The Last of the Parental Holidays

Everyone loves a family holiday.  Or at least the beginning of one.  Or potentially the concept of one.  Everyone loves a holiday, and doesn’t family just spice things up a little?

The FamilyPainefull never fails to keep things interesting.

This will make more sense shortly

But within that broad church that is the gathering together of every available relation to drink, and dance, and drink, and eat, and drink, there’re some niche groupings.  There’s the Family Holiday Gathering, where no one goes anywhere exotic, they just converge on someone’s home and start indiscriminately breaking things and fighting over bedding.  There’s the Resort Family Crashing, where everyone does go somewhere exotic to work on their cancer-baiting sunburn and non-existent surfing skills, and 1 in 3 members decide what they really need is to do something stupidly drastic to their hair.  And let’s not forget the Family Road Trip – 1 hour renditions of The Song That Never Ends, a gradual tour of Australia’s ‘Big’ things and (on very special trips) a dog vomiting in the back of the car.

I don't remember road trips looking like this

After the recent return of Mother and Father Painefull from a trip to Vanuatu with two of their grandkids, I was reminded of another niche category that will always be very close to my heart – the Parental Holiday.  The Parental Holiday comes with a Used By Date, it only really occurs during the era when your age leads to discounted prices, or your poverty leads to pity invitations.  It’s just you, your parents and the deep blue sea.

With no one else to dilute the situation, all the potentially awkward encounters one could hope for are amplified.  Then squared.  Then made even more entertaining.  As with everything in life, I have a personal top 3 for the purpose of illustration:

3. Backpacking through New Zealand

It was 1997.  I was too young and mum was too mature to fully understand what backpacking really actually meant.  It meant bunk beds with strangers, people smoking pot out the back, and mum (as the only licensed person in the building, and proud driver of a rental vehicle) being begged for lifts by the kind of individuals that probably spent their spare time attending beat poetry revivals.  To be fair, it only took one hostel for mum to get the drift – we booked into B&B’s for the rest of the jaunt.

2. Lindeman Island Club Med

2003.  There was sun, surf, activities… and compulsory communal meals with everyone staying at the resort on enforced group tables.  Fortunately, as a sullen teenager who had only just tipped over the 18 mark, I wasn’t too picky with my wines.  I overcame my daily hangovers by taking up archery.  Because at Club Med holding a weapon just makes things feel better.  Sample Highlight: Instead of befriending the only other teen my age, she actually became my resort-based nemesis.  I don’t know why.

1. Croatia

In 2007 I fully appreciated just how cool my parents are.  I think you need to be old enough to see them as more than just purveyors of authority, punishment and snacks to understand that they really do know how to have fun.  When Mother and Father Painefull caught up with me during my wandering year in the northern hemisphere they were flexible, adventurous and hilarious (sometimes even on purpose).  Sample Moment: Mum spent a great deal of time discussing and negotiating over 2 glass paintings of roosters with a local man in Rovinj.  Except his English was limited and the conversation went along the lines of:

Mother Painefull: These are lovely – are paintings of roosters quite common around here?

Man: (brief quizzical look) Ah yes, the cock.  The cock is very common.

MP: There seems to be quite a range…

Man: Yes, the cock comes in many sizes and colours.  Sometimes it’s red, sometimes orange, sometimes there are 2 cocks.  The cock is very popular.

MP: I want one for me, and I wanted to get one for my daughter, perhaps a smaller one?

Man: We have many sizes.  Lots of cocks.  Here’s a nice one.  Would you like a larger one?

I don’t feel like I really have to say anything else on the subject.

Painefull Out

Pleased To Meat You

Hi, my name’s Painefull. I’m sorry I haven’t written for a while, but you should know it’s for a very good reason. It’s because I’m a terrible person.

I appear to have skipped town for the month of April. That’s not true. Even it if was true it would be a completely ineffective excuse coming from the person that once arrived in snow-locked Germany, had her final flight cancelled, got her bag lost in the system, injured herself kicking snow, and still took the time to blog about it from the shivery confines of a friend’s charming little flat in Münster.

To re-introduce myself after over a month of radio silence, I thought I should update you on my life.

Haven't seen The Princess Bride?  Why are we friends?  Who are you??

I got older
You probably already picked that from the wrinkles in my writing. No, I didn’t dive off the deep-end into a pile of self-loathing, liver-spotted, quince paste eating devastation. I’m saving that for 30 (though I’ll probably give myself a head start and kick that shame spiral off when I clock on to 29).

I’ve never loved my birthday, and for that I find it easiest to blame Keira Knightly. I’ve also removed it from Facebook to avoid having my identity hijacked by Mossad. This year I did manage to celebrate with family, friends, and iPod-based karaoke that featured a lot of Celine Dion. And canes. And a range of WW1 and safari hats.

I discovered being a student is harder than I remembered
I got a taste of this last year, but when you ramp things up to full time student-hood and couple it with full time unemployment, you give yourself the chance to feel both stupid and poor in equal measure.

It’s also meant I’ve had the glorious opportunity of conducting business with Centrelink for the very first time. It’s a fine romance we’re having, though they’re definitely playing hard to get. It’s been 2 months, 5 extensive phone calls and 4 office based dates and I’m still not getting any. You know how it is with government agencies, they just don’t like to put out.

I continue to injure myself while dancing
It’s one part Getting Older and two parts Vigorous Conviction In My Absurd Belief I Can Dance.

I got sucked in by Delta Goodrem’s PR machine in full flight (ie. The Voice)*
If you haven’t become hypnotized by So Goodrem’s efforts to emote like her life depended on it then you haven’t lived. You can take that ruling to the bank (where they’ll undoubtedly rip you off on the interest rate front, but smile politely while they’re doing it).

I would once again like to thank the Dutch, arbiters of all things addictive in reality television (that aren’t called ‘Survivor’ or ‘Australia’s attempt at political stability’) for such a brilliant gift.

I had to try and come up with a horror movie idea
Considering I can’t stand horror movies, this is a big deal. I stayed up until 3am the night before it was due, clutching my softball bat and trying to think of something scary without scaring myself. Strangely all my ideas ended with, ‘but it was just a dream’. Then I discovered there’s some classic horror movie in which people’s dreams kill them. Then I had to try and go to sleep.

I got a new bed
This was mostly to solve my unending issues with my back. My existing bed was as old as Jesus (but there’s photographic evidence of its actual existence). It was best described by one of my housemates (Mick) as “Big enough to imply promise, but not so big as to say 'slut'”. Fair call.

I had Brazilian BBQ… and I’m still full
Steak my heart and hope to die, I don’t want to butcher this with puns (or get grilled about this later), but sometimes you do just have to ham things up. I have a bit of a beef with eating so much meat, but it was a rare occasion and it was all very well done.

If you're a vegetarian, look away now

So, now that I’ve re-introduced myself, I promise not to leave it so long between one-sided monologues. Yes mum, as the only person to have read every single post I ever put up, that promise is pretty much for your benefit (also, while I’ve got you Mother Painefull, what are we feeling for dinner on Monday night when I come visit? I think I’ll be hungry again by then).


Painefull Out

* = Delta Goodrem is Australia’s answer to the vacuum in product placement happy celebrities left by the fact that Pat Rafter is, after all, only one man. She is also a singer.

Dear Shit Parker

I’m not a great driver, evidence of this abounds, and so I try to remain understanding when it comes to the shortcomings of others on the road. But what I lack in motor skills (sometimes you find the pun, sometimes the pun finds you) I more than make up for with my commitment to parking as inoffensively as possible. I use an especially ancient art form called Touch Parking which means only knowing I’ve gone far enough in any particular direction when I touch something with Albus*. The only thing that gets punished in this process is my tyres (the guys at the local tyre place call me the Black Widow for a reason).

So even though I try not to judge people who cut me off, taxi drivers that almost impale me and the elderly in general, I cannot abide bad parkers (I’d say ‘hate’ but Mother Painefull drilled into me from an early age “We don’t hate people Painefull, we just dislike them intensely”). Sadly, my little street is littered with people who seem utterly convinced that kerbs, like corporations, are people too and thus must surely require personal space.

Yes Lexus, I’m talking about you.

You, that considers the stretch of road between car and sidewalk a second, equally sized pathway. You, that seems to be pining for angled parking in a one way street world. You, that, unless you were driven by someone who had to race off to give birth, put out a house fire, or SAVE MANKIND from an oncoming apocalypse, had no reason to come to rest in such a position that actually created genuine traffic build up whenever there was more than one car on the road (for two weeks).

Now no one wants a hive mind, and everyone deplores mob mentality, but there’s something more than a little satisfying when people find a common enemy. That’s why I couldn’t help but enjoy the fact that after weeks of miss-use someone finally left Lexus a note on his/her windscreen.

But it wasn’t actually deemed enough, and said note led to a metaphorical pile-on. Several people took it upon themselves to make additions to the note, voicing their very own concerns. There, scrawled in various pen inks and writing styles were a series of messages from a range of strangers on the one piece of paper. They all shared one theme – Dear Shit Parker, why would you be so selfish?

Mass rage satisfied in that polite, casual, indirect way we love in this very modern world, all went on with their daily lives as if they hadn’t taken part in a written protest flash mob. The verdict was delivered, shame was doled out. The Lexus behaves himself now.


Painefull Out

* = Albus is the name of my car. He’s an albino and, much like my pale-skinned self, is sensitive to sun, certain of global warming and irrationally angry about people who think a car horn is a birth right. With great power comes great responsibility.

Gangs Of Neutral Bay

I remember a brief period in my life when I ran around like the Artful Dodger (minus the thievery… or the artfulness) firmly believing I had what it took to start a street gang. This was in the same era in which I also firmly believed I was capable of building a fort in a tree all by myself, that my new writing project The Tiger, The Wizard & The Trunk was a work of original genius, and that I was destined to appear on Broadway because my god I could sing. I was 8.


All these beliefs were fostered by a particularly supportive set of parents and an addiction to Enid Blyton. While reality, gravity, copyright and a notably traumatic moment when I was asked to mime (because I was putting the rest of the choir off) brought me back to earth, I still think of that time as the most limitless I ever knew – I could do anything (except watch the Keifer Sutherland version of The Three Musketeers, that terrified me).

And lately I’ve had the chance to re-live that heady mix of grass stains, gravel rash, childhood politics and make believe thanks largely to the Street Gang. The Street Gang is what we call the mob of children who have all suddenly hit The Age of Limited Supervision-based Frolicking that comes when one enters primary school and is thus allowed to hover, recklessly, within yelling distance of a family’s front door.

And so the Street Gang gathers each afternoon without fail. They barter over bamboo sticks, take turns riding skateboards down a tiny incline and give a superb day-by-day audio study of how long it takes for a boy’s voice to break. They also use impeccable logic during imaginary wars, like “I shot you, I used my gun with the biggest range”.


While I’m grateful this means they’ve finally moved on from the lengthy phase in which they used to heckle me from the fence, trying to sell me their crap paintings, I was mildly concerned when an older kid recently introduced them to several rather adult 4 letter words. Vocabulary expansion is vital, but I think their parents might be worried about where they’re picking that shit up from.

Given all the nostalgia this has evoked for me, I’ve had to work over time to appear aloof, rather than creepily invested. I may not be helping myself when I give them gang signs as I drive past, and declare loudly “So that’s where you’re hiding!” if I walk by one using a hedge for cover during a water pistol version of hide-and-seek. Yep, way to play if cool Painefull.

I guess I’m just envious. They’re at that stage when the street you live on seems gigantic, and they don’t have to justify reading Enid Blyton (or Harry Potter, or Hunger Games). Ah well, if nothing else, at least I can comfort myself with the fact that I have ten times more road sense, no enforced bed time, and my worst skin is behind me. And I’m not that rather jolly, well-rounded rednut. He seems lovely, but high school is not going to be kind to him.




Painefull Out

Someone Else’s Art Project

A long, long time ago I had really severe issues with cutting my hair. I had dead straight blonde locks and the very idea of losing them terrified me. That goes some way towards explaining why photos between the ages of 5 and 10 have me looking like I was trying to get cast as Creepy Ghost Girl #4 (the other half of that explanation is that I was, and in fact remain, as pale as a ghost).


My hair was one of the key reasons I dreaded Mother Painefull going away for any length of time. That left Father Painefull and I staring at each other fearfully each morning in the knowledge that he was going to have to plait my hair. Nobody looked forward to that (including the neighbour who would then re-plait my hair as I went past on the way to school). Pity the Housemistress who inherited that problem once I headed off to boarding school.

Mother Painefull once became so exasperated with my refusal to have any significant haircut that she tried to trick me into getting one by lying to me about how big 10 inches was. Luckily she was foiled.

It wasn’t until late high school, sometime after my fellow boarders threw out my beloved overalls and before Mrs Woog frogmarched me to get my ears pierced, that I truly accepted what was clearly an irrefutable truth – it’s just hair. This occurred to me just as I was coming to terms with the fact that Life wasn’t really going to let me sail through it as an Icy Blonde, no Life was intent on making me a Mousy Brown.

Determined to deny the genetic instructions being sent to my follicles I began an era (that still continues) of Open Season on my hair. After some trial and error it became apparent that, wait for it, hairdressers know more about hair than I do. Revelation City: Population 1.

But my ongoing system of pulling out a book, telling the professional with the scissors to do what they want and letting them have at it hasn’t always led to resounding applause. Sometimes I have to agree, yes, the hairdresser has made me look like some weird hybrid Zebra-Cheetah.

Some of my more distinctive outcomes have included…

The ‘Funky’ Asymmetrical Cut
Useful For: playing Two-Face in a community theatre production of The Dark Knight


Verdict
SALON STRANGER: (1st to the woman next to me)Wow, I just want to tell you I love your hair. (turns to me) Yours is… well I’d never have that kind of but… aren’t you… but each to their own, right?

Back Of Head EXPLOSION Cut
Useful For: being the body double for Kate Gosselin during her own hair EXPLOSION era


Verdict
DAME DEADPAN (former boss): Well now the back of your head is better to look at than the front of your head.

Top Deck Colour
Useful For: paying tribute to a superb block of chocolate


Verdict
MRS WOOG: I didn’t like your hair last year.
ME: Which look?
MRS WOOG: All of it – 2009 was a bad hair year for you.

Plum-tacular
Useful For: looking like the unemployed, oddly red-tinged student I currently am
Verdict
LIVINIA: Don’t take this badly but the word that comes to mind is... ‘Newtown’. Then paired with your glasses, you know thick rimmed and square, it’s kind of like… Newtown times Newtown*.

And so my quest to avoid the Mousy Destiny fate intends for my hair continues. And every time I look up to discover what some overly-chatty hairdresser has done in the process, I can reassure myself that at least hair (like my dignity) will always grow back.


Painefull Out

* = Newtown, for the unfamiliar, is where the Sydney student-art crowd typically can be found sipping lattes while wearing brightly coloured, mismatched footwear, berets, skinny black jeans and statement shirts, paired with the ironic gaze of someone who knows exactly how soy products are made. When Livinia likens a person’s hair to Newtown (as she did this Saturday), she's just searching for a polite, euphemistic way to say she’s not a fan.

The Leap Year*

There’s something utterly brilliant about the concept of a Leap Year. It’s the answer humanity created to overcome the fact that the natural world is perfectly imperfect. We measure, and weigh and quantify every minute of every day, but just like when I used to try and do maths, there always seems to be a strange number left over we can’t quite account for. I love that no one questions the solution of simply compiling all those leftovers into an extra day every 4 years. It’s like AFL, and Lost, and Lady Gaga lyrics – it doesn’t really make sense, but we’re okay with it.

A fresh revelation about Leap Year that amuses me is that because it’s never considered when drawing up contracts, most people don’t actually get paid for that day of work. And you know why I can allow myself to be amused? Because I no longer work.

I’m currently unemployed… on purpose. I know, great time to be embracing the end of an income, right? Next thing you know I’ll be moving to Greece – apparently that’s where it’s at. I wasn’t born on the 29th of February, but 2012 is kind of my Leap Year. In what often feels like a rather irrational act, I’ve returned to the hallowed halls of education all in the name of furthering my attempt to be a Real Writer (much like being a Real Girl, I suspect all it takes is commitment and an acceptance of extreme discomfort).

I’ll be spending my days at film school. Dawson Leery, you fictional, shining forehead you, I hope you’re proud.

After 2012 I will return to pretending to be a Grown Up. Aspirations are good. Goals are necessary. Sometimes dreams are better. Eventually reality will become so loud it’ll drown them out, but until then… once more into the breach (it’s brimming with company).


Painefull Out

* = I was going to call this ‘How I Learnt To Stop Worrying & Start Making Immature Life Choices’ but that title was a little epic, even for me, a lover of lengthy turns of phrase.

A Very Painefull Christmas

For the first time in several years the entire Family Painefull has converged upon the parental home for Christmas. That’s 5 couples, 7 children and me (failing to bring in fresh blood by either love or reproduction, I continue to let the team down).


The festive season is a time of year packed with traditions, and my family is no different. Some, such as dancing on tables, public waxing and streaking may have gone by the wayside, but new ones have sprung up in their place. With that in mind, before driving out to the Dor I put together a list of things that I predicted must occur for it to be a proper Painefull Christmas family gathering. I am happy to report I had 100% accuracy. The Family Painefull is made up of two different but equally important branches, the people who had a mattress to sleep on this Christmas and those that slept on the floor, these are their stories (*ding ding* [Law & Order noise]).

1. Whatever I am wearing will be wrong, but in the spirit of Christmas several people will try not to mention this fact until they can’t contain it anymore.Correct: It took Mrs Woog quite a while to ask me if I was wearing a pair of old school pants (I wasn’t).

2. The kids will receive 5 million gifts. Responses may vary from those who are teenagers and thus too cool, those who get excited every time someone hands them something to unwrap and those who aren’t interested in anything that isn’t covered in glitter. Correct: There were the usual double-ups (like the time Harry received 4 microscopes, this year’s microscope was the water pistol… and apparently water pistols now require batteries) and Jack looked ready to cry. Meanwhile the youngest nephew relished every gift as if it was his first.

3. There will be a remarkable amount of conversation about how everything would be better if the parentals owned a pool. There will then be a lot of conversation about whether we should turn the air conditioning on already. After it’s been turned on, someone will keep mysteriously turning it off. This person will be Father Painefull. The air conditioning will have little to no effect anyway because everyone else will leave all the doors open.Correct: The Australian summer made its first real cameo of the season. As a result a great deal of the afternoon was spent trialling different detergents on a slip-and-slide and the Brothers Grimm (aka the brothers-in-law) ‘testing’ the water pistols on everybody.

4. Elspeth will make delicious salads, I will wash up like a mo-fo (I’m a washing up specialist – it’s important to play to your strengths).Correct: While we joined Mother Painefull in the kitchen the rest of the family was busy with equally challenging tasks. Mrs Woog was responsible for ‘the look of the table’, the older kids were in charge of ‘child management’ and several people took turns making sure the couches didn’t get up and walk away.

5. Mother Painefull will put on the ULTIMATE feast – many species will be featured.Correct: Beef, pork, chicken, salmon and the Beloved Leg of Ham. The Vegetarian (aka Mrs Ryan, the only vegetarian to own a meat business) was also sorted, thanks to the 4 different types of salad.

6. The children will do a concert (as their parents did before them, for example the traditional sisterly rendition of Miss Otis Regrets followed by No More Tears/Enough Is Enough).Correct: There was a highly competitive dance-off between the nephews and niece. Highly. Competitive. I expect them to draw blood next year. Twas followed by trumpet and guitar solos.

7. Mrs Woog and Mrs Ryan will end the night by entering a smoking, drinking, dancing spiral that culminates with me crying from laughing too hard.Correct: Death Sticks + white wine = my 2 oldest siblings re-enacting their favoured seduction techniques (in such a way that probably should have ended in injury, but didn’t).

There were a couple of other features I failed to predict, but really should have. These included a therapy inducing task for one nephew who had to apply fake tan to his mother, the presence of an Ark full of pets, and the Brothers Grimm disappearing on an ‘errand’ and inexplicably take beer with them (returning 2 hours later).

As usual the operation was a big success. Seeing as this Christmas fad doesn’t seem to be disappearing anytime soon, we’ve decided to do it all again in 364 days. By then we all swear someone will definitely have a pool.


Painefull Out