elfinblaze

My sister got bitten on the arm by a spider this week. She didn't see it, she was asleep, but she woke up with a pus filled bite, and an arm that ached all over.

I think it was probably a Redback spider, because she felt really sick the first day, very nauseous. Her whole arm has also been sore for three days, with radiating pain, so it's a pretty severe reaction for a spider bite. But it's the nausea that makes me think it was a Redback.

The only good thing is that the three-year-old sleeping next to her wasn't bitten.

A month ago I was looking forward to a family holiday, my sister only had her wedding on the brain, and my mother spent her days knitting and sleeping on the couch, or looking out the window, just people-watching.

It feels like a lifetime ago.

But now I'm feeling like I can face the world again.

In a way, my siblings and I had the best preparation it's possible to have. If it's in any way possible to be prepared for death. We knew our mother was sick for almost ten years. We always knew the risk she faced. But she got to watch us grow up. She got to meet her first grand-child. And now at least, we still have each other.

My sister is still getting married this month, and my aunt will still be in Australia for that. We're all still doing our chores and errands, like we always did. We still have our own lives to live. There's just an empty wheelchair and some unused canes in the background. We'll get used to that.

It'll just be a new normal.

My mother died at 5:30 this morning.

After I posted yesterday, we got a call from the hospital that she was deteriorating fast. Their estimation of weeks to live was revised down to days. We immediate went to see her.

She looked terrible, like she'd withered over night: gaunt, with her skin melting away from her face, eyes bulging, jaw sunken.

She mostly drifted out of consciousness/sleep/awareness, but she was responsive enough to recognise us (her family), and even smile when she saw her grand-daughter.

But she wasn't even aware of us leaving last night. Too out of it.

My sister stayed with her, until my brother went to relieve her at 3am.

He was with her when her rattling breathing eventually slowed and stopped. She had a "Do Not Resuscitate" order, so that was it.

We all flew back to hospital.

They let us stay as long as we needed.

I don't know what else to write. No other words are coming to me.

...

- I don't own a Star Wars board game. Worse, I don't own any space-themed games. Imperial Assault is really tempting me to fix that.

- Private Manning on transitioning in a US prison:
Military prisons like Fort Leavenworth "reinforce and impose strong gender norms," Manning writes. "The U.S. Disciplinary Barracks restricts my ability to express myself based on my gender identity."

- Who needs feminist bitches? I say we all do!.

- This is a heart-warming story: I'm am otherwise straight man who fell in love with his best friend.
We had no idea how to make this work. We had no idea if this even could work. Sometimes we still don't. It took time — years even — to figure it out. But it's a relationship. None of us know what we're doing. We just try and negotiate and compromise. And, little by little, you become just another boring couple.

- Today, Tweety accidentally bleached her hair.

She was aiming for highlights, but ended up bleaching just the hair closest to her scalp pure white. The middle went red, while the ends stayed brown. So then she decided to dye the bleached horror blue to make it at least look intentional. Only she ran out of blue dye halfway through and resorted to doing the rest in purple. So now now she has blue-purple-red-brown hair.

I feel bad for it, but I'm still laughing.

Bill Lindsey inspires me to write all the time, and again today, mostly because I agree with him and there are so many idiots in the world who don't.

Every time a conservative windbag declares that the word "family" should be restricted to a man, a woman, and their children, I get offended. But not because I'm queer. The queer part of me just rolls her eyes at the stupid. I actually get offended on a far more obvious level: I have two adopted siblings. What that declaration is implying, is that my brother and sister are not my family because they aren't my parents' biological children. And that is more offensive to me than anything else.

Sure, sometimes having adopted family members makes for some interesting turns of phrase: I can say my brother is half Greek, half Lithuanian, and it makes complete sense to say I'm German in the same sentence. Or my sister's brother died when he was little, but he wasn't my brother. Or I can joke that I'm not related to my brother or sister, and I'm not even lying. And that's not even getting into the conversation I had with my brother about our family tree (my family tree) where it's all about the culture that got passed down, not the genes. You see? Interesting ways of thinking about family.

But they are unquestionably family. No one gets to tell me otherwise. They are my little siblings - not so little anymore - and they are my family.

So when I hear some puffed up arse claim that just "living together" is not enough to create a family, steam pours out of my ears because that's exactly what creates my family, screw biology. And when I see claims that Biological = Natural, I get insulted on behalf of my siblings because they might not be my biological siblings, but that doesn't make our family unnatural.

So every time someone talks about "traditional" families, but then hurriedly qualifies by adding that two straight parents adopting kids is totally okay, I'm struck by how they only think of adoption as an afterthought. Because my siblings are not an afterthought! They are the literal definition of "family" to me. They are who prove that family is not about biology, but about love. They are who prove to me, that whoever claims family can only be biological isn't worth my listening to. My siblings are my reality, and my experience of family, and anyone else's words just can't compete with real life experience.

A definition of "family" that rests on only the biological, is a lie, and always has been. It makes me angry when people spread lies, and it makes me angry when people ignore my family. My family, you arseholes!

I think I need to go calm down.

- Normally I hate taking reading material to the toilet with me. It strikes me as a less-than-ideal place to read. But today I found myself taking a magazine with me for the first time. That's because I was originally trying to read in front of the fire, and Magpie kept sitting and lying down on top of me. Every time I thought she'd wandered off and I tried to read again, she'd be back, plopping down on my stomach, on my face, wherever she found most convenient and I found least convenient. So when I went to the toilet, I took my Vogue with me, because damnit, I was going to get through that article on AIDS in South Africa!
She's a funny child though.

- How board games are made. 43mins documentary, covering the industry and process of creating board games. It's really interesting. *geek*

- Some rare good news from the Australian government: Same-sex Couples Included in Overseas Adoption Agreement For the First Time
Same-sex couples are included in Australia's new agreement with South Africa on overseas adoption announced today by Prime Minister Tony Abbott, after being excluded from every previous inter-country adoption agreement between Australia and another country.
I'm not sure if John Howard's ban on gay couples adopting from overseas is still in place though. It probably still is, actually, but this article makes it sound like that law is being addressed in this process:
The Prime Minister's office confirmed the eligibility of same-sex couples to adopt under the new agreement with South Africa, and told the Star Observer these reforms will consider inconsistencies between the states and territories on same-sex couples adopting.
We'll see what happens, I guess.

- I love this post: Jesus and the centurion's 'companion'.
This wasn't the only way that word pais was used in Jesus' time. We think it usually meant servant or slave, but it also sometimes meant son. And also, sometimes, it was a euphemism for, basically, a man's boyfriend or a younger, same-sex concubine.
I think the word "boy" would convey the same ambiguity in English. Personally, I'd assume family if I heard it, but I know others wouldn't, and if I were going for a translation that captures the same ambiguity of the original term, I'd go with "boy."

- ( I'm developing my own shorthand. It looks something like this. [picture] )

Yesterday, Easter Sunday, was another family outing, this time to Goat Island, one of the many small islands in Sydney Harbour.

Like many places in Sydney, it started off as a labour/prison facility for the early convicts. Later it was used by the water police and fire department. When the black plague hit Sydney in 1900, it was used as a quarantine facility. Most recently it was used for the filming of the TV Show Water Rats, and up until the 1990s it was used as a government site for the Maritime Services. Now it's abandoned, apart from the historic tours that stop by - such as ours - but it's an interesting place, with all the layers of that history visible: original sandstone walls from the 1700s next to modern buildings and filming props left behind on the island.

We heard stories of infamous convicts, such as Charles "Bony" Anderson, who was chained to a rock on the island at night, and would scream so long and loud that people on the mainland could hear him. And we saw the prison carts, where convicts were chained together overnight, six per cart, so they could hardly move, and only the "luxury" carts contained a toilet. We saw the peep holes in the defence wall that soldiers could shoot through, but hardly see through. And the carved graffiti left behind by bored soldiers and employees from 1788 to the 1990s, still visible in the old wall.

The island also has ghost tours for people to meet some of the tortured spirits that live there. Our guide told us that most of the ghosts hang around the old morgue, but recently a heavy iron door in the showers, one that shouldn't even be able to move, swung back and forth as her tour group watched. She said half her group left in a hurry after that, but she spoke of the spirits like they were old friends, just keeping the place company.

( 12 illustrative photos, yay! )

All up, it was a good day out. Not something we do often, but worth the experience.

- There's a guy living near me who owns a wolf; I've seen them out walking occasionally. This wolf is the most beautiful animal I've ever seen. It's huge, and I mean massive, and it's utterly pure white except for a streak of gold down its back. It's an absolutely stunning animal. So much so, I need to mention it in a blog post. :)

- I'm just reading stories online about people being smuggled across borders, and it makes me remember my father's stories of leaving East Germany. He was still a child and his mother - my grandmother - got in friendly with the border guards. "Oh, the kids are just going to visit relatives. They'll be back." And they always were, so that's how they made the trip back and forth across the border: getting the guards to trust them. And one day they just didn't come back.

The only other thing my grandmother managed to smuggle out of the country with them was her sewing machine, because she wasn't leaving without her sewing machine! I don't know how she managed that, but this is the same woman who stole her teacher's cane by sticking it down the front of her dress, so who knows how creative she got with the sewing machine.

- LANDO CALRISSIAN IS GOING TO BE ON GLEE! Or at least the actor will be. Not as awesome as the time they had Chewbacca on the show, but still pretty awesome.

- Fascinating history: The Medieval Guide to Sexual Sin.
Only in darkness, fully clothed, in the missionary position, without "lewd kissing" and ideally without taking pleasure from the act.

- This is my current desktop: ( Engage )

- I'm old enough not to let it get me, but it's kind of hilarious that when our feminist mother got my brother and myself to clean her house, he got the hedge-trimming and gutter-cleaning garden work. What did I get? Vacuuming and groceries. Oh, gender roles. I don't mind; keeps me out of the sun, but I am amused that this was just her automatic role assignment.

- Urgh. I check the Herald website for the first time in weeks and the first thing I see? Chelsea Manning being referred to by her unwanted male name. Urgh. This is why I've switched to other news sources.

- My sister is considering getting married at the German Catholic Church here in Sydney - St Christophorus - and my aunt might fly over from Germany for the occasion.

- Another Nine-Letter Word Game! I am way too addicted to these things.

- Problems you might not know you have: How web filters are ‘protecting’ you from harmless gay content.
A lot of what is being blocked is completely innocent. E-mails that contain words such as ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’ or ‘sexuality’ are treated like spam. Non-pornographic websites aimed at the LGBTI community are banned – including vital support services, lifestyle sites and news and magazine sites like this one.
The blockers don’t seem to know the difference between titillating sex sites and sex education sites. And even LGBTI charities like Stonewall have been blocked.

- Fred Phelps is dying
I'm not sure how I feel about this. Terribly ironic that his devotion to his god ends this way. Destroyed by the monster he made.

Sounds like a wasted life, spent hating so much. May he rest in peace.

I'm currently reading Addicted to Hate, about the Phelps family cult. It's harrowing and disturbing stuff.

George Takei says it best
I take no solace or joy in this man's passing. We will not dance upon his grave, nor stand vigil at his funeral holding "God Hates Freds" signs, tempting as it may be.
He was a tormented soul, who tormented so many. Hate never wins out in the end. It instead goes always to its lonely, dusty end.

- My sister had her engagement party yesterday. It's a small world. Her future father-in-law recognised me from catching the bus with him every morning, and her future mother-in-law went to high school with a woman who recognised my mother... from their sons going to pre-school together! And there's even more weird connections from there onwards, so it all felt a bit like a small town with everyone realising we knew people in ways we didn't realise before. The engagement party itself was lovely though. Beautiful decorations, nice people all around, and well organised, all for a lovely young couple who deserve all that and more.

- Wil Wheaton vs MRAs. Or rather, some MRAs have decided to hate Wil Wheaton over a tweet he made six months ago.

- Inspired by this, I'm trying to think of the fastest way to lose all my board games. It's actually a fun thinking exercise. How could you best screw yourself over?

- (Graphic content warning) An infamous Russian who kidnaps and tortures young gay men was finally arrested in Cuba. Finally!

- Vladimir Putin is now using Hitler analogies. Anyone saying they want to "cleanse" a country of a group of people sends chills down my spine. That doesn't sound familiar at all...

- An Italian nun gives birth and says she had no idea she was pregnant. At least she's not claiming it was a virgin birth.

- This post and its comments are some of the most hilarious things I've read recently.

He is identifying particular weather events and connecting them to particular sins. This opens up new possibilities in the field of religious meteorology. If this correlation between identifiable sins and identifiable weather events can be fully mapped and charted, then we ought to be able to control the weather.

Indeed. Emily from Harris Park, please stop swearing, we need a break in the weather. Bring the rain back in a week from now. That should do it.