This Is It

 

They Fall In Line

So the worst two days of the year are behind us now and we have the Blayney Show coming up on Saturday. Things are slowly falling into place, and the Superdogs’ schedule for 2014 looks like this:

22 March, Blayney Show (competing)

15-16-17 May, Gympie Show (competing)

18 May, RSPCA Million Paws Walk, Gympie (performing)

30-31 May, Springsure Show (performing)

7-8-9 June, Winton Show (competing/performing)

20-21 June, Mt Isa Show (competing/performing)

14 September, Pregnancy Loss Australia Memorial Walkathon, Melbourne (performing)

4-5 October, Hamilton Outdoor Adventure Fair (performing)

6 December, Penshurst Show (performing)

We have some other shows who might be interested, but are still having committee meetings about it.

 

The dogs are looking good, trick routines are almost sorted, although I’ll probably keep tweaking mine right up until the last day like I always do. Freya’s heelwork needs a lot of practice, but all of them can do the weave poles like experts – most days, anyway.

Three Years Gone

12 March 2011. The day that split my life in half. The day that changed me forever. Three years feels like forever, but at the same time I can remember every detail like it was yesterday – right down to worrying the paramedic would accidently step on my bare toes as he came into the bus, or telling Gabrielle “of course the baby will be breathing now!” and feeling another flicker of fear as we headed towards the hospital.

 

There aren’t words to describe the pain of losing a sister. A baby sister, only thirteen hours old. It was like living in a nightmare of pain and fear and waking up every morning only to realize you’re still trapped in your dream. And having to stitch your own wounds because nobody notices you’re injured too. There was no one to lean on, because everyone had fallen. For months, we all lived in a haze, going through the motions of living without any enthusiasm. Then there was an advertisement for the Goomeri Pumpkin Festival in the window of a gas station, asking for more performers. And we had a focus.

 

Picking up the pieces has been a slow process. Our whole world shattered into hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces, and all those pieces just don’t fit together the way they used to.

The Only Really Important Thing

My family is crazy. They really are. Our conversations are full of movie quotes and references. We say “yahtzee” and “idjit.” We talk about Stargates and named our car The Puddle Jumper. We feel a sudden cold breeze and say “I think I felt a chill!” to which someone will respond “That’s coz it’s cold.” When we’re about to hit the road, we say we’re just going “somewhere else,” or “somewhere that’s not here.” We joke that the talcum powder scattered around to keep the ants out are like salt lines.

 

Even more confusing to outsiders would be the quotes that got misheard. “Are you humming Metallica?” was heard by Jireh as “Are you hungry for talcum powder?” and his version gets quoted as often as the original. We laughed so hard the day he shouted that out, swinging in the ropes at a playground.

 

Going through a tragedy brought us closer, because at the end of the day, all we’ve got is each other. Time and time again I’m reminded of that. My family is all I have, all I can count on. Of course we fight and argue, because some days the bus just seems too small, especially this time of year. But the fights never last very long, and for me, at least, grudges fall by the wayside because it doesn’t really matter that Tess ate all the lollies (including three lollipops) off my bed, or that somebody cut the legs off my best pair of jeans, thinking it was hers. After going through March 2011, none of that seems like a big deal anymore. The only really important thing is that we’re together.

Feelings On A Page

There comes a time in everyone’s life, I think, where your view of the world changes, where everything changes, forever. For me, it happened on 12 March 2011, when I was fourteen years old and had everything going right. The day dawned bright, cheerful, mist still hanging around the hills in the distance. I jogged up the hill with Sparkie at 8am, cheerful and light-hearted, the cool breeze washing over my skin. At 11pm I was walking out of the John Hunter Hospital, legs feeling like lead and my eyes scratchy, a mixture of shock, grief, and guilt churning in my gut. And just like that my life was split in half.

I used to think things would “get back to normal” eventually. The old saying that time heals all wounds isn’t totally true. We’re still hurting, three years later. We probably always will be. We were broken and shattered and it took a long time before we found our feet again. Some days it feels like I’m still drowning in the feelings of that day and the weeks, months, that followed it. And then I reach out for my best friend, my Sparkie, because she’s always there.

When I write, my feelings seem to flow off my fingertips. Talking isn’t as easy. Words get tangled up and come out wrong, so mostly I don’t even try. But writing is different. Writing is a way to sort through my feelings, make sense of my emotions, and give them to my fictional characters. This time of year especially, my fan fictions tend to be heavy on emotion and light on action.

 

Right now I am listening to three different songs – Jessica is singing “Hang On” by Plumb, the phone is playing Newsboys’ “Save Your Life,” and I have “You’re All I Have” by Snow Patrol coming through my headphones. Kind of appropriate, I think.

Summer’s End

When it’s 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), there’s only so much you can do in a day. For weeks, we were waking up sweating at 8am to 30 degrees and suffering through the day only to fall into bed still sweating in 30 degrees. We camped by a river most of this summer, beating the heat with fans and swimming. One night was so hot and still that some of us went for a dip in the river around 10pm so we could be cool enough to sleep. So we didn’t really get anything done. We sat on the bed soaking wet in front of the fan, watching movies on the computer most of the day. The only exercise anybody got, except crazy Freya, was walking down to the river, swimming, and walking home again every few hours.

Tomorrow is the last day of summer. We finally hit the road again on Monday and there’s about three weeks until the Blayney Show. The heat is slowly going away, dropping ten degrees which is still too hot, but at least now the mornings and evenings are cool enough to work. Training has started up again. Sparkie and me are working on a new trick, which will hopefully be ready in time to use it in competition.

As Time Crawls By

The past few weeks not much has been happening. The biggest thing we’ve done is dragged the scrollsaw out and made a bunch of puzzles and various wooden arty things. You can see them on the Wheel Education Facebook page. The weather’s slowly cooling down again (for this week, anyway). We’re still parked in the same camp by the river, and we’re all starting to get itchy feet again.

 

We have just under five weeks until we compete at the show in Blayney, NSW, on March 22. We had such a blast last year that going back again was an easy decision. After that we have the Gympie Show on May 15-16-17. Sparkie and me have been competing there every year since 2009, so this will be our sixth time. The day after that – the 18th – we’re going to perform at the Million Paws Walk again. After that, there’s nothing really solid. Some other shows are keen to have us, so we’ll see what happens. Keep an eye on the team’s website or Facebook page for updates.

 

I’ve also taken to writing stories about my favourite movie/TV show characters – “fanfiction.” Well, actually I discovered fanfiction when I was eight and reading Watership Down, and started writing my own not long after that, but only recently have I started posting some of my stuff online. If anyone’s interested in reading them, I could probably post some links here.

 

Some random photos from the past couple of weeks: