hot and spicy

My handsome daddy always was her favourite blue-eyed son; he was kind and gentle and generous and clever and capable and strong and reliable and curious about the world, and he didn't have a mean bone in his body. He was always the first person she turned to when she needed help, and he never let her down.

Anyway, my grandma used to tell me about all the homeless animals my father would bring home with him, almost every day – an endless stream of kittens, puppies, birds and other beasties that needed somewhere to live or somewhere to heal before they were released back into the wild. One morning as she fed some new puppies he'd rescued from somewhere or other, grandma finally said, "Enough! Darling boy, you must stop bringing home every poor waif that needs a place to live! We don't have room for any more pets!" and my father (who was about six) hung his head and went off very sadly.

Later that day, my grandmother heard strange noises coming from the cake tins in her huge farmhouse kitchen, and went to investigate. Inside the Iced Sponge container she discovered a half-starving kitten wrapped in a teatowel and, nearby, she found my father hiding in the shadows, trembling about what her reaction would be.

Of course she hugged him and they kept the kitten, and every other animal and person he ever brought home for feeding and comfort and company after that.

I've been thinking about my father a great deal lately. It was Father's Day in Oz last weekend, and of course he's no longer here for me to talk to, and I miss him terribly.

When I was little, our house was always full of people and animals and noise. My father seemed to know everyone in town, my parents had many friends from all over the place, people dropped into our home constantly and we seemed to have someone extra at the dinner table nearly every night. My father also had this endearing habit of telling any of his male friends and acquaintances, if their wives were in hospital or having breakdowns or recovering from illnesses, that my mother would look after their kids for as long as they needed it. This meant that one of the main memories from my childhood is of a series of tiny helpless babies living with us for weeks at a time while my mother spent her days diligently looking after them, bathing them, feeding them and playing with them as if they were her own.

My mother still sometimes answers the door and finds a thirty-something person standing there who says, "You don't know me, but when I was a baby you looked after me for a couple of months, and I wanted to say thank you."

My father's family had owned large tracts of land in the Brisbane River catchment for years. Once, it had been dairies – my father spent much of his youth, when he wasn't rescuing animals and bringing home local children who needed a good feed and a kind word, that is – milking cows. By the time I was born, most of the land had been sold off and developed as some of the most desirable acreage suburbs, favoured by academics and professionals seeking a semi-rural existence close to town and UQ.

By the end of 1973, much of Australia had been inundated with the biggest rains since European settlement. Because of our peculiar river systems, heavy rains in north Queensland quickly caused flooding in the southern states that left vast areas of the inland submerged for weeks. In January 1974, Cyclone Wanda brought winds and rain – between 36" in the city and 60" in some outlying areas, over a couple of days - that pushed half of Brisbane underwater and drowned more than 40 suburbs. The Brisbane River, which winds through the city, and its associated creeks, broke their banks. Thousands of people were left homeless, and our suburb was one of the worst hit.

Our family house – which stood on a hill – was quite safe, but several of my father's other properties and businesses were destroyed. It was a devastating experience from which he never really recovered, emotionally or financially. Despite his own losses, as always, his first concern was for others and our whole family worked for weeks in the relief efforts, distributing food and medicine to the homeless, shovelling mud and carting away debris from damaged areas. For months afterwards, we had people we hardly knew living rent-free in my father's houses while they rebuilt their own homes.

When I started keeping this online diary, I wanted it to be full of happy thoughts. About the only sad thing I've ever written about in any detail as hissandtell was when I was raped, because I've made a conscious effort to use this diary as a vehicle for fun and play and for trying to make sense of the obscure absurdities around me in a humorous, ironic way.

Two years ago, I was just starting to recover from a work-related breakdown which had seen me resign from my job at the end of 2002 and spend months sitting in my garden suffering from PTSD. This basically meant that I shook, twitched and cried a great deal and sobbed inconsolably whenever anyone said anything remotely kind to me, and locked myself away from the world because I was simply unable to function on any practical level.

I was sad and exhausted beyond compare and I felt like a failure for the first and only time in my life. Before I quit my job, I'd never given up on anything. I always thought I had the strength and the inner resources to succeed at absolutely everything the world threw at me, as I always had in the past. I have a highly indignant sense of right and wrong and I've never in my life stood back and let someone walk over me or anyone I care about – or even a perfect stranger who needs help, for that matter. I try to be kind and to live a decent and honorable life without lies or deceit. Although I have a dreadfully caustic tongue, I usually manage not to say anything unnecessarily unkind or thoughtless. I'm a quick learner: an excellent student who always passes exams with flying colours and minimal efforts. I have lots of friends and people who love me, and tell me so often. I was my father's favourite child – a fact my siblings admit freely - and I always felt pretty special and privileged. I've never been in an abusive relationship. I remain on cordial terms with almost everyone I've ever known, lived with and worked with. People don't often try to fuck with me. Fortunately, I can also be very, very scary when I choose to be. I choose my battles wisely and I'd never lost any war I'd ever been in.

Both my husband and my father always said I'm the first person you'd want on your side in an argument, and the last person you'd ever want to pick a fight with.

But after seven years working in one of the most notoriously difficult communities in the state, I was tired of arguing with fuckwits day after day, tired of bad manners and stupid gratuitous advice from stupid people who should at least have the awareness to keep their stupid mouths shut when they clearly knew so very little about anything, tired of being bullied and intimidated by politicians and public servants I was not allowed to argue back with because my job prohibited me from doing so, and tired of having to give the myriad Village Idiots who invaded my space as much consideration and time as those people who actually were informed and rational and knew what they were talking about.

When I fell apart, I know how very fortunate I was to have the physical and financial means to recover in a place that was, and still is, a complete paradise to me. This is my sanctuary from a post-9/11 world I just had to get away from for a while – living in the bush is my humble little version of Siddharth's "going into the forest", or Thoreau's "simple living" in the woods. To me, nature is what's sacred. I appreciate the fact that, living here, I can't tell where nature ends and art begins.

I seek to dance in balance between the worlds, as they say.

I have a fabulous funky house, a beautiful garden, pets I adore who run wild and free, and the most wonderful husband I can imagine. For those first several months while I sat around trembling, J looked after me completely: he cooked meals, forced me to eat when I had no interest in food, washed dishes, cleaned the house, laundered my clothes and drove me anywhere I needed to be so I could try to get better. He even taught himself how to bake cakeys (which looked dreadful but tasted surprisingly good) to cheer me up.

Overnight, I'd gone from working long, long hours in a highly-paid highly-stressful job I'd never wanted, to doing absolutely nothing all day except drinking coffee and re-reading Jung and Joseph Campbell and Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky and John Pilger, and listening to music. Along with several other school administrators, principals and educational advisors in our district, I'd been bullied and stalked and intimidated for months by the unethical new local Member of Parliament (the wicked Dairy Queen) until I decided I simply didn't want to work for the evil, lying, corrupt state government any more, ever again, and that I couldn't compromise my principles and peddle their political propaganda any longer, or stand my ground against constant intimidation with an annoyingly passive inscrutable smile on my face while I pretended not to know what Dairy Queen and her disgusting crooked immoral cronies were up to.

Then, of course, there was that pesky little matter of "confidentiality", which meant that I wasn't technically allowed to talk about anything to do with the workplace without the very real risk of being sacked, prosecuted, incarcerated and stripped of my superannuation fund.

I have lots and lots of political and media contacts and keep in touch with many persons of "influence". I used to work as a journalist; I have several friends who are still employed in newspapers, television and broadcasting. They were all begging for me to tell them all I knew so they could expose the bitch and her associates for what they were, but I decided to think on it for a while. Not for nothing is my motto, "Revenge is a dish best eaten cold", you know.

Anyway, when I was newly unemployed and sitting naked in the garden painting my toenails and all, I received persistent offers from a newspaper editor I know to write "entertaining anecdotes about life in the country" for a weekly or fortnightly column (my choice) in a couple of the local rural papers. I know I've led an interesting existence, I've travelled all over the world and had many different lives, I've met a lot of fascinating people, I'm a published writer and poet with an excellent work history, I'm not exactly your average farmer's wife (and nor is my husband your average cow-cocky): and in my muddled haze I thought DiaryLand was a good opportunity to practise putting some of my experiences, adventures and ideas into story form.

In the months leading up to my resignation, I'd start to cry when I woke up in the morning at 5 am, and spend all day at work crying on and off, and then cry all the way home until I pulled up at the front gate at 7 pm. My husband and dog would meet me at the gate every single night – J would open the car door for me and give me a kiss and a long hard hug, Patchouli the Dog Familiar would greet me enthusiastically with a happy little howl and a hugely wagging tail, and they'd both lead me into the house and sit with me on the sofa. J would bring me a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, massage my head and rub my sore feet and, while I cuddled my beautiful soft warm Patchouli and fell asleep exhausted in front of the television, J would make dinner.

Sometimes I'd take Patchouli in to work with me, and she'd sit quietly at my feet wherever I was working, visit the children in the classrooms with me and play ball with them at lunchtime. Even kids who didn't like dogs fell in love with her. She looked like a storybook dog, with the prettiest face and the strangest spotty markings, and she had a sweet and gentle nature they trusted instantly.

My Administrative Officer's husband always said that in his next life he wanted to come back as the Chez Hiss dog. Our visitors' book here at home is full of references to Patchouli and drawings of her from visiting children who, more than anything else, wanted to take her with them, and begged their parents for a dog just like her. Our neighbours and friends always asked after her. My former students still send her Christmas cards every year.

We bought her from a pet shop in the Easter holidays 1999, when she was seven weeks old. Our previous dog Mr Foster, a huge-jawed huge-testicled Blue Heeler who'd been horribly beaten and abused as a puppy and whom we'd inherited because he'd been run out of town for biting the mailman on the leg and a shearers' cook on the bottom, had died of old age a couple of months before. Before Mr Foster, we'd lost J's lovely old sheepdog Gator to snake bite and Flo the 9-week old Border Collie puppy to rat poison just after we moved here.

We tend to inherit a lot of other people's cast-off pets. My aviary is full of birds of all kinds with broken wings, and naughty cockatoos which had once been pets full of promise but were released to the wild because they were noisy and destructive (and because people in town were threatening to shoot them for damaging their buildings and gardens). Whenever anyone needs a home for geese or ducks or chickens or turkeys or guinea fowl, or dogs, or donkeys, or piglets, or horses bound for the knackery, or poddy lambs that their owners don't have time to bottle-feed and hand-rear, they call on us first. Last week I was in a local store and a woman I barely know told me she had 23 Angora goats she had to get rid of, and that I could have as many of them as I wanted because she knew they'd go to a good home.

When I reported this to J, he said, "Um, the number you want would be zero, right, darling?"

Anyway, by April 1999 we were in the market for a new dog. We'd been offered an errant two-year old male Golden Retriever by the local policeman, but J and I decided we wanted a female puppy without any bad habits. So there we were in town: we'd split up to go and keep our separate appointments, and we'd met back at the Good Food Cafe for coffee and cheesecake.

"I went to the pet shop, and found a puppy," I said.

"I went to the pet shop and found a puppy too," J said.

"Oh? And what did your puppy look like?" I asked.

"Pretty ordinary," he replied. "Her brothers had classic blue cattle dog markings, but she was a funny little white mung bean with strange black spots all over her, and a black pirate patch over her left eye."

We looked at each other and I said slowly, "That's the same puppy I wanted," and then we both said, "Let's go there right now," so we left our coffee and raced back to pet shop straight away and bought her and whisked her away to live with us at Chez Hiss.

Like all puppies, she was very naughty and what she seemed to like to do most was bite and chew things. She was an incorrigible thief. She stole and left irreparable teethmarks on visitors' caps, hats, designer sunglasses, riding boots, shoes, sandals and clothing. She ate entire sprinkler systems, went deep-sea diving in the fishpond diligently for hours one day until she'd pulled out the fountain, dug up plants, caught and played with one poor guinea fowl until it died ("No! Bad dog!" and a smack – the only one she ever got – taught her not to do that again), nipped the back seatbelt in the Toyota clean in half, chomped the armrest on the wooden day bed, tore up a stuffed toy koala I'd had since I was a child, wore underpants and bras on her head, had a fetish for fishnet stockings and fluffy marabou feathers on fuck-me mules (ah, just like her mother) and pretty much demolished my Smokey Bear Pendleton blanket from Santa Fe I'd always been so fond of.

Then, when she was about 12 months old, she suddenly grew up and never, ever gave us a scrap of trouble again.

For the next five and a half years she brought us nothing but joy, every single day. If you had sat down and designed the perfect dog for us and our lives and our situation, you would have come up with Patchouli. She was a little charmer and everybody fell in love with her; everyone would comment on how cute she was and what a fine physical specimen she was. But she was also well-socialised, kind, reliable, trustworthy, gentle, funny, eccentric, intelligent, adaptable, highly-strung, friendly, keen to be in on anything, clean, healthy, strong and so very, very pretty. She was housetrained in two goes, never barked inappropriately, was snake-savvy and was the perfect blend of spoiled housedog and outdoorsy companion in the paddock.

She died on Wednesday, and our hearts are broken.

She had seizures – we don't know why, but the vet said it sounded like poisoning or snake bite. She died in the car on the way to the vet, and J immediately arranged her into a peaceful position so that when he brought her home she just looked as if she were asleep on the back seat. He put her gently on the lawn and we lay with her for a little while hugging her and telling her how much we loved her. She was still as soft and cuddly as ever.

J dug the grave straight away, under a frangipani tree, a pomegranate tree and a fiddlewood tree in the side garden. He asked me where I wanted her and in what position, then dug it so it faced west towards the setting sun, and made it so her head was slightly higher than her bottom. He sobbed the whole time and I realised all over again what a good, kind and decent man he is and how much I love him and how much he loves me, and how much I rely on him when things go bad, and how much like my father he is in so many ways.

He burned a disk of "Come in Spinner" (her film on my movie page to the left) and put a label on it with her photo and "Our Baby Patch 1999-2005" on it, and put it in several layers of plastic and in a well-sealed box. We buried her on top of her sheepskin rug, in her faux-fur cowprint dog bed with her head on her green fluffy fur pillow, with the letters that said "Patch" from her kennel and her toys and balls and an old bone she loved and treaties and her collars and leads, and gifts sent by some of my DiaryLand buddies. We put in a pair of J's socks (which she loved to steal when she was a toddler), a pink and white candle to show her the way on her journey and a yellow cockatoo feather from Scrawn the Bird Familiar (who was absolutely in love with her, and knows she's gone and is missing her awfully and calling out her name all the time). We sprinkled patchouli and rose petals on her, put bougainvillea flowers on her and told her over and over how special she was and how lucky we were that she was our dog.

J puts new bougainvillea flowers on the grave every morning: "White flowers for a beautiful white dog," he said yesterday.

The last three nights, when I went out to feed the animals and she wasn't there pretending to charge at and bite Sally the pig, I lost it again. When I go into the kitchen to make dinner (which we don't want to eat), she isn't there lying on the mat watching me as she always did. I keep thinking I can hear her scratching on the bedroom door to be let in. About ten times through the night, as I always did, I reach out in bed to touch her with my hand or my foot. When I sit at the computer, she isn't at my feet all soft and warm and sweet, or sitting with me while I have coffee and watch the morning news, or next to me when I go into the garden, or spinning like a top when J starts up the four-wheel ATV.

I shed a tear when all my pets die, but neither J nor I have ever mourned another animal like this.

I keep crying, of course. I stop for a while and then think of a million funny little things about her and start again. There are signs of her everywhere - white hairs on the leather chair in the living room where she used to lie to watch TV of a night, scratchmarks on the bottom of all the wooden doors where she would pull them open with her paws and then snout them open the rest of the way...

I wrote a poem about her on the refrigerator with magnetic letters. I talked to my mother and my sister and brother and a few close friends about her endlessly, until I was exhausted and my head hurt from crying. My brother told me that when his old cattle dog died, it was like his heart had been ripped out. I know how he feels. J and I lie awake at night for ages talking about her. Neighbours have rung to offer their condolences and new puppies, friends have emailed us with sweet messages. J and I appreciate everyone's kindnesses so very much, but nothing is helping much just yet.

I've been sleeping at night, except for some disturbing dreams that take place in my grandmother's house and make me wake up crying. Yes, I realise it's all about loss of those I love; I've often had dreams about losing Patchouli in the city or in a shopping mall or some foreign (for her) place and have woken up crying about not taking better care of something that's so precious to me.

I wish this didn't hurt so much. I wish she were still here with me, lying at my feet while I'm typing. I wish I could see her again to cuddle her and tell her how much I love her and what a good girl she is and how much happiness she brought us every single day of her life.

J says we'll get another little puppy soon. We'll endure another round of chewed-up shoes, stolen socks and dug-up plants. Wish us luck; we wouldn't miss it for the world.

* * * * * * * *

So that's it. No funny improbable stories this week about inappropriate sexual fiascos or horse-fucking gone wrong, or being chased by emus with waggling penises, or wild sex under the stars with my beloved J, or getting drunk with fabulous bossy girlfriends while we name-drop and compete with each other for being the cleverest and the wittiest and the most controversial and the most obnoxious.

This week, it's just the rambling long-winded disorganised thoughts of a woman who's sadder than she's been in years, mourning her best friend and constant companion, missing her kind wise old grandmother, wishing her strong gentle handsome daddy were alive to give her a hug, heartsick about the mess in New Orleans and trying to make sense of the world again.

Vale, our beautiful Patchouli. We'll love you forever, darling puppy.

* * * * * * * *

Thanks so much to these new buddies for reading me; I'll get around to reading your diaries soon, I promise.

lady-frenzy
catkid1
cf188
pumpkin144
withouteven
koomaster
logophobic
joiedv
carriesplace
lady--c
godisfemale
signomifly
vasessakins
evil-barbara
hsiutime
hardsauce
sweetresent
tamfoxx

* * * * * * * *

My girlfriend V arrives on Monday for 10 days. We have more visitors coming next weekend, and stockmen turning up soon for cattle work. I hope that by the next entry I write, I'll be laughing again and back to the usual shallow self-absorbed observations about life's absurdities that you pay me for.

In the meantime, please hug your babies (and your daddies, and your grandmothers) from me, and tell them again how much you love them.

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