gelati and bourbon

Today has been a mixed bag - like those old lolly bags you used to get at the milk bar, filled with stuff you loved and stuff you hated, but ate anyway.

Jeez hormones are a bitch hey? They make the mundane truly intolerable. For all concerned. I could tell today that there was a serious problem when I came back from my weekly market + supermarket shop with one green bag half full of goods. Usually I spend a lot and come back laden with delicious treats for the week. Today it was some meat for the cats, some chicken schnitzel for dinner and some juice. Even Mat looked worried as he 'unloaded' it from the car.

The day just got progressively worse. What can I say. A combination of out of whack hormones and long-standing family shit. My mum was meant to take Indi for a few hours, so that my estranged sister could bask in her glory. I actually get excited at the prospect of a few hours sans kid - to get our pigshit house in order and regain some semblance of sanity and peace. I get a call, sister has to leave, mum not taking Indi after all. My house is almost walking with all the micro-organisms that have decided it's a COOL place to live, and then she suggests that she come around. To sit in the pile of shit that has become my house. I politely (!) decline, and then begin rocking in my seat, back and forth, while silently breastfeeding, putting Indi's socks on, fighting off three boisterous kittens and trying to unload the dishwasher. Something had to give. It was a really important bit of my mind. THEN Mat bought a really big and strong bottle of scotch, and THEN we heard the beloved ice-cream man's van coming down the road. I took a really big gulp of my scotch and dry, swallowed, took another really big gulp, fished around in the beautiful red carnival glass dish Mat's mother bought me years ago, the one that holds some spare change for when the ice cream man comes around, and dashed outside, weilding child and coins, and bought Indigo a big gelati, all for herself, and managed to not sway one bit. Another scotch and a few more licks later, all was well, disastrous day turned around miraculously, and with a schnitzel dinner cooked up by my magical wondrous love, and devoured by all and sundry, the day was saved. Even the cats felt it, as they piled around us in kitteny feline love, and fell asleep, as did the aforementioned child, while mama and papa watched a bit of much needed pixelated goodness. Thank the good lord for gelati and bourbon I say.

*note - no bourbon was consumed by aforementioned child in above photo. In fact, a bit of artistic license employed as photo was taken a good six weeks ago when Indi was gifted with not one but two magical mystical icecreams (our leftovers) and rejoiced.

** geez it's hard to type when you've had that one too many scotches.

Happy Anniversary To Us!

Today is our fifteenth anniversary! Hooray!

Fifteen years ago, I was eighteen years old, just started uni, a huge new world that had me wide eyed and finally free of the cloistered life I had led previously. Within weeks Mat and I were circling each other, and after a few drunken pashes we decided to give it a go.

The funny thing is, I had already started and ended a two week relationship by that stage, with one of Mat's acquaintances, so Mat totally expected me to have my way with him and do the same. He even made a joke of it when we first decided to be an item, by celebrating our one minute anniversary. A good friend of ours, Mr Pi, bought us nachos to help commemorate the occasion. It was 7.22pm on the 21st of March 1994.

And here we are, fifteen years later, still together, and still very much in love. So much has happened, the ups and downs that you hear about but don't really understand when you are young. We have supported each other through deaths, through drug addiction and recovery, through a heartbreaking breakup and a sweet blissful reunion. We traversed the spectrum from not wanting any kids at all, to thinking OK well maybe one day, to yes we will try, and now we have our beautiful baby girl, the most gorgeous culmination of our love that I could ever imagine, even on the wildest of psychedelic trips. And we had our fair share of those as well.

In fact our cosmic union happened while high on LSD, camping in a friend's backyard, soon after we got back together. We traversed the universe together in that tent, and saw that we were indeed the true companion of the other, that no-one else could ever even hope to fill that space. It was during the come down from that trip that I doodled the design of the rings we now wear, the rings Mat's mother asked us to have made on her death bed a few days later.

So what did we do today to mark this most auspicious occasion? I suggested to Mat that we could get my mum to look after Indi for a few hours, for the first time ever, and we could go to fed square and have some Mohito's while watching the sunset, or go to Fairfield Boathouse and have a devonshire tea and row a boat down the river. He suggested we lay in bed and fuck. It didn't take me too long to realise once again that he is a wise man, a wise man indeed.

So after Indi woke up from her afternoon nap, we took her to Anne Anne's house (Turkish for mama's mama), and with trepidatious hearts we left, not knowing how she would handle a few hours away from us, albeit with her beloved grandma. I think Mat was more nervous than I was, coz I have left her with Mum before, but not for so long.

And we spent the most delicious hour and a half in bed that I can remember for a very long time! It seemed that time actually stretched out, so that it seemed we were there for hours, which was fantastic. We made love, slowly and passionately, in a way that has just not been possible for us with a small child, even while that child is asleep. She is a pretty light sleeper, so she would either wake up once we got going (even if we were in another room), or we would hear a dog bark or a bird chirp and think it was her waking, or we would have to keep quiet or be quick, and even though it's always nice when you can get some, it's just not the same as laying in bed, just the two of you, and knowing there is nothing else that will call you away, that you can take your time and focus and immerse yourself and just bliss out. Afterward we lay there and talked and laughed like we used to do when we were uni students and would spend literally all day in bed doing just that, day after day. It was SOOOO nice! I mean, we talk and laugh all the time, but it's just different when you're still tingling with the loveliness of having just made love, and all naked and intimate, and your hands are running over each other.

So after a couple of hours we called Mum and she said Indi was fine, but Mat felt he couldn't relax properly so we got dressed and drove over. As it turned out Mum called us when we were just around the corner, saying Indi was happy but getting tired, so it was good that we left when we did. We were so overjoyed to see her, like we had been gone for days. I'm gonna treasure the memory of that time we had though, just the two of us. Mama and papa got to be just Mat and Nalin for a while, and it was good.

Things I wanna do before I die

I've been thinking about this for a week or so. I think too much of my life has been spent feeling limited in terms of what is possible in my life, more limited than I needed to be. Partly this has been due to my upbringing and the things I was told about what was possible, what was sensible, what I could or couldn't be or do, and partly this has been due to my own feelings about certain things - sort of along the lines that certain activities or professions just weren't a possibility for me, for what reason I don't know, and that only a certain type of person could do those things, people who were clearly more worthy, more intelligent, more creative, more adventurous, etc. And I reckon this kind of thinking sucks. I mean, clearly there are some limitations we cannot avoid, like I am seriously unlikely to ever be able to afford space-travel. I can dig that. But there's a whole heap of things that I really would like to one day do, thankyouverymuch, and I think it's about time I wrote a list and got cracking. So here is the beginning of my list. I'm sure I will add to it as time goes.

One day it will give me great pleasure to:

• Learn to play the piano, and not be afraid for others to hear me play.
• Go scuba diving, preferably at the Great Barrier Reef.
• Become a writer, creatively and professionally.
• Write and illustrate a children's book. An award-winning one.
  
• Travel all over the countryside in a Winnebago.
• Spend a year in Italy, and get to know Europe, esp the south and Scandinavia.
• Make a clay-mation short film. Or a bunch of them!
• Work with hot glass, at a glass studio with a big furnace.
• Have an exhibition of some kind. Or a bunch of them!
• Go to Antartica.
• Go to a bunch of places really.
• Ride a dirt bike.
• Get my motorbike license and some wheels and some leathers.
• Spend a few months in an ashram.
• Live by the sea for a bit. Or a lot if I like it.

Well looks like I'll be a bit busy for the next 40 years or so! Cool, looks like a fun list. OK, where to start?...

Photo tag, and a rant

OK, so you go to your photos folder, and take the fifth folder, and take the fifth photo in that folder, and post it on your blog. Well, the instructions I received actually involved the sixth folder and sixth photo, but I only have five folders in my photos folder. I figured everyone would live. And even thrive, who knows.

Oh and everyone reading, consider yourself tagged. Go ahead. Have a blast. Thanks Idzie.

The photo actually holds a dear and special place in my heart, and I felt glad when I saw which photo was the fifth in the fifth for me. This was taken at Port Campbell National Park, near the Twelve Apostles, which is one of my very most favourite places in the world, and certainly the most stunning coastline I have ever had the great fortune of visiting. I took it on a crappy phone camera, and I reckon it looks pretty good.

It was taken on my last solo driving trip before becoming pregnant, and certainly my last solo trip for a long while to come I imagine! Which makes me a bit wistful. Which makes me very glad I did it.

I left home planning to drive the Great Ocean Road, and camp along the way, not knowing how far I would go. I thought I'd get to Cape Otway, but when I got there my invisible friends nudged me and told me to keep going, and I found myself aiming for Port Campbell. I spent two nights camping in a really great little caravan park, right by a creek, 100m from the ocean, and a five minute drive in both directions from the most spectacular sights - 90 degree stunning cliffs of such brilliant sheer height emerging from the bluest oceans, clearly so deep and treacherous.

And the apostles, many more than twelve, though the twelve are the larger ones, isolated columns of land thrusting up unexpectedly here and there, their connections to the cliffs they so resemble carved away by the powerful turbulent waves. I was truly boggled in mind and body, and spent many an hour just brimming with the awesome power of the place. It felt truly sacred. I can't wait to go back.

I was gonna rant about the shit day I've had but I feel so much better now after writing the above that I can't be bothered.