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.

Music

I am so completely terrible at keeping this thing up.
Let's just say uni got in the way again. I mean, by now we all know that's a complete lie, but let's just go with it.

I'm back down home this weekend (hooray!) for a friend's engagement party. Shenanigans were had, by way of car rally around the Lismore/Ballina region (which is, in all honesty, the most beautiful area I've ever experienced ever; Lennox was particularly beautiful). After all the cake had been cut and the prizes awarded, Daniela and I scurried over to her mother's car to go home. Both of us are without our licence, me pitifully so. Daniela's only 16 and has already started driving.
Me? I've had the thing since I was sixteen. One hour in my log book.
Daniela's family listens to pretty awesome music, and 99% would have to be Spanish. They definitely have stronger ties to that side of the world than we do in my family. I don't know how they find their music, either, because this isn't music that my dad and uncle would have listened to when they were over in Chile. That was the time of, apparently, Madonna and Silvio Rodriguez (and Silvo is pretty darn awesome).
On the way home, we listened to a song called Amarte Bien, by a charming fellow known as Carlos Baute. The version we listened to was this remix version including Juan Magan, and my gosh do I already love it to pieces.
Now it's your turn. Go forth and love this to pieces.

Just an aside, I'm extremely sorry that it took so long to get to the point, and that I started telling stories only to not finish them. Shoddy work, but I am tired and such. That car rally was effort. I promise I'll be an excellent writer soon.