Singular Scene

So Singular in Each Particular

Sweet Baby James

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I remember the first time I heard him. The same place I heard a few people for the first time, and actually, the place I really learned to listen and appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into a great song.

So many times you hear music and enjoy it, never really knowing why, what it is about a song that resonates. For some it will be the lyrics, others the chords, harmonies, instruments. I love it all. And I love this song. Copperline, by James Taylor.

Taylor writes great lyrics (“Half a mile down to Morgan Creek, leaning heavy on the end of the week”), he sings with the most fabulous phrasing and the singers he has alongside him on projects like “Live at the Beacon Theater” are outstanding, and incredible artists in their own right. But this song was the first, it was in class in my first year of Creative Arts School and it will stay my favourite. (And I’m kicking myself still I didn’t pony up the cash to go hear him when he played in Sydney on my Birthday. Next Time, for sure.)

 

Oh, and happy birthday this week to my very own ‘Sweet Baby James’ who at age 10 can hardly be called a baby any more…

In with the New

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I have a vague recollection of a movie scene wherein the hero, an author, sits down in front of his typewriter, flexes his fingers, and in an exaggerated fashion places them on the keys and begins to write.

I feel like that guy.

It’s been such a long time that when I found my brain defaulting back to blog post type thoughts rather than tweets and subsequently logged into my blog to blow off the dust I still couldn’t muster the enthusiasm – neither for the front end, the bit you see (that notepad chaos theme was well overdue an overhaul), nor for the back end, my old faithful Movable Type installation.

So, you know, I threw it all out and started again.

Need I tell you that this occurrence was more than a month ago? Apparently good things take time…

I’m sure that most of my readers won’t be interested in what prompted the change from MT to WP – I’ll document that over at the Web Princess blog – for now, here I am back and enthused both to have transferred all my old posts from the wibsite and seamlessly integrated them (actually, it was a slow and laborious task) with the self hosted MT ones to find myself with a fairly comprehensive record of the last 6 years.

I know, six.

Time for some more Dreams

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I’ve told the story before, somewhere in this blog’s archives, but a long time ago someone gave me a laptop.  It was a faith story, a God story and blew my mind a bit that someone would do that for me.  How that came about was a helluva story too…

To cut what is long story short to get to the point of THIS story, I had the computer on my dream board for a while and was really focused on it, praying about it, (to use a ‘Secret’ reference, sending  the desire out to the Universe if you will) and sure enough, the laptop I wanted came via a very good friend in the US who supplied it with all I needed and MORE!  In what has been a full circle I paid that laptop forward the other day to someone who needed it and am glad that the blessing just keeps going!

The dream board hasn’t had a lot of attention lately, it hangs above my bed so I look at it now and again and after making a fortuitous purchase on ebay today I realised I’ve actually come into possession of almost all the items on the board in one way or another over the last couple of years.  Guess it’s time to update it…

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The only items remaining are the camera, the lens and the European travel… that’s pretty good going!!

The Adobe Creative Suite was a leaving gift from my old workplace… I got the CS4 version… so that image has been up there a really long time…

The MacBook was also gifted to me when I left the church. I’ve since updated it with a brand new MacBook Pro… which I LOVE with all my gadget loving little heart.

The iPod became a redundant desire with the advent of my iPhone (which I also love more than any inanimate object should be revered, but seriously, is an iPhone inanimate? I don’t think so…)

The Flash was a purchase again, quite some time ago when I did a dance school photoshoot.  It doesn’t get nearly used enough… but then, neither does my camera…

The printer was a necessary purchase to complement my business and today I’ll go and collect the matching scanner…  The office now has all its electronica complete!!

Which brings us to the last item. The red sofa. 

I had a win on ebay today in what was one of those ‘down to the wire’ heart pounding auction finales…

The story of the sofa is this.  It’s an ikea ektorp 2.5 seater sofa bed which I’ve had my eye on for YEARS.  I’ve sat on them every time I went to Ikea and never been able to find the requisite $1200 to buy one.

I’ve had a saved search on ebay that alerts me everytime they come up for auction and this week it did.  Right price, right place, not quite the right colour, but that’s easily remedied.

I went looking for covers online only to discover that this model of sofabed has been DISCONTINUED. I nearly died of shock… so the stakes on the auction went right up (for me at least).  And today I sat at the computer staring at the clock having been outbid once already and dropped my highest bid bomb on the auction with 3mins to go and won…  I got the sofabed for $550, 100 under my maximum price.  Colour me relieved.

There’s an outfit in the US that makes custom covers for Ikea furniture and I’m waiting on swatches to see which fabric I’ll order. In the meantime the white sofa will be covered to keep certain kitty’s fur off it!! (Yeah, I know, good luck with that…)

I don’t think the dream board is magic; furthermore, in recent years I wonder what God really thinks about my materialistic desires… I DO think that putting the board up and keeping a certain amount of focus on the goals I’m working towards seems to be making those goals achievable…

Roll on Thursday when I get to pick this baby up!! (And here’s hoping it’s been a non smoking house… it is in Redfern after all…)

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Backward Glance at the Noughties

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I’m only glancing… for to dwell on the past is wasted energy… Particularly as my ability to remember anything other than useless trivia is a bit retarded…

I spent the click over to the year 2000 partying with friends in Oakura, NZ. We partied with a spinning torch some streamers and a kickarse game of trivial pursuit. Girls against guys. Girls won. BOOH YAH.

That first summer of the decade, and millennium for that matter, was the last one one I spent any great length of time in NZ (3 months), I was also dead certain I was only coming back to Australia for one more year (and God laughed so hard his orange juice came out of his nose).

12 months later, at the end of 2000 my best mate was praying for me backstage before we went on to lead worship and said… “you KNOW what you’re doing next year…”

True that. In my guts I knew then I was coming back for more study but I’d been avoiding the issue, I had no idea it would be for this long, neither did I know that Freddysmamma would become SO much a huge part of my life… she’s the mother of my godkids, partner in choral crime (such as it is) and general all round good egg (so good she’s not going to be fazed at all that I posted this photo, no she won’t… oh and it wasn’t taken in the year 2000, this is more like Christmas 2008)

BTW, She’s the one on the right..

Spent the year working as a nanny to 3 very over achieving kids, one of whom recently played one of the Billy Elliots in the Sydney production!

First nephew was born.

2001 dawned. Last year of college… Moved house, down to 3 other flatmates instead of 4, still house-mother to a bunch of younger girls… but all very independent, thankfully!

Finally got home to visit first nephew.

Big highlight was the Arts Festival wherein the two girls pictured above were joined by two marvellous fellas and sang an a capella set of musical arrangements for an audience – our major work with such classic tracks as ‘Tuxedo Junction, Amazing Grace and Java Jive’ classic barbershop numbers, some of which were our own arrangements and we had a BLAST!  Oh, and we passed with flying colours…

2001 was the 2nd year I had volunteered with the Music Department at church and at the close of that year, which finished out my college career to that point, I walked into a job as Assistant to the Music Director – the first of the 13 3rd years who graduated to get a full time job… but more about that later…

2002 Was my first full year of being a PA.  It was busy, I was on call, I babysat the kids, ran errands, booked travel. We recorded an album that year and gradually work and my boss moved into the central focus of my world. Truth is I loved them, I loved the life.

Moved house again, this time with one other flatmate. It was a great flat in Queenscliff with beautiful views of the Ocean.  My flatmate Bliss was a dream to live with and we had a great time singing and working together in the Music Team.

2003 Another year of work.  All the the same really as the year above with the further reduction of time and space for anything (singing, photography) else.  It was unhealthy, I was unhappy that the fun stuff was being shafted in favour of working. But I still loved work, loved my boss, loved the people around me.  Thankfully my familial and social relationships remained mostly intact.

Nephew number 2 was born and I went home to see him at have Christmas with the family.

2004

Was my rock bottom year of the decade. By Easter my boss whom I’d loved and served like a Labrador for 4.5 years (2 as a volunteer) was exposed as a workplace bully.  It’s a long story, the centering of my world around him was down to his particularly manipulative management strategies and when my eyes were opened to how damaging that was to me and to the rest of the team I was absolutely gutted.  Worse still was that I’d been an unwitting party to his games and perpetuated the problems and manipulation.  It goes to show that some charismatic people can be dangerous.  I cut ties with him and his family for my own safety.

I spent the rest of the year in therapy.  Some of which was blogging… Singular Scene was born!

I remained on staff and by a whole series of fortuitous experiences I ended up working in the IT department as the Web Princess.

Whether or not you belive the Bible, there’s a passage that reads “all things work together for good…: and in spite of the incredible angst in that time, much of what I’d learned of web technology in those Assitant years actually served to be the ground work for what I’m doing now… but that’s another story too.

My Godson was born, his mother’s name is Freddysmamma but his name isn’t Freddy…

Bliss decided to move on… NOOOOO! She went home to Queensland, and I
had 9 weeks at the end of the year with a fella for a flatmate, a very
quirky one, we called him The Count…

2005 Flick moved into the Queenscliff flat with me.  We had lots of fun,
initiated the apartment building christmas barbeque and generally
socialised over champagne and cards! Wow, halfway through the decade.  Nephew number 3 was born, I got home to see him in his early weeks too.  Nephew number 4 came later in the year.

Work carried on with a couple of very different foci. I refused ever again to let work or my boss have that central focus in my life.  As a Christian I decided that such a place was better left for God… Sensible really… shocking I had to learn it in such a traumatic way… I also worked only from 9-5, also sensible but unfortunate that I remained one of the few people in that organisation who ever managed to keep that boundary firmly in place.

I got to go to Hawaii for the annual global conference.  It had been so long since I’d done any kind of decent travel I went with some trepidation… however I LOVED it and got that spark lit to do some more adventuring…

I started the As Scene business this year as a means of supplementing my church income, never thought it would be come my sole means of support later in the decade!!

2006 was the year I embarked on the higher educational path taking up the opportunity to get my existing Adv Dip quals upgraded to Bachelors Degree.  It was an interesting journey, one that lasted that year and into the next where I juggled full time work, part time business and part time study… I thought I was busy then… guess it was good prep for 2009 when life got INSANE…  Still it was an incredible fulfilling year!

It is also the year I became an Australian… (but shhh… don’t remind the Kiwis).

Flick and I went on holiday to see Bliss in Brisbane – highlight of that trip was riding EVERY ride at Dreamworld!!!

The other big events were that my adventuring took me to a wedding in Asheville NC to be bridesmaid for a girl I’d never met. And while that was going on my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and bravely had her ‘girls’ removed as a preventative measure.  (have you had yours checked recently?).

In the last weeks of the year I packed up my seaside flat and moved to Balgowlah.  Still close enough to walk to Manly but no longer any sea views. Instead, I have a garden and I live on my own, which I love!

2007 was my 2nd year of studying and the year that I finally became a cat owner again after 8 years without one.  Chino moved into the house and my heart and between us 2007 was basically pretty uneventful!

Nephew number 5 was born.

2008 – Chino got finished off on the road at Easter, I turned 40 and went home to celebrate my birthday with family. I graduated with my Bachelors’ Degree and the seed was sown for what would become the year of upheaval…

Nephew number 6 was born.

In May I made a home for Princess Lulubelle a rehomed Burmese who had big shoes to fill, and she has done so in her own inimitable way… a very clever puss with loads of personality and she’s wormed her way into my home and heart, and the hearts of a few of my friends who love to come over for cuddles (hers, not mine!)

In August I wrote my leaving speech to wrap up 7 years of working for the church, In December I actually resigned with an offer of a place in the Masters’ Program at Sydney Uni.

And so we come to 2009, and if you’ve been reading along all year you are pretty much up to date with the comings and goings around here…

I think it’s safe to say it was the scariest and most thrilling year of my life to date!!!  It was wonderful to stretch my brain in the gorgeous halls of the University of Sydney, it was challenging to stretch my faith and my mettle to support myself wholly by my little tiny web business!!

To top it all off, I jetted home for Christmas and a visit with nephew number 7 who arrived while I was there!

Thanks to those of you who read along and comment occasionally! I hope the Noughties was as fun and thrilling for you and that the ‘teens’ are even better!