Today I turn 37. Which I figure means I’m leaving my mid-thirties.

I have to work today, and my footy tips are descending into farce, but on the bright side, the weather has turned good (25 degrees forecast today!), and it was nice to have a few people over yesterday to celebrate (even if it means excessive tidying/cleaning beforehand, and then a little more afterwards, for instance to make sure no young relatives have left cake smeared into the floor).

Hmm, I’m curious. How old are the people that read my blog? Leave your age with your comment. Go on, I dare you.

PS. Results here.

I wonder if Jeremy might like to get into journalism?

(Pics from Sunday. Thanks M and R.)

What a week.

I already mentioned a colleague’s mother-in-law and an ex-colleague of mine passing away last weekend. I went to the latter funeral today. The family are understandably very upset at his unexpected death at 63. They had a nice booklet with a eulogy that talked in detail about his life. Nice touch.

Just before the funeral I got some health news about someone, which I won’t divulge just now.

Then when I got back home after the funeral I got the news that a guy I know was hit by a tram this morning in Victoria Parade. He’s off the critical list now, and is stable, though there’s some risk of brain damage.

Definitely one of those weeks.

A shooting yesterday morning in the city (a few blocks from where I work) left one dead and two injured. Quite an unusual event, which had police and media swarming over the area. A Channel 10 cameraman I spoke to said it was pandemonium in their newsroom. (But no, despite what you might have read, the CBD did not go into “lockdown”. A number of buildings were sealed, and streets closed. No more than that.)

One can only feel for the family of the man killed, who was apparently a bystander seeing if he could help a woman being attacked. Ren just about saw it happen.

Having it happen nearby is one thing. People with a personal link to you dying makes it all the more real. It turns out a colleague’s mother-in-law passed-away over the weekend after a long illness.

And — more of a shock — an ex-colleague, who had come out of retirement recently to resume working had also passed-away, suddenly, on Friday. If he’d been unhealthy, he hadn’t complained about it. Always cheerful. RIP, John M.

I’ve been thinking a bit recently about mortality anyway. It might have been sparked by my grandmother passing away, or getting more conscious of my kids growing up and me getting older. (Is there a median age for mid-life crises? Ah, it’s 46 apparently.)

Some people have particular religious beliefs that come into play. I don’t. I guess I’d be defined as a Weak Agnostic: Maybe some people have figured it all out, but I haven’t yet.

So I don’t know what to think about issues such as life-after-death. A very strange (and spiritual) dream I had as a kid, accounts from others of near-death experiences, and I suppose plain simple hope leads me to think there’s something. Quite frankly the prospect of nothingness, of completely ceasing to be after death, scares me a little.

Okay, so I’m rambling. Whatever the truth, these are the sorts of background thoughts that have me occasionally talking/posting about the kind of “get off the bench” stuff that Cam’s been talking about. Making the most of life. Seizing the day. That kind of thing.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and I headed over to my mum’s place with a card in hand. From what I can see, about 80% of the Mother’s Day cards out there are the excessively soppy ones that I’m not that keen on, and that she wouldn’t appreciate. That generally leaves just a few semi-jokey (and thus acceptable) cards left on the shelf.

One memorable card from years past was “The Mothership has landed”, with a picture of a UFO, and lots of mothers coming out of it, bearing hot pies, and proclaiming things like “We never hear from you anymore” and “Are you eating properly?” From what I recall, my friend Brian once gave it to his mum, too.

This year’s card though was a “How many mothers does it take to change a lightbulb?”, with the answer being something along the lines of “Only one, because it won’t change itself, and nobody else around here will get off their bum and do it.” She liked it.

But the main reason I went over was to help move furniture around the house. My mum’s house is undergoing a refurbishment at the moment — painting, new carpets, new lino, etc. In terms of furniture movement, it’s almost worse than moving house. At least when you’re moving house, everything is going somewhere. For this though, you’re having to find out-of-the-way places for everything until it’s finished. All the books are in boxes in a big stack in the dining room; all the bookshelves under a tarp in the garden. The house looks unnaturally empty.

When that was all finished, I moved Marita’s stuff back to her house. After 6 months, the work there is almost finished. Like every renovation in the history of the universe, it ran over-time, naturally.

Have to get used to making dinner for three again, now.

My grandmother died on Friday night.

I didn’t know her well, and hadn’t seen her since 1999. She’d been unwell for some years, but all the same, it was sad news — perhaps because like the rest of my grandparents, I grew up distant from them — either in miles or in years. Unavoidable, but a shame for all of us, I suppose. Only my Grandad left now.

RIP Margaret Joyce de Bowen née Middleton, 18/5/1926 - 30/3/2007.

My nephew Leo was born two years ago, and celebrated his birthday yesterday. His entry into the world doesn’t seem that long ago, and already he’s a toddler, not talking yet, but running around and making the kinds of noises toddlers do when they’re trying to express themselves. Showing people things, curious as anything, and addicted to Play School. (His previous fascination with Pingu appears to be waning.)

Of course, Jeremy just turned 9, Isaac is now in grade 6 (high school next year, ALREADY). All the family kids are growing up fast.

At first glance, to someone living my busy-but-comfortable life, the world is a pretty nice place. The trees are green, the birds noisy but happy, the neighbours are friendly, the paper arrives on the lawn every day and food and drink are plentiful.

But you only have to watch the news to know that much of the world isn’t like that. There’s death and destruction almost everywhere. Even ignoring things like the road toll and domestic problems with drug deaths, some of the stuff that happens overseas is just horrific. People can be so downright nasty to each other in a way that I just can’t fathom sometimes.

When should I tell my kids the world’s not very nice? They know about Stranger Danger, but they’re going to need to hear about all the rest of it at some stage. That people are starving. (We do what we can.) That people are killing other people (and apparently enjoying it). That in wars (both just and unjust) innocents get in the way. I don’t generally watch the news when they’re around, but as they grow older, maybe it’s time to start.

Not that it’s all bad. The lady on the train with the crutch the other morning got offered a seat immediately. There are random moments of kindness that happen from time to time. And there are countless people out there doing good deeds. They deserve to know about all that too.