I was brought up by Virgo parents. You may scoff at the astrology, but they were very stereotypical for that star sign, so go figure: health conscious and tidy to a fault. God help you if you left a phone book out. Raised with parents like that, you go one of two ways - become a messy hoarder in protest, or become a neat freak yourself. I'd like to think I'm not as extreme as they were, but I can't relax unless the house is uber tidy.

Thing is, we have a small house, so even a little mess makes it look less than harmonious, and I'm a big believer in tidy house equals tidy mind. So, everything must have a place. Just don't open my drawers - I guarantee you that they're a hell jumble. As long as my mother doesn't see inside my drawers - oh, the shame! - we're good.

My bedroom (we sleep in separate rooms, because sleep is precious) is always the neatest one. There isn't a lot in it - a bed, my surfboards, and a cupboard. That's it. I feel more peaceful when I'm not looking at a ton of stuff. Again though - don't open the cupboard.

Flaws, I have many, but keeping a tidy house isn't one of them (unless, those drawers, you get it, right?). My Dad used to say that the front door was the window to the house soul in the same way the eyes are the window to to the soul - a messy entrance says a lot about a person. I cannot bear more than one pair of shoes neat at the front door.

Could I improve myself? Whilst I'm answering the Weekend Experience community questions, I may as well keep going. This is fun. Of course. But some things I think, well, now I'm over 50, there's no way I can be bothered improving on some things, like tidy drawers. Life is too short. They'll get done when I feel like it and then I'll mess 'em up again. And I'm always going to walk barefoot and traipse sand across the house for Jamie to have to vacuum, and I ain't never vacuuming because, boring. God help me if Jamie dies.

Worst self? Often. The self that's irritable, in pain, stressed and anxious is not a nice self - she's snappy, terse, impatient. I find the best way to be in a marriage when I'm like this is to go to ground - tell Jamie I'm feeling shitty and it's not him, but I need space to process, to breath. I go walking, go to the beach, or lock myself in a room with a meditation or something. Self awareness is everything. You can think it's them but more often than not it's how you react to them. Taking a deep breath and saying nothing is inhabiting a better self.

One way to calm down is to go a'walking. I'm so lucky that we live right on the edge of the Otway National Park and the beautiful forest that's the Angelsea heath. You can walk for miles and there and get lost, or ride a bike, but that's more Jamie's thing. Last time we walked around the entire golf course but at the moment, I'm waiting for my hip to get better - no matter, it's better walking in winter anyway and far less snakes!

I am so in love with this place. It's full of good, chill people. I mean, what do you have to be an asshole about if you live in a place like this? I used to be embarrassed sometimes living in my old place, about half an hour inland from here. It used to have a caveat: 'I live here, but I have five acres', or 'I live here, but it's only half an hour from the sea', or 'I live here, but if I could afford to live on the coast I would' as if I had to make an excuse for living in that area. It's changed a lot recently as it's earmarked as a growth area for people who can't afford to live on the coast (or that might like living in a small rural town) but it used to be rather - redneck, I suppose.

If you weren't a fourth gen wool farmer or your family didn't have a street named after them you could never really fit in. Rural towns in Australia can be a little like that. They'll accept the Indian family running the grocery store but they'll be pretty intolerant of migrants and refugees otherwise. There can be a lot of intolerance and flag waving from people that have never really travelled and that read a particular newspaper that brainwashes them to believed migrants are stealing their jobs and taking over their country, in the same breath as making them believe that indigenous people are also a threat to their sense of belonging to a country that was stolen in the first place.

Maybe I'm being unfair, and of course I'm generalising, but there's an underlying racism in this country that makes it the 'lucky country' for only a particular demographic. Australia definitely isn't all white sandy beaches and turquoise waters - and the sharks aren't always in the water but the narrow minded, bigoted, racist, intolerant and untravelled and uncultured people on it's land. We are quite good at sweeping those things under the carpet or into a drawer. We sweep our history into a drawer, after all - massacres and indentured servitude and miscegnation of it's first people, and then we tell them 'they should get over it' even though for many it's in their living memory and created inherited trauma and disadvantage.

Yep, sometimes I am ashamed to call Australia home.

On the whole though, I feel lucky to have been born here, and it's a better, safer place to wait out the apocalypse than many places.

Well, that's it for the questions this week - I have a house to tidy and shit to sweep into drawers.

With Love,

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