and do things.

I don’t remember why I agreed to this.

I’m panicking.

I mean, if he likes me and decides that he wants this infernal thing to continue then I’m going to have to marry the guy because there’s not a chance on this sweet sweet earth that Nana will let me get out of it and then I’m going to have to escape my own wedding to flee to Mexico and start a new life under a new name –

Carmen, calm the flip down.

Though it is probably still best that I have my getaway name planned. There’s no way I can pull off any South American or, eugh, Spanish accents, but that doesn’t stop me from pretending I’m the love child of two hippies in the Australian bush somewhere.

“Carms?”

I turn to look at Lorena. “Chakra Sunrise Bloom.”

“Are you high?”

“No. It’s my getaway name.”

“Okay. One, you have getaway cars, not getaway names. Two, it’s a little early to be thinking about your escape to Mexico. Yes, I know you have an escape to Mexico planned,” she says in response to my wounded look. “But there is every likelihood you’ll say something ridiculous and he will want the getaway car.”

“What? I’m a perfectly lovely person.”

“You do have the tendency to blather on about directors and films that no one has heard of. That’s another thing – don’t subject him to your idiotic rambling about Bollywood movies. Yes, I know there are so many genres within Bollywood, and that no one appreciates that, but something else? That never improved my life the way you thought it would. I daresay he’s in the same boat.”

Younger sisters. They go out a few times before you do, and suddenly they’re the ones slinking into your room and offering advice before you date.

Then again, it could be vastly worse. It could be my mother in here offering advice.

Or Nana.

“Where is Nana?” I say, just to be on the safe side.

“She’s coming over for dinner, so she’ll be here when you get back.”

Suddenly, fleeing to Mexico becomes appealing for so many other reasons. 

♪ she paints pictures on the wall, she eats all of the garden ♪

I was talking with my brother yesterday about a number of different things, and as Dragon's Are You Old Enough? played on the TV, we wondered about the possibility of escaping, and whether escaping is different to running.

He told me that he would like to 'escape', to use my word, more for the sake of change. To get out of ruts.

Me? I'd like to escape for the sake of escaping. Just to go somewhere else and find out if I'm different when I'm elsewhere.

There are two main places where I'd love to go, and Melbourne is top on my list for it not being too far away, and for it being so very gorgeous. What has crept into my mind, though, is that it's actually a possibility. Melbourne could happen sooner than I think. I sit here, typing away and carefully avoiding assignments, and the realisation hits me that in four weeks, I'm in my final year of study at QUT. After that, I'm free, really. I can go to Melbourne if I want. I can study there if I choose to. I can decide against that, go and get a job, start working full time in media somewhere. It's sort of frightening, really. 

But there's the thing. Part of me wants to embrace the fear.

At the moment, I don't have much going on, and I'm fully aware a year could change that. My life is sort of in limbo at the moment. I'm not sure what's going where, and figuring that out is requiring too much headspace and worry settling in my belly. (Signs, again. People can't we just use flipping signs it would make all of our lives easier and dealing with everyone would become simple. I'm going to make this a thing everywhere.) I wonder if two months at home will clarify that, or if two months at home will make me more confused. 

Who knows. Life is just confusing.

And if it's confusing, shouldn't I just shake it up some more? Adding more confusion to the mix can hardly be a bad thing.

But one day I want to be sitting in Melbourne, in my apartment or in my house, with a job I love and - if God chooses to bless me in this way - a family. Pipe dream perhaps, as much of a dream as London is. Maybe I'm meant to stay in a city (I don't think I could ever go back to Ballina-like surrounds). I don't know. 

This coming year, though - let's say from now til September next year - there's going to be a lot of thought going on, and a lot of things that might change.

Ramblerambleramble

So today I left the house for the first time in two days.

I know, miracle. It's a bit weird being in the house by myself. Either I wake up with the desire to do something and it's raining, and no one is here to motivate me to leave, or I wake up with the desire to sleep for days.

Today, I woke up with more of a necessity to do something, and no rain. So I went.

Anyway, it's weird leaving the house after you haven't for two days, and also after you've had no real contact with anyone for the same amount of time. I did have human contact on Saturday, and I think I must have forgotten how to pleasantly converse with another human being in the time that I'd spent alone. Really, it's quite embarrassing and traumatic. It took me a little while to remember. I was quieter than usual as I remembered how to converse. 

That... that probably makes me seem really special.

After spending nearly a week by myself, the amount of people who had flocked to Southbank for Riverfire was just... astonishing. I think I must have forgotten that people all flock for fireworks, and that there'd be plenty of them. I really am quite forgetful. You could hardly move anywhere. We got an absolutely amazing view, though, quite by chance.

Oh man, oh man, I can't even write now. This is just embarrassing.

To sum it up before I start blithering like an idiot even more than usual, I had quite a lot of fun. This fun is a good fun and I like it and repeating fun like this is probably good. Wheeeeefunnnnn! (Really did not accomplish the 'not blithering' part. My career as a writer is fading rapidly.)

To the next point.

My parents have ventured down to my grandparents' place - the one that I sell so well - and thus, have no reception. Sometime between 1am and 8am, Sirius kicked the bucket, and so I called my father at my grandparents' house.

My grandma answered the phone, as is her custom, with a muffled, "207."

"Grandma?" I said. "It's Tash. Are my parents there?"

"Why would they be here?" she asked indignantly.
"Aren't they visiting you?"

She sighed. "I'll go and ask Grandpa." I heard her leave her room and shuffle to the kitchen, where I could hear my mother's voice plain as day. "Grandpa, have you seen Colin?"

Colin is my uncle.

"No, Grandma," I tried to say. "It's Tash."

Evidently, Grandma did not hear me. "Elouise can't find Colin."

"GRANDMA!" I shouted. No luck.

"I don't know why she thinks Colin's here, anyway." She must have put the phone back to her ear. "Elouise? Your father's not here."

I gave up. "Can I talk to Aunty Merrilyn, then?"

My mother came on the phone. "Ellie? Can't you find your parents?"
"I can. I'm speaking to my mother."

My mother hooted. "Mum," she called. "It's Tash, not Ellie."
"Well, why didn't she say so?" Grandma said, affronted.

I seem to be going well today in the realm of phone calls. I called my other grandparents, searching for my cousin, and instead reached my Nana. Expected, and all good.

Nana is not subtle when it comes to presents, however.

"Nana," I said in my best Spanish. "Can you please, somehow, find out which James Bond books Tata has? I am going to buy him some as a present."

"Okay, niña. Viejo! The nieta wants to know what James Bond books to buy you!"

Tata immediately wrenched the phone from her. "Nieta, don't buy me James Bond! I've read them all."

"I wasn't going to buy you James Bond," I said in English. "I just wanted to know which books you have, so when I buy some for me I don't double up and then I can borrow yours."

"Nice try. You don't like James Bond. You like silly novels."

Which is, unfortunately, quite accurate.

Now Teddy is staring at me from the iPod dock I have shoved him into, Sirius being unavailable to play music. (There's an ominous scent coming from him. I'm a bit worried. Dad also sounded worried, but pretended otherwise. Nice try, Padrecito, but I know your wow Tash you've really screwed up your computer this time voice very well now.) In between playing Joe Anderson's cover of I Want You and Split Enz's Message to My Girl, Teddy has decided charging is a violation of all he holds dear. Yet... somehow... there is no battery power being lost.

I don't think I will ever understand this technology thing.

Yeah. That's about it. I think I'm done rambling for the day. I should really do some form of uni work.

In attempting to format this post, I found a half-finished, non-rambling post that I could possibly have uploaded instead. Did I do that? No. It seems even now I prefer incoherence to brilliance.

I have a crazy father.

I'm not writing this because the said crazy father has done anything in particular, but mainly because I've written about the crazy grandfather and, heck, I really need to write more.

And by 'more', I mean anything that doesn't involve QUT-Harvard style references. 

Anyway, I will alternate between calling him Dad and Papi, but they are one and the same person so no confusion.

My Papi's childhood was in Chile. He had large glasses, because that's all he could get to deal with his blindness, and he had a dog named Minnie.

I don't really know much about the time in Chile. I know about it from my uncle's perspective, and from my grandmother's, even bits from my grandfather's. Dad, however, doesn't sit down and talk about it. He doesn't speak Spanish unless it's necessary. During my HSC, I asked him to speak Spanish with me.
"I don't want to."
"Dad, I really need to practise."
"Practise at your nana's."
"Papito! Please."
He sighed, I took it as my cue.
"Hola, me llamo Natasha. Como te llamas?"
"Don't be silly, Natasha, you know my name."

 I have gleaned bits of his childhood from passing comments he makes. "You still have to make your bed. Why? Because even though we had a maid in Chile, I still had to make my bed."
Yeah, my dad had a maid in Chile. We asked why we didn't get a maid here. "You don't need one." Well, he didn't need one there. "Tell that to your grandmother. She insisted."

He spouts off things like that to encourage us, I think, or perhaps make us feel dread. "School? You think school's hard? I had to go to school on Saturdays. We all did."

When he was 18, he came over to Australia with his family. 

We hear more stories about that time than we do of anything prior. "I'd learned a bit of English at school, but of course it wasn't anything you need when you come to another country." My uncle had apparently learned nothing, so Papi used to force him to talk to people at the train station and the like to get him to speak more. "You say it like Bondee Jooncshun," he told Uncle in one story. "'Can I plizz have a tickeh to Bondee Jooncshun'."

He started working somewhere, with my mother. Apparently it was something to do with computers. My mother was his boss. To everyone who knows my mother, this is hilarious. She only recently learned how to operate a computer ("Tashi! Tashi! The computer's not turning on!" "Press the power button, Mum, not the CD button"). My uncle worked in the same place, and he says that upon seeing my mother, my father decided he was going to marry her.

Which pleased my Nana no end. (My mother was also a bit concerned by this story, saying she was glad she'd not heard this earlier as she possibly would have ran.)

However, the man did not know much English, so any attempts at wooing would be fruitless. He decided to stay mute until he knew more English and thus could seduce my mother appropriately. My mother didn't quite like that, and apparently used to pick on my father and constantly ask questions to make him talk more. (We seem oddly similar in that sense, my mother and I.) Somewhere in this story, my parents started dating, my mother quit her job, and moved on to possibly go on the trawlers or something. They're a bit vague on the timeline here. Meanwhile, my father lived at home, receiving boxes of Balmain bugs from Mum, and being followed around by his little brother. 

Continuing on the vague timeline, my mother returned at some point and it became the 90s. My brother was born when my dad was the ripe old age of 23; I was born when he was nearly 25. We've got videos of that time, and for a guy who had come out to Australia less than 10 years earlier, he speaks English perfectly and is able to scold people pretty darn well.

For example:

Chris is running around the backyard and notes that Dad and Tata are playing soccer.

He promptly steals the ball.

Dad: Christopher! Can I please have the ball?

Chris continues running around like a lunatic, clutching onto the ball.

Dad: Christopher! [more stern now] Please give me the ball.

Chris races around the front of the house with the ball.

Dad: [chasing him, lost all patience] CHRISTOPHER ENRIQUE YOU COME BACK HERE.

Apparently from an early age, Chris looked like my parents smooshed together, and I perfectly resembled my father. He still gets offended if anyone says I look like my mother. Apparently one of my old teachers saw me at work once, and told Papi, fondly, that "Tash looks so much like Merrilyn now." Dad still continues a vendetta against her.

He also refused to call Chris and I by anything other than our full first names. 

As a comparison:

Mum: Will call me Tash, Tashi, or Tasha Carolina. Will call me Natasha when I am in trouble. Will call Chris: Chris, Christopher, or Henry. He didn't get in trouble much with Mum.

Dad: Will call me Natasha. Will call me Natasha Carolina when I am in trouble. Will call Chris: Christopher or Christopher Enrique when he is in trouble.
I don't know why, but he does this with my cousins too.

When I was growing up and hit my teenage years, I did not get along with Dad. He and I have very similar personalities, and they were practically identical when I was 14 or so. Both of us had very quick fuses, set to explode whenever the two of us said anything to each other that could theoretically be taken the wrong way. (My mother used to roll her eyes at us, saying that she could tell us exactly what we'd been saying to each other and not take it the wrong way.) This continued throughout high school and until I left home, and God taught me to, for the most part, control my temper. I remember just after I left home and my reactions were still set to go off when Dad said something, he called and asked me who I was voting for. I said Labor. He went off at me, which turned into an all-out argument, and both of us hung up. I immediately called Mum, as was my custom. She was perplexed. "I don't understand you, honey."
"HE IS TRYING TO STIFLE MY CHOICES FROM TWO HOURS AWAY."
"... yes, but he's also voting Labor. He lectured me last night about voting Liberal."

 Basically, the only thing that we bonded over was music. For as long as I can remember, my father has been attached to his guitar, and I can remember Silvio Rodriguez being coaxed from the strings and Dad singing in Spanish. Because of Dad, my first tape was Crowded House's Woodface; because of him, the first CD I bought was Ben Lee's Breathing Tornadoes. He take poems I'd written and put them to music, recording the attempts so he'd remember what chords he'd used. Last night I called him to tell him about awesome shenanigans, and told him Ben Folds Five is out in a few days.
"Oooh. Really?"
"Really really. It's already been leaked and it's amazing."
"Mumford and Sons is out too, probably on the same day."
"WEH. I'm going to be broke."
"You buy Ben Folds, I'll buy Mumford and Sons, and we'll do a swap."
"Done."
Most of the CDs I buy, he ends up getting a hold of. Because I keep most of my music in digital form, I pass them onto him. The same with him - if he buys a CD, he gives it to me first so I can copy it for the two of us, and then it lives in his car forever.

It's weird now I've left home that he and I are quite close. If given the opportunity to tell someone about my news, I go straight to him. I never used to.
Mum called me on Monday to ask about a few things. I was evasive. I didn't feel like sharing with her.
Dad calls yesterday. He asks the same. He gets the full story. I don't know, there's just something different about sharing with Dad than there is with Mum. And he's become the same, where he just calls to tell me extremely random things (such as the other night he wrestled the phone off Mum mid-sentence to inform me that the bank had told him he was paying too many fees and he was convinced he'd stumbled on a conspiracy). I love it now, because he's an excellent man and so similar to me that we exist on the same wavelength. He usually reads all my stories first, because he's honest but also knows where I'm trying to head at - and can find faster ways to get to my point.

And just on a final note, my father is insane.
He enjoys making people bite. He especially enjoys making me bite, because Mum and Chris have learned to ignore him. We went out for dinner a few weeks ago and he spent the entire meal poking me, eating steak one-handed, just because I stupidly told him I bet he couldn't be annoying for an entire meal. He also hides and tries to scare people. I can't even count the number of times that Chris and I have been going up the hallway, seemingly with Dad in tow, and suddenly there's no Dad. We always flee back to Mum and scream and refuse to go down the hallway until Mum marches down there and pulls Dad out of his hiding place, sternly. (He really is like a child.) Once, Mum and Dad were looking after this awesome kid, Ollie, for a few months. Ollie was watching TV, and Dad decided to sneak outside and wait to scare Ollie.
I was walking through the living room and saw Dad outside the window.
Ollie said, "Hey. Where's your dad gone?"
Dad slashed his throat at me.
Feeling extremely bad, I lied. "Got no idea, sorry."
Ollie screaming and running up to my room to hide a few minutes later let us all know the prank was indeed a success.

The weekend and the assignments.

So I've been looking at a lot of blogs today. It's an unfortunate side effect of researching opinion-based things. You find one blog, decide that the voice is lots of fun, and then it's a slippery slope into distraction and all the similar things.

The studious part of me was not one for continuing. "Come on," she coaxed. "Close the blogs. Close Failbook. Close Liam's Tumblr. Get something done for once."
The more prevalent part of my head, the one that seems to enjoy dancing to extremely bad music when I'm trying to concentrate in a lecture, replied with a very sharp, "No! Shan't!" and now here we are.
Typing a blog.
When there are quite a few essays/speeches/things to prepare for.
Oh well; when the words want out, they want out, and there's nothing much you can do to stop it.

I've got to do an assignment on some form of media policy. Turns out that Googling 'media policy Australia' returns the results of the ABC's social media policy, closely followed by government policies for the same thing. Upon seeing this in our tute a few weeks ago, I nearly died of disappointment. I'd done a 2500 word essay on the ABC's social media policy last semester, and had conveniently forgotten everything/my laptop had died and had lost everything on its hard drive. Our tutor asked us to get into groups to discuss which area of the media we'd like to focus on. I chose print media. I like me some books.
When our tutor came over, I mentioned that I enjoy the occasional (by which I mean frequent) book, and he said, "Oh, cool! So you're thinking about parallel import restrictions and the like?"
I was not. I was thinking about... well, dancing to really bad music and going home to take a nap. "Yeah, something like that."
"That'll be really good to write about. It's a pretty recent debate."
Thanks to my tutor being a lovely, kind fellow, I have now got a decent topic. I had to outline my arguments today in a speech (the most casual speech I've ever had to do) and hand over a bibliography with at least 5 references, annotated.
I handed over 5 pages. Hooray for research and references being done before the assignment's due.
There's also the global media assignment/speech (researching theme parks and products ahoy), and the research one (why they're asking first years to deconstruct someone else's research is beyond me), and the communication one where we're talking about QPAC.
Tonight and tomorrow will be productive *shakes fist*.

Over the weekend we had a party. That was fun.
I started the night off as Zorro, and ended it as all the things. I'd kidnapped my fedora from a friend, some Batman gear from two other friends, and then somehow came across a nerf gun (with no knowledge of how to load the thing). I also had a samurai sword and a quiver. It was a good night, a good housewarming, and we did lots of happy things.
Also, our bathtub is still full of drinks because we have nowhere else to put them.

I got proposed to over the weekend, too. That was a flipping amusing. I have a friend who asked me for my number a few months ago. I was feeling particularly stubborn when he asked (because of reasons), so I said no, he had to work hard for it. I was probably also in my let's see how this social experiment turns out mood, which really crops up all too often for my liking.
The day after the party, he informs a few of us that he had a plan.
The few of us who were there scoffed. Mere moments earlier, he'd actually had my number, due to my failing at life and losing my phone, and thus needing to call it. The other plans he'd mentioned had also come from us, so we decided that the plans weren't going to be too successful.
We went out to Rosalie later that day, and had gelato. Gelato at Rosalie is always nice, and also resulted in us coming across the following sign:

Rosalie's in the flood zone. This building would have been underwater
when the 2011 floods hit.

Anyway, after that we were wandering back to the car. He'd been threatening to unleash his grand plan since we'd been shopping elsewhere earlier that morning, so I figured that he wouldn't actually go through with it.
No.
Outside a park, next to the car, where I tried to slink into it before he could do anything (you know, just in case), he actually got down onto one knee, phone in hand, and asked me for my number.
Another friend of ours, having twigged earlier what he was going to do, screamed, "OH MY GOSH THAT'S SO CUTE" just before he did it, which made a group of people close by stare at us the whole time. I was laughing my head off. It was a solid plan, and definitely counted as working hard for my number.
So I thought, until I realised he'd spelt my name wrong.
"YOU SPELT MY NAME WRONG!" I was laughing at the same time; it was a pretty easy mistake to make, considering how weird my name is at the best of times. I've had it spelt Paveq. Paveq. "You don't get my number now!"
He groaned and changed it, trying to get me to give it to him again. When Trina suggested that he yell out to the people who were staring at us, "SHE SAID YES!" I decided that if he did, he'd get the number.
So as we drove away, he bellowed at them, and I gave the number.
Brilliant afternoon.

It's now pretty quiet in our house. Friday we had 5 people; Saturday jumped to 11 people staying (part of the 30-odd people there for our party), and suddenly Sunday night, Trina and I were quietly at home on our laptops like any other night. I miss the people. They're all from down home, and my gosh I wish they lived up here. 2.5hrs isn't that far, but being smack in the middle of all the people I love is something I quite enjoy.
There's your command, people I love, move to Brisbane (then follow me to Melbourne. And then London. Just follow me, okay?).

I saw my parents on Saturday, too, and I saw a picture of my Binca lying in the boot of the car, dead. Ugh, I hate that word. I don't like associating it with things I love. She looked like she was sleeping, but there was something in her face - you could see that Inca, whatever it was that made her, her, was gone. I think the wall of photos is a better reminder of who she was, as my crazy bird of a puppy.

Anyway.
That's about all for today. Back to the assignments (and back to waiting for people to reply to things; my impatience really is not the best trait).

Inca.

When I was 7, we got a puppy.

I remember finding out about her. It was late afternoon, and as was custom in my family (not custom in anyone else’s family, I used to grumble), my brother and I had been down for naps. I’d crept out of my bed – sometimes my mother used to decide that we had to sleep for longer, possibly depending on her level of patience with us – and curled myself around the wall, peering at Mum on the phone.

She had a piece of paper, gently torn from the newspaper, in her hand. I can’t remember what she said, probably discounting it as something that wouldn’t impact me. She was smiling. She hung up the phone and saw me.

“Did you have a nice nap?”

I didn’t say anything at first. I stared at her, tired. “Can I have some juice?”

The next day, we were bundled into the car. Chris and I were not happy. He preferred to spend his days in front of the computer. I preferred to avoid Lismore at all costs.

We turned just before Lismore, and instead went to a breeder’s place in Goonellabah, up and down lots of winding roads along steeply formed hills. And that is where we got Puppy. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful puppy I had seen. There were so many other puppies around, but this one was mine.

“What will you call her?” the breeder asked us.

We all shrugged. “We’ll figure something out.”

On the way home, I begged to hold Puppy. “She’s too little to be in the boot, Mama,” I protested. “Please?”

Mum, possibly swayed by how pretty Puppy was, agreed. I clambered over the back seat and grabbed her.

Puppy was a bit confused. This was her first time in a car, and having some crazy seven-year-old grab her round the waist and squeeze wouldn’t have helped matters any. Puppy promptly threw up on me.

“Oh, Tashi,” Mum groaned. “Mauricio, get her a towel!”
I still loved Puppy.

We took Puppy home.

“We’ve really got to name that dog.”

We couldn’t figure out a name.

“Tash, you can go feed her.”

I put her in the old garage, the one that Mum had painted ‘terracotta’ and ‘slate’ in one of her artistic moods. The stuff looked much like what she’d vomited on me, and gingerly I opened the lid and plopped it in front of her on a plate. “There you go, Puppy,” I said. “Go and eat.”

Puppy ate, and I wandered over to the bookshelves, looking for something to pass the time. I looked over my shoulder to check on Puppy. No Puppy.

Where on earth was she?

A lick on my leg solved that question.

Puppy was sitting at my feet, waiting for me to go back to her plate so she could eat.

As puppies are, this puppy was a bit of a menace. She chewed through Dad’s roses, thorns and all. She dug holes. She ate socks, shoes, anything she could find. She loved soccer balls, so she would always steal them when Dad was trying to play with Chris. You’ve not seen anything funnier until you’ve seen a puppy, gangly paws and all, playing soccer.

“We’ve really got to name her,” Dad said, again. We called her puppy; Dad varied between that and mierda.

The Internet was Dad’s new toy at the time, and so he went to Google to hunt out a name. He returned, valiant, with Inca. I don’t know the reasoning for naming an innocent Golden Retriever puppy after a civilisation butchered by the Spaniards, but they went for it. Dad promptly went outside to test the new name, where Inca was sitting eating a stick.

“Inca!” he yelled. She lifted her head, looked around, and continued chewing on her stick.

Dad wasn’t one to give up, though. “Inca!”

She peered at Dad, as though saying to him, I don’t know who this Inca is, but do you need me? She must have figured not. She returned to the stick.

Dad went over and put his hand on her. “Inca.”

Inca blinked, confused. I’m not Inca. I’m Puppy. Or Mierda. What’s going on?

“Good Inca.”

Inca wasn’t impressed when we got Tuscany, a little round ball of fluff that, for the podgy belly she had, couldn’t move much faster than a waddle. Chris, similarly unimpressed with Tuscany’s lack of athleticism and possibly noting the similarities between the new puppy and I (lack of athleticism, podgy belly, preference to lie down in a corner and ignore everyone), he decided that Inca would be his puppy, and Tuscany would be mine.

Inca didn’t care whose puppy it was. She knew it was a puppy and that we all were wooed by her cuteness and her waddle. And so Inca devoted her waking hours to tormenting Tuscany. One of the earliest photos we have of Tuscany (and possibly of Inca, too) is where Tuscany is clambering up onto a chair, trying valiantly to escape Inca, yet seeming to forget that where the chair looks massive and cliff-like from her perspective, Inca could just pluck her off thanks to her gangly legs giving her new height.

Inca seemed to thrive on Tuscany’s stupidity. Tuscany has always been a glutton, and one day decided that Inca’s bone should be hers.

Inca did growl and give fair warning, so no one should have been surprised when she bit her on the eye.

Inca had a penchant for rocks, and would grab them no matter where you put them. On a chair? On the table? In the back corner of the garden? Always, the dog would find them.

I tested this out one day, and dropped the rock in her water bucket. She dove in with gusto, grabbed the rock, and blinked at me, water dripping from her face.

We started this as a routine (one I’d get scolded for, plenty).

She would always run away, leaving the geographically-challenged Tuscany in her wake. She loved her adventures. One time, some kind person found her and called my mobile (it seemed everyone in Wollongbar knew that if a white Retriever came running around their place, it was 99.99% of the time, our dog). I went over, leash in hand, to pick her up.

She beamed at me, big eyes peering out from under wet, muddy fur.

“Where on earth have you been?!” I shouted.

I scolded her the whole way home, hosed her off and stomped inside. There were messages on the answering machine.

“Your dog’s been in my pool,” said the first.

“We just saw your dog on the highway,” was the next.

“Your dog’s just been in the highway construction site, I think,” was another.

We decided it best to repair the fence.

I’ve written about her before, and honestly – at 1000 words already, I could go on. There are so many crazy memories about this dog.

I got to see her on Sunday. She was happy. I picked her up, her old body, and sat her on my lap where we just relaxed for such a long time. She was moulting. My mother was shouting at me that I’d be covered in fur (and I love being covered in fur, it makes me feel so close to them). I kissed my puppy, remembering how she used to have fur all over her tail and her back, but now that she’s old she’s not growing it as fast.

I didn’t think much of it, really – I didn’t do the maths, that she’s 13.

On Thursday, I was at uni. 6pm, and I didn’t want to be there anyway.

My parents called. I texted back, I’m at uni. Can I call at 7?

Dad replied, As soon as you can.

I replied, Is it bad?

I’ll tell you when you call.

I want to know now.

He didn’t reply.

My brother came on Facebook; I’ve copied and pasted the conversation.

Did Mum call you?

No. She tried but I'm at uni. What on earth is going on? They won't tell me over text.

Because you’ll be sad.

What is it?????? HOLY CRAP HAS ONE OF THE DOGS DIED?

Inca

And I fled my tute. I called Dad. There was screaming, in the middle of campus. There was crying. I made my Dad cry because of my reaction. He told me to call him back when I got home.

Thursday was just… horrid.

Yesterday I was bawling my eyes out too much to see, too much to go anywhere, and I stormed off to the shops to get some pictures printed of her to put up.

And there is still a part of me that’s convinced she’s around. But she’s not.

13 years, of being Chris’s baby, of being such a gorgeous dog.

I wrote on Twitter when I first moved up here this year. If the dogs die while I’m up here, I’ll be really mad. And I am, I honestly am. Not with God – he gave me so many opportunities to see her before she died, and I’m so thankful for that. But I’m mad at myself. I wish I’d been there. And now, stupidly, I’m making plea bargains for Tuscany. Asking him to keep her alive and let her die while I’m there.

Anyway.

So that’s that.

Inca Indian Summer, according to the breeder.

06.05.1999 – 23.08.2012.

To lighten this up, let's have some crazy photos of a crazy dog.

She's death staring me. She hates cameras.

In my room, because it was freezing last year 

and the poor puppies were shivering. 

I lost sympathy the minute they tried to climb onto 

my bed for snuggles.

Love her big eyes. Gah, they're gorgeous.

Beach trip. 

Even more beach trip. She loved the beach.

Her best 'please let me in' face.

More beach.

We had a toddler over at our place and sat him on the floor

to look at the dogs.

Inca was not very impressed. She's pretty confused.

Sulking because camera and no pats.

Their bed, which is actually my couch.

"HEY. YOU'RE TAKING PHOTOS."

This is the most recent. Couple of weekends ago or so.