Snoskred – Life in the Country

I’ve been a busy bee the last 24 hours or so. I’ve been using my StumbleUpon toolbar to “stumble” all the blogs listed under “Blogs I read daily via Google Reader” and “Australian Blogs Community” in my sidebar. So if you’re in there, you’ve been stumbled my friends. I was inspired by this post from Riley Central which talks about Stumble Karma. It’s really easy to follow and a lot easier to “stumble” than I thought.

The reason I have been keeping myself busy is.. I had a major disappointment yesterday.

You may recall back in May, I wrote about my heart being broken when a house in the place I want to live turned out to be too small. I don’t usually like to make the same mistake twice, but yesterday I did it without even realizing it. Last Tuesday when we went looking at houses we’d seen this one that looked like it might work for us. It was very close to the beach in a quite peaceful area. I called the real estate lady and asked if we could arrange to look at it, and we made it for Monday next week.

I was pretty excited because it looked big enough to fit all our stuff in, and it was solid brick – many of the homes where we want to live are weatherboard or generally beach shacks you couldn’t live in during a winter. Sephy fired up Google Earth for me and he sent me a photo which had me daydreaming of beach walks every day taking my camera with me. The house is somewhere in this pic.

By the time the other half got home from work, I’d already mentally packed all our stuff and moved in to the place. He had received a phone call from the real estate lady saying she had been in contact with the owners and they’d had a bad experience with cats and they wouldn’t accept us as tenants, so there was no point even looking at the house.

I was completely shocked. The next thing I know my eyes started to water all on their own and I was bawling. It sounds stupid to you guys I guess, but there is such a strong urge in me to go and live near that bay. After the tears, I started to get angry. Our cats have never done any kind of damage to a house. They have cat towers, they are desexed, they don’t pee on the carpet, they are well looked after. The worst they might have done is fur up a curtain, but that comes out in the wash.

Even worse – the current tenants clearly had young kids. So if I’d had kids instead of cats, it would be fine. I don’t have human babies, I have feline ones, so I can’t live there. It seems to me this is discrimination, and completely unfair. If they said to a couple with kids, sorry you have kids, you can’t live here, imagine the outcry!

Funnily enough it happened almost exactly two months after the last time.

“There’s nothing like work for getting over a disappointment” from Memoirs of a Geisha. I have to say, it really works. I’m feeling a lot better already. And it benefits all you guys in my sidebar as well because you might see some traffic from Stumbleupon now.. I hope you do.

Aussies reading this, I need your input and comments. Recently during my blogging chicks commenting challenge, I found myself breaking my own commenting rules. Specifically – “If you’re seeing red, get out of there fast – and as politely – as possible”.

A very judgmental blogger had stated that they would not read a blog if it contained swear words, and stated that they felt anyone using swear words basically was a bad writer incapable of expressing themselves in any other way. Them’s fighting words to an Australian – at least they were to me.

Living here in Australia I hear swear words all the time, it’s a fact of life. There is not one single word that shocks or offends me. Not even the C word. In fact I know people who use that as a term of affection. If one was offended by these words, you would probably find life quite difficult here in this country – Aussie readers, do you agree?

At the same time I have recently changed the way I do things here at the blog with regard to swear words. I put a * in them. This is something I do for the readers, not for me. That is because I do understand that some people are offended by these words.

So over the past few days while I have been cleaning my bookshelves (a job I finally finished) what this blogger said has been bugging me. I’m not going to link to the blog because I do not feel she deserves the traffic.

To write off everything a person says because of the occasional swear word? Isn’t that akin to writing off everything a person says because they are {insert one of the following – black, white, yellow, pink, gay, lesbian, heterosexual, republican, democrat, right wing, left wing, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, is my point made or should I continue?}. So I am a “swearer”. So I am going to hell. Or something. That doesn’t mean I am somehow “lesser” or my words have any less meaning.

I won’t lie to you guys (and Christian readers, please do not be offended by this, read the whole thing before you get upset) – I have struggled with this commenting challenge. First of all, it’s the blogging *chicks* and I’ve had some really terrible experiences with women during my life time. So the reality is, women scare me. Mostly. And I say that being female myself.

The other thing I have struggled with – many of the blogs belong to people who are Christian. I have always been somewhat scared of the apparently very religious after some bad experiences with the religious in my teenage years. The Christians I have known have never acted like true Christians – they preach, but do not *practice*.

I used to be Baptist. I used to go to church. The trouble was, the church I went to was more like a social group with cliques and some of the people were extremely nasty. It put me off church and Christians so much that I’ve never gone back. Since then I have often felt people who believe in God are as alien to me as people who believe UFO’s are coming to the earth to collect them.

I respect the right of everyone to worship whoever they choose, don’t get me wrong, but I do find it difficult when people are very judgmental and impose their religious views on others, especially in the areas of topics like a politics, sexuality, a womans right to choose, and the worst of all in my opinion, the religion where parents refuse to let their very ill children have blood transfusions which would save their lives. It’s an alien concept to me that you could care more about a religion than your flesh and blood child who is dying in front of your eyes.

I had a moment of panic at the start of this challenge when I opened up the first 10 blogs and the majority of them were Christians. But I’ve stuck with the challenge because I have found points of commonality with the people – even with the Christian people, several of whom I have now added to my google reader. Had you asked me at the start of this challenge would I be able to find Christians worth adding to my google reader, the answer would have been NO. Probably with a swear word in front of NO, too.

There’s blogs on the Australian Blogs Community that I struggle with because they have a very different point of view on some topics to what I do. I’m still willing to hear what they have to say. I listen to people who consider themselves left wing and right wing. I am incredibly tolerant in so many areas. Even I am surprised by how tolerant I am, from time to time.

What I have trouble tolerating are people whose minds are closed – who won’t listen to others and who will never change their opinion even when evidence suggests they should. This is why I have trouble with people who identify themselves as “right wing” or “left wing” when it comes to politics, because they seem to blindly support one side or the other. I’m a person who supports the side that is *right* and that means I can swing from one wing to the other in a heartbeat.

My blog has 5 hits for the F word on Technorati. Google comes up with 23 but it counts several of these more than once. If that negates everything else I have ever said here on the blog for some people, then so be it.

As I go back through my posts I will be editing swear words to have * in them. I apologize to any readers who may have been offended by my using these words in the past, and I do intend to use * in them in the future. It’s not because of that very judgmental blogger, it’s because I do respect and care for my readers and I do not want to impose my swearing on them. I know not all of them come from a place where the F word is as common as hello.

Sephy posted on this topic today also, these two posts tie in quite well together.

I meant to write about interpretation today but it didn’t happen. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get my act together on that one.

Yesterday was an absolutely glorious day. The Other Half and I went to a few places to have a walk on the beach. The last place we went is in the new town that both of us really want to live in and it was a place we drove past last time but didn’t stop. It’s more interesting than a normal beach, it has mangroves and a big wooden bridge across them, so you can stand there and look at the little crabs doing what little crabs do.There were little fish in the stream which was running out of the mangroves, the stream was a funny color because it had rained, and the fish were eating little bits of food coming to them as a surprise.The tide was out, and you could walk out for miles along rocks and sand. And we did, we spent over an hour walking there, just soaking it in, looking in rockpools, finding hidden beach life. It was so peaceful. Absolute, utter silence. It was incredibly incredible.As we were leaving we noticed that one of the houses we’d looked at was maybe 3 houses away from where we actually had been. I began to imagine a new life, beach walks twice a day, peace, silence, no screaming kids. The house was listed as having three bedrooms and a rumpus room. There’s only two of us but we have a lot of stuff. We live in a four bedroom now. It looked like it would be big enough, and though the bricks were a little dark I said to the other half, why don’t we go to the real estate agent and see if we can have a look?

And so we did. Half an hour later we pulled up out the front of the house. The real estate lady was there waiting and already had the house open. It had screen doors (something we really miss now) and we went inside to a quite dark room which would have been the lounge. Then up a couple of steps to the hallway which ran the length of the house. At one end of the hallway there was a giant wood fire and another living area. Then it had a kitchen and dining. The kitchen was fairly old and country style, but I liked it. Mentally, I was already moving in boxes.

The bedrooms were somewhat small. It had one bathroom. As we walked back towards the laundry I said, so where’s the rumpus? The real estate lady said – it’s out the back, but you don’t get access to it, it belongs to the owner and he stays there on weekends, holidays, that kind of thing. Hmm. Not brilliant news, but I’m still prepared to accept compromises I guess. Then we go outside, and there is no undercover area for a bbq or outdoor setting (we have both) except the owner has one attached to the rumpus, which we wouldn’t be able to use. There was no garage, either.

After we’d been in the house we were standing out the front and all you could hear was the trees and parrots flying past and I just really wanted to live there. Even if the owner stayed out the back from time to time. Even if we didn’t have a garage. Even if we had to give the pool table to my parents to make it work. My mother would be furious, she spent years trying to get rid of a pool table, but maybe I could talk her into it. The idea of beach walks, maybe two minutes walk away, whenever I felt like it.

All the way home both of us tried to figure out how we could make it work. I could almost hear Tim Gunn from Project Runway in my head “Make it work!” but no matter how we sliced it, there was no way us and all our stuff and our two cats could fit in that house. It didn’t have Austar. It didn’t have a broadband connection. We probably could have those fitted, and if there was a rumpus in which to put the pool table we would have explored it. But there wasn’t.

I was really pretty tired, I’d been up for 24 hours trying to put my body clock back onto schedule. We got home and it was just after 4pm, and then those kids across the road started up screaming and playing and yelling, and The Other Half came in and said to me “It’d be worth getting rid of half of our shit just not to hear those kids anymore”.

It didn’t hit me till I got up this morning and was chatting to Sephy online and telling him about the house. My heart is broken. It’s like a new version of life was coming towards me, stretching out its hands, and at the last minute it turned around and went the other way.

We’re just going to have to be patient. What we want will turn up. We have to believe that. And now I’m going to be more pro-active – I’m going to get in touch with all the property managers there and let them know what we’re after. But today I feel really grumpy.

It’s 1:30am and my mind is wide awake. The other half went to bed quite a while ago now, and I don’t want to go in and read till I’m tired because it will wake him up. Much of this post won’t make a lot of sense. It’s ok, I just need to get it out.

I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but the one that keeps annoying me today is why did I place my faith in other people when I should probably have struck out on my own and created what I wanted to create, especially when those other people suddenly decided they didn’t want me to be involved in things to the same extent I originally was.

Those people let me down and yet, I continue to support them. Those people say nasty things about me when they think nobody else is looking. Well, people are looking and whether you like it or not, they have no good reasons to treat me badly, so they let me know what is said. And I don’t say anything, and I probably should, but I figure for the good of everyone, it’s better just to let them talk and try to show them by my actions that I am not the person they think I am.

I know this – I have done a lot of good things. I don’t talk trash behind peoples backs – if I am going to say something about you I say it to you. Maybe I should have done what everyone was urging me to do – create my own empire, make my own site, do my own thing, but that would have taken the focus away from what is really important, and it would have meant a lot of the work I have put into things would have to have been put into creating the empire, and realistically that would have been a waste of my time and energy.

People think I’m holding grudges, but I don’t. I’ve put the past behind me, well behind me – they are the ones with the chips on their shoulder and no real desire to remove them. I was told to build a bridge, and I did. And let’s face it, someone who said some very nasty things about me, and continues to do so from what I am told, recently I put a fair bit of effort in to doing something nice for them – for the good of the bigger picture.

People ask me why, when I was treated so badly by certain people, I continue to stick around. It’s a good question and one I find myself asking myself today. I have a little piece of paper on my desk. You might have seen it in the doll pictures. Maybe you can’t make out what it says, but it is the answer, and that is why it sits there on my desk, right in front of me, day after day.It’s entirely true. What it says is – sometimes taking the high road is no fun at all.

It hasn’t been fun. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t enjoy the way certain people treat me. But the good things that have come from me taking that high road are very worthwhile and one day, maybe, those people who have been so unpleasant will come around and see my actual actions instead of making sh*t up. They’ll look and see and maybe they will eventually think – damn, she did that, even while we were talking crap about her? Even when we kicked her in the teeth, and then kept kicking her in the teeth, over and over till most of her teeth were missing? What would I have done in her shoes? Would I have stuck around? Would I have stuck it out? No f*cking way. I’d have resigned publicly, made a huge fuss, gone off and made my own site, and split the community even further from what it already was.

Right now today, I am truly wondering if this has been worth it, when people won’t let go of the past, and they still seem to think kicking me in the teeth is a great idea. And maybe what I should do is exactly what *they* would have done in my place – resign publicly, cause a huge fuss, go off and make my own site, and split the community. But I can’t do that, not because I can’t go make my own site, I have in house technical support and my own server is finally back online etc, but because I believe the community is split enough already, and further fractures will only do more harm.

It’s time. People need to stop trying to hurt each other, and remember why they are involved in any of this at all.

Today I did go make my own site. It’s actually for all my stuff, because now my server is back online I’ve managed to get things into one place, and some kind of order. It’s got all my scambaiting audios there in one place, well a lot of them anyway. I’m going to get back into doing more of that stuff soon.