Rebecca Addison's Blog, page 7

6. My most excruciatingly embarrassing moment.

You thought I’d forgotten didn’t you. Well, I am here, at 9.10pm and I am going to tell you my most embarrassing moment.

Only…

I can’t think of what it is.

You see, I’ve worked pretty hard at not being embarrassed over the years. It’s mainly because I’m an awful blusher. I blush when I think about blushing.

I can’t think of any truly mortifying experiences so I must either be excellent at avoiding situations where there’s potential for me to do something stupid.. or I’ve been lucky.

I’m also all about risk management. I have never tried karaoke. I only dance in big crowds and with a wine (or two, let’s be honest) on board. I’m slightly obsessive at checking my fly is up / skirt is not tucked into underpants / toilet paper is not stuck on shoe.

Does this mean my life’s most excruciatingly embarrassing moment is still out there, waiting with a calculated smile for me to bump into it a few years from now?

But I know, I know, you clicked on this post to read something embarrassing.

So here is someone else’s embarrassing story. When I was in my teens a friend and I picked up another friend from the airport. While our parents were milling around checking out the Women’s Day in Whitcoulls and staring at the arrivals screen we decided to go for a walk. We strolled around the terminal, got bored in about three minutes, and then decided to sit on the seats that lined one wall. The plane was late, so we walked some more, looked at the planes and pretended we were about to go somewhere amazing. The friend eventually arrived and we all walked through the crowds of families and business people to baggage claim then out to the car. Nothing embarrassing there, right? Wrong. About ten minutes after we walked in the door I noticed something stuck to the butt of her jeans. It was long and white, almost like a slim envelope. It had brownish reddish stuff on it.

“Hey, what’s that?” I asked as I approached. She craned her neck and looked down. And we both knew. Our eyes locked in a moment of pure horror.

It was a used sanitary pad. It was someone else’s used sanitary pad.

I will give whoever left that pad sticky side up on a seat in Wellington airport the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe she was unwell, or even the first unwitting victim of this pad being stuck on pants.

The point is, we were in the airport for a long, long time after we sat on those seats.

Good friend that I was, when I realised this, I laughed until I cried.

 

5. 9 things I just can’t handle.

I had to really think about this one. There are a couple of things that annoy me.. but nine?  Thankfully, my sister is visiting me at the moment and she knows me better than anyone else. Like a good lil’ sis, she was quick to help me pinpoint my flaws.

1. Bad mornings

I have tried and tried and tried to be a morning person. I just can’t do it. It’s not the earliness of it that I can’t handle. It’s the abrupt jolt of being transported into my day. I need to ease into being awake. I like silence while I nurse a cup of tea and read. Soft music with no words. No one talking to me is preferable. What I really can’t handle is being woken up suddenly, having kicking, playfighting kids under my covers, hard rock music and/or guitars being played with distortion, three people talking to me at once (all of which happens on a regular basis).

2. Dog ears

The other day I was helping in my son’s classroom and I spotted their bookshelf out of the corner of my eye. Books were shoved in sideways, spilling out on the floor. Every day after that my eyes found those books every time I walked past, until one day I couldn’t handle it anymore and I started sorting it out. There were wrinkled covers with creases and pages bent back. The teacher saw me make a face. He stopped my tidying, because the children needed to “take ownership” over the bookshelf and tidy it themselves. He promised me gently that it would be fixed by the end of the day. It was. I still cringe when I remember those dog ears.

3. Last minute requests.

Yesterday my day went like this:

I’ve lost my hat.
I need money for the East Timor fundraiser.
I forgot my art project, can you bring it to me?
Sorry, I know it’s three days before the event, but we don’t have a billy kart now. Can you make one and bring it to school so that we can use it too?

Enough said.

4. There house was so nice and quite.

Okay. I know. I know. Some people just aren’t great spellers. I get it. But if we could all just learn the difference between their/they’re/there and quite/quiet I think there would be a lot of us in the world who would be very grateful. That’s all I’m saying.

5. Too many words.

This is similar to bad mornings, but it’s all day. I’m a writer and I’m obsessed with words. My brain seeks them out. If I’m listening to a song, I couldn’t tell you what the melody is or what instruments are used, but I will be able to repeat the lyrics word for word. I listen to conversations when I’m in cafes and restaurants. Because of this, I get flustered if there are too many words at the same time. If I’m listening to music in the car and my husband is talking to me and the kids are having their own conversation in the back, I can hear all of the words all at once and I’m paying attention to them all. My husband says, just block it out. Quiet + words is perfection. Background noise + words + words + words is a nightmare.

6. Not again.

I read Stephen King’s book On Writing a while ago, and it’s helped me as a writer and ruined me as a reader. There are some words that should be on a naughty list, or at least used very sparingly (and in the right context!). Smirk is the no. 1 offender. If characters never smirked again I think we’d all be fine. I don’t even think we’d miss it. I know the crooked half-smile is sexy for the male lead (this is not a smirk, by the way, a smirk is mean). I know how hard it is to portray all of those facial expressions in a way that translates to your reader. I do get it. But please:

7. Driving out of the zone.

I learned to drive in New Zealand and now I live in Sydney. Here, there are three or four lane highways with monstrous trucks and manic lane changing. I have a designated driving zone and when I’m forced to venture out of it for a hospital appointment or .. (really, only a hospital appointment would make me do it).. I really can’t handle it.

8. Any kind of stomach upset or hint at feeling sick or anything remotely connected to feeling sick.

In our family, you’re not allowed to say “I feel sick” unless you need a bowl or a toilet in the next sixty seconds. If I think someone is going to be sick I will be awake all night fretting. I will track your every move and quarantine you to the germ zone and cover you in antibacterial gel. I’m emetophobic. I have an irrational fear of vomiting. Actually, it’s the possibility of vomiting. I don’t even like writing the words.

9. Someone being mean to my kid.

I’m a pretty measured person in all aspects of my life except for when it comes to my kids. I’m horrified at my reaction sometimes when one of my children tells me that someone teased them or left them out. I usually plaster on a patient smile and offer advice. But believe me, it’s not always what I want to do.

Leave me a comment with one or more of your flaws. Don’t leave me hanging out here all on my own!

4. (One of the) hardest things I’ve ever been through.

 

So. In the spirit of honesty, I will admit that I am kind of cheating. This isn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. But it was hard. And, it’s something I don’t think we talk about enough.

In 2004, at 25 years old, I had my first born babe. I was pretty unprepared for motherhood like a lot of first-time parents, and I’d been through a difficult pregnancy that involved weekly hospital visits and a spell on crutches. I have no idea if any of that had any impact on what happened after I gave birth. Maybe it would have happened anyway. Sometimes I wonder if it would happen again if I had a baby now, when I have years of parenting experience and maturity under my belt. I have no doubt that it could.

Jemima’s birth was a grueling 36 hour affair. When she finally made her entrance into the world (not until she was ready – oh, what foreshadowing that was), I was beyond exhausted. I don’t remember much about that last two hours but I do remember the strange heavy feeling that washed over me almost as if my blood had thickened and slowed in my veins. I was lightheaded and couldn’t catch my breath. It wasn’t medical. It was anxiety, and it hit me in a flash. When my midwife placed my wet, purpleish baby in my arms, I looked down at her and felt nothing but hot panic. My first thought was, What have I done? Even then, in the minutes after birth, my mind was already spinning the lie – that I had made a truly terrible, irretrievable mistake. When I think of it now it makes me so sad. I’d like to go back and experience the wonder and joy of meeting my baby girl for the first time without those hormones and that brain chemistry ruining it.

I was desperate to get home because I was convinced that it was the hospital that was making me feel so panicked. It didn’t help.. in fact, it made things worse. She cried and I couldn’t breathe. I heard her screaming 24 hours a day, even when she was sleeping in her bed. I cried and paced the house. I dreamed of driving far, far away. At my lowest, I tried to convince my husband that my mother should adopt our baby. I was completely serious and couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to go along with my plan. If it hadn’t been for my mum and sisters who packed me and the baby up and moved us into mum’s spare room, who got up to her in the night and fed her, who gave Jemima her first bath – well, I don’t know what would have happened.

A lot of women don’t have that kind of support. That’s why we need to talk about postnatal depression. I was so embarrassed that I wasn’t acting like a blissful first-time mum and I was deeply ashamed at the thoughts I was having about my daughter. Underneath it all was horrible, dark, twisting guilt and the words, What’s wrong with me?

If I could speak to my twenty-five-year-old self now, I would tell her that there is nothing wrong with her; not in her soul, where she believes she is a bad, bad person. No. I would explain that she’s suffering from an illness and that she needs help to get better again. I would tell her that she will be a wonderful mother – and soon. That she will love that little girl more than anything. That the way she’s feeling is temporary – it will pass, she will be okay. Most of all I’d tell her that her relationship with her daughter is going to be special. The two of them are going to discover how alike they are and they’re going to love one another fearlessly.

PANDA (Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Australia)

Post and Antenatal distress support group (NZ)

PPD moms (USA)

3. The lie I told that I got away with (or didn’t).

I have two children. One of them is honest to a fault. The rare times this child has lied, it has ended in both of us bursting into laughter because the execution of it was just so poor. This child sees the world in simple terms – something is true, or it isn’t. The other child is like me.

When I was a kid, I didn’t quite know what to do with the writer’s brain I’d been given. I had stories and what ifs and characters in my head that were as real to me as my best friend Elinor with the famous dad. And they were so much more interesting than real life. I mean, when it was my turn for Show & Tell, why tell the class about my new Beta sneakers when I could explain that I was a late to school that morning because my eyeball had fallen out on the way, rolling into the dirt? Why tell them that I had done precisely nothing that weekend, except for practicing Sound of Music routines with my sisters at the end of the neighbour’s driveway and scaling the small bank next to the house with an orange tow rope like a rock climber? No. I knew I could do much, much better than that.

On the first day of a new school year, the slightly bewildered and shell-shocked teacher would ask us to write a page on what we had done over the summer break. One page! Please. I’d give her four. I set to work, writing not about the mud pies I’d made and decorated with daisies, or the rotten branch I rode like a horse, pretending it was a pirate ship bounding over white-tipped waves, or the fraught games of Barbies I played with my sister, where we’d dump all our stuff between us and divide it up in a laborious yet highly methodical session of ‘Picks’. No. I wrote about the cruise I had taken to Africa and our rocket ship day trip to the milky way. Christmas morning, so special that year, because we had woken up in the haunted mansion at Disneyland, having been mysteriously transported there overnight by our wonderfully sneaky parents.

I don’t remember getting into trouble (much) over my lies. I was smart enough to keep them to a minimum when I was around my mother, who would listen with a patient smile and then go about her day. She was an unsatisfying audience.

Given my history, as an adult, I have a surprisingly strong distaste for dishonesty. I don’t like lies. I very, very rarely tell one. It’s become a personal rule I won’t break, like never reading the end of the book first, and no coffee after 12pm. I still have exciting scenarios that come into my head unbidden. They’re still better than real life.

I’ve just learned to keep them contained within the pages of a book.

Street Team!

Join my street team to receive a free copy of The ‘Ohana Tree!

Limited spaces available.

In exchange for your free copy, you’ll need to write a review on Goodreads and Amazon and if you liked it, promote the book on your social media accounts. There will also be swag giveaways and exclusive teasers for book two in the ‘Ohana series.

Here are some ideas for promo posts:

post a pic of The ‘Ohana Tree on your ereader to Facebook and Instagram
make your own teasers on picmonkey using photos and quotes
create GIFs from images on GIF Maker
share your reviews on Facebook
tweet to let your followers know you’re reading The ‘Ohana Tree
recommend the book to your Goodreads friends

I can’t wait to share my latest novel with you. Email me on hello@rebeccaaddison.com to sign up!

 

 

2. The day I left home.

Firstly, I have to explain a little something about myself. Since I was a little girl, I have loved the sensation that comes with the decision to move. I blame my mother, who would often rearrange the furniture in a pique of boredom and/or restlessness. Oh, how I loved walking into a room that had been taken apart and put back together in a different way. Those first two or three seconds of complete confusion tinged with excitement. I loved moving house as a child. Even the unpacking and the terrible week of disorganisation and mess that followed was worth it. My husband wants to get a gypsy head tattoo on his arm with my face. I’m iffy about this idea, because I’m not sure about how I’d look in a headscarf, and also, I think he just wants another tattoo.

My first big move came at 16 when I decided to move away from Wellington, where I lived with my two sisters, my mother and my step-father, to Auckland, to live with my dad, step-mother and toddler-aged brother. When I look back at events that shaped my future, those forks in the road that will determine the rest of your life – well, this has to be one of the biggies. My adult self often wonders what on earth I was thinking by doing that. I left my school, where I was a good student and had lots of friends, my sisters, and my mum. I can only think that the restlessness and itch to see new things that still plagues me now must have set in. There is very little I can do about it when that happens. It’s like an ache, deep in my bones.

My second move came two years later when I left a handwritten note for my dad to say that I had left home. I was 18. Another decision that my adult self shakes her head at. I don’t like to think of myself as a person who moves out, leaving nothing but a note. My teens and early twenties are littered with selfish decisions like that.  I had wanted out for at least a year; I’d been collecting kitchen utensils and crockery from op shops for months, stashing them under my bed in an old suitcase. I was desperate to live on my own. I wanted to shop for food and buy bed linen, cook dinners and walk around an empty house knowing that no one was about to arrive home. Now, it’s hard to remember living in a way that was so small. My world consisted of me and my boyfriend. It was as though everything else existed slightly outside of time. When my daughter meets her first love, I’m going to try to pull her back into the real world. I don’t want her to get swallowed by it like I was. Hey, I said I’ll try. As for her moving out, my husband and I are secretly hatching plans involving granny flats and separate entrances that will hopefully keep our children with us for a long, long, time. The crazy Sydney housing market might have some positives after all.

My third big move came in 2010, when we left home. We flew to Australia to begin a new life.

My first move was about adventure. I still love new things. I love moving much less now that I have children.

My second move was about freedom. I still love having the house to myself more than just about anything. I’m still deeply attached to my concept of ‘home’.

My third move was a mix of both. We wanted new things and we wanted to create a home for our children that matched the one we held onto so tightly in our imaginations.

And now? I think I’m done moving. Travel – absolutely. But moving your things and your children and your life? I’ve had enough of that. I always said that when I finally settled down I would get a tattoo of an anchor on my foot.

Maybe it’s time to make that appointment.

1. That thing that happened in high school that pretty much changed my life forever.

1996. Onehunga, Auckland. I had just moved to a new city to live with my dad for the first time since I was six years old and was navigating the brand new world of a co-ed high school (that’s mixed-sex.. boys AND girls. My mind was exploding).

This photo was taken at one of the first parties I had ever been to. It was at Abbey’s house. Her parents were away and she had a boyfriend at University who once said that she was his ‘partner in crime’, a phrase that made me long for someone to say that to me. Abbey had a platinum pixie cut and wore cooler clothes than anybody I had ever seen outside of a magazine. I was a party rookie. Before moving to the big smoke, I had only been to all girl sleepovers except for one brief appearance at David’s house where I stood awkwardly against a wall with his friend Toby while my friend and David eyed each other up. I had never smoked a cigarette or tried weed and got drunk on half a glass of wine. Before 1996, I was a girls’ school girl; when it came to boys, sex, and alcohol I felt like I was on the outside, looking in.

This photo is the first picture my husband and I have together. Yes, that’s us – him with his shoulder length knotty hair and suede jacket, and me with my – yes, Snoopy t-shirt with denim over the top. It was the 90s so my eyebrows are overplucked and I’m wearing a cute little clip in the side of my slightly too long pixie cut. My husband taunts me with this photo every now and again because I look so weird in it. It’s true – you can see our personalities even though they were still being formed at that tender age of 16. He’s the clown. I hate the camera.

We met at Alex’s garage party where there was a keg of Lion Red and Pearl Jam on the stereo and I told him that I only liked surfers… but then talked to him all night. I wore a leather jacket much like the one he wears in the photo, and brown lace-up boots. After that night, we were going out. He bought me an ALF phone. We went camping together. He tried to make me comfortable in his “cool group” full of musicians, pretty, extroverted girls, and kids who were anti-establishment. It didn’t work. I overheard one of them in the dark room at school pondering our relationship, saying, “I don’t get it. She’s not even pretty.”

The thing that happened in high school that changed my life forever was meeting my husband. Beat that.

30 Days of Confessions

 

So. This is kind of how my life works. Last night we ate sausages and it was the first red meat I’d eaten in a while. Not months.. just a week. Or two weeks. The point is, it was semi-new and my body wasn’t sure about it. This morning, I didn’t feel so great. That, and a week in Canberra at the National Folk Festival surrounded by cool, bearded vegans and delicious Indian food, led me to a new plan to eat vegetarian dishes every second night and keep red meat to a minimum.

There I was, browsing veggie dishes for tonight online when I came across this cool blog called Veggie Mama. A bit of reading and being nosy (I think we’re going to have her pumpkin and millet risotto tonight) and I stumbled across this writing challenge she did in 2013. Now, as a writer and a born and raised teacher’s pet, this sounded like my kind of homework.

Plus, I have one book that is finished and is awaiting release (The ‘Ohana Tree, if you’ve somehow missed my million social media posts about it), and another book that I am currently hiding from. Or, it is hiding from me. Whatever. We aren’t allowed to speak to one another for 6 weeks. That leaves me with nothing to help me with my write-every-single-day habit.

A challenge! And a writing challenge at that. This will give me something to write every day until The ‘Ohana Tree is released, thus staving off nail biting, insomnia, and screaming at my husband, and it will allow you to be nosy and look around inside my head. I can’t promise that it will always be tidy and/or pretty in there.

I’m stealing these prompts from Veggie Mama, Stacey, if you read this – I hope you don’t mind. Also, your house looks really cool.

I’ll write every day and post them each evening. Links will be on my Facebook page and my Twitter account.

Here they are:

1. That thing that happened in high school that pretty much changed my life forever.

2. The day I left home.

3. That lie I told that I got away with (or didn’t!).

4. The hardest thing I’ve ever been through.

5. 9 things I just can’t handle.

6. My most excruciatingly embarrassing moment.

7. The story of my first kiss (not skipping all the awkward details!)

8. The day I started blogging – what was I thinking?

9. The most difficult decision I have ever made.

10. 7 things I learned from being a kid.

11. The last thing that made me cry.

12. My earliest childhood memory.

13. That thing that really gets my goat.

14. The worst Christmas I’ve ever had.

15. What I am addicted to and why.

16. My obituary.

17. A DIY on something I know nothing about.

18. What I’ve learned about life so far.

19. Brain dump: what’s on my mind right now.

20. Something I lost.

21. My worst habit.

22. Thank you to a thing that I love.

23. What I want to be when I grow up.

24. Something I found.

25. A review on something I’ve used, watched, eaten, or read lately.

26. An update on my most popular post – where are we now?

27. Set a goal and a plan on how to get there.

28. Top 5 blogs I’m loving right now.

29. I ask advice on something that is troubling me.

30. A menu for my last meal ever.

Aloha!

2016 already, can you believe that? And in a couple of days, my two children will go back to school and begin a whole new year. This year is going to be an exciting one for me because I’ve been working away on a new project and soon I’ll be able to share it with you all.

As soon as Still Waters was released I began thinking about my next novel. I believe in writing every day, for me, it keeps my creative side limber and ready to go when I need it. Whenever I try to have a writing break I end up feeling half-crazy within about a week, and I know I need to get back to it. For the next novel, I had a very clear idea from the start. Two people from opposite backgrounds; one who has lived a sheltered, isolated life firmly rooted in tradition and family loyalty, the other a free spirit with no roots and no desire to settle down. What if these two people met? What if the man who has never left the island longs to share in her adventures? What if she’s sick of running and wants to experience family for the first time in her life?

That was my starting point. In this book, I wanted to explore the complexities of family relationships, loyalty to loved ones vs loyalty to your own dreams and desires. It’s a slightly longer, gentler book than Still Waters, told from our male main character’s point of view. And it’s set in Hawaii.

Over the next couple of months, I’ll be posting excerpts and teasers as well as the all important release date. I hope you’ll follow me on this new adventure. I can’t wait to share it with you.

Top picks for 2015

So, 2015 is almost over. Did it drag for you, or fly by?

This year was a crazy one for me. I wrote a children’s book, traveled to Asia with my family, accidentally wrote Still Waters and self published it, then wrote another novel to finish the year off! I’m taking a well earned break over the holiday season and will be back into editing when the children return to school at the end of January. I’m hoping to release the next novel by the middle of 2016 depending on how well the edit goes. To keep up to date with new (and old) book news make sure you come over to my Facebook page.

So now that we’re nearly ready to see the new year in, it’s only natural to look back at the year that was. I’ve been thinking about the books I’ve read. I’m usually a one-book-a-week girl, but with all of the writing this year I’ve had to let that slide a little. I’ve still read some great books though! These are the five that have stuck in my mind:

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

I’d heard a bit of the buzz surrounding this book by the time I picked it up. I was hooked from the first page. The writing is very clever and emotive without being sentimental. I read it months ago and still think about it.

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

I’m fairly new to YA fiction and they have been a bit hit and miss for me. This was a big hit. It kept me guessing until the end and I thought the characterisation/dialogue was brilliant.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

I read this book in Malaysia on holiday. VW is one of my all time fave authors. No one writes like she does. Orlando was so different from anything I have ever read that it had me laughing out loud, and looking around the empty room for someone to read out a passage to. Read it with someone you love.

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

This book arrived just as I was leading up to releasing Still Waters and was scared out of my wits. A saviour. I bought the ebook then immediately bought the print copy. I read the passage about the fear + the roadtrip to my kids. Buy it! Anyone wanting to live a creative life needs this book.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

I just finished this one on holiday about a week ago. Wowsers. It was a book I picked up not knowing anything about it and I went into it blind. Very, very sad story and a difficult read, but I include it here because I think it’s an important book, and one that stands out from the others I have read this year.

How about you? What were your top five reads of 2015?