Beyond Comprehension

[This is a backdated post]

I want to start this post with a general spiel about what people consider normal, or refer to an article I've read recently, or any of the usual intros that these things often kick off with but this time I honestly can't.

What I'm starting with is this: my 21 year old cousin does not know how to cut her own fingernails.

Yes, you read that correctly.

I've always known she was sheltered, a bit lazy, and that her parents do more for her than they should* but this was the first time that I truly grasped the magnitude of the issue.

We were at a family gathering and halfway through she realised that she had netball afterwards and had to trim her fingernails first or she wouldn't be allowed on the court.

She didn't have anything useful with her so she started biting them off.

Seeing what she was up to, I pulled out a basic set of nail clippers that I keep in my handbag and passed them over.

These sort of dealies, you know the ones.

She thanked me, put them over the end of her nail without opening them and then proceeded to swivel them about, trying to get them to work like a man unsure of how to apply a can opener to a can in a way that will produce food.

Starting to get a bit worried now, I said 'oh here let me get that' and popped them open for her and demonstrated the clipping motion.

She thanked me again, applied the clippers to her fingernail, clamped down and then instead of clipping through, ripped the end of her nail off, then calmly applied it to her next fingernail to do the same.

At this point I think my brain started screaming, and a nail later I managed to get my body to move, plucked them out of her grip and said 'let me tidy those up for you'** and cut her nails for her because Jesus Electric Sliding Christ!

How do you get to 21 without learning how to cut your own nails?

This means that someone else has been doing it for 21 years!

Outside of the times she's presumably gnawed them off.

And if she hasn't learned how to trim her own nails what else hasn't she learned?

There have been a lot of articles written about helicopter parenting*** in the last decade particularly.

Articles about how helicopter parenting is leaving adults stuck in adolescence because overly helpful parents have sought to protect them from disappointment too effectively or have not been able to step back and allow them to learn from their own mistakes.

Articles about how parents are pushing their children into learning environments or professions that make them miserable in the belief that they're setting them up for success later in life which will counterbalance today's misery with future happiness and security.

One of the most extreme manifestations of this inability to deal with 'the real world' or life in general comes in the form of Japan's Hikikomori, individuals so overcome by the pressure to succeed or the fear of social missteps that they lock themselves in their rooms, barely emerging for years.

This of course the extreme but it all has to start somewhere.

Wanting your child to be successful, to achieve their potential, is an admirable goal but it has to be seen within the context of a full life.

Kids also have to be taught how to manage their time, to cook, to take care of themselves, and to balance priorities.

This means introducing chores, encouraging them to manage their own responsibilities during childhood and letting them experience the consequences of failing.

I know my parents bailed me out more than a few times when I panicked about having left an assignment until the last minute or accidentally left it at home and begged for someone to run it to me at school during lunch time so I wouldn't get in trouble.

They also let me fall on my face sometimes so that I realised that I'm the person who needed to remember to do my homework because no-one else was going to do it for me.

My Dad wouldn't give me the answers, he would ask me questions until I started forming my own.

It was a balance that did see me wide-eyed and more than a little nervous at the idea of failing academically but in a position where I could - after having a bit of a panic - manage to talk myself down and through what I needed to get done.

I'm still a bit prone to doing things at the last minute because I know I'm smart enough to get away with it in certain situations but I've also come up against enough situations where being smart doesn't cut it because the task required time and effort to be put into it that couldn't be papered over with a good vocabulary.

But I learned this through trial and error, sometimes having to run smack bang into consequences multiple times before the lesson stuck.

Without encountering natural low-risk failures during their younger years, kids can't possibly get a realistic view of what failure means and how to cope with it or overcome it as they get older.

Every prospective failure will be seen as terrifying.

And you will end up with someone who can't cook, doesn't clean up after themselves, drops out of multiple university courses and can't cut their own fingernails.

Because good lord, there is an age at which children should be put in charge of their own personal grooming and it is a lot younger than twenty-friggin'-one!



*She's been diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder in the last 4 years so now the waiting on her is more of a 'keep an eye on her so she doesn't hurt herself' thing rather than anything else but I can't help but think that if they had given her more rules to follow and boundaries to respect that 'none', she would have been in a better place to deal with her mental illness.

**I know I should have shown her how to use them properly and returned them to her but by this stage I just couldn't bear the idea of her doing something else outlandish. I did point out that if you squeeze them firmly they cut right through and I had shown her how to open them and close them but I'm guessing the lesson won't have stuck.

***See, this is where I would have started this post if I could have stopped my brain wailing 'Her nails! Can't even cut her own nails!'

Nepal - Week Three

Day Fifteen to Day Sixteen

Our last two days of trekking were amazing in that we covered what felt like a ridiculous amount of distance in a much shorter time than it had taken coming the other way.

Of course they had been easing us into things at the start of the trip and there is a significant 'up' portion that you climb up to Namche that is a lot less strenuous when it is a 'down' from Namche, though your legs get a good work out keeping you braced safely as you go down the slope.

We had known we weren't here in the busy season but this was even more apparent at this point.
Coming up there had been constant foot traffic and numerous jopkyo and donkey trains every hour.
Coming down we only saw a handful and most of the foot traffic was incoming hikers who didn't realise how chilly it was going to get.
We'd had to carefully cross patches of ice that hadn't been there when we'd come up, caused by little streams that run down the mountain trickling across the paths, and that was more than a bit nerve-wracking next to the long drop at the edge of the path.

Arriving back in Lukla it felt like we'd been away for much longer than the two weeks we'd been walking.

Day Seventeen

We woke up bright and early for a quick breakfast and hustled down to the tiny airport to wait for our plane back to Kathmandu.

The thing about the plane back to Kathmandu, of course, is that the weather has to be good for the small planes to be able to fly.

The weather has to be good at Kathmandu, at Lukla and at a particular pass in between before the plane can leave Kathmandu and arrive at Lukla to pick us up.

No dice.

There was a bit of cloud in Kathmandu and the wind never really settled down.

We waited at the airport until about 11:00am and then went to wait in a little restaurant next to the terminal, staring morosely at the sky.

This put us in a suddenly tenuous position as our international flight back to Melbourne via Bangkok left at 1:30pm the next day and if we missed it, given the time of year, there was no guarantee we'd be able to get another flight in time to get back for Christmas.

Flights weren't officially cancelled until 12:00pm and until then we wouldn't be able to get the travel insurance pay for the only other way to get back to Kathmandu - a helicopter - so until then we twiddled our thumbs and hoped.

Once the official word came through our guide got on the phone to arrange two helicopters to come pick us up.

Unfortunately a lot of other people had had the same idea and many of them weren't fussed about travel insurance or didn't have any to fuss about.

For the rest of the day we watched helicopters come in and leave and knew we were moving up the queue but we didn't get to the front of it until 4:00pm which is when the helicopters stop flying because visibility isn't high enough.

So after getting up at 5:00am we wandered back to the lodge we had stayed at the night before, to stay another night and to try keep from being too nervous about the idea of missing flights.

Day Eighteen

We were up earlier than we needed to be, made sure that we were as organised as we could be and that we were wearing the cleanest clothes we had left as we were now going to be getting onto an international flight after two weeks of trekking.

Two weeks of trekking with minimal showers outside of camp showers (ie, a cloth and a bowl of warm water) and most of us not having washed our hair for the full two weeks because we didn't want to catch a chill on the trek.

The night at the hotel would have been nice, especially the shower part, but at this point we were just hoping that the helicopters would turn up and get us to the airport in time.

The helicopters landed at about 8:00am, had to refuel, de-ice their windscreens, and load our bags up before we could look at leaving.

The helicopter flight was a hell of a thing. Not much turbulence but you were a lot closer again to the treetops and mountains than even the small aircraft flight had been.

I got to sit up front and watching the countryside with its small towns go by, the terraced hills and mountains slowly giving way to flatter ground and larger communities until we reached Kathmandu was almost worth the hurry and bother of having missed out on the scheduled flight the day before.

When we landed someone from the hotel met us with the luggage we'd left in storage and there was a flurry of activity as we hurriedly packed our kit bag contents into our regular bags, made sure we hadn't left anything pointy or inappropriate in our carry on luggage, shed layers we didn't need any more and tried to ensure we were as un-stinky as possible.

Once we'd managed to get ourselves sorted it was time to head straight into the airport to go through about six levels of security checks, check-in for our flight and board the plane.

And in that sudden hurry, without a chance for a last look around or much in the way of reflecting, we were leaving Nepal.

It was definitely the most demanding trip I've been on in my life.

Having the usual comforts unavailable doesn't usually faze me but when one of those comforts is the comforting idea that if something goes wrong you can quickly access medical care, you get a bit nervous.

If someone had been seriously sick or injured their only real option would have been being airlifted to Kathmandu hospital by a rescue helicopter.
Nepal is still a developing country with very little in the way of medical care available, especially in the rural regions.

You usually saw at least one rescue helicopter passing overhead a day and while it was reassuring to see that they were operating dependably, it also drove home the fact that you needed to be careful, that what you were doing really was dangerous.

It's also remarkable how taxing you can find the cold if you're not used to it, especially when you're tired and constantly on watch for something that could constitute an altitude sickness symptom.

One of the tricky things about this trip has been successfully explaining it to people now that it's done.

It was amazing, one of the most rewarding things I've done but the tricky or difficult bits are a lot easier to explain or imagine so some of my friends seem convinced that I had a terrible time.
It's a lot harder explaining a moment of wonder or the constant 'holy shit, look at where I am!' jolts your brain got every time you looked around.

I am so glad that I went and if anyone else is considering such a trip and would like to hit me up for advice, feel free.

Nepal - Week Two

Day Eight and Day Nine

These two days get their own description because of my brother.

He woke up Day Eight feeling terrible having - despite precautions - caught some kind of tummy bug.

He didn't feel too bad at the start of the day but he didn't feel well enough to eat his breakfast.

He managed to walk for about two or three hours before his body decided to take matters into its own hands and eject whatever was bothering it out of his mouth over the edge of a cliff.

And then he felt magnificent!

Until he tried to continue walking.

Because he hadn't had breakfast and his body had just emptied out whatever else it had in reserve and an amount of liquid and left him low on fuel and a bit dehydrated.

He gamely tottered on for another half hour, stopping to rest every couple of minutes as our guide monitored him, before announcing that he was definitely not going to make it to the camp under his own power and asking if he could stay the night at one of the local hostels and catch up with us at the camp the next day as it was to be a rest day.

I did NOT like this idea.

I was NOT leaving my baby brother alone in a strange town by himself while he was sick in a third world country.

Our guide was explaining to him that this wouldn't be a fantastic option anyway as he'd still have to make it to where we were stopping for lunch because the porters had his luggage and he'd have to keep a porter and a guide with him and pay for their lodging and meals.

Blah blah blah, time to take matters into my own hands.

I hired him a horse.

A shaggy little mountain pony that they saddled up and popped him on.

My father and I were sent ahead with one of the sherpas leading the way as our guide waited with my brother and the guy readying the pony. Within about half an hour my brother had caught up to and overtaken us, looking quite cheerful now that he wasn't trying to walk.

At the camp we found he'd tucked himself in for a restorative sleep with some rehydration fluids close by for sipping and was feeling much better.

At this stage it was still uncertain whether the bug had completely worked itself out of his system and left him in a state where he'd be able to carry on walking with us on Day Ten.

We stopped by every now and then to check on him and bug him about drinking water if he happened to be awake.

The next morning he stirred himself out of bed to come join us at breakfast.

He ate a small amount of plain foods for breakfast, kept sipping at rehydration fluids and had some small walks around camp after sitting in and chatting with those of us who didn't go on the optional walk for that day.

Then he went off for more naps before re-emerging at lunch and then dinner for more plain food and liquids.

Day Ten

Thankfully a day and a half of taking it easy and getting plenty of fluids saw him come good and when we set off on our climb to Lobuche my brother was able to keep up comfortably as we all took it easy up the ridge to the yak pastures.

The yak pastures were on a large plateau, higher up than we'd been before and were quite a sight before a bank of fog rolled in and obscured them.
As we donned our windproof gear for the first time a light snow started to fall, hardly more than a dusting but it was an amazing thing to walk through in the mist.

Before lunch we had to cross a small patch of ice, our first for the trip which made us glad we weren't on one of the icy mountain pass treks, and then it was time to climb climb climb.

Lobuche was the second highest place we would spend the night and by this point we were all carefully watching ourselves and each other for signs of altitude sickness but aside from people experiencing a lowered appetite we were all doing quite well.

Day Eleven

The walk to Gorak Shep alongside the Khumbu Glacier was reasonably smooth if not completely flat going but was one of the tougher days of walking we'd had.
I'm not sure if it was just the altitude and lack of oxygen tiring you out more quickly or the fact that walking along on a flat surface able to see where you're going is a bit mentally wearing but by the time we got to Gorak Shep we were a bit achey and puffed.

There wasn't to be much rest yet though because after lunch it was time to trek to Everest Base Camp and back.
We got to leave our daypacks behind which was great and wear our puffy down jackets which was extra great.

The walk to Base Camp was incredible.

We saw Nepali guinea pigs, snow fowl and other birds that seemed to be doing quite well despite the lack of oxygen.
There was a bit of up and down, not too much but it was made more challenging by operating on 50% of our normal concentration of oxygen.
The trek there was estimated to take about two hours.
It did for some members of the group but for my Dad and I, who are short of leg and a little bit low on puff, it took three hours.
My brother had waited a half hour at the Base Camp for us and he was there when we arrived so we could take photos together and feel smug as a family.

Standing at Base Camp was a bit of a moment for me.

A few times during the trip I'd thought 'What the hell have I gotten myself into?' and had wondered if there was a point where I'd realise I wasn't going to make it all the way.

Each day was manageable, we were never pushed to go faster than we felt comfotable with, we were taken care of and fed well and got an adequate amount of sleep for the most part but the physical exertion along with the cold at night and the constant awareness of hygiene and altitude made for a bit of stress at times.

Standing there I got to think 'Shit, I actually did it! I trekked to Everest Base Camp! I am standing here with my father and my brother in a place where a large percentage of the human race will never come! This is incredible!' closely followed by 'Man I can't wait until we have a sit down!'

Heading back we had to hurry slowly because it was going to be a very close thing for us to get off the rocky and perilous part of the trail before we lost sunlight - the consequence of walking slowly.

We made it, just, reaching the flat approach to the town as the light faded, and leaving boot marks in the light dusting of snow that still covered the ground.
We collapsed into chairs around the fire at the lodge and sipped cups of hot tang - one of the stranger things we came to look forward to while trekking - and recovered.
Dad had been especially knocked about by the rush back and almost fell asleep in his chair.
We had to help him out of his boots and a few of his layers so we could dry them out for the next day.
He woke back up for dinner and then we all turned in for a good sleep before it was time to start heading down.

Day Twelve to Day Fourteen

On Day Twelve the Canadian son, my brother and my godfather's son were the only ones who opted to get up at 5:00am to climb Kala Pattar. The rest of us were still a bit tired, not wanting to brave the temperatures they'd encounter and felt we'd probably gone high enough.
They managed to climb Kala Pattar and get back down in time to join us for breakfast where they explained that it had gotten so cold that they hadn't been able to operate or indeed feel their hands at all for a time.
The views sounded amazing but I am not built for that kind of cold and felt satisfied with my decision to leave that part of the adventure delegated to my brother.

The next three days were a steady retracing of our steps down the mountain. Marvelling at things we'd been too tired or tunnel vision-y to notice on the way up, feeling a bounce in the step as we descended to slightly more oxygen-rich levels and high on success at having achieved the goal of our trip.

As thoughts of home started to pop more frequently into our heads we entered the 'fantasising about various foods and not having to use hand sanitiser before eating every single morsel' part of the trip.
The fact that we were returning home just in time for Christmas didn't help this at all.

Nepal - Week One

Nepal blew my mind.
Straight up blew my mind.

I've travelled a bit but it's been a long while since I went to anywhere so out of my normal range of experience and it makes you pay a degree of attention you mightn't if you were somewhere more familiar.

When my father asked me back in May if I wanted to go on a trek to Everest Base Camp I was excited but nervous.
And then December rolled around quicker than I thought it would and found my father, my brother, my godfather, his son, a woman my father and I have both worked with, and a woman she knows through another friend sitting at the airport waiting to fly to Nepal.
Amazing

Day One

We flew from Melbourne to Bangkok, got the plane from Bangkok to Kathmandu, and the moment we landed at Kathmandu the eyes were wide open.

Bangkok airport is a HUGE, modern structure.
Kathmandu airport is a single storey brick building that looks like it was built in the 1960s or there about.
Outside the taxis are all cars that look like they were built in the Soviet Union and may very well be fitted with their original tyres which have fossilised on the rim.

Being driven through the city to the hotel we quickly realised there weren't any road rules per se.
People just nudged in and were moving at a speed that there didn't seem to be any collisions.
Lanes were invented and abandoned at a whim.
There were no road markings.
We were told that they do have a few traffic lights in Kathmandu but due to daily power outages they don't actually use them as traffic lights that only work some of the time would cause more confusion than calm.

The edges of the streets were torn up as the government was in the process of having the front room of most buildings knocked down to widen the road. These rooms were mostly built without permission by the building's owners/residents as there wasn't really a planning permission system in place when they wanted to do so.

The power poles that lined the streets were hung with thick ropes of wires as it seemed that whenever someone wanted to hook into the power they just added another line.

Our group got together to meet our guide and the two other group members who we didn't know, a Canadian father and son who were my father's age and about my age respectively.

For dinner we went to a restaurant called Nepali Chulo where we sat on the floor on cushions at a low table and were served a variety of dishes - curried meats, steamed vegetables, rice, soups and breads.
As we ate, people in traditional dress from various regions took turns performing the corresponding traditional dances.
At the end of the evening a man inside an elaborate peacock puppet costume moved through the diners, bowing the head at the end of the puppet's long neck and operating its mouth in some ingenious fashion to accept tips.

Day Two

We were taken to see the Pashupatinath Hindu temple complex and Boudhanath Buddhist Stupa.

Pashupatinath was incredible.
The street leading up to the temple was lined with stalls of people selling religious icons and strings of flowers for pilgrims to buy before entering the temple.
There was an old people's community home for Hindu elders who have no family to care for them. One old gentleman waved at us quite cheerily when he saw us peeking through the gate.
Down by the river were flat pedestal-like protrusions where some people were building funeral pyres for their loved ones.
We saw one person being prepared for the pyre, family or friends taking their shrouded body down to the water to ritually wash their feet to purify them before the funeral proceeded.
It felt a bit intrusive to watch something so important but we didn't linger there long as there was the rest of the temple complex to observe - from the outside as non-Hindus couldn't enter - and many small shrines to walk amongst.
People hawking goods and gifts wandered about, trying their luck with various tourists.
Monkeys were running around on the roofs of the temple and freely in the forest behind the shrines.
The scent of ash, incense and the river emphasised the fact that this was somewhere unlike I'd ever seen before.

Boudhanath by comparison was quite calm.
There were still plenty of people around but it was in town and the stupa itself was ringed by shops that formed a perfect two or three storey circle around the stupa.
The size of the stupa was quite impressive as were the many lines of flags that ran from its tip to its corners.
While we watched men with ladders climbed in a precarious fashion to throw buckets of yellow wash over the dome.
You could see where dry materials were being ground and mixed to make paint or washes for the upkeep of the stupa.
There were also piles of powdered incense which people could buy in little packets to burn during their observances.
Prayer wheels were everywhere and every now and then you would catch the sound of chanting, either from monks or pilgrims in small temples amongst the shops or from recordings floating out of the shops.

Day Three

This morning we got up nice and early, got our kit bags ready and headed back to the airport to fly to the tiny airport at Lukla.
We waited for about an hour before being taken by bus out to the part of the airfield where the small planes depart, we drove past members of the Nepali military being put through their paces jogging around the airfield.
Even though the plane only seated about 20 people it had a flight attendant who squeezed her way up the aisle to offer us wads of cotton to put in our ears and mints to chew or suck on during the flight.
The flight through the valleys and past the mountains was amazing, especially as they were so close and every movement of the plane and touch of the wind was very evident in such a small craft.
The landing strip at Lukla was tiny. I mean tiny. We all spontaneously applauded as we touched down and wheeled around to stop by the small terminal building.

At a little field behind a house in the town we organised our kit bags and day packs - watched by locals who were tending crops and leading chickens about on strings - and then set off for our first bit of trekking, a short walk from Lukla to Ghat.
It was our first experience of the dusty winding paths and the lusher part of the track and having to step out of the way for strings of jopkyo (half yak, half cow hybrids) and donkeys being used as pack animals.
It was also our first experience with the nature of the weather in the mountains.
It was quite warm and mild during the day but the moment the sun dropped behind the mountains at about 4pm, the temperature drops somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees Celsius.

We slept in large sturdy tents in lovely warm sleeping bags.

Day Four to Day Seven

We spent these days discovering the joys of 'Nepali flat' - a term meaning that if the amount of up encountered is roughly the same as the down encountered they consider that flat - and the various considerations of the trail.
Every day you'd wake early, be given a cup of tea, organise your kit bag for the porters to carry away, organise your daypack for yourself, have a hearty breakfast, fill up your water bottles with boiled water and start walking.

The water had to be boiled because the local water isn't good for non-locals and for a similar reason we had to use hand sanitiser before every meal as the local dust and dirt we'd picked up while walking wasn't something you wanted to accidentally ingest.

We'd stop for lunch along the way, another huge meal of multiple dishes, and we'd catch our breath and look around a bit more.

The ever present mountains were almost too big to be accepted as real. You'd stare at them, you'd know they were mountains but your brain kept insisting they must be a movie backdrop or something because mountains just don't get that big.

The towns we passed through were well populated with wayhouses for hikers and little shops that obviously did quite well during the busy seasons, a time when anywhere up to 200 or more hikers could enter the national park each day.

After lunch we'd scoot on to get to our camp where we could relax, catch up with journal writing, play cards, go for smaller walks and just hang around chatting before dinner.
At dinner time they would light the yak-dung stove and we'd have a few hours of comfortable warmth in the dining building before the fuel ran out, the puffy jackets went on and it was time to go tuck ourselves into our sleeping bags again.
We rarely stayed up past about 8:00pm or 8:30pm due to lack of heating and generally feeling a bit tired after walking and being at altitude.

The higher we went the colder it got at night and the more you'd try to convince yourself that you didn't really need to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. You always lost that argument but you'd have it for a while because climbing out of your nice warm sleeping bag to trot across the campsite to the freezing toilet was not appealing.
And when I say freezing I'm not being hyperbolic, at night it was 0 °C or less even at this lower altitude and at one campsite the water in the toilet cistern actually froze solid.

By this point we'd been through the big town of Namche Bazaar and seen the local market where villages from kilometres around bought their supplies, had a rest day there to help the acclimatisation process, visited Thyangboche Monastery - arriving just in time to hear the monks going through their daily service and for me to accidentally sit at the parping end of a long mountain trumpet.

Simply amazing.

Anticipation

This time next week I'll be sitting at the airport, waiting to go to Nepal.

I'm remarkably calm about this.

Calm for me I mean.

I used to get unbearably jittery the closer I got to leaving on a trip but at the moment I'm feeling good.

Part of that will be because I'm a bit older and a bit more confident.

Part of it will be down to the fact that I've been preparing physically and wrapping my mind around this trip for a while now, and have finished the bulk of my equipment shopping.

The rest of it... I've no idea.

I keep prodding at myself, like someone with a tooth they think might be sore, trying different angles, waiting for the pain.

If I'm not worried maybe it's because I haven't thought of this or this or this?

I've had to stop myself from doing that because it is not a particularly helpful thing to do.

I've had plenty of people wanting to tell me the stories they've heard about things happening to people in Nepal specifically or at altitude in general.

A few months ago this would have sent me into a tizzy.

Now?

Meh..

This is going to be a completely new experience, I don't know exactly how it will go and I like that.

We're going with a good company, I'm going with people who care about me and I'm going to be sensible.

I don't want to be worried.

I'm enjoying being excited! :-D

Unhelpful Uncle

At a family gathering yesterday a few different people seemed to have things to say about our upcoming trip to Nepal.

One aunt was chatting away about a story she'd read in a weekend paper supplement about a guy who had spent a few months trekking around in the mountains of Nepal and who then had to spend 6 weeks in hospital recovering after he got home.

That was OK, we're not planning to be as high for as long or to push it like that fellow.

Then my uncle decided to chime in.
"I have to tell you that a woman I used to work with went and did this trek with a Canadian girl and the Canadian girl never made it back.
She died of Mountain Sickness.
They got her back to the Kathmandu hospital whilst she was still alive but she didn't pull through."

'I didn't need to hear that' I thought.

"Of course, she'd been having breathing difficulties for a while. Sounding all bubbly and wheezy.
But she kept saying 'it was only a little bit further' and refused to turn back.
And she was drinking alcohol the whole time.
And this was 20 years ago."

Thanks, unhelpful uncle.
So not only did she get Mountain Sickness (which I will forever hear in a 'Tales of Interest!' from Futurama voice) because she went against specific medical advice after experiencing symptoms of difficulty, she was drinking and not getting adequate rest or hydration etc.
And as it was 20 years ago they probably knew less about altitude sickness and if she was even part of a guided tour they probably weren't as rigorous about safety and First Aid Training and their guides (assuming they had any) won't have been trained in monitoring and treating the symptoms of altitude sickness and definitely won't have been carrying an inflatable decompression chamber.

So thanks for amping up the idea that I might die of 'Mountain Sickness!' for no reason :-/

An Unexpected Opportunity

Huh, well that was easy...

Less than a month ago I was grumbling about how long it takes me to plan trips and how much time I spend faffing about researching and agonising over how much time to take and how much ground I should try to cover and then my father asked me if I wanted to come on a trip with him and I just said yes.

So, yes, in December of this year I'm going on a trip with my father and my brother.

We're going to Nepal to trek from Lukla to the base camp at Everest.

Yes, in December.

Yes, the Himalayas in December.

Yep.

As we're not going up the actual mountain, the trek itself is supposed to be manageable as long as you prepare yourself with some regular and varied exercise a few months in advance.

I already walk for about two hours every day but I'm going to have to start mixing that up a bit, replace some of the walking with stair climbing and biking to get some more cardio going.

The trip is 18 days long and includes acclimatisation days that let you rest and get used to the altitude, though I've been informed by the last few days you'll be shuffling along missing full oxygen saturation.

The reaction of various friends and family to hearing about this trip has been equally split between 'OH MY GOD, THAT'S AMAZING!' and '... What on Earth is wrong with you?'

I can over-think things at time, I can be anxious or a bit of a cynic at others but there's no way, no way, that I could let myself be the person who would one day say 'you know I had a chance to go trekking in Nepal once but I didn't take it'.

Any worries I have about things possibly going wrong are completely outweighed by how amazing the experience could be and how much I want to do this.

Have I mentioned that we'll have Sherpas? And pack yaks?

Yes, you read that correctly. Pack. Yaks.

The company we go through pays its guides and Sherpas well and operates on a 'take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints' philosophy and as the time between my decision and the present stretches out I'm getting less nervous and more excited.

Holy crap, I'm going to Nepal!

And to celebrate, I give you this...

A Life Wasted?

My father recently turned 60 and as a surprise for him, my sister and I put together a couple of photo-boards to display at his birthday party.

We sat down and went through our entire family cache of photos, picked out any photo of sufficient quality that featured Dad, scanned it, had it printed out and added it to the board.

They went down a treat with the family, especially the photos which hadn't been seen in decades and which they'd forgotten.

They were a major talking point and had clusters of people hanging about them for the entire duration of the party.

I was really pleased to have played a part in their creation and giving everyone a chance to reminisce and giggle at what my father used to look like and get up to but it also made me realise something.

I have straight up been wasting my life.

Flicking through the photos of myself so far it was absolutely clear to me that I have not anywhere near been living up to my potential or exploring all the opportunities available to me.

When I saw the pictures of my mother and all the incarnations of her glorious hair...

I have been rocking the same handful of hairstyles for my entire life, none of which seem particularly evocative of their time period or make me look outlandishly different from year to year.

In the photos I found of my mother she sported:

• A magnificent curly afro
• A sleek long bob with matching fringe
• A mane of hair down to her bum
• Charlie's Angels flicky hair
• The obligatory 80s perm
• A cute curly shoulder-length do with a sideways swept fringe
  
• Her current pixie cut

Anyone in the future looking to catalogue my life and reviewing my photos up until now will be barfing to themselves in quiet boredom over the uniform monotony of my hair.

There have been a few changes but none so striking and the biggest changes have been the occasional shift in hue.

I know there are reasons for this...

• my laziness
• the unpredictable and willful nature of my follicles
• the fact that most of the hairstyles that have been 'fashionable' during my hairstyling years have been almost unfailingly terrible *coff Jennifer Aniston coff*

... but I still feel that I'm letting future biographers or possible descendents down by not offering a full catalogue of wild and wonderful photo material for them to pore over.

Even my father has sported a wider range of dos - though admittedly some of them were on his face.

The question now is, is it too late for me?

Am I too set in my boring hair ways?

Are there any dos that will be considered as time-bound and awesome as those that preceded the 90s?

Could I have taken a less superficial message from almost a century of family photos*?

Maybe I could have, maybe I could have...



*Out of interest we went all the way back through photos that featured the younger incarnations of our grandparents and great-grandparents too.

Secret Family Recipes!

This Tuesday I drove to my aunt's house where she, my cousin and I started assembling one of our family's traditional Christmas dishes.

It's one of those 'nobody ever writes anything down' sort of sets of recipes where you just have to keep turning up year after year to help until you start to remember how it's done.

You know how it's supposed to taste because you've been eating it every year for your entire life but it takes a while to work out how to get it right.

It probably would be easier to write everything down but where would be the fun in that?

All the rolling, blending, chopping, tying, stirring, tasting and seasoning is fun all by itself.

All the yelling at each other over the sounds of the kitchen, asking for consensus, making everybody else taste things and give advice and take turns at things is fun too.

This year only a few of us could make it for one reason or the other but it's different every year.

There's no set time, there's no set procedure.

Every year is different but every year is the same.

The recipes are secret not because it's that different from what anybody else can do.

There are probably plenty of similar recipes in cookbooks and being handed around by other families, amongst themselves and out to friends.

It's secret because then it's just something we do together.

It's secret because then it's special.

It's slightly different and it's all ours and it's just a hell of a day and damn if it isn't delicious every single year.

Father's Day

The older I get, the more evident it becomes that I'm turning into my Father.

At least in some ways.

There's a lot of my Mother in me as well but today is time to talk about Dad.

When my siblings and I were kids and we were on the obligatory summer holiday trip - to the beach or to go camping or to visit relatives who lived enough hours away to make visiting a rare occasion - there were things that Dad did that drove us crazy.

He made terrible puns.
He'd pull over to examine historical markers and sites signposted on the highway when all we wanted to do was get to our destination.
He'd steer with his elbows whilst blowing his nose.
He'd take detours because he thought they looked interesting and we'd never been there before.
He'd tell us 'fascinating facts' and then quiz us about them later.

Drove us absolutely nuts.

But those things that drove us mental, are now the things I love (even if the puns still make me groan) and appreciate. And have started, sadly in some cases, to emulate*.

I never appreciated until quite recently the extent to which my Father, coming from a cultural and familial background that favours and coddles sons**, went out of his way to make sure I always felt capable and worthy and just as good as the boys.
He signed us up for a father-daughter group when I was little which took us on various trips and activities, let us do all sorts of arts and crafts, and where we got to spend time together.
He helped me with my homework but never gave me the answers, insisting that he'd be doing me no favours and telling me that I could do it if I put my mind to it, giving me hints and gently questioning my answers to make me think things out.
He let me take up dozens of different sports and hobbies for as long as they held my interest, and challenged me to be sure I wanted to give them away before I did and that I was doing so for the right reasons***.
He bought me biographies of famous female explorers and athletes and scientists.
He bought me books on many different subjects, novels by many different authors and encouraged me to chase anything I was interested in.
He supported me in my studies and travels.
He still does.
He taught me how to ride a bike, how to fly a kite, how to do all those other kid-friendly things that parents are supposed to teach you but mostly he taught me how to think.

Even all those stupid, maddening things he did on family trips are examples.
He taught me to be interested in the world.
That you should always choose new experiences over repetition****.
That there's never a bad time to learn something new.
That if you're passionate about something you should share it with the people you care about or with anyone willing to listen, and that you should listen to them when they share their passions with you.
He taught me to give a damn.
And I love him for it.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.



*Puns. You must have noticed my tendency dorky alliterative blog post titles by now.

**Italian. Also Irish, do the Irish do that as well? I don't know any stereotypes about Irish mamma's boys.

***E.g. Not because 'It's tooooooooo haaaaaaaaaaaard' or 'I don't want to geeeeet uuuuuuuuuup at 7am' or 'But my friends are doing something else'.

****I don't always follow through on this one (especially when it comes to DVDs) but when I have the opportunity to do something new, I almost always say yes.

Divine Providence

I've just got a new TV/entertainment system cabinet because my cousin is becoming a nun!

Uh... I haven't bought it in celebration of her upcoming novitiate.

In August she's entering the convent for her three months of contemplation/extra meditation/xtreme nunning and as such she's been busily giving away her superfluous worldly goods*.

I expect I'm supposed to say I was surprised when she told me what she was planning but I honestly wasn't.

That's not to say I've ever looked at her and thought 'girl is gonna end up a nun'.

She's an attractive, accomplished and personable woman with all sorts of life paths open to her and whilst she's been a practicing Catholic for years she's never been overtly religious or expressed any prior intentions in this direction.

But I can see how it makes sense for her.

And she's one of the few people I know who has the personality, the temperament and the sense of moral responsibility to carry it through.

She's been a teacher for almost 10 years and in that time she's helped a heck of a lot of people, in the course of her work at the school, within her community and parish, and by donating her time to teaching disadvantaged children in other countries on working holidays.

She's been on several pilgrimages with our Grandmother** which I thought she was undertaking predominantly as an aide/chaperone to help 80-to-85-year-old Grandma get around the less accessible parts of the Holy Land, but they obviously stuck with her personally.

She's always been a spiritual person, not a preachy person but an introspective/meditative one and she has a firm sense of social justice.

When I said 'moral responsibility' I didn't mean it in the self-righteousness or blinkered morality way that some might use it, I meant that she is the kind of person to take responsibility for her own actions, to act for the good of others and to take a religious position seriously as an act of service to the community as well as to the church.

I think she'll do well in the vocation if she chooses to take vows and she'll do a lot to help others who need help without asking anything of them in return***.

I'm happy for her.

I am also not unhappy for me and my new TV/entertainment system cabinet.

I've been meaning to get one for ages but never really got around to it...



*most of her furniture, kitchen bits, books and DVDs, anything without deep emotional or personal meaning

**who has entered the pilgrimage phase of being an Italian/Irish matriarch

***up to and including not expecting people to pay lip service to religion in order to receive help, that is not her style

Cooking With Ricochet: How To Make Lazy Chicken And Vegetable Pasta Bake

Serves about 4 depending on how ravenous your guests are.

Ingredients
1 can of condensed chicken and corn soup
500 g of penne
1/2 a barbecued chicken
1 zucchini
1 carrot
1 1/2 cups of grated tasty cheese

Steps

1. Decide you can't be bothered cooking, opt to have toast for dinner.
2. Remember your parents are coming over, give up and pull out a lazy recipe instead.
3. Preheat the oven to 200 °C*.
   
4. Put the 500 g of dried penne on to cook for about 10 minutes in a pot of boiling water, with a bit of salt. Probably too much. Damn. Drain it and put it aside.
   
5. Grate the zucchini and the carrot, congratulating yourself for not grating your fingers off whilst your parents sit on your couch and flick channels on your TV.
6. Shred the barbecued chicken, carefully not eating any of it before you put it in the bowl.
7. Mix the soup, zucchini, carrot, shredded chicken and penne together and pour them into a baking dish. Accidentally drip a bit on the cat who then runs away and hides under the bed and refuses to come out so you can clean him off. Give up as the other cat runs in and starts enthusiastically cleaning soup and chicken off the first cat for you.
8. Sprinkle the cheese on top of the pasta and bung it into the oven for about 20 minutes.
9. Put on your oven mitts, pull out the baking dish.
10. Decide the pasta bake may be cooked but will be more delicious if you grill the cheese a bit.
11. Take off your oven mitts to turn the grill on.
12. Blithely pick up the baking dish, turn around to put it under the grill.
13. Something's burning.
14. IT'S YOUR FINGERTIPS, YOU IDIOT!
15. Manage somehow to dump the piping hot straight-out-of-the-oven baking dish onto the cooking range instead of the floor.
16. Ask your Mum to put the baking dish under the grill whilst you hold your fingertips under cold running water, reminding her first of the importance of oven mitts.
17. Serve up the deliciously golden brown cheesy, chicken and vegetable pasta bake with some salad.
18. Keep swapping hands between eating duties and a cold pack during the meal.
19. Two days later notice that you miraculously don't have any lasting damage, blisters or any indication apart from a callous on one fingertip that you almost burned your stupid fingerprints off.
20. Cancel planned crime spree.
    

*That's about 390 °F

Lazy Days

I'm sitting at the back door, dusting sand off my feet, being helped and hindered by two damp, happy dogs who break off every now and then to chase dragonflies before coming back to wag water on me and lick my toes.

I've one sunburned ankle, salt in my hair, my skin smells of sunscreen and it's soon going to be time for a cool drink and a nice lie down.

We're at the beach for the week which means sleeping late, walking the dogs, watching one of them try to drink the ocean, good food, swimming, basking in the sun, cheerfully persecuting each other with board games and watching thoroughly inappropriate movies for people who are staying at the beach (they always play Jaws and like fools we always watch).

Today I helped a 3-year old build a series of sandcastles and then we trampled them like a pair of godzillas before running down the beach to kick the waves back into the sea.

God, I love the summer.

Calm And Confusion

Where am I?

Who are you people?

What are you doing in my room?

Good GOD, what happened to my hair!?

Oh, right... right... Yesterday was my sister's wedding...

You'll have to excuse me, what with yesterday's ceremony and my friend Awesome's nuptials I've spent most of this year preparing for and planning weddings and I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to do now.

I... remember free time but can't quite wrap my head around how it applies to me.

After the months of phone calls, running home mid-week to try on shoes and dresses and pick jewellery and have make-up trials and bombard my sister with reminders of her appointments and to-do items... it's over.

The day itself went flawlessly, almost spookily well.

My mates Awesome and Eep chauffeured us from the hairdresser to the beauty salon to the other bridesmaid's house where we had to get ourselves and my sister dressed without undoing our hair or wiping off our make-up like the klutzes we usually are.

My Dad turned up and managed to restrain himself from making too many jokes as he drove us to the ceremony and then suddenly it was The Wedding.

My baby sister and her fella standing in front of all their friends and family, blue sky, soft breeze, lush garden, vows, readings, no-one faceplanting or stuttering, signings, photos, driving, more photos, reception, someone pushing a welcome glass of wine into my hand, speeches, crying, food, cake, more photos, fetching cars, packing gifts, kisses, collapsing into heaps.

My sister is married to a man who loves her and makes her happy and who we have long since assimilated and added his distinctiveness to our own.

You cannot believe the relief.

Now I think it is time for something a little different.

I might sit in a café and read a book, or take the dogs for a walk, or ignore all those plans and have a snooze, or get all these pins out of my hair and wash out the layers of hairspray.

Yes, that last one.

Then maybe the others, if I can be bothered.

Oh the freedom!

The Chicken Party

My sister is getting married this year.

This month actually.

This is a thought that I feel should be making my brain boggle but she and brother-in-law-to-be have been together for so long and are so absurdly suited to each other it seems more a formality than anything else.

At this stage all we need to remember to do is turn up in the right dresses and shoes and we will be set.

The one thing we did need to get done and done properly before the big day was her hen's party.

I could give you a run down of what we got up to but a) that'd be a bit anecdotal and 'hey I went to a party that you weren't at' and b) it was a private party for my sister and none of your beeswax so instead I'm going to talk about something else.

There's a lot of build-up around what's supposed to happen at hen's parties since they attracted the hivemind's attention so I've decided to use this post to make one particular point, one that I think isn't made enough.

If it is your hen's party you can do WHATEVER YOU DAMN WELL WANT.

This includes telling people who are trying to tell you what you HAVE to do to take their suggestions and jam them up their jacksies.

If you want to get rowdy and take it to the streets that's fine, if that's how you like to play you'll have a ball.

If you're usually a quiet person, like doing things differently or just don't think it's the business of everyone in the damn town/suburb/city that you're getting married you don't HAVE to go out and do specific things and nobody is allowed to tell you that you should.

If you want to go paintballing - Go!

If you want to go to a day spa - Go!

If you want to have a BBQ, get drunk and play Rock Band - Do!

Karaoke bar!

Burlesque show!

Bowling night!

Movie night!

Costume party!

Bake off!

Beach party!

High tea!

1950s glamour pin-up photoshoot!

There is no limit to what you can do for your party, pick whatever you're happiest with and do that.

It is a party to celebrate your life so far, your friendships with the people you invite and the life you have ahead of you - there is no rule that says it has to be just one thing.

You shouldn't have a particular hen's party because you think it's expected of you any more than you should have a particular wedding because that's what you think is expected of you.

Do what makes you happy.


PS. In case you were wondering, no we didn't get a stripper. Just in case instead of Hugh Jackman...


...we got Har Mar Superstar*....


...who does indeed strip with confidence and alacrity but not to the same reception.



*Or someone I went to school with. I don't know why I'm so convinced lately that someone I went to school with will one day take their clothes off in front of me for money.

Cooking With Ricochet: How To Make Rissoles

Serves about 4 (depending on how big of an eater each person is)

Ingredients
500-700 grams minced meat* (usually beef or lamb or veal, whatever you prefer)
2 or 3 tablespoons of tomato paste (puree)
1 large onion
1 teaspoon of oregano (or as much as you like)
1 teaspoon of sweet Hungarian paprika (once again, you like paprika, go nuts)
Milk
Plain Flour
Eggs (at least 6)
Breadcrumbs

Potatoes (enough to make mashed potato for everyone - I dunno, 6 large 'tatoes)

Steps

1. Go home for the weekend to see your family and get roped into making dinner.
2. Take the minced meat and stick it in a mixing bowl with the tomato paste, the chopped up onion, the sweet Hungarian paprika and oregano. Start squishing it all together with your hands in a gross, glorious, squidgy mess.
3. Find out that the refrigerator system at the supermarket was a little overenthusiastic and that the mince is actually semi-frozen when you start losing the sensation in your fingertips.
4. When your mobile phone starts ringing in your jeans pocket, run into the lounge room and scare the bejesus out of your sister by jumping up and down and jiggling your hip at her and yelling that you can’t answer the phone because your hands are covered in meat.
5. Roll your eyes when, once she has fished out your mobile phone and answered it, you discover that it’s your mother calling to check that you still remember where everything is in the cupboard. From the other end of the house.
6. Take four large pasta bowls. Half fill each of them: one with milk, one with plain flour, one with egg and one with breadcrumbs.
7. Roll a ball of mincey-meaty-onion-tomato stuff up into the size of an egg and squish it flat. Then dip it in the milk, roll it in the flour, dip it in the egg, roll it in the breadcrumbs and put it on a large plate to await cooking.
8. This will take a while and you will have to have another plate on standby to scrape accumulated milky, floury, eggy, breadcrumby goop off your fingers onto.
9. As you are scraping crap off your hands yell at your sister that what she really really wants to do is peel the potatoes and stick them in a microwave safe casserole dish and nuke them for about ten minutes and then mash them with a bit of milk, margarine and salt.
10. She will disagree but you will be very convincing. She will be very convinced that she doesn’t want milky, floury, eggy, breadcrumby fingers wiped all over her nice shirt.
11. Once you’ve finished rolling and dipping and scraping, wash all the gunk off your hands, pour an oil of your choice (canola, vegetable, olive… whatever gloopily floats your boat) into a frypan and start frying rissoles at a sort of medium high temperature (I dunno) until they’re golden brown on the outside and cooked on the inside. About 2 minutes each side should do it.
12. Serve with plenty of mashed potato, tomato sauce** and pointed comments along the line of how nice it is to come home and see everyone and be given the opportunity to refamiliarise yourself with the family kitchen. Mouths will be too full to allow verbal ripostes so expect the 'talky talky' hand signal and grins.
    
    

*possibly known as ground chuck elsewhere in the multiverse (Who is Chuck and what did he do to you?) - Oh and 500 - 700 grams is about 1.1 to 1.5 pounds

**ketchup, catsup, tomato relish, whatever.