The Results are in!

Welp, the results are in. Thirty-one of you responded to my survey… 31! That is heaps more than I was expecting, and lordy did you guys say some hilarious stuff, also some insightful stuff. I’m really glad I wrote last week’s blog, and I’m really glad I put together that survey, but most of all I’m really glad you guys all felt compelled to respond so excellently. This week’s blog is dedicated to the results, enjoy.

Question 1: Who are you?

As suspected, most of you are my friends. Nine of you, however, claim to be an acquaintance. It’s funny, you know, I only added that option in at the last second. I had this moment where I thought, someone might feel uncomfortable claiming to be my friend if we haven’t actually spoken in three years, so I better put this option in. I wasn’t expecting nine of you to go for it! I have this feeling that we are probably actually friends on some level, in my imagining, but maybe that’s just because I’m super lonely, you guys.

WE HAVE SO MUCH IN COMMON, LET'S DO BRUNCH.

Question 2: How did you find Hum Drum Plum?

Most of you responded that either you saw it on facebook, or I told you about it, which comes to the same thing, really. Kudos to the three of you who clicked “I saw a link to it on twitter”, you guys are the reason I still occasionally hang out on that crazy website. Remember when twitter was awesome, you guys? What happened there? Is it because I stopped posting words that rhyme with twitter and passing them off as jokes?

Question 3: What are your favourite kinds of Hum Drum Posts?

I really should have limited the number of responses you could put on this one, shouldn’t I? I’m looking at you, person who ticked every possible answer and then wrote, “(Sorry I know that was no help, lol)” in the Other box. Lol indeed madam/sir, lol indeed. Nah, it’s cool, and I’m very flattered you like all the kinds of blogs I write. The real winners of this question, of course, were the cads who answered, “I like everything you write, I am your mother”, an answer I literally put in there to try to catch her out. Six of you thought that would be a hilarious response, and to be honest you were 100% right.

I'm not sure if mum did the survey now, I'm not even sure she's my real mum anymore.

Question 4: If I were to get a whole new blog, how would that make you feel?

To be honest I’m upset none of you chose “Confused and Angry” or “Giant Squid of Anger”, but it seems all of you decided to go all serious for this one. Which of course I do actually really appreciate, even though it makes for dull analysis right now. The overwhelming response was that you didn’t care. Then, just to make it difficult, an equal number of you said you’d like me to change/said you wouldn’t like me to change. So I guess I’ll just have to run two blog sites at once to please as many people as possible. (No, I won’t do that: that is crazy).

Question 5: What do you think of me trying something new and only overanalysing movies, TV, etc?

Yes, now we get into the main focus of the survey, the reason I did the bloody thing in the first place. And sorry Marge, the mob has spoken. Overwhelmingly, you told me you’d like me to try something new, but not abandon what I do now either. That’s really pleasant, you guys, thank you. 

Question 6: Tell me honestly, on a scale of awesome to brilliant, how good is Hum Drum Plum?

Funnily enough, even though it was badly worded, and not at all an accurate way of gauging how people feel about the blog, this question is the one I was most nervous about. The first person that responded with “Ok” was like a little knife to my heart. DON’T FEEL BAD, three people who responded that way. It’s alright, I did genuinely want your honest opinion, but there’s still something very difficult about receiving any kind of feedback. I appreciate the three of you who said it was “brilliant” (oh stop!), but let’s be real here, most of you said it was good or great, and I probably agree with you. It could be better, and I am going to aim to make it so over the coming months.

Question 7: Finally, if you feel like saying anything else, please do so here.

And this is where the hilarity and insight really came out. You guys! I was alternating between laughing hysterically and tearing up every few moments. You made me look (more) like a crazy person. I don’t have room to go through every response, but let me wax lyrical a little, and give some general answers to your questions…

Person who asked if I could do a blog detailing my teeth brushing routine… no, no I cannot, because that is literally the only thing I have left, the last sacred thing I have not shared with the internet. Please respect my privacy on this, my toothbrush and I are very adamant on this one. I’m sorry.

Person who said I had a “strange talent” in that I am relatable but firm in my own opinions. Thank you, that was a really succinct and nice way of putting what I strive for in blogging, but also my actual life. I am glad that comes across.

To the multiple people who said they don’t really see or know me anymore but feel some way close to me because of my blogs… it’s awesome that you feel that way, but please interact with me! Comment on blogs, like my facebook statuses, send me a PM. I know it might feel weird at first but I am really open to reconnecting with people over stuff we both find interesting. And sometimes blogging feels like you are yelling into the void, because people are afraid of the comments section. Please don’t be afraid! You might feel close to me because of my blogs, but I have no idea who you are!

People who just said nice things, thank you, I really needed those nice things.

People who said insightful things about going forward, thank you, I feel like I am a lot more sure of what I would like to do with the blog, stay tuned.

To the person who used this section to anonymously confess about a sexual interaction you once had with a horse… I know who you are… and if you don’t become subservient to my every whim, I am going to reveal your secret to the masses.

Stay tuned next week for the results of the results. What my plan is, how it will work and when it will start will all be revealed, just as soon as I work that shit out. Have a lovely week xx

Help! I need somebody!

Readers, bloggeroos, lovers. Whatever it is you’re called… I need your help.

not just anybody...

You may have noticed (you probably haven’t, I’m probably being paranoid) that my blog has been coming to you later and later every week. Sometimes it doesn’t reach you until Mondays. Also, and I know I probably am just being paranoid now, but you may have noticed the quality is getting shittier too. The truth is, my friends, that blogging is getting harder and harder for me. It’s not that I don’t have the time, it’s not even that I don’t like it (I love it), it’s that it feels like there is some inspiration box of ideas in my head, and at the moment we’re down to a paperclip, two bits of fluff and the last bit of scrunched up paper that says, “write a blog about how you’ve run out of ideas”.

I know, in my heart, that this isn’t true. Inspiration doesn’t work like that, there aren’t a finite number of ideas and I haven’t used all mine up already. If I had, I’d probably be dead. But I do think that writing once a week means that good ideas, great blog posts seem to be few and far between. They swim in a sea of posts about my own, little life. My most popular posts are ones that aren’t about me. You guys love reading about Disney, Translink, Harry Potter and growing up. Obviously, I always write from my own perspective, and my own experience, but I understand why the more relatable posts aren’t ones exclusively about my life. My life just isn’t that interesting. On the other hand, I’m sure you guys can understand why I do often write about myself. When casting around for inspiration, it’s much easier to stop in my own living room, or in my own head.

I am a big believer in quantity. Obviously, quality is very important (and it’s why I’m having this freak out), but I really do believe that making myself write a blog every week has made me a better writer. If I were to just write whenever the fancy took me, I would never write at all. You can’t just sit around waiting for inspiration to hit, because it won’t. That’s a fallacy. For me, anyway, there’s no creativity phone and you can’t just sit around waiting for it to ring. You’ve got to pick it up, punch in numbers randomly until you find something worth talking to. Maybe inspiration just comes for some people, but I have to push for it, and more often than not I write without it. And making myself write regularly has made me *find* inspiration, and that’s great. But even still, I feel like I’ve been pushing too hard lately, like I’ve damaged the part of my brain that comes up with ideas.

So I’m completely conflicted. A part of me wants to stop blogging for a while. Give my brain a rest and try to let ideas come to me later. Another part of me thinks that’s stupid; I should keep at it, because keeping at it for the last year or so is what has made me better. I think maybe the answer is that I need to switch it up. I need to get a new style, a new project, maybe even a new blog. My big idea at the moment is to pursue an “overanalysing” theme. I really enjoy doing those kinds of blogs, and people seem to like them. So I’m wondering if I should just throw myself in to *only* doing those kinds of things for a while. You know, watching and ripping apart Disney films, other kids movies, TV shows, stuff I haven’t seen before… etc.

And this is where you come in. I write for you guys, so I want to know what you think. I’ve made up a very quick survey and it would be amazing if you could do it. I estimate it will take you no more than a couple of minutes, and it just covers a few questions about who you are, why you read this blog and what you’d like to see in the future. If you could please take a few moments to do this for me, I will love you all 5eva. 

This is the link to the survey, please help!

A Bit of Earth

One of the things I told myself I was absolutely going to do once I moved to Dalby, was grow an edible garden. Other things on the list included ‘learn the ukulele’ and ‘write a novel’, so I guess we can say it was a fairly ambitious list. But despite having bought then abandoned a ukulele and lol don’t even talk to me about a novel, I have in fact, been rather successful at cultivating a small garden. And yes, some of it is even edible.

Please don't look too hard at the sad basil on the left, the sad basil and I are working through its issues

I had a few rather disastrous attempts at it, and then suddenly I just got into the groove of it. Every time I go out there, something is a little greener, a little bigger, a little better. I water regularly, I re-pot as necessary and I am always adding little things to it. Unfortunately, my real estate agent is a ruiner of dreams, which means I can only keep things in pots, but despite this hurdle, I really have cultivated my own little corner of Dalby. I grow things I would like to grow, I try things that seem ok. It’s mine, and this one little thing makes me happier than I can possibly express.

I’ll try though, in blog form, no less.

There is a deep satisfaction in making something from nothing. I think it’s one of the reasons I like knitting so much. You start with string, essentially, and you weave that shit together in a complicated little knot over and over and the next thing you know you’ve got something functional. In my case, that’s always a scarf, because I haven’t quite progressed to anything more complicated than that, but shit it’s still something new that didn’t exist before. Writing is much the same. Pulling words out of your brain and twisting them into some kind of story, or even just a sentence… that is some amazing stuff right there. I’m doing it right now, every word I write did not exist in this particular order before I came along and put them here. Isn’t that a truly fantastic thing?

I figure I can just grow the plants *over* the ugly shit in the yard, and pretend its not there

Gardening is that fantastic sensation PLUS the feeling of helping something to grow. It’s not just making something; it’s making something live, it’s creating life, and it’s friggin awesome.  Knowing that I made this thing, and that it wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t applied myself, if I hadn’t tried hard, and persevered, gives me a really big sense of accomplishment. And I know that it’s just a little thing, I didn’t save a rainforest, or grow a whole human inside me or anything, but it’s empowering, it fills me up with a giant ball of happiness.

View out our back door

It’s funny actually, but I’m sure this is the feeling people have when they do make a whole human, except multiplied by about ten thousand. But to be honest, I’m just content with zucchini plants and flowers for now, lol babies seems too much. I’m full of joy and bouncing with happiness about a bunch of plants, can you imagine if I made a baby? I’d be hysterically jumping on the furniture. It seems too much, and I’m very content with my herb babies and my vege babies, and anyway, they are much cheaper to feed, and they don’t poop themselves… and if ants get on them I’m not the worst person ever.

And I won't be sent to jail when I hand pollinate this zucchini plant in Spring.

Shirley Temple is a Star!

Shirley Temple is a star!

S! T! A! R!

She can do the rumble,

She can do the twist,

She can do anything just like this!

Girls do a curtsey,

Boys take a bow.

Boys go *kiss* *kiss*,

Girls go WOO!

Girl readers in particular possibly remember chanting this in primary school. There were moves too. Do you remember them? I have a vivid image in my mind of three girls standing on one of the metal benches near the oval (you had to do it out of sight of the teachers, see). I’ve forgotten how the moves at the start go, but in my memory, the girls do a curtsey, just like the song says, and then bow low. They come up to blow two quick kisses, and the jump off the bench whilst simultaneously throwing their skirts up high and flashing their knickers.

Within the rhyme scheme, I think that “woo” should probably be a “wow”, but we always said “woo!” when we jumped. I also remember performing this for our male classmates. It was a big deal, it was hilarious, it was risqué. We were literally working up to flashing our undies at unsuspecting boys. And when we did they usually ran away. This counted as playground entertainment in the early to mid 90’s you see; we didn’t have the internet or phones. Hell, tazos and tamagotchis were still years off.

It’s kind of fucked up, though and I can’t stop thinking about it at the moment. Those last two lines in particular. Boys go *kiss* *kiss*, girls go woo. Boys throw some kisses around and girls lift their skirts. Boys press the right button and girls will let them in. Is it an equation, boy kisses go in, exposed undies come out? Or just a statement of fact re gender roles? Boys make the first move, girls then put out? I know it’s a stupid kids’ song, but doesn’t that make it worse? If it’s not to be taken too seriously, why do the lyrics have such serious connotations?

I can’t pinpoint for you the moment I became a feminist, it’s been a gradual process, and I’ve only been properly aware of it for the last 18 months or so. When I was 6, I thought that song was silly, and a bit scary, and it made me slightly uneasy, I think. But I didn’t for a second think about what it meant, I just accepted it as normal, just a song we sang. I don’t know that I even knew who Shirley Temple was, I just knew it was the name of a delicious mocktail my mum bought me once.

Another thing I readily accepted as a child, but find bizarre now; almost all my teddies were male. I had one female teddy that my aunty made from a floral patterned material. Flowers obviously equalled girl, so I named her after my aunty. The other teddy she made used a red fabric, and I named him Red Bear (I’ve always been very creative). I can’t think of another soft toy that wasn’t a boy in my imagining.

I actively sort out male things; I liked them, which is fine. I liked Tonka trucks and digging in my sandpit, I liked Lego and building things with my wooden blocks. Even when I went through a Barbie phase, my favourite thing was my Barbie car. Oh yes, there was a Barbie phase, but it lasted a very short time and then… here’s the kicker, I was ashamed of it. I am *all* for kids playing with non-stereotypical toys, but why was I ashamed of my stereotypical phase? I got rid of those Barbies faster than you could rip off one of the Barbie dresses, but not before mutilating a few of those plastic beauties. If you want to look at this metaphorically, I literally pulled the head off stereotypical femininity before going back to trucks and pretending my lapse into girl-ness never happened.

I thought girl stuff was stupid, I identified as a tomboy, I didn’t want girl toys because I thought girls were crap. I had a lot of female friends but right through primary and high school I would often say things like “I much prefer the company of the boys”, “I don’t fit in with the girls”, “girls are so screechy and stupid”. Why did I hate women? How did I reconcile this within my own identity as a woman? I’m still working some of that out, and I do wonder if my own self-worth was damaged by these beliefs (it must have been, surely?). What I do know is that I don’t regret any of this. I am not ashamed. I’m not sure I could be the feminist I am today if I hadn’t had to teach myself how to not hate women first.

The other night I had a lovely conversation with two female friends about how we are all only just now discovering make up. All three of us identified as being not particularly “girly” during the phase of our lives where many girls learn how to apply make up, do their hair and dress themselves well. And now all three of us are discovering things like how to make our eyelashes curly, what lipstick colour suits us, or what kind of clothes look nicest on us. While it would have been nice to learn this sort of stuff years ago, maybe, there is a certain empowering feeling, actively seeking out this kind of lady knowledge now, as an adult. It feels like something I am doing, not something that is being forced upon me. I’m not, by any means saying that women who have had their face and hair shit together since they were teenagers are not empowered, or not feminists, just that it’s working for me. I am working it. It is a part of my feminism, and I love it.

And if I could go back in time and stop my younger self from performing the Shirley Temple song, I wouldn’t. Because my younger self enjoyed it, she got a thrill out of it, but most importantly it made her feel a bit weird. And that little niggling feeling has been burrowing inside me since the very first time I watched three girls jumping off a bench with their skirts in the air. That little feeling stayed with me through all these years, it has manifested in strange and interesting and complicated ways, and though I didn’t know it then, thinking that song was a bit weird was the first feminist feeling this lady brain ever had.