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So, people have been cautioning me extensively that, when I get the settlement money for my insurance thing, I should be careful with it and not spend it carelessly.
Which, obviously. It helps somewhat that I dislike excess Stuff. I have set myself a budget for buying stuff I Want (which, to a large extent, consists of guitars and maybe a camera), and that is the entirety of that.
However, certain aspects of my character are revealed by exchanges like this:
Me: Oh, but I'll also be doing some clothes shopping.
Them: ... On most people, that might be cause for concern, but not you.
Me: Uh-huh. It probably helps that you know I won't enjoy it.
Because, as is well-known amongst people who know me well, I hate clothes shopping. I do it when I can't avoid it. But, if nothing else (and it may be nothing else), I shall be acquiring some new bras, because I'm not sure I have one that's less than ten years old, and my bras, they are dying. Which means I may be spending what I consider to be quite a lot of money on clothes, but it's clothes that are necessary. (Spare me your old-school bra-burning feminism; I wear bras for my benefit. Fulsome funbags such as mine are more comfortable when contained in the supportive embrace of well-structured cotton... but underwires can go to hell. I had one snap and draw blood once.)
Bearing in mind that I consider spending $200 on clothes "a lot of money". And I do not keep up with This Season's Fashions, I wear my clothes until they wear out.
Oh, hell, I need pyjama pants, too. I tore one pair recently. And I might buy a second pair of shoes. And get a dental checkup, I haven't seen a dentist in about five years I think. Maybe more. "I have no money" has been my excuse for avoiding a lot of things, perhaps.
In addition to my much-desired electric guitar, I'm planning to buy a 3/4 size guitar and maybe even a 1/2; partly so I can teach my friends' children to play guitar, if they want me to, and partly with the intention of volunteering at the children's hospital, and giving the kids there a chance to play a bit. Not sure whether to go electric or acoustic there - electric has the advantage of being a lot quieter (if you use headphones).
And since this money in part represents the wages I haven't been earning in the last couple of years, there's another not-technically-necessary expense I'm probably going to go through with: a trip to Britain. The long-awaited visit with my uncle and his family in England, then a trip to Scotland to visit the farm on which my ancestors have lived for the last 900-odd years, and perhaps pay my respects at the stone circle where my grandparents' ashes were scattered.
However, planning that is partly contingent on seeing whether a certain summer session unit is running at uni this year - it involves a trip to Europe to tramp around historical sites and dig through dusty half-forgotten archives. I'd love to do that course, so if it's running, I could combine the two, since I'd rather not make unnecessary trips halfway around the world.
Ways in which I am weird: if I go to England, I may skip visiting London at all. (Similarly, if I go to France, I have no real desire to go to Paris.) I was going to say I'd like to see if I can get my shoulder at least to a point where I could ride again, and then I remembered that if I go, I'll almost certainly be going in the northern winter, and, well... no. (Especially since I plan to spend quite a bit of time, if I can, in the Highlands of northern Scotland. If family lore is to be believed - and based on other knowledge, I suspect it is - it's really very cold there. My great-grandfather considered the electric blanket to be the pinnacle of human invention.)
It's just a shame I'm teetotal - it rather defeats the point of, say, visiting Genuine Scotch Distilleries and the like.
Advantages of Britain being the first foreign country I explore on my own: I speak the language, and they drive on the left side of the road. (Also, I have family in England and Scotland.)
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(Because apart from anything else, Chas and Dean are expected back tomorrow, and I will not be getting away with late nights any more, that's for sure...)
Looking over the stuff from Iran... the video of the cries of Allaho Akbar ringing back and forth through the night is chilling.
The photos of the march are awe-inspiring.
I wonder what's going to happen.
I'm going to stop by the church to light candles again tomorrow.
I wonder what's going to happen. I'm amazed by the courage and conviction they have... it's not something that, as an Australian, I generally think about. Stolen elections aren't on the radar here - the AEC is trusted, and so on.
I find myself thinking that Iran would probably be best served holding another election, administered by New Zealand officials.
Usually, the go-to agency for organising reliable elections in foreign countries is, in fact, the Australian Electoral Commission - it's administered, or helped to organise and administer, a number of elections overseas at the behest of the United Nations, because the AEC know what they're doing and have a very good reputation.
However, Australia was allied with Bush the USA from the beginning of the Iraq War, whereas New Zealand not only refused to join the "Coalition of the Willing", it was opposed to the invasion, and is perhaps less likely to seem questionable to Iranians.
Important: If you have a Twitter/facebook/blog feed/account, set it to GMT +3:30 (Tehran). This makes it harder for the police and censors to identify and shut down protesters. Regardless of whether the election was actually stolen or not - I have no real information on that, but I get the impression the case is convincing - the absolute, tiniest minimum we, as human beings, can do to try and help the people of Iran right now is to try and deflect the suppression of their ability to communicate.
Personally, I don't know that there's anything at all else I could do, but I have done that. My twitter account - which I've been ignoring for weeks, much as I have LiveJournal - is now set to Tehran for time zone and location. Iranian censors can't touch me, Iranian police can't hurt me - but if they go looking for Iranian protesters and find me instead, that's a very good thing.
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Due at some point: A post on Barack Obama and the thing I can't forgive.
Meanwhile: "Some neighbourhood watch, Forde." Includes the audio of the 911 call made by the survivor of a "Minutemen" attack, whose husband and daughter were killed. She was wounded.
( Yeah, this is upsetting content if you're, you know, human. )
There's this mode that a lot of people get into when dealing with a crisis. It's a false calm. I've been there myself dealing with a few different things, from parents in critical medical states to injured children. You deal with things, and deal with things, until the crisis is over, and then you break the fuck down, because panic and hysteria are a luxury.
My mother has a story of one of her first years of teaching, when a student fell and broke her ankle badly - bone poking out badly - and Mum, being the responsible adult with duty of care and all, Handled It. She sent the fastest available student to run to the appropriate place to call an ambulance, another to the nurse's office to call the available medically-trained person, all that kind of thing, and was being supportive and calm to the girl who'd hurt herself.
One of the other students asked, "Should I go and get a glass of water, Miss?"
"No," Mum said, "She might have to have surgery. She shouldn't have anything until the doctors have seen her."
"No, Miss, for you. You're white as a sheet."
Mum thought she'd been doing so well, but apparently all the blood had drained from her face as soon as she saw how badly the kid was hurt.
I've seen my mother handle a crisis too, of course - such as the time she heard me scream in sudden agony, came running, and saw that I'd just burned quite a lot of my upper body with boiling water. (I was making a cup of tea, and, well, it didn't entirely go as planned.) A split second as she appraised the situation, and then she grabbed the jug of water out of the fridge, threw it over me to counteract the boiling water (probably didn't help my shock, but you know, mild shock is much faster to recover from than extensive second degree burns), helped me peel my sodden shirt off, and then sat me on the couch with a blanket over my shoulders while my mother called our doctor's office to let them know she was bringing me in. (It was closer than the hospital, etc.)
While she was doing this, my sister walked in, looked at me, with large blisters rising on my bare upper body, and said: "Ew." Ah, siblings. (A few years later, the two of us were home alone when I burned myself less severely, and I will say that she handled herself with much more aplomb.)
Then Mum took me to the doctor, where I was jumped ahead of all waiting patients. Oddly enough, no-one complained that the screaming, sobbing nine-year-old with burns all over her chest queue-jumped.
That practice was very well-run - the only times they were ever running late were when they'd had to deal with emergencies. Because of that, regular patients tended to be very calm and accepting of emergency-based delays. Old school Family Doctors sort of practice - people tended to take their kids there instead of Emergency if it was something that was in the scope of the doctors to handle, because it's easier for kids who are in pain and upset and semi-panicky to be kept calm while dealing with getting treatment if they're being treated by doctors they're used to.
And kids tend to see doctors a lot (especially if, as we did when I was a child, their family goes to a practice that bulk-bills, so the appointments don't cost the family money), because kids get sick more than adults (yay for developing immune systems I guess), and have to get more checkups and more shots and so on. I hate needles - I remember the relief of finding out a given vaccination had shifted to the "get boosters every ten years now" schedule.
(Which I've been terrible about anyway, but when I see my GP tomorrow I'm going to be all, "So, about my immunisation non-record..." and get my immune system updated. Because I am a geek, I choose to think of this as downloading updates to my antivirus system.)
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