Cheers sweetie

Worst day this year on record.
Such a foul mood all day. Can't believe it's been almost 18 hours of it.
Still - it's been made so much better over the last 5 hours by dear friends and alcohol (that crutch that I don't use often enough methinks).
Probably shouldn't blog while pissed.
Hope I didn't upset anyone tonight by crapping on too much.
Bloody black clouds following me around.
Begone damn storm clouds.
Here's to tomorrow being full of sunshine and light (potential hangover notwithstanding).
Cheers.

Say goodbye...

...to the old quote.
Oh I love it so much.
But time for a new one to go with the changed template I think.

"She ran the back of her hand along the first shelf, listening to the shuffle of her fingernails gliding across the spinal cord of each book. It sounded like an instrument, or the notes of running feet."
- Zusak, M. 2005, "The Book Thief" Picador, Sydney.

Written this morning

I just get to work as the first spits of rain are falling from the feathery clouds drifting in the cold blue morning sky.
Now sitting at my desk I'm listening to the splats of raindrops on my office window, to the trickling of water running along the balcony. The half blue sky is now blanketed in grey.
I press my hands on the window glass and feel the icyness of the morning still there. It makes me hanker for winter and bed, and reminds me of holidays in colder places than this.
The steady rhythm of the rain-shower is punctuated by the sounds of the crimson rosellas flying across from the park to hide in the eucalypt out the front of the Library. I can still see blue sky and fluffy clouds east on the horizon.
And when I walk to the kitchen to get my morning cup of tea and look south, there is a most amazing rainbow arcing over the tall shiny greys of the business district.

That is all.

What's inside us and what's in the world around us.

Okay, so I saw this on an advertising postcard - and promptly cut out the figure and made it hang from my computer monitor at work...until I realised that it mayn't be quite appropriate and binned it *blushes*
And now look! It's gleaming from lit-up bus shelters all over town!
I know what I think about it - but just what does the average punter make of it all?

But there is something that has me even more excited: Worldmapper.
"Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest."
Truly weird and wonderful. I wasted the best part of an hour delving into map after map. Countries resized according to figures on their tourism, attended births, ore exports, toy imports, immigration, emmigration, and more.
Looking at the first page it's amazing to see India pulsing like a a yellow heart.
Some maps sort of resemble the land mass maps we are used to seeing. And some are absolutely nuts!
It looks like the site is a continuing project - and I'll be keen to see the resources maps (groundwater recharge, forest loss, etc) when they are released.

Taking it on the chin.

A blank page and a blank space in my day.
A pause between knocks.
Today at work I received fallout from one of the bigger oh-my-god-how-did-i-just-completely-forget-to-do-that blunders in recent memory. Involving the tippy top boss ladies too.
No nasty fallout at all, but I'm very tired now. Surprisingly tired from that.
And now to a meeting where again I get to say 'no, i haven't done what i meant to, in fact i haven't done anything about it at all and i'm sorry'.

It's like I have a black hole somewhere in my brain where things vanish for weeks at a time.
And I completely plumb forget that there's something I'm meant to do.

In more positive news, last night I got to do one of the more bloody cuttings I've ever done. Felt the tug between cutter and subject. Who says more? Who says stop? Why stop? Felt the bloodlust rising and falling like a tide.
And then later I sat amongst kinky photos and kinkier people and drank red wine and marvelled at the way words together can make memories and possibilities take form.

good, and good intentions

Spent a week up north with my sister recently. Which was pretty fantastic. Hung out at her place with the trees, spiders, stars, chooks, mountains. Found it pretty weird to see so many places that have memories from my earlier life attached to them. Still doing my head in a bit.
And I also came away with even more respect for my sister and the way in which she choses to live her life.

Today at work we set to destroying a box of good intentions.
I will explain.
In the past, when people wanted to join the Library, we had to type up the cards by hand and laminate them. So they joined, and we told them to come back in a week and collect their card.
Years later we find a large box full of uncollected library cards. People who have come in, intending to borrow a book for their child, on their medical condition, about sewing a wedding dress on the cheap, because they were going on holidays, to read about the latest movie, to get themselves out of legal strife, because they saw a cool book review, because they don't want their mum to see them reading about it, because they can't afford the book they need, because they want to learn to cook/fuck/fix their car, because they want to better themselves...
...and then they never come back.
Good intentions.
And we have to shred, cut up, destroy, all of these cards. All of the physical evidence of these stories.

I have no way of ending this little story except that I wonder about all these people, and if they found what they came into the Library looking for.

full update on the last week coming soon...until then...

Hello My identity is

admirer, ally, babe, bent, biogirl, bisensual, bisexual, bottom, brunette, chick, do-me queen, dominant, drag king, dyke hag, extrovert, female, female-bodied, female-souled, feminine, feminist, femme, femme-ish, fetishist, fluid, freak, gay-friendly, gender expressive, gendered, genetic girl, gentlewoman, girl, grrl, human, kinky, lady, leather, ma'am, masochist, me, miss, mother, ms., non-trans girl, open, out, outgoing, passive, person, pervert, polyamorous, queer, queer-minded, questioning, SOFFA, sadist, sadomasochist, same gender loving, shy, sister, straight, submissive, switch, top, trans-friendly, transhag, trisexual, undecided, versatile, wannabe, whore, woman, YES!

What's yours?

Blog Against Disabilism Day.

Well, I was hoping to write a more 'well considered' entry for 'Blog against Disabilism Day'. But I've only got a few moments to finish packing before getting the the airport.

So here's an excerpt from my life (read: brain dump).
Before I started going out with my social worker boyfriend, I thought I had a decent grasp on what some disabilities might be and how to treat folks with dignity, etc. You know - the standard - don't treat people as if they are their disability, don't assume anything about personality, intellect, etc, based on their disability, and so on.
But I hadn't really heard the term 'psychiatric disability' before.
And so ensues a learning curve for Miss Y.

Recently we had a mental health awareness training course at work.
At first I didn't want to go because, as worthy as it sounded, I had so much work to do, and hey I was learning heaps and reading more and talking more about mental health these days.
*sighs*
But I go.
And the first thing the trainer does is asks the room to list different mental illnesses. After a slow start we end up filling the whiteboard.

She says we've done amazingly compared to most groups and that she often gets great responses from Librarians. She says because we deal daily and incidentally with library patrons with mental illnesses, that we're wonderfully aware.

Then someone jokes that the lists we've created are just the conditions of the staff, not the patrons.
Everyone laughs.

And then I look at the list again and realise that they're dead right.
But so many of us have found our niche.
Cataloguers with Aspergers. Aquisitions Librarians with OCD.
Oh yeah, GAD can be a challenge when you're working in Readers' Services, and it's not a fun run when the maintenance lad is feeling his depression.

But we're all just people, getting by.
So sure, don't treat people as if they are their disability. And also, don't assume there's nothing there if you can't see it straight away either.