Yes,ThankYouVeryMuch

Connected through cake

2010-06-29T09:12:00.004+10:00

Last night I was a bit distracted, a bit busy, crocheting slippers for the birthday of the gorgeous boy of one of my best friends. He asked for orange and pink, which just filled me with joy, such gorgeous colours! I really wanted to get as much done as possible, to give them to him by the end of the week, so I was focussed and not really interacting with Indigo, and she didn't like it. Usually she is more than happy to play with Mat for hours and hours, but last night, even though he was right there, she kept coming up to me, bringing me books for her to read, placing toys on my lap, asking for a breastfeed when she'd only recently had one. I could tell she was a little unsettled that I was there, but not there for her.

At first I thought to myself, it's good for her to know I'm not there 100% of the time, it's good for her to realise I'm a separate person with my own desires and goals. But after a while I could tell it was getting to her, and I decided we needed a little connection. So I suggested to her that we place a tablecloth on the floor, get out the flour, eggs, sugar, vanilla, butter and coconut and make a cake together. Her whole face transformed into joy, and she clapped her hands and shouted "Yay!" So the table cloth went onto the floow, and I left her with a bowl into which I had cracked two eggs - she likes to play with the raw egg, letting it slip through her fingers and picking up the yolk, eventually piercing it and mixing the oozy contents with the white. It kept her occupied while I got everything ready. Then in another bowl we combined butter and sugar, and stopped to taste. She declared it good. You can't really go wrong with butter and sugar! Then we added coconut, and tasted again. We looked into eaah others eyes and nodded as we tasted, and Mat gave a third opinion, still really really good. Splash in the vanilla, the flour, some baking powder and the eggs, and a bit of soy milk, and now it was time to use the mixer!

A few months ago I bought a bright orange retro hand mixer on ebay and Indi and I both love it! We both hold the handle together while she switches it on, and then we watch the wonderful swirly patterns form in the cake batter as we mix away. Mesmerised, we probably mix more than we need to. Then together we poured the mixture into the lined cake tin and together we placed the tin in the oven. As we waited for the cake to cook, she played happily, her cup now filled as we had been connected through cake.

I'm so glad Indigo's old enough to get that we need to actually cook the cake - it always ended badly when she realised she wasn't getting cake right away and cried and cried as I put it into the oven. Half an hour later she came up to me just as I pulled the delicious golden dome out of the oven, and asked if it was cooked. And it was, to perfection. I smeared some butter on top, and dusted it with cinnamon and sugar, and cut us some generous wedges.

There are lots of ways that Indigo and I connect when we're in need of a bit of closeness, lying in bed and tickling, singing songs, going into the garden and searching for snails and slaters, picking vegies in the garden, crafting - the list goes on... but baking a cake together is the tastiest one for sure.

Long days, motorhomes and general loveliness

2009-09-23T18:11:00.004+10:00

It's spring equinox today! Hooray! From now on the days win! There is more light than dark, more day than night, and the days will just get longer and longer and longer, with a bit of daylight savings added in for good measure. Such a wonderful thing. For the last week or so it has felt like my sap has been rising with the emerging spring. I felt a big glum there for a couple of months, interminable long grey winter and all, which tends to happen every year. I felt tired and flat, noticeably so. But now I feel back to my usual spritely self, energetic and bright eyed and in love with all the flowers showing off their loveliness in my garden.

Tonight we celebrated by going out to our favourite place to eat out, the Shanghai Dumpling House in the city. What's so 'spring equinox' about that, you may ask? Well, we're not sure, but it was certainly yummy, and we did spent most of the way there discussing spring equinox-type stuff. Maybe next year we'll host a gathering and light a fire and some candles and eat some yummy food.

So, welcome longer days, we love you, and really, deep down, we wish you could stay forever and never leave. I know that the darkness and coldness of winter makes the new spring feel extra specially great, that it's all relative and all that, but really. Melbourne winters are just a bit rough.

Well, may-beee when I get my new (old) motorhome, I can spend the last month of winter in queensland living in my old converted Bedford bus, with my child and anyone else who tagged along, and avoid the hardest bit of the Melbourne winter. Yes, you heard me! A motorhome! Woo hoo! Last saturday I had an idea, a thought, that germinated and has taken over my brain like a delightfully noxious weed, and I am now consumed with the idea of selling up Euroa (though it pains me, it pangs me, I will miss it and carry fond memories forever) and buying a motorhome instead. Something we can use, something we can enjoy, something that can take us around this amazing country of ours and really give us value in terms of life experience and joy and enrichment and adventure. Euroa is nice, but it's stuck in Euroa. Which is nice if you come from Euroa. Also, there are houses all around the 9 acre property, and I know for a fact that at least one sleazy neighbour used to perve on me when I camped there. He told me he saw me swimming in my bikinis in the dam. Damn. That made me feel even slimier than the dam water did.

So, yes, I've spent the last four days madly crazily researching motorhomes, and have realised this:

Some people are nuts. They spend $250,000 on a moving mansion, totally decked out in energy guzzling glory, with huge plasma tv's, overstuffed furniture as far as the eye can see, king sized beds and even some with a spa. I'm sure it's all very cushy but it makes me kinda cringe with the American cheese of it all.
I can afford a pretty small minibus type arrangement, with very basic bed, kitchen, maybe a table to sit at, no toilet or shower or anything like that. Cramped, ugly, no charm. And only two seats, so not really useful for a family.
I can also afford a really old passenger bus that has been converted into a motorhome. A 76 model Bedford to be exact. Again no shower or toilet, but with room for four to travel and sleep in, a nicer open plan feel, with some space to breathe and live without feeling claustrophobic.

So, yes, I am considering getting a truck licence (how cool is that?!) so that I can drive a bus around the country and travel with my child. I could drive around in a car and camp of course, many do. But I really like the idea of stopping somewhere and being able to crawl into bed almost immediately, no tent to set up, no unpacking of stuff and repacking each time. And if I travel with Indi on my own, which I plan to do a fair bit, then setting up the tent with a cranky upset child who has had enough is pretty near impossible.

I have been talking about motorhomes non-stop for days now, and dreaming about them at night. No jokes. Mat is being very patient with me! But how can I not be excited? Will update with more news as it comes to hand.

And as for general loveliness, well, life's just good. We are happy. Things are going well. Mat and I are best friends and still deeply in love after 15 years. Our child is the most beautiful and truly delightful thing we have ever seen, and we both feel totally blessed to be har parents. And she's a funny thing. A real sense of humour, a cheeky sense of humour.

Just one anecdote. The other day, as I was breastfeeding her, she was pinching me, these tiny little pinches all over my chest. It was annoying me. I repeatedly asked her to stop, gently and respectfully, explaining that it hurt me and I didn't like it. She ignored me and kept going. I got firmer with her and told her sternly I would have to stop feeding her if she persisted, that I didn't want to do that but that I wasn't going to allow myself to be pinched. She stopped feeding, looked me in the eye, and said "Yuk mama." !! Mat and I burst out laughing. I said "Yuk Indi." She shook her head and said "Yuk mama" again. Then she said "Mama shit bum." Well, if the first one made us laugh, this one made us totally crack up, tears and all. Probably just the positive reinforcement she didn't need, but really, it's impossible not to.

So, yep, in general life is awesome, I am so lucky to be doing what I am doing, the mama of an awesome girl, the life partner of an awesome man, living in an awesome if messy house, and with six awesome cats, with an awesome and supportive family and dear lovely friends. Really, sometimes I feel like the queen of the world. A queen who will drive a bus. Bet that's a first.

Dark dark day

2009-09-14T22:54:00.004+10:00

The kind of day where I find myself looking at my child with such anger, with such frustration, that it scares me. The kind of day where the sound of her voice calling me, once again, yet again, causes every single teeny tiny muscle in my body to tense up. The kind of day that makes me want to disappear, or makes me want my child to disappear. Just for a bit. The kind of day I wish I could erase from my memory, and from hers.
I found myself in the late afternoon, curled on my side on the trampoline out the back, sobbing. I was hoping the neighbours weren't in their yards coz they surely would have heard me. I cried and cried and it just didn't seem to be stopping. Eventually I got it together enough to phone a couple of friends, and was lucky enough to get through to one, who listened to my sobbing with a great big open heart, who told me exactly what I needed to hear, and to whom I am so grateful. And I was also grateful that I even had friends in my life that I was prepared to call in such a state. It is actually a really hard thing to do. I suddenly had more respect and admiration for those that had called me up in tears. I never realised it was so hard, that you could feel so vulnerable. In a way, you are showing the person on the end of the line the dirtiest of your dirty laundry. You are balling it up in your fist and holding it out to them, shaking it like a pompom.
And if you are lucky your friend will stand there, they will look at that laundry being shaken in their face, unfazed. Then they will take your hand and lead you straight to the washing machine.
In my case that would involve stepping over the vacuum cleaner, the ridiculously large toolbox, the bucket with the soaking teddy bear in it that the cat peed on, and the many many other objects strewn over the floor of my miniature laundry. We may stumble, my friend and I, on our way toward that machine, we may curse and stub our toes on the way to emotional cleansing and wholeness. But as long as that friend of yours keeps a tight hold on your hand, and encourages you to keep your chin up, telling you everyone's become lost in large bundles of obscenely dirty laundry at times, all too often secret bundles which smell all the worse for being secret, that everyone's had rough times, and that we've all come through on the other side, with baskets overflowing with fresh clean laundry smelling sweetly of the sun and the grass and the spring air, that there is life beyond these dark dark days and that the sun will rise and happiness will return to hearts forlorn, if that friend can do this for you, then you are lucky, and you will be OK.
I am lucky, really lucky, and I was OK in the end. It has been a rough day but my child is asleep, I have a packet of Mint Slice biscuits handy right by my side, and a man to hug me and love me and tell me I'm a good mum.
Did I mention I was lucky?
Fuck I love my child, and fuck it is hard being a mum sometimes.

Astronauts are helping me feed my child!

2009-09-01T02:47:00.008+10:00

It's true. And it's cute!

After a long and tedious spate of teething and illness, Indi's relationship with food had taken a backward step. While she was under the weather, we were lucky if she had five mouthfuls of food all day. Which in and of itself isn't a problem. I'm not worried she'll waste away or anything. But then she would ask for constant "meme" (Turkish for breast, kinda pronounced meh-meh with less emphasis on the 'h'). Which would drive me bananas. I have made a commitment to breastfeed my child until she is well past two, possibly three, as I really believe in the health and emotional benefits of doing so for the child. But really, personally, I'm not in love with the process. I've never been one of those women who go all doe-eyed at the sight or mention of breastfeeding, who feels physical pleasure and joy whilst nourishing their babe. I wish I was! It would make life so much easier! Maybe I would have been if Indi had fed every two to three hours like a lot of babies do (much to my amazement!). From birth Indi often fed every half hour, extending it to an hour at a long stretch. Sometimes she fed for hours on end, especially when it was hot. It was actually really hard work for me, the hardest thing I have ever had to do I think. Looking back (and really I didn't intend this post to be about breastfeeding, but here we are... ) I think that the frequency and intensity of Indi's feeding probably set the tone for my relationship to breastfeeding. Maybe if I had had a two to three hour break between feeds, I would have felt differently about it all. Who knows?

Anyway, (I've missed my long rambly blog posts!) so she was hardly eating, hardly sleeping, and breastfeeding all the time, and I was going nuts. But gradually her teething and cold subsided, and she got a bit of an appetite back, which was great. But it wasn't really where I wanted it to be. Sometimes it needed a bit of a kickstart. Sometimes she sat there, hungry, but didn't eat. It was as though she had gotten out of practice or something. One day, after preparing a healthy and delicious meal for us all, and knowing she was hungry, I was gettin' kinda frustrated when she, once again, refused to eat anything. She was excited as she saw the meal being served, and happily sat in her special chair with the cushion on it to boost her up. But nope, head turned to the side, chin up, she was not gonna be eating any of it thankyouverymuch.

After unclenching my jaw, I spotted one of her favourite toys at the moment, one which provides her with literally hours of entertainment. It was one of the many little astronauts we have about the place, from a spaceship toy collection of Mat's from when he was a teensy tiny cute little thing. These astronauts have baths with her, they get carried to the car and back when we go on trips, they get pushed around the house on her little trolley, or in her little wooden car, and of course they go on regular trips out into the cosmos on their many little spaceships of various shapes and sizes. On any given day you can look at any part of our house and see one somewhere, anywhere, as there are quite a few of them. So one happened to be on the kitchen table as we sat to eat our lunch. And I had a brainwave. I grabbed a bit of bread, impaled it on the arm of one of these astronauts, and suddenly the astronaut was asking Indigo if she wanted some bread. Well! You should have seen the look on her face. She leaned forward, eyes wide and mouth agape, and happily ate the bit of bread from off his little arm. And asked for more. And more. Success! A full tummy! A happy mama! Once again my brilliance and genius was on display for all the world to see - I love it when that happens!

So, since then, Indigo has been offered lots of food by the very generous and accommodating astronauts. Basically anything that has enough shape to be impaled onto something favoured can be guaranteed of some success consumption-wise, at least for a bit. And other toys have stepped in too, occasionally. She has had bits of tomato impaled onto the tail of one of her Siberian tiger figurines. And today she even had an astronaut straddle a spoon full of pumpkin soup, which turned it from (and I quote) "Yuk!" (this was as I was spooning it into her bowl, she hadn't even tasted it), to a silent but definite Yum.

Occasionally I wonder where this will end, whether she'll be fifteen and asking for food to be delivered on the end of her ipod or something. But for now, it's fun, it's damn cute, and it means a few less demands for the breast, which means a bit more sanity for this mama. And that's gotta be good, surely.

Thrice blessed, the return of the sun!

2009-06-22T05:37:00.006+10:00

Happy Winter Solstice everyone!
I'm really pleased actually coz this is the first time I have actively celebrated a solstice/equinox off my own bat, in a meaningful way. I have meant to for years, but somehow never got around to it. I only remembered it was winter solstice when I logged onto facebook and saw that some friends of mine were going to CERES to the celebration being held there. I would have liked to have gone, but I'd just got back from being away for a few days with Indi and I wanted to snuggle at home with my baby and my man and my cats and not go anywhere. I still wanted to do something special. So I went about the house and gathered up a bunch of candles of all kinds, candles I've been collecting over the years but which I never really use very often. I spread them around our open plan lounge/dining/kitchen area, some in pretty coloured candle holders, hanging from cup hooks in the kitchen, sitting on top of bookshelves, on the mantlepiece, on the kitchen table, wherever there was a free surface (not an easy thing to find at our place). I lit them all and turned off the lights and instantly it was magical, a transformed space of sacred wonder. It's amazing the effect candles have, and instantly I wondered why I don't do this more often. Then the answer came to me - fire hazard! But it's nice to do it for special occasions. So there we sat, surrounded by our flickering points of brilliance and colour, pretty patterns dancing on our walls and ceiling as the light shone through the patterned coloured glass.
The lighting of the candles, to me, represents a return of the lengthening of the days, a return of the light, the return of the sun. This means a lot to me, as I'm quite solar powered and find it very easy to be joyful and happy when the sun is bright and the sky is blue. Conversely, dull overcast days are to be endured, and often leave me struggling and flat. I think this is quite common. Also, even though we really are only at the start of winter, on some level the lengthening of days tells some deep part of me that on the other side of winter is spring, my favourite time of the year, and that it's not really that far away. Winter has it's charm, to be sure - the snuggling in front of the heater, the nourishing soups and stews that one suddenly wants to cook, the chill of the cold on your cheeks on big long walks that would leave one wilted and frowny in summer, and the brilliance of cold blustery ocean power. But really, to be honest, of all the seasons it's probably my least favourite. I don't hate it, but I don't relish it either. Maybe for a few weeks in Autumn when I'm sick to death of the summer heat and the first few tendrils of cool air wrap themselves around me I enjoy it. But once the cold really sets in and gets below 15 degrees it's just drudgery for me. So raising my chin to the lengthening days and thinking of the spring to come helps me through the dark cold of winter.
So back to our little evening last night. I gazed across at the candles hanging in the kitchen from the cup hooks, congratulating myself on how beautiful it all was, and I spied the bottle of red wine sitting on the bench, three quarters full. And suddenly I thought of mulled wine. I don't know if it's a traditional winter solstice libation, but it damn well should be, and will be in our household from now on I can definitely say. I jumped online for a recipe, as I'd never had it, and was pleased to see I had most of the ingredients in my pantry. Fifteen minutes later Mat and I were sipping with wide eyed delight our first mouthfuls of mulled wine, and wondering why we'd never done this before. Indi had her stemmed brandy glass of herbal tea, which we usually give her when we're having a drink, so she doesn't feel left out, and in her usual good natured fashion she proposed a toast, and another, and another, and I thought it fitting that the Winter Solstice should be celebrated with three cheers. Hence the name of this post.
I sat on the loungeroom floor and sipped my wine, watching Mat and Indi play and laugh together, and I took a moment to harness the energy of the returning sun, to ask for it's blessing on my life and the lives of those I love, to shed it's life giving warmth on us all and help us to grow and love and laugh together, to blossom and thrive. And I felt the energy surge through me, powerfully, enhanced by the glow of the spiced wine, and it felt good.
And suddenly, with a bit of effort and attention and good spirit, we have what I would dare to call a family tradition on our hands, and it feels right. The lighting of the candles, the triple blessing with mulled wine, some time spent together feeling the specialness of it. I'm sure as the years pass, as the kids grow, other things will be added, special foods that they look forward to, special craft activities. This makes me really happy. I have felt for a while the lack of meaningful ritual and tradition in my life, never having been satisfied by those offered up my my own Turkish upbringing or those of mainstream Australian society. For a while I have had an urge to celebrate the solstices and the equinoxes, and to be more aware of the full and new moons. Gradually I'm getting there. These are the events that I feel are worth celebrating, the cosmic points of significance that move and shape us, whether we are aware of them or not. I believe that becoming more aware of them, spending some thoughful time on them, enhances their healing and invigorating power and harmonises us with our environment, with the universe within which we sit.
So here's to a future with many more celebrations, and lots more mulled wine!

Mulled Wine Recipe
1 bottle of merlot red wine
A good splash of brandy and/or whisky (I used both)
1/2 a cup of water
1 sliced orange
1/2 a sliced lemon
3/4 of a cup of sugar
5 star anise
7 cloves
1 whole nutmeg, broken into pieces
2 cinnamon sticks

Pour a bit of the wine (a third?) into a saucepan and add the rest of the ingredients. Simmer for five or so minutes, til it smells really good, but not too long. Remove from the heat and add the rest of the bottle of wine. Most recipes tell you to add all of the wine from the start but I think way to much of the good stuff must evaporate that way, so I chose this method and it worked wonderfully. Strain into a special looking jug or teapot (I used a silver one carved with swirling patterns that my mother bought me years ago from Turkey) and pour into your most special glasses. Sit back with loved ones, cheers each other three times from the heart, and enjoy!

gelati and bourbon

2009-03-27T22:43:00.006+11:00

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!

2009-03-21T17:50:00.003+11:00

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

2009-03-16T18:44:00.006+11:00

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

2009-03-09T23:40:00.006+11:00

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.

Being different, being true

2009-02-14T14:27:00.002+11:00

I have spent the last hour reading the blog of a teenage unschooler in Canada, and it's been really great in terms of reconfirming that it really is possible to raise a thoughtful, intelligent, creative and passionate person outside of the school system. Of course my deep inner belief is that it is easier to do this outside the school system, but sometimes it's hard to stay sitting close to your inner truths when they are so rarely shared by those around you. Sometimes the loneliness of seeing the world so differently to those around you can really get to you, and you can start to doubt yourself.

And being a mum, and loving your daughter beyond the ends of the universe, you want to do what's best, that old cliche. There's so much at stake. My child's whole life, her whole future.

And the reactions you get when you talk about homeschooling, or unschooling, can act like waves on a rock, you can feel yourself slowly eroding sometimes, being worn down. People just hold the idea of school so closely, they don't even realise they are holding something, you know? Most people have never, ever, for a second, thought about school as a human construct. They act as though it is as natural for human children to go to school as it is for a butterfly to emerge from a cocoon. But it's not. We invented it. It is possible to not go. This doesn't even occur to people!

So what is my problem with schooling? Many kids love school. I personally had a mixed bag of experiences at school. In many ways I was enriched and exposed to things I never would have been at home. Socially, I had my best and worst experiences at school. Academically I excelled, and gained a lot of pride from being top of the class.

OK, so my issues with school come from a few angles. Firstly, there is the system of heirarchy which forces students to submit to the higher will of the teachers and principals, and basically the way I see it, is in place to train them to be good little worker bees and fit nicely into the capitalist society we live in. After all, if we weren't scared of the principal we wouldn't be scared of the boss, and we might not be as happy to accept our humble place in a world that is out of our control.

Not only are they trained to accept the rule of authority, preferably without question, but they are taken away from themselves, which I suppose is a necessary step in creating an obedient person. Kids are coerced into doing things they don't want to do, at times when they don't want to do them. Yes of course we all have to do things that we wouldn't choose, but I think life throws these things at you anyway, there are plenty of things that we must begrudgingly accept, there is no need to institutionalise it and immerse oneself in a five-day-a-week grind of it. There is little respect for the child/teen and their passions and interests and their in-the-moment feelings. See, to me, that's not on. It's not the way I want to live my life, and therefore it's not the way I want my child to live hers. I want her to feel respected. To feel that if something is important to her, then it is actually important. To feel that if she has a strong feeling about something, that she can truly honour it, and indeed that it is important that she honour it. It has taken me years to learn to listen to my inner voice and then even longer to give myself permission to honour what I hear. I want Indigo to be able to grow up doing these things, because I believe, really believe, that doing these things leads you to happiness and fulfillment.

Also, I don't want her to have to effectively have a full time job. Five days a week, six hours a day, plus homework. It actually seems insane to me. Really nuts. These are children! They should be out playing, climbing trees, digging holes, reading under doonas, staring into space in dreamy wonder, getting obsessed with things and then abandoning them, whatever! And not to mention, spending time with the people they love, and who love them!! It seems crazy to me that the accepted model of how a normal family functions in our society is for the children to be in school five days a week, the parents to be at work five days a week, then for the whole family to quickly rush in dinner, bath, a bit of play perhaps and then bed, all into a few hours at the end of the day when everyone is tired and bleh. Then get two days off to do all the stuff that needs doing. I wholeheartedly reject this model for my life. Completely and utterly. I don't know who decided this was a good way to live, but it doesn't suit me. I like to take my time with things, linger in nice places, and leave space and time for creativity and connection. To allow for last minute decisions to do this or go there. I like to leave room and time and energy to spend growing intimate relationships, and gardens, and ideas. I worked full time for seven months many years ago and hated six and a half of them. I worked part time ever since, and made a conscious choice to do with less money to live the life I wanted.

Then there is the social side of things. About 98% of people, upon first being told of our plans to homeschool, mention socialisation. "But how will she make friends?" Well, my response to this is twofold. Firstly, I make friends and I'm not in school. There are ways to make friends and develop networks outside of school. There are other activities she could engage in, sports, art clubs, homeschooling groups (of which there are many, and who go on camps and have regular excursions etc), via the internet, and many more. With a bit of effort this should not be a problem at all. And secondly, to be honest, the peer influence and pressure that most kids get from school is less than desirable. There is so much bitchyness, so much pressure to fit in and be cool. So much cruelty. In some ways it's very much like a small town mentality. Everyone knows each other, and gossips, and there is a way of being, a social flavour which you must adhere to or be ostracised. Again, the social side of schools seems really unnatural to me. Hundreds of kids all squashed together and kept within the confines of a fence. Kept in line by a few adults with too much power over them. Kinda like a prison.

Also, I've lost count of the number of parents I've spoken to who seem a little sad, a little melancholy, about the way they kinda lost their little ones when school started. So many external influences, so much time away from home. They started doing things and speaking in ways that were really foreign. And to me, five is just way too young for that to start to happen.

Then there is the system of school grading, where my child would be judged according to someone else's schedule, someone elses idea of what is good, what is important, what is necessary or useful. I want Indigo to be her own judge. To really deep down know that her own beliefs about herself are ultimately more important than any assessment she may receive externally. Yeah I got great marks in school, and it made me feel great everytime I saw an A, or A+, or 100%, whatever. Especially that 100%. Only attainable in the maths and sciences of course (and perhaps the reason I felt so comfortable with those subjects). It was as though each time I saw 100% written in red on my work, that little handwritten number assured me I was OK. That all was well. As though it were a reflection of my worth as a person. 98% was OK, but not perfect. And then later in university, when things went not only pear shaped (although I like the shape of pears), I would say banana shaped, and my marks went out the window, so did my self esteem, and now, over a decade later, I am still putting the pieces of myself together again. And yes it is not impossible for a child to have a whole, healthy view of themselves and still go to school. I just think school makes it so much harder. In so many ways.

Ultimately, if Indigo wants to study at school full time, and then later on work full time, that's completely up to her. But while she is young, while I am her parent and entrusted with creating the pond she swims in, that shapes her, it is important, it is imperative, for me to honour my own feelings and give her the life I think is best. It's important I be true to myself as a parent. I'll always respect and honour her, and who knows where our path will lead, but from here, for now, I think we'll be staying away from schools.

PAINTING!

2009-01-28T01:30:00.010+11:00

So these last few weeks have been awesome in terms of my creativity. For so many years, since my early twenties really (so about ten years) I have felt my creative self sit inside me curled into a little ball, rocking itself gently as it hid from the world. Why I don't know. Before that, I was so into my art, and my creative side was a huge part of how I defined myself. It was an intrinsic part of my identity, and one that I cherished. In fact, now that I cast my mind back, it was one of the few parts of me I was really proud of.

Then something happened. Many things happened. My life kinda fell apart, slowly but oh so surely. The house of cards within which I had lived for so long finally collapsed under the pressure of a family divorce, a drug addiction, the death of friendships, and the spectacular demise of my academic career as I sunk deeper and deeper into nowhere. And along with it all, my creative side just crumbled. Many people use their creativity to help them deal with hard times in life, to express themselves and process traumatic events, but I think my low self esteem resulted in me being too afraid to produce anything, in case it wasn't perfect. And a crushing perfectionism is a sure way to kill any creative spark that occasionally would rear its head.

So there has been an ache in my heart for years as I listened to the echoes knocking around in the vast empty hall of my creative self, so big and yet so empty, so full of promise and potential and yet dormant, seemingly lifeless.

Until recently! I had an urge a few weeks ago to bring out my old watercolour paints (half of which had dried up and become hard little tubes of brittle colour) and do something. And unlike the times in the past when I would bring out the paints or the pastels or the chalks or the fabric or the beads, and play for a day, then leave them untouched for weeks until I finally packed them away again, this time I have been doing a little bit each day and somehow, SOMEHOW, the urge to paint and keep going has stayed with me! It has filled me with such a feeling of coming home to myself, such a feeling of wholeness and fullness of being ME. I've been having a ball.

So now that Indi is old enough to potter and play on her own, with the cat's water bowl and the wading pool and all her outdoor toys, under our lovely pergola out the back, I sneak five or ten minutes to paint here and there, and it's great! So here are some of the bits and pieces that have come of it.

And my favourite....

Show us yer map o' Tassie!

2009-01-24T23:53:00.012+11:00

Well what an awesome way to spend one's 33'rd birthday! How bloody lucky am I? Yay for cheap flights to Tassie, and yay for Mat who reluctantly agreed that even though we couldn't afford it, I really needed and deserved a holiday after what was, in many ways, a tough year.

I chose Launceston since I like to go to new places and hadn't been there before. What a gorgeous town it is! Set so beautifully in a gorgeous valley, with houses clinging up the steep slopes of the surrounding hills, I think it's the prettiest city I've ever seen. Well, apart from Venice and Florence, but that's some stiff competition! Certainly Australia's prettiest city.

On the first day there we went to Cataract Gorge, a beautiful place five minutes from the city centre, with a lake and a huge pool surrounded by gorgeous cliffs. It was hot, so Indi and I got to swim swim swim, and we had a ball splashing and giggling and buddying around. She's a lovely girl that one, we had lots of fun.

We hired a campervan, which is a great way to travel, since you can stop anywhere and you are home. But the down side was that we needed one that could accommodate a car seat for Indigo, which meant a van that was a bit weird layout-wise, and with not one but two very uncomfortable beds for us to sleep in. I must say, despite having a lovely time, it was heaven to sleep on our big, soft, luxurious bed last night when we got home. I kept waking up and being amazed at how much room we had! This was our home for four days (that's Indi asleep on my lap):

So on my birthday morning we woke up from our first night in the van, stretched out our kinks, and drove to an amazing rainforest gorge. It was GORGEous! No, really, it was. Stunning. It involved an hour's walk, down and then up a steep hill, whilst carrying a sleeping baby who weighs ten kilos. We were thoroughly put to shame by an old couple (I'm talking maybe 70's) who RAN the circuit walk three times while we trudged our one lap. Between them they had about a gram and a half of body fat, and they just exuded cardiovascular health. By the time they passed us the third time I felt like a walking chocolate eclair. Anyway, on the way down to the gorge we saw this amazing old tree.

Indigo woke up at some point, which I was really glad about, coz I really wanted her to experience the beauty we were surrounded by. It felt good to be sharing it with her, and I think she really appreciated it. It really was a magical place.

Then we had lunch at a beautiful winery overlooking the Tamar River. It was a true gourmet meal, and was my birthday present from my family. I finally got to sample some of Tasmania's much raved about food, and it certainly didn't disappoint. We were oohing and aahing our way through the whole thing. And this was the view from our table on the verandah.

We kept driving (we were able to time our drives with Indi's naps most of the time) and camped by a beach that night, and since Indi went to sleep early (she actually fell asleep during a beach walk at sunset, and then stayed asleep for the rest of the night) Mat and I got some real one on one time (both the talking and the not-so-talking kind), which was really great.

Indi did so well during the trip, in terms of driving and being happy in unfamiliar surroundings and just generally being a good sport about being carted off to way too many places per day. She's not a happy car traveller generally, but Mat and I were both so impressed with how she coped nonetheless. Here are some pics of my sweetie:

Over the next two days we drove back to Launceston and saw some sights, got caught in a storm and almost got blown off a bridge (well that's what it FELT like!), got a bit of cabin fever during a wet evening, and had a yummy chinese meal. We got to see a cuttlefish (Mat's highlight of the trip; he has a special connection with the cuttlefish. They are pretty amazing creatures.) Also went strawberry picking, and bought a yummy strawberry wine. And then on the last day we went on the most amazing bushwalk through Hollybank forest, which was really brilliant, another magically beautiful place of lush green wonder, and which had a long path called the Walk of Change that led us to the most amazing river and waterfall, totally secluded and brilliant and lovely. We all drank from the waters in a ceremonial gesture of thanks and connection, a libation to commemorate a great walk, and a great way to end a special holiday.

Thank you Mat for making it possible. I love you.

A Happy Birthday it was. Travelling with my beautiful family. I'm a lucky lass!

I like January

2009-01-08T12:13:00.005+11:00

It's always been my favourite month. While December was a real cracker of a month, busy but very enjoyable, January has that slow post-festive feel to it, with strings of days with not much on, some extra luxuriating, and maybe even a trip away somewhere. Also it happens to have my birthday in it, late in the month, which automatically takes it up a notch special-wise. Mat's birthday is four days after mine, and each year we really like to indulge ourselves during the period between Christmas and our birthdays, which is a whole month of indulgence! Hmmm, hang on, if we add that on to the indulgence that happened throughout the whole of last December, and which seems set to repeat itself each year, that makes almost two months of indulgence. No wonder my pants are all tight! But hey, life is short, and two months of indulgence out of twelve seems alright to me. Just might mean I have to go pants shopping more often that's all.

So what am I doing for my birthday this year? Going to Tassie!! I am SO excited, seriously, like bopping in my seat excited. We are going for three nights, and hiring a campervan after flying into Launceston, which I chose simply coz last time we flew into Hobart and I'd like to see somewhere new. So three nights to take it easy and drive as we please and stop where we please, and see the north coast of Tassie, and eat yummy expensive food at fancy wineries and restaurants, woo hoo!! So the trip itself is my birthday present from Mat, and my mum and sisters are putting in to pay for some of the fancy eating I wanna do. People always rave about Tassie's food, and last time I didn't get to sample any of it coz we were doing it on the cheap and we just cooked for ourselves, but this time, I'm not going home without a couple of belly-fulls of awesome Tasmanian fare, washed down with some delicious local wines, thankyouverymuch!

And it will be our first time travelling in a plane with the wee little one. Who knows how it will go?? She has been slowly getting better at travelling in the car, which has been such an ordeal over the past year, to the point where she can now travel up to half an hour with few issues, and more if she falls asleep. Hence why the campervan is so good for us, coz we can travel in fits and spurts and not have to make our way back each night, and we can keep going the next day. Not to mention I love camping and caravans and caravan parks and all that stuff. But flying, well, it could be great, coz she will be on our laps and not strapped into a device which keeps her on her own (half the problem of the car), or it could be terrible, coz she might get restless and squirmy and start bleating her little bleat of complaint which she does when we are at a cafe or restaurant or something for too long and she wants to crawl and explore, as she is designed to do. We have bought her some new funky stuff to play with on the trip, so hopefully it will go well. And it's only an hour, at the end of the day, even if she howls the whole way, it won't be too long, for her, for us, and for the other passengers. But regardless of how the plane trip goes, me is excited....

Indigo has just been developing so much these last few weeks, it is such a joy to watch. Mat and I laugh and beam at her so often, it is such a wonderful shared bliss we have. She has learned more words (nose, frittata, banana, and of course her favourite food of all, cheeeeeeese! All said in her own unique babbly style of course, plus a bunch more but my mind is blank) and has also learned how to kiss, which just melts our hearts into little puddles of love. She kisses us on the lips unbidden, and she kisses her toys, and yesterday when she was listening to my mum speak to her on the phone, she kissed the phone! Those tiny little puckered red jubes of lips, oh my lord, does life get any sweeter than when your adorable daughter purses her lips and leans towards you and lifts her little head for a kiss??? If there is I am yet to find it.

So we pass the days in a lazy way, playing in the sandpit or the wading pool or in the outdoor spa, gardening and picking vegies for dinner, and dangling things in front of kittens and laughing as they jump around. We eat yummy organic fruit (I have just discovered the joys of organic stone fruits - WOW!!) as we lay on the trampoline, and go for walks, and hang out with family and friends. It's a damn good life I gotta say. I'm having a good year so far!

Well hello there, possums!

2008-12-29T23:16:00.014+11:00

It's been aaaages! Dunno wot happened really, lost the blog bug for some reason. Plus the fact that I've been ridiculously but deliciously busy (ie. busy making lots of food for multiple gatherings of lovely people). December has been quite a month!

And it occurred to me, in amongst the craziness, that pretty much every year December is going to be a wild and crazy month. And I love it! There are so many gatherings in December, and just this year another three have been added to what was already a fairly busy month. We know so many people born in early December, but for our family the festivities begin with my dear mother's birth on the 12th. The family always gets together for a dinner together, either at someone's house or a restaurant. This year it was both! We converged at a very unsuitable location (family unfriendly or what?!), chosen by my sweet but misguided sister, and ordered take away gourmet pizza and took it all back to my sister's place, where we all shared and laughed and the kids jumped off the couches and it was much nicer. Then the next day was Indi's first birthday (YAY!), which I had been cooking for over the previous week, freezing stuff to be baked the day before (good plan, will continue doing this), and for which I have exactly zero photos, since my sisters took all the photos and I have yet to even see them. Will post them when I have them. And it went really really well, despite our park location being rained out and having to have it at home instead. It was crowded, but that just meant more joy per square metre really, and Indi was a star hostess! She didn't get freaked out at all, as I was fearing, but just got more and more excited, and when it came time to sing happy birthday she hunkered down in my arms and looked at every one with wide eyes til they were finished hooraying. As I cut the cake and people started milling, she suddenly clapped her hands and shouted "HRAY!", and everyone cracked up laughing, as did she, and she did it again and again and MANG it was so bloody cute, I think I will remember that for ever!

Oh I have one photo, of the cake I made, taken the night before just before I went to bed, satisfied all was as it should be:

Cute huh? I bought the icing flowers, so disregard any visions you might have conjured of me weilding the piping bag, it didn't happen. Much easier to hand over a few bucks at the cake supplies store nearby and buy some fruit mince pies to munch on at the swiss cake shop next door, yum! They were still warm too... But I digress!

OK, two birthdays down, but no rest for me, I had much cooking to do to prepare for the Christmas feast I was planning. I had to be creative and plan well since Christmas Eve my sister wanted us to gather at her place for the first of what will be our yearly tradition from now on, and on the 23rd it was Pa's 92nd birthday (go Pa!!). So three days in a row of gathering with family and wonderful food and celebrating lovely stuff. Plus a last minute invitation to a boxing day dinner at a friend's parent's place, and then tomorrow the last of the lot, a gathering at Mat's aunty's place, again the first of what she hopes will be a yearly gathering, post Christmas. Phew! Let me count them... seven events! And that's not counting the odd 'getting together with friends just coz we like em' thing too, which we also did. For kinda hermit-like peeps, that's a whole lotta socialising. And I have loved every minute of it. Six of those events will be repeated each year, each December, and I reckon it's awesome.

Here are some photos of us since my last post, just random shots of loveliness.

Me and Mat in a lovely moment.

The WHOLE kitty family, with mama top left, papa bottom right, and five kittens in between, all squished onto one armchair. How cute is that? They love each other so much. I think it was a couple of days before the first two kittens were taken to their new home, so I'm glad I took it when I did.

Kingu is the little ginger lady we will be keeping. Mat chose her, and she is most certainly the most remarkable of the kittens. She has pluck, and she purrs a lot. And her name means Chaos Dragon.
She's a TIGER! Fer-O-cious!

Yesterday I finally got my pool swimmable for the first time this summer, and Indi went into it with me! She had a great time! So much better than public indoor pools with their weird chlorine smells and echoes and freakiness, she was much more relaxed in our pool, which made me so happy. She just might be a water baby after all!

I just WISH this shot wasn't blurry, but you can see her joy through the blurriness, and it shows what a busy bee she's been sprouting all those teeth! She has four fully out, and there are two more sprouted below and another two on top. She makes the cutest teensy little bite marks in her cheese slices!

And here is the wonderful Dr Chops, my spirit cat who has gone through so much change and upheaval this past year, and who I love to bits. He is joined by Moo.

Springtime Abundance City Central

2008-11-03T14:14:00.009+11:00

Our garden has been blazing away in mindblowing springtime glory for months now, and I thought I'd better capture it before the heat of summer fades the beauty, as it tends to do somewhat. The flowers have been going nuts for a couple of months now, and have been filling my heart with joy every time I walk out front, which is a LOT, we spend every day out there, Indi and I. I weed, plant and fertilise whilst she tries to slip a sheep poo past her lips without me noticing (which is all too often!! aaarghhh!! no wonder the first word she has learnt to respond to is "spit it out" in Turkish.). Thankfully my lettuces are now big enough to be mulched around, and so the sheep poo is hidden beneath lovely lucerne mulch, away from the fat little cheeky fingers of a certain 11 month old imp.

In the last couple of weeks the roses have been coming out to play, and have been filling the garden with a rich sweet perfume. Since getting the second queen bed in our bedroom and pushing the first one right up into the corner of the room under the huge window, we have been able to lie in bed with the window open and be awash with the scent of roses, which is quite a nice experience I must say, and easily promotes many moments of sheer unadulterated thankfulness for all the wonderful things in one's life. You can see the top of the window frame of our bedroom in the right hand side of this photo with the amazing purple rose archway.

Having ripped up half the front lawn in my quest for more vegies space, and as per my google research used a multitude of various forms of fertiliser (organic blood and bone, organic complete fertiliser, sheep poo, compost, organic Charlie Carp, sulphate of potash), we are now enjoying sitting back and watching as they all "go sick". Tomatoes are bushy and leafy and covered in flower buds, same with the capsicums, and the beans have just discovered the long poles of the pretty frame I put up for them to climb on, and are tendrilling around them nicely. The front of this photo has some shade cast by the huge market umbrella we invested in at the start of spring, when I realised that our precious baby was gonna get too much sun if we were gonna be gardening every day, which we both love to do.

Update re: strawberry patch on wheels - it is working! And wonderfully! It's only a teensy bit dumb coz it's waaaay to heavy to ever push anywhere, but as a novel and cheap (and not very legal) idea for a planter it is great! I had filled it lovingly with all manner of goodies, which, had I been a strawberry plant, I would have ached for - lots and lots of homemade compost, sheep poo, organic potting mix, sulphate of potash - and the results are really awesome. In the past all attempts to grow strawberries resulted in pathetically small and stunted fruit, and sad looking plants. Thanks to google and some lovely friends who had gifted me with the plants in the first place, I learned how voracious these little beauties are in terms of water and feeding, so I truly indulged them, and I have never grown strawberries this big or cheerful before! Indi has been eating them every day for about a week, and it just makes me so happy to see her eating home grown organic fruit. How lovely!! It might be hard to see (bottom photo below) but I have a tomato plant and two nectarine trees which have sprouted from the compost. I'll have to remove the trees I think and donate them to someone worthy, but methinks the tomato can stay, and may be handy in providing not only more tomatoes (I have planted HEAPS but you simply cannot have too many home grown tomatoes!), but when it's bigger will provide shade for the strawbs during the heat of summer.

Here are some more shots of berry-licious wonderment:

We are also looking forward to mounds of zuchinni, cucumbers, pumkins and potatoes. The snails and I have been battling it out for the cucumbers though. They seemed to think I was putting out a midnight snack for them each time I planted out a punnet. On the third punnet I put a cut-up plastic bottle over each plant, and I'm winning! Each plant is safely housed and growing wonderfully. Indi loves to much on cucumbers, so I just can't wait when I can reach into my garden and hand her a super duper fresh one. Yay! I have always always loved gardening, since I was a small child, and have planted a vegie patch and flowers for as long as I can remember, but growing organic food for your child just adds a whole new dimension to it!

Oh, and just a final note about watering. We bought a tiny pump (really a bilge pump that boats have on them to pump out the water that seeps in) which you attach your garden hose to and sit into your bath, and it works beautifully, and means we can save our bath water (only when we have used no shampoo or conditioner, which is fairly often with Indi and most of my showers these days) and water whenever we like. I try to not get the water onto the leaves, since it's technically grey water even though it has no chemicals in it. I have hated the two day a week rule, any true gardener knows it's not enough in summer, not by a long shot, so it's so nice to know I can water my garden without using any extra tap water, and keep my garden growing during the heat of summer. And you can recharge the pump battery by a small solar panel too! Needless to say, we likes the pump.

OMIGOD LOOK! It's a fuzzy ball of KITTEN!

2008-10-19T08:18:00.007+11:00

I have always, always wanted to have a litter of something born at my house. Puppies, kittens, ducklings, whatever! It always seemed to be the thing that happened to other people, a magical thing that I could only ever dream of. Until the lovely Sophia arrived at our place just over two months ago. She is a beautiful, slender, pure white cat, who is not much more than a kitten herself actually. She arrived one day, scrawny, hungry, with a flea collar around her neck so tight I couldn't get a finger under it, and with a really dirty head as clearly she had been trying to rub the damn thing off for a long time. She wasn't very happy. She was also quite the randy one. Within minutes of taking the collar off her and giving her a good feed, our other adoptee Crunchie strutted over and began to get to know her better, in the biblical sense. (Yes, we know, we are getting him spayed next week!!) And there were other strange cats hanging around over the next few days, so we were pretty sure she was pregnant. We didn't really want another cat, but there was no way we could turn away the lovely and tiny Sophia, especially since she'd be needing somewhere safe and warm to grow and birth her little babies. So suddenly we had a third cat! (This picture of her was taken the day she arrived. Yes, it didn't take her long to feel at home!) She grew and grew, and grew and grew (I had never seen a pregnant cat before!). She ate and ate, and grew some more. Her ever expanding girth had no effect whatsoever on her cheeky scampy nature however! Her nickname is Scamp. She still pounced playfully on Dr Chops (our O.C - Original Cat) at every given opportunity, and leaped literally a metre high in the air to catch them pesky cabbage moths (I was cheering her on!) But she did become more and more wary of the suddenly scarily mobile Indigo! Much to Indigo's disappointment.

Anyway, we knew it would be soon that little Sophia would be birthing her babies, so I put some blankets in a few spots around the house - under the bed, under the armchair in Indigo's room, behind the recliner in the lounge, and also in the bassinet that came with the pram, which we only used once when Indigo was little (coz of course she is huge now!). This I placed in our bedroom, which is the only room that is heated a little at night when it's cold. And this is where Sophia chose to give birth to her beautiful little family. We had been out all day, building a brick wall in mum's garden and hanging out with the family, and when we arrived home I noticed after a while that Sophia wasn't insistently hanging around for her dinner. I asked Mat if he'd seen her, no he hadn't. I wondered if this was it, if she had given birth while we were out and went to see if I could find her, and sure enough, there she was lying on her side inside the bassinet with a mass of cute tiny fluffy things wriggling beside her, blindly finding her nipples and feeding and then losing them again and finding them.

I couldn't believe it! She had done it! All on her own! I was so proud of her, and still am. She has done an awesome job, really she has, and the kittens are growing so fast! Each day we take a peek inside the bassinet, and are shocked at how big they are! I think we been taking too many peeks coz this morning Mat went to check on them and they were gone! I was scared since they haven't been out of the bassinet since they were born, either remaining feeding or sleeping against mum or in a heap together if she has gone out for a stretch and a feed and a wee, as she has been doing. I was worried that Crunchie had attacked them (tom cats sometimes do this to reduce competition in their territory), but there was no blood anywhere. Then we found them tucked deep into the corner of our room behind some hung up clothes and the washing basket. Phew! Was glad they were still OK.

So for now life continues as normal, since they still can't really walk properly and their eyes are shut. Once they are looking about and are mobile, things are gonna get a teensy bit crazy, methinks!! But boy are five kittens gonna be cute! How the hell are we going to give them away?? I'm trying not to think about it too much. Will cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, enjoy the pics of utter cuteness.

Neighbours

2008-09-23T18:08:00.003+10:00

The three of us were sitting out on our front porch today, with Indigo playing with the remnants of our yummy lunch made by Mat (a yummy egg and fetta cheese omelette, mmmm!) when I noticed Mat looking intently just beyond our front fence, a bit I couldn't see due to the bushes threatening to engulf the chair I was sitting on. I asked him what he was looking at, and he said, quietly, "A man, right next to our fence," and kept looking. I leaned forward to catch a glimpse of this man, and heard a wizzing sound, and another, and another, and then all of a sudden a motor catching and buzzing into action. It was a wipper snipper thing. And then we both suddenly realised who it was, and what they were doing. It was dear old Barney, my favourite neighbour who lives a little down the road, and who walks past with his lovely wife Heather every day on their trip to and from the local shops. They usually walk pretty slow, as they are in their late sixties/early seventies, but Barney is still as sharp as a tack, with a cheeky glint in his eye he lets with wisecracks fly before you even realise, and giggles as you finally catch on. He's a funny man, and has a really big heart. We always have a nice chat when we see each other, and always enjoy a laugh or two together. Anyway, he has suggested more than once that I borrow his wipper snipper to trim the buffalo grass that has climbed our front picket fence, about a foot and a half high. It is a huge mass of grass that is impossible to mow, it is so thick, and we just ignore it and mow around it and it gets higher and higher. I think each time Barney walks past it it annoys him. We also have a dodgy section of fence which keeps blowing down each time there's a big wind, and each time Mat puts a few more nails into it, which holds it up until the next big wind. Well lately this big of fence has been down a lot, coz the winds have been massive, and I reckon Barney has been muttering under his breath every time he walks past at how lazy we are not trimming the grass or fixing that fence. So finally, he decided to take matters into his own hands, and so he turned up with a wheelbarrow, his wipper snipper, some nails and hammer and some wood, to bloody trim that bloody grass and fix that bloody fence himself! So he just turns up and starts doing it! Without saying anything! Hilarious! We cracked up laughing, gave him a beer, and Mat took the hammer and took over the mending of the fence, under Barney's firm and precise instruction of course. When the grass was trimmed and the fence fixed, he loaded up his tools back into his wheelbarrow, and after many thanks and laughs from us, he wheeled his stuff back home, declining our offered cup of tea but promising to come back with Heather one day to take us up on it. It was just a lovely thing to do, and both Mat and I were filled with a sense of humorous thankfulness. So thank you Barney, the grass is trimmed, and the fence fixed (ugly, but sturdy), and you can resume your daily walking in peace, not having to be irritated by those lovely but lazy people at number 81.

Big Questions

2008-09-16T17:56:00.009+10:00

It occurred to me today, whilst changing Indigo's nappy, that I have had a very productive day, and that most of my days are in fact almost as productive. Today I planted out my whole vegie patch (Hooray! Methinks this topic deserves it's own post...), I walked for an hour with Indi in the Ergo to get her to sleep in the morning, I played with Indigo and Mat over lunch (so much fun, giggly chortles aplenty!), I watered my new garden while holding Indi (all bloody 8.5kg of her!), and for the rest of the evening I planned to chop the cat's meat (three kilo's of it), make a lentil vegie soup for our lunches for the next few days, and prepare dinner. It felt like a decent day's work! And I mentioned to Mat that we are both really quite productive in our own ways. I am used to thinking of him as productive - he is a super prolific artist, musician and writer, and the evidence of his productivity surrounds us and crowds his ever cluttered studio (and the garage!) But I am not so used to thinking of myself as overly productive. I usually think of myself as quite a leisurely sort (or at least I did before I became a mum!), who could spend a day lounging around reading quite blissfully. But these days especially I think I really do achieve quite a lot in a day, and most days, with no break at all.

But something else occured to me, standing there at the change table, as Indigo chewed on her foot. Whilst the products of Mat's creativity are visible, audible, readable, the products of my own productivity more often than not end up either on the compost heap or down the toilet! It's kinda horrifying, and a tad disappointing! Well my two main joys are gardening and cooking. So I'm either growing it, or buying it, or preparing and cooking it, or eating it. What we don't eat ends up on the compost, and what we eat, well.... ends up as poo. It's not really what I would consider a life's work. Compost and poo. I really would probably prefer to be remembered for more noble outcomes or products than compost and poo. I mean, sure, we're all kept in good health by my efforts in the kitchen, and we sure do enjoy our delectables on a daily basis (we are not the kind of household that skimps, let's put it that way!). Aesthetically I get to design and create and handle all kinds of lovely foods, and gardening wise I am kept healthy and spiritually whole by my green thumbs.

But I guess the question that inevitably ended up forming itself in my head, whilst standing there changing Indigo's nappy (which was a pooey nappy too, quite apt!), was whether all this effort, delightful and enjoyable as it is, constitutes a meaningful life. A full life. Whether it is enough?

Enough for whom? A good question. Me? Others? Is this about what I think of myself, or how others will judge me? A bit of both I guess. I wonder whether it is enough for me. But also I find myself thinking of how my child(ren?) will view me when they are teenagers. Whether they will be able to respect me, or whether they will look down on me if all I ever do is garden and cook. And occasionally dabble in something creative. While the cake bakes.

I remember a woman in a novel I read once (dunno which one?), quoting her mother, who once advised her to create something that would not be consumed or messed up each day. To not devote one's entire life to making food that would be eaten or beds that would be slept in (I don't make beds, but still). To make something each day that would last. I find this sentence ringing around in my brain after all these years, even though the names of the author and book from which it came are long gone. Clearly it struck a chord.

I think for so many years of my adult life I have struggled simply to be well and happy. I spent my twenties battling addictions of substance and soul. There was no time, or energy, for grand pursuits over and above trying to be happy and learning how to live well. It has taken me a long time to get where I am now, where I am happy with who I am and where I am at, most of the time at least. At this point in my life I scarcely have time for a shower some days, let alone time to find another meaningful pursuit to add depth to my life. But I think once the hustle and bustle of child-rearing slows a little, enough to create some space, some time to sit and think and breathe slowly (dare I say, time to be contemplative), then I think there will be something else added to this delightful mix of seeds, weeds, cakes and soups. I can feel something forming, taking shape in some way, although it is still way too embryonic and amorphous, too new and fragile just yet, to shed public light on.

But yeah, I think one day there will be more depth, and more meaning, to what I do, in a lasting way. But for now, with a baby, and possibly more on the way, I am happy in my garden and my kitchen, and consider my time spent in both as a rich and wonderful backdrop for my kids' lives. I can see that the things I love to do, as well as providing me with endless joy and satisfaction (anyone who has smelled and bitten into a sun-warmed home grown tomato knows of what I speak), as well as making me happy, I can see how these things provide a lovely environment in which my kids will grow and learn, and one that to be honest I am proud to create and provide.

Name change

2008-09-12T11:02:00.003+10:00

Well it was during my pregnancy (yes, back in the days beyond time when my life was my own!) that I mosied on down to the good ol' Births, Deaths and Marriages Office in the city and stood in line to change my name. I changed my surname from Yuksel to Arileo. Why? A lot of people ask this, and really it's a fair enough question. Well, at first glance, as you can see, despite my former surname being pronounced Yook-sel, in written form it has the word Yuk in it. "A minor detail!" one may exclaim. But not so! It displeased me. Immensely. It aggravated my aesthetic sensibilities, in fact. It has always niggled at me. I don't like being niggled at. However, despite my anti-niggling preferences, I was prepared to put up with it, and I did for a long time. I mean, it was my name! It was a part of my identity. I couldn't imagine having anything else. Even when I hated my dad for a while, and wanted to break all ties with him, including my surname, despite racking my brain for a good couple of years I never came up with anything that even came close to being imaginable as replacing my actual NAME.

But one day, after putting up with this less than perfect but really quite serviceable name for 31 years, it just began getting stuck in my throat. I remember being asked for my name over the phone for something official, and when I spoke it, it just sounded wrong. It was like I was spitting out something distasteful. And the same thing happened the next time. Suddenly, I just felt as though it wasn't actually my name any more. It was really weird!

Well, now, everyone needs a surname. Our society would collapse if everyone suddenly decided not to have a surname. "I must have a new surname!" I exclaimed. And so began the search, in earnest, of a name befitting a woman of my station. It was not an easy search, oh no! There were trials and tribulations the likes of which I could scarcely convey. Well, I could convey them by just saying it was hard to think of one I guess. That would do it. Mighty hard! It's a huge thing, choosing your new name. I mean, everything you come up with is gonna sound weird, coz it's so new, and the old one so ingrained, so habitual. It really did perplex me for ages, and in the meantime I was stuck with this name that sounded wrong wrong wrong.

I wanted this new name to mean something. I wanted it to be relevant to who I had become. I wanted my spirituality to be involved. I was fairly sure I wanted Leo to be a part of it, since Lions are a part of my spirituality, one of the creatures I feel a deep affinity with. And then one day, as I was walking to work, I came up with Arileo. Don't know why the Ari, it just sounded nice. It was the only name I had come up with that even had a chance. And I liked the feel of it. So I let it roll around in my head for the day, and when I got home I googled Ari, just to see, and lo and behold (and don't you worry, I beheld!) that Ari, in fact, in both Hebrew and Netherlandish, meant... Lion! So inadvertantly (or maybe totally advertantly, or intuitively) I had chosen Lion Lion as my name. Well, it seemed to be getting the spiritual tick of the century, so I went with it. I gave it a month or two to settle into my brain, and then took the plunge.

It was surprisingly hard down at the office. I felt some reservations, some niggles of a new sort. Did I really want to change my name? Was I really gonna go through with it? I ummed, I ahhed, but in the end, after some administrative issues were sorted out, I did it. And it felt good!

Now I toy with my first name. I am thinking of changing it from Nalan to Nalin, officially. I have been trying Nalin on for size for some time now, and I tell you I like what I hear. And see. Again, aesthetically, I like the 'a' and the 'i' in both names - Nalin Arileo. I like that Nalin actually pronounces my name better the way I use it on a day-to-day basis (NAH-lin; as opposed to the Turkish pronunciation, which is more NAH-LAN, and with which I identify less). There are other reasons also, but in the end, I think Nalin does win. It's not a crowd pleaser with my family, but regardless I am pretty sure I'll be back at the old Births, Deaths and Marriages eventually. And from then on I'm not touching it!

Or...

...maybe I could do with a middle name?

The mama's mama

2008-08-26T18:39:00.003+10:00

Well, the holiday is over, my mum returned from her three month overseas trip last Saturday, and of course brought with her all the many and varied issues, problems and resentments that have plagued our relationship for so many years, particularly the last 10 months or so. And to be honest, I enjoyed her time away, almost as much as she did. I enjoyed having more time in my week, without feeling obliged to see her twice a week so she can be close to Indi. I have enjoyed not having to worry about offending her, not having to worry about her silent judgement and criticism of me (and my house and garden!), or her not-so-silent judgements either. I have enjoyed the space in my mind and heart not taken up by worry and hurt. And I especially enjoyed not feeling scrutinised and misunderstood as a new mother, and found that while she was away I was really able to grow and develop and find my groove as a mum, to really get the hang of it all and develop real strength and confidence in my abilities and my choices.

So now she is back, and I have decided to enter into a new phase in my relationship with her. The Buddhist reading I have been doing has enabled me to open my heart, to really see her as a person who is trying her best, whatever the outcomes, whatever the behaviours, and to understand that what I see as her shortcomings are more often than not the result of her own heavy load of pain and hurt that she has accumulated throughout her own difficult life. I have embraced the compassionate heart, and have found an ability to forgive her, and myself, that has eluded me for a long time. I have felt my anger flow away, replaced by a resolve to make things better.

After spending four hours with her yesterday, I came away tired and a little disappointed. It takes so much effort for me to spend time with her, to stop myself from sliding into unhealthy power struggles, to keep dipping into my spiritual well in order to maintain myself, to not let the heaviness bring me down. I guess I was hoping my new-found resolve and a good dose of affection would melt her coldness a little, and that I would inspire within her some sort of change.

But then, after coming home and making dinner and pondering it all while I chopped and stirred, I saw that to expect a change after one meeting was probably pretty naive. I can see that she is hurt and wounded, and that if there is going to be any change at all she is going to have to be made to feel very safe and loved, and this may take quite a while. And also, I realised that in the end, she may never change the way she behaves towards me, and that all I can do is keep holding on to my compassionate heart, to keep stoking the fires of my own joy and understanding, and to keep loving myself no matter how she treats me, no matter how she judges me. Ultimately, my goal is to love her openly, while not caring so much what she thinks of me. I need to be able to do this for myself, and for Indi too. It's important for me that Indi sees a loving strong bond between my own mother and myself, but ultimately, if that can't happen, it's important for me to model to Indi how to stay strong and true to yourself in the face of criticism, and to put yourself on top of the list of people's opinions you should care about.

Damn those Buddhists are on the ball!

2008-08-26T17:28:00.006+10:00

Seriously, I know they have had two and a half thousand years to nut it all out, it's a long time, enough time to look at it from all angles and draft and redraft, but geez those Buddhists just have it down pat! It's amazing. I know that reincarnation is not everyone's cup of chicken noodle soup, but I personally can fit reincarnation into my own personal conceptual scheme of the universe, quite neatly. I wouldn't say I believe in it, but that goes for a lot of my spirituality - it is in that category of things I can easily grasp and understand and imagine being the case and even intuitively lean towards, but about which ultimately I have no real definitive idea. How can you? So in as much as there is never going to be any hard proof, I think I'm about as comfy as I'm gonna get with reincarnation. It's all good. For those science-worshipers who can't get their heads around it, no worries really, just act as though karma begins at birth and ends at death, and refers to the fruit you will reap as a result of your actions in this life, sweet or bitter as the case may be. Same net effect, in that you stop acting so much like an arse-hole and try to think about the effects of your thoughts, words and actions on those around you.

OK, so with the reincarnation thing out of the way (the biggest beef most people have about Buddhism, coz really, the rest is all just about how to be happy and nice), I've just gotta say how impressed and thankful I am that Buddhist wisdom is out there doing it's thang and making the world a better place for so many. I studied it pretty intensely a number of years ago (wow, almost a decade! fuck!), but became a little disillusioned with it after an unfortunate series of events involving a local Vipassana meditation group.

For those who don't know, Vipassana is a kind of meditation that has you totally focus on just the in and out of the breath (there are many many kinds of Buddhist meditation, where the focus is placed on various things), and which frequently involves extended silent retreats, generally 10 days for lay-people. Most people are really quite horrified at the thought of spending 10 days meditating silently, but from the moment I heard about it some kind of fire lit up in my heart, and I knew knew knew it was for me. And I was totally right! I just loved it. Really loved it. Did I mention that I loved it? Loved. I had, at the time, never felt more in love with the universe without the help of some good hard drugs. (Ahhhh, those were the days! *Sniff*) Gradually over the ten days my heart opened like a flower, and bloomed gloriously! I was amazed at the beauty of nature all around me, stuff most people, including myself, just walk past without noticing every day. The graceful and gentle twist in a perfect blade of grass. The seeds heads of the same grass, so symmetrically perfect, so intricate, just amazing. Grass! I was blissing out on the lawn! It was so much bloody fun, and showed me a way life could be, a way I could be, that was so beautiful, and so removed from the life of real difficulty I was leading at the time. I was not doing well at all, in many many ways, and Vipassana was truly a retreat for me, in the deepest sense. So, unsurprisingly, I offered to volunteer there, and did more retreats along the way. It became a very treasured part of my life for about six months. Then my dad died, and my world crumbled a little. I booked myself in for another retreat, knowing I really needed it this time, and packed my little granny jeep with my belongings and spent three hours on public transport getting there, plus a really long walk up a steep winding road with my jeep. Violins please! Anyway, I filled out the usual forms when I got there (they had a weird set of forms which asked all sorts of things) and to the question asking if I had done any other form of meditation or healing since the last retreat, I answered 'yes', since I had been doing pranic healing, a kind of reiki. Also, what issues I had been having, and I mentioned my dad dying. I had a private meeting with the meditation teacher, again the usual procedure before commencing a retreat, and he brought up the pranic healing. He asked who I had been working on, and I told him my dog, who had cancer. He ummed and ahhed (he was a man of few words), and then regretfully informed me that I would not be able to start my retreat. I was shocked and so disappointed, I REALLY needed this one to help me find my way in the world, I had a lot of shit to deal with and this was something I felt I really couldn't do without. He told me that until I decided to stop doing the reiki forever, and devote myself entirely to Vipassana meditation, I would not ever be able to do another retreat. Not only that, but I wouldn't even be able to spend the night there before going home, that I was to leave the premises ASAP! That my altered energies might disturb the other meditators!

To cut a long story relatively short(ish), I was really hurt and offended at being kicked out while so vulnerable. And with new and angry eyes, I saw that, despite the wisdom of their teachings, the Vipassana Centre and the way it was run was a bit cultish, and kinda creepy. I think for many years this experience turned me off Buddhism altogether. And it has taken this long for me to revisit it in any meaningful way, and to realise that despite the narrow-mindedness of one group's policies, Buddhism itself has so much to offer. My one real criticism of it that had nothing to do with any lingering resentments, and which I mentioned in a previous post, related to one of the four noble truth's being the goal of the cessation of suffering, which I thought was simplistic and didn't acknowledge the growth that comes out of most suffering and the yin/yang dualistic nature of the universe. The recent reading I have done has actually addressed this one point, and I have a new found understanding of Buddhisms perspective on suffering (well, according to one Buddhist nun anyway - Robina Courtin, in an interview with her that you can read here.) Here is the bit that shed new light for me:

Robina Courtin:
So therefore the Buddhist method then of getting rid of suffering and developing happiness is the method of learning—one, to know my mind well, and then learning through familiarity on the basis of having Buddha's model of the mind as my basis, learning to identify ever more deeply the neuroses and then learning every day—and it's the hardest job we'll ever do—to go against them, to deconstruct them, to let go of them.

So it's not, as I previously thought, aiming at just repressing all the suffering to attain the feel-good states of meditation. It's actually about digging deep into your heart, deconstructing the underlying causes of the pain (more often than not some kind of fear, if you dig deep enough), and then letting it go. So it totally acknowledges the growth and learning that suffering brings, and the analysis required to get there. I think the actual problem was that my understanding was limited, and that my own practice at the time was probably about desperately clinging to the bliss. When I think back, my life was such a mess back then, and I was going through so much pain every day, that I kind of became addicted to the blissful states I achieved through meditation, and began to cling to them. I didn't know how not to. For me back then, it would have been like asking a drowning person to not cling to the rope being offered to them. Or that's how it seemed. And one of the main lessons in Buddhism is to not cling. To not crave. No craving, no aversion, one of the most important phrases you'll hear at a Vipassana retreat!

But now, I'm a much much happier and well adjusted person. I've dealt with so many of my demons. I'm not desperate. So I think I'm actually in a much better place to really re-examine Buddhism, and look at it all again from this healthier place. Which is exactly what I have been doing over the last few days. And I have been truly delighted at the new perspective it has given me on my life. The peace, the awareness, the opening of the heart, and the thankfulness for all the little things. I have really enjoyed revisiting this old friend, and look forward to once more incorporating Buddhist philosophy into my own little eclectic collection of spiritual wisdom that I have nurtured for so many years.

My Man

2008-08-10T22:49:00.011+10:00

Looking at this photo just now, as I've been uploading it, I am struck firstly by how much of a spunk he is, and secondly by how much sharedness we have together, Mat and I. I have looked at his face for almost half of my life. There is so much 'us-ness' between us. Fourteen years of it. It's a long time. But then again, when we are old and grey and our wrinkled toes instinctively find each other in the bed for the six billionth time, fourteen years will seem like a drop in the ocean.

This man, this brilliant, unique, spectacular man, has shaped my life in ways I could never have predicted. Somehow I knew as I looked at him across the room one day, drawing feverishly, that he was a catch. But I had no idea just what kind of crazy adventure I was embarking on by choosing him as my man. We have had the most amazing highs together, so many of them, and ridiculously high! Our feet barely touched the ground for so long. Years. Two innocent, big hearted souls bursting with joy in the presence of each other, heads shaking in disbelief at the fact that feelings this intense were even possible! A cosmic dance of connection and union, two true opposites joining to form a magical whole.

We've also had our lows, as all couples do. Our feet did touch the ground, eventually. I in particular got bogged down in some muddy ground that I spent the next decade trying to get clear of. Mat was such a complex part of it all. In some ways, he held me up and kept me from totally drowning in my self-destructive urges. He loved me through it all, and stayed by my side when many would have left. He barely wavered. And in other ways at other times he took my hand and led me in even deeper, when I was barely staying afloat as it was. Relationships are funny like that.

We are such different people, Mat and I. Really complete polar opposites in so many fundamental ways! Sometimes I don't know how it has ever worked at all! He loves black metal and breakcore and all sorts of noise "music", and I love silence. The sounds of nature. Or Radio National. I love food and cooking and love planning meals and shopping for food at markets and cooking and eating, love love love it all, and he could quite happily subsist on toast and coffee and the odd pizza. I love travelling, he hates it. Seriously. He is the only person I know who gets stressed out about going away for the weekend, and would really rather not go, thank you very much. He is a true hermit, only emerging from his cave to play the odd gig now and then. I have dreams of travelling
Australia and the world; he could think of nothing worse. I really could go on with these diametrically opposed elements of our personalities, but really, there are so many that it would become a very boring post indeed. Suffice to say, alike we are not!

But beneath and beyond all of these surface level differences, our deepest and most dearly treasured values are almost completely matched. We share philosophies on life and people and morality. We stand united on everything political, environmental, social. The same things make us angry with the world, the same things fill us with hope and joy. We agree totally and utterly about how to parent Indi, what we feel is important in shaping her environment, in order to totally support and nurture her beautiful little body and soul. And that is just so wonderful. So wonderful. All of these things which are really important to us, all of these things which are a part of a life lived thoughtfully and from the heart, we share. And for that I am so very grateful.

But for some time now I have been feeling a little lost in amongst all of our great differences. I have been lamenting the lack of shared interests, and the resulting fact that a lot of the joys we both experience in life are experienced without the presence of the other. It has made me really sad. The other day Mat told me he thought I was unhappy, or stressed, most of the time. I reacted really badly to this, because I have been feeling more like I have found my place on this earth than ever before, now that I am a mother. I have felt more fulfilled, truly, than at any other time in my life. And it made me really sad that he wasn't seeing this. And I realised that a part of the reason was that many of my joys, my daily happinesses, occur without him. They happen in my garden, on my walks, when I connected spiritually. Or in my kitchen. All without him, all private. I questioned whether this was right. Whether a truly healthy relationship can exist between two people who really are so very different in terms of what they like to do with their days. Whether the infinite love two people both share for their daughter was enough of a 'shared interest' (if you can call it that) to be enough? It has been really hard having these thoughts.

But then, when I really really think about it, in the areas that matter, in the way our hearts dance in our breasts, in the way our eyes sparkle and gleam with love and joy, we are so united. We may DO different things, without the other, but when it comes down the the important stuff, we are right there, side by side. At the end of the day, I would rather, much rather, be with a person who has interests really different to mine but who shares my deepest values, than with someone who likes to do the same things as me but doesn't agree with my core philosophies on life.

I think that relationships are complex beings, and as the old cliche goes, they are hard work. They really are. But when I look back at the relationship between Mat and I, I feel so blessed, so awesomely lucky to have found someone so caring, so loving, so passionate, and so truly unique. Anyone who knows Mat understands what I mean. He is a very special person. A real gem of a human being. I don't know anyone who lives by their morals as closely as he does, who lives so thoughtfully, so authentically, so earnestly. I don't know anyone else who has such a drive to create and be creative. And I don't know anyone else who has been so unwaveringly supportive, who has stood by my side, the whole bloody time, with love just pouring out of him. Not only am I the luckiest woman alive, to have him, to be with him, but my daughter is the luckiest girl in the world to have him as a father. He is the most loving, devoted and joyful father I have ever seen, ever!

I am crying as I write this, as I declare to the world, once again, how much I love him.

Mat, my cosmic partner, my true best friend. I love you so much! Thank you so much for every minute, my sweet one. I am truly blessed. You have shown me love beyond anything I could have even fantasised about before I met you. You have expanded my mind and my heart, and introduced me to whole new worlds. I continue to learn and be inspired by you. And I couldn't have dreamed up a better father for my child. I feel like the queen of the world, living by your side, your cosmic wife.

Strawberry Patch on Wheels

2008-08-02T17:19:00.006+10:00

Yep, that's right, I'm currently in the middle of creating the world's first completely portable strawberry patch. How? Why? Let me explain...

A couple of weeks ago I walked to the supermarket, and I bought way too much to carry home, especially with an incredibly cute eight kilos of little girl strapped to my body, so I brought home my shopping in one of those big metal supermarket trolleys. Huge ungainly things that they are! I had such trouble bringing it all home, they are so HEAVY (I think these days trolleys are actually larger than they used to be -probably so we can be tricked by the evil supermarket tycoons into buying more - they are so deep I almost fall into them trying to get the last little packets out of the bottom. I have visions of little old ladies taking dives into them as they overbalance, their legs waving around as they wait to be helped out.) and the footpaths are all much more uneven than you would ever notice just walking along. I spent the whole walk home trying to prevent the damn thing from either rolling onto the road, the nature strips or banging into fences. Do others have this issue? Maybe it's just me. Anyway, it was annoying. So the thing has been sitting in our front yard since then, waiting for me to take it back. It just didn't seem to be happening. It wasn't that I didn't go on lots of walks, in the direction of the supermarket. I went on heaps. I could have done it multiple times. But my general inclination for some reason just didn't seem to be leaning towards hauling this massive, cumbersome, LOUD contraption back from whence it came. Especially empty. At least a full trolley represents the promise of delicious treats and wonderful ingredients to unpack at the other end. An empty trolley is just dead weight. Not appealing at all!

Strawberries, I hear you ask? Why all this faffle about trolleys? Yes, well recently some dear friends who were moving out of their rented home gifted us with about 30 strawberry plants from a wonderful patch they had created, but were now leaving. I was so stoked!! I had always dreamed of growing a whole strawberry patch, but for some reason in my mind it was placed in the category of really awesome things other people did but not me. (I really must minimise the number of things in that category, life's too short!) So anyway, I went ahead and dug out a lovely section of lawn and created my own lovely patch, and planted away. They all looked very happy in their new home, and my mouth watered as I imagined the bountiful bowlfuls of delicious homegrown organic strawberries that we would be surrounded by. Yay!

Until I did a little research (well, actually I just mentioned my new patch to Tania as we sat in the sun in her lovely backyard, sipping herbal tea) and discovered that strawberries need a raised mound to grow well, with lots of drainage. Bugger! My patch was not only un-raised, it was a kind of a ditch. Hmmm. Not good. I wanted the best for these strawberries, I wanted them to really thrive, and living in a ditch just wasn't gonna cut it for them. Also, I had recently been inspired (as per a few blog posts ago) to really devote a big area of our garden to veggies. And really, the strawberries, although lovely and wonderful and delicious and marvellous, were taking up a huge piece of prime vegie land. I knew I had to make a decision, and it wasn't gonna be easy.

And then one day, as I sat on my front porch and looked out over my garden, and pondered (as I do often) I had a brilliant idea. I could take this here godawful trolley, line it with the bit of shadecloth I had sitting in the garage, fill it with soil and compost and all manner of lovely things that strawberries love to dine on, and turn it into a planter! AND, not only could I plant them in the top, as no doubt you are imagining right now, but I could also poke holes in the shadecloth along the *vertical sides* of the trolley, and grow strawberries up the SIDES! Pure genius! I almost saw a flash of light come out my ears as this thought formed itself in my brain. The whole darned THING could be covered in lovely delicious strawberries! Yay!

So it's underway. This afternoon while Indi and Mat sat on a blanket on the grass, chatting and singing, I spent an hour lining the trolley with the shade cloth and hauling into it a bunch of home made compost, potting mix, sheep manure, blood and bone, sulphate of potash and a bit of pine mulch and mixing it all together. Dr Chops was fascinated and kept sniffing around and investigating. And then Indi got sick of it all and wanted a feed and a nap, so we left it at that, and now we have a trolley filled with soil on the lawn. My neighbours now have even more reason than before to think I am mad. But oh well. Will *they* have a strawberry patch on wheels? No, no they won't.

This is fucking HARD!!

2008-08-01T13:11:00.007+10:00

I am really struggling today. This week. Have been for a little while. It's partly the sleep deprivation thing. But I don't think it's just that. It's so many things. It's partly the lack of freedom thing, I think. The lack of anything even close to the ability to be able to just say "I'm driving to the beach" or "I'm going to the pool" or "I'm gonna lie in bed and read all day". What I am feeling is so multilayered I don't even know where to start, really. So it's partly lack of freedom. It's also partly not being able to bloody drive anywhere greater than 10 minutes away, coz Indi has a hatred of being strapped into anything for longer than that, be it car seat, highchair, or pram. It's also Indi needing to feed to sleep unless she is in the Ergo. So either I am lying in bed with her, or she is feeding on the breastfeeding cushion on my lap while I'm at the computer, or I'm walking around with her. I have enjoyed each of these sleep-related experiences with her, to varying degrees (in increasing order) but I think I am just tired of it all! She naps three times a day, and I think I'm just dessicated by the monoculture of options I have available to me. I'm sick sick sick of lying in bed waiting, hoping she will fall into a deep enough sleep for me to pull away and leave. It usually takes so long! And then she only sleeps in bed without me for about 20 minutes at most. I am sick sick sick of being on the net for hours a day while she sleeps on me, not being able to go get a drink or go to the toilet, or let my cat in, or anything. I am sick to bloody death of walking around the streets around my house, I think I could name each and every plant my neighbours have in their yards by now. Plus I'm just so tired, and my knees and hips are so sore. These things, which gave me such pleasure a while ago, now have lost their ability to sustain my spirit, and instead have been draining me, depleting me. I am getting frustrated with all of it. Maybe if we could just have a day at the beach every now and then I'd cope better. I used to visit the ocean as a wonderful way to connect to my spiritual world and work through my issues, a way to let the wind sweep away all my stress and scrub me clean. But I can't do it. We can't drive to the beach, and a train ride to the nearest ocean beach and back is too long to be done in a day, and we just can't afford to go away for the weekend. If I was rich I'd hop on a plane (I reckon Indi would fly better than she travels in the car) and fly to tasmania or something. I don't need warm, I need ocean. Not calm pretty bay beaches, I need rollicking crashing wave action. Hence the pictures in this post. They are a pathetic attempt to connect to the energy I need and miss so much, my ocean friend.
Sorry for the rant. But I don't want this blog to be a filtered pretty happy shiny unrealistic slice of my life. I want it to be real, and I want to be honest.

Chink!

2008-07-27T12:56:00.005+10:00

Well it happens to the best of us, it happens to the worst of us, and it has finally happened to my little girl. Her first tooth (teeth?) have emerged! Just peeking outta the surface of her bottom gum. She has been showing the symptoms of teething for a good three weeks now (her first fever three weeks ago, and her first dose of panadol, nappy rash, rubbing her ears, and a bit of general grumpiness from time to time), so we knew it was imminent. I wouldn't even have known if I hadn't have given her a drink from my glass of water (she has a sippy cup but I'm teaching her to drink from a glass as well), and after some blowing of bubbles, some dribbling, a few gulping sounds (at least *some* was getting in!) I heard a definite "chink!" sound! It took me a second to realise what it meant! How exciting! I don't quite know what I am so excited about to be honest, I mean, it happens to everyone as I mentioned before, and the thought of lots of little chompers near my already overworked nipples is not too delightful! But it is a definite milestone. She's growing up, my little girl.

She's also holding herself up on her hands and knees for longer and longer. Just this last week she has developed so much, and she clearly enjoys her new superpowers of stability! Until she gets a bit tired and faceplants for a few seconds. Now this crawling thing is not a milestone I am in a huge rush for her to accomplish. I am happy for her to take her sweet old time about it, as I have been told over and over by other mums that it just takes things to another, more frenetic level, as they scurry about the place wreaking havoc. But such cute little havoc!

Well to aid her in her scurrying, and mainly coz after three years of living in this house I was just bloody sick of the lounge room arrangement which I didn't like from the beginning, we did a big shift around in there and somehow we have managed to knit some more universe or something coz now we have so much more space! It's great! Mat and I, and Dr Chops, are all loving it! Chopsy has been just uber-cute, rolling around on his back with complete and frivolous abandon, playing with his favourite toy of all time which had become lost under the couch and which emerged during the shift around. He is so happy! And this toy, it is so funny, it is a shred of plastic bag, those thin clear ones you get near the vegies at the supermarket, which I had tied a knot into a few times, back when he was a kitten, like TWO and a HALF years ago. He loved it instantly! It is now like a plastic floppy anemone, some whisps of plastic joined by the knot in the middle, and there is nothing else on this sweet sweet earth that gives him the same unbridled joy as this bit of plastic. The first night it emerged, he woke me twice in the night coz he had jumped on to our bed with it in his mouth and played with it for ages. He never does this! He sleeps on our bed when he wants to but he never plays with things on his own like that, and never in the middle of the night! Despite it being 2am, and having just been woken after getting back to sleep post feeding Indi, I smiled in the darkness at my beautiful spirit-cat's joy. He is such a special one. I love him.

Living a Simple Life, and Living it Well!

2008-07-25T18:58:00.010+10:00

I have just been reading this great blog on living simply and being as frugal and self sufficient as possible, and I must say I am inspired and invigorated! I have been reminded of many a thing of great importance to me, such as being gentle with the earth and having minimal impact on the environment, being close to nature and growing your own food, spending less and being satisfied with what you have, and being creative with fewer resources rather than constantly buying and consuming and disposing of. These are wonderful things to be reminded of!

I have always valued these things, but over the last few years I have become rather lazy in my commitment to them. I think as our household income grew over the years, and buying things became easier and easier, I became quite the capitalist consumer. I fell a little in love with this model of living that is thrust upon us by society at large, that of working and purchasing and throwing away, a life isolated from one's environment, isolated from nature, and isolated from the effects of one's actions on the planet and it's inhabitants, such as the huge amount of resources used, natural environments spoiled by contaminants, land degraded by commercial farming methods, air polluted by factories and cars and electricity generation, and animals suffering for our pleasure. Not to mention the millions of people over the world who are affected by slave labour or who are grossly underpaid, and have awful living and working conditions. All of this is the effect of the obese capitalist Western lifestyle. Over the last few months I've had a growing awareness of the distance that has developed between my morals and the reality of my life, and I have been slowly trying to bridge that gap. Reading the blog has inspired me to make more of an effort in this area, to speed things up, to go further than I have been going lately, or ever before, and to finally put things right.

This is a very good thing. It makes me feel good in the pit of my tummy, a sure sign I am on the right path. And where does this path lead me? It leads me towards a life that sees me growing into my full potential as a human being, living in the greatest harmony with my surroundings, and with a deep sense of satisfaction and gratitude for all that I have. It leads to what I would call a bloody good life.

OK, so growing your own food is a huge part of this living simply and sustainably thing. Ever since I was a wee one I was heavily into gardening, of all kinds. I have always had a particular fondness for combining my two great loves, gardening and food, so the vegie patch has always had a very special place in my heart. The photos in this blog are of things I from my garden. (The first two photos are of three different kinds of beetroot, and the last one is a punnet of rainbow chard just before planting.)

So until now, my vegie patch has been a place of indulgence, really. I have grown vegetables, often from seed, for the sheer pleasure of gardening itself. With the exception of the amazing tomato, my favourite food plant of all time, my crops have been intermittent and sporadic, and have been secondary in importance to the process of growing, the joy of planting seeds and watching them sprout (a very special time), helping them become seedlings, planting them out and caring for them into their old age. It has given me countless hours of untold pleasure, it really has, and I imagine it always will. But something has been gnawing at the pit of my stomach for a while, and I have been ignoring it for long enough. I have never even come near to growing a decent fraction of the vegetables that we consume on a day to day basis. Like I said, the tomato is the exception to this. Each year I grow kilos and kilos of wonderful tomatoes, often five or six different varieties, and from mid-summer into autumn we are self-sufficient tomato wise, with enough for sharing (another special thing). Other than the tomato, however, and the odd crop of lettuce, silverbeet and zucchini (anyone who has ever grown them knows the feeling of a glut of zucchinis, which seem to grow an inch every time you turn around) the things that I harvest are considered special treats, things to delight in and savour. I have never planted in the numbers required to really feed us, or staggered my plantings to ensure a long harvest period, or devoted the required space for a serious kitchen garden.

But I think I've had it with this type of middle-class indulgent gardening. It's been fun, lots of fun, but I think now it's time to turn my skills and my enthusiasm into something the whole family can really, truly, tangibly benefit from, in terms of nutrition and cost. I want to grow an organic vegie garden that I can really rely on to feed us well, for most of the year.

I'm a little daunted by this task to be honest. This will need some serious garden space, and some real time and effort. But to be honest, everything that's involved is stuff I love doing, it's just that I need to do more of it than I ever have. There are harder things to swallow in life than doing more of what you love than you have ever done before. I think I'll cope!

I'm really quite excited. Spring is just around the corner so this is the perfect time to start planning what I will need and order my seeds (yay!!). I've got a compost heap just bursting with goodness, thanks to the wonderful Mat who took over maintenance duties at some stage (much to my surprise and delight) and I've got a few garden beds in mind that have a couple of straggly flowering bushes on them, and that had better get ready for a good overhaul.

There are many other things discussed on the blog such as stockpiling, making your own cleaning products and not spending unnecessarily, all of which I want to incorporate into my life, but this is the bit I'm most excited about, to be honest.

And I can't help but think this is wonderful stuff for Indi to see and be involved with as she grows older. Having her around is a real incentive for me to be really authentic to my beliefs and my ideals, and to model the things I hold dear. I can see myself really evolving into the person I have wanted to be for so long. It feels like it's time to stop dipping my toes in the waters of life and really take the plunge. As with all big jumps into the deep end, it's a bit daunting and a bit scary and threatens to challenge me more than I've been challenged in the past, but if there's one thing that new motherhood has taught me already, it's that I have more strength, endurance, patience and drive within me than I have ever given myself credit for, and I reckon it's time to put it to good use!

Crunchy and the Big Bad Foot!

2008-07-21T17:47:00.006+10:00

Sounds like a children's story! But no, unfortunately it's Crunchy's reality. His foot's not much better than it was when he came back home, and after going to the vet today after thinking I could actually see bone (gross and disturbing!), it was confirmed that his toe is dislocated and might have to be amputated. Poor sweetie. He's moping around with a huge sticky bandage wrapped round and round his leg to help give the toe a chance to develop some skin over the bone, otherwise the toe is coming off. The bandage looks like a big club coming off his leg, and he's not happy about it one bit. Plus he has to stay inside at night. We have one grumpy pudda on our hands! He's such a beautiful person though, such a stoic really, he's currently curled up asleep. I'm sure if he could he'd be muttering under his breath.

So we are faced with the decision to neuter him and keep him indoors at night permanently, in an effort to curb his street-fighting ways, and help him live longer, and help our vet costs go down, goddammit!

Mat is not happy coz of all the reasons listed in the "My cat eats cake" post. He wants little Crunchy to remain the free citizen of the world that he is today. He doesn't want to be his "owner", but rather his housemate. Who doesn't steal his testicles. I am torn. As per usual, I can see both sides really well and am sitting squarely in the middle, wringing my hands, looking left and looking right and not really knowing which way is really best. Ahh the challenges of trying to live by one's morals! Not always an easy path to take, and the road isn't always clear ahead. Sometimes you gotta cut a new track through the forest... OK, enough with the dodgy metaphors already.

So maybe we can try keeping him in at night and put off the neutering once we see how that works?

But then if his toe does come off, they'll want to do it in one go, while he's under (so steal his testicles AND his toe.)

D'cisions, d'cisions...

Dreaming of feasting on sleep

2008-07-17T17:15:00.007+10:00

Ahhh, that wonderous space of dreamy rest, warm comfort, liminal delights - such a precious commodity to the parent of the very young, so taken for granted by those who have yet to procreate... sleep is one of those things which, like food, must be enjoyed in just the right quantity to have the greatest effect on the sleeper. Too much and one feels sluggish and 'overcooked', too little and the nerves start to tighten, the muscles to ache, the eyes to sting, and you can almost feel the brain kinda flexing itself to keep going, keep going.

Yes, it's finally getting to me, the lack of sleep. For the first few months of Indi's life, I can honestly say I was better rested than through the bulk of my pregnancy with her, during which I suffered from chronic insomnia and experienced the deepest tiredness I have ever felt - growing a person is not easy! Indi has always been a fairly good sleeper, sleeping most nights for 10-12 hours, not even really waking to feed, just stirring and being fed back to rest immediately as she sleeps right by me in our big bed. For the first few months she needed a feed every three hours, and during that time I felt really great, very energetic, not tired at all. The last few months have seen the gaps between feeds shrinking gradually, and for the last few weeks it seems I wake every hour or two. This has been taking it's toll. I seem to be unable to get a really restful sleep when waking with this frequency, and I can feel myself running out of steam. I feel tired during the day. I'm a bit more cranky than usual. I don't feel the elation and joy I used to during my long walks while Indi naps in the Ergo. I'm kinda going through the motions a little. Indi herself still makes my heart sing with her every action, she is still the most amazing thing ever, it's just that my spirit seems to be sagging a little as my physical body struggles with the load.

But I'm keeping it all in perspective, and recognising this as an intrinsic element of being a new mother. It's part and parcel of the job for most parents. This is part of the hard work of parenting. I know many others have it far harder than me - my partner works from home part time, and is very supportive, so I am most grateful really.

A couple of nights recently I have had three hour gaps between feeds, and I have woken feeling like I have been asleep for AGES! Wow, how different this is to pre-pregnancy times! Back then, waking after three hours would have seemed horrible, and I would have been complaining bitterly! Ahhh how things change when you become a parent! Youth is definitely wasted on the young!

We have recently acquired another queen size bed to sit alongside our current one (which Indi and I have been sleeping in as Mat camped out on the floor on a single futon), so we will experiment with having Indi sleep in one bed while Mum and Dad sleep in the other one, in case she is waking due to my snoring or shifting. Maybe it's just the teething, or a growth spurt, or who knows what.

In the meantime I dream of the wonderfully restful and uninterrupted eight hour sleeps I used to get, and the long luxurious sleep-ins Mat and I used to have so often, every day during uni days, and weekends after that, chatting in bed for hours , making love, being silly and laughing so much, only emerging when hunger forced us to. Such sweet sweet memories that I will treasure forever. And look forward to having again one day.

Note: The wonderful picture above, called Sleeping in the Garden, is a painting by Erika Hastings. She has a cool blog: http://mudspice.wordpress.com where you can see more lovely paintings, and contact her.

The Magic Red Hat

2008-07-16T19:35:00.003+10:00

OK, so I said I would post a picture when it was done, and here it is! My first ever completed knitting project! I'm very proud. It's simply two rectangles (not even measured properly or the same size really) joined together, so the corners make these cute little ears.

Next project: one for me!

I am woman!

2008-07-11T18:46:00.004+10:00

Today, I felt good. No, actually, I felt awesome. I felt strong. I felt capable. I was impressed with myself. Is it OK to say that? Does it sound egotistical? It's a shame that in this world it is frowned upon to praise yourself, that it is often considered being "full of ones' self" or arrogant. Well, I don't care, today I will praise myself, coz I feel I deserve it. So should you, you probably did something awesome recently too. Go for it!

OK, so the praiseworthy moment of my day came when I was walking up the ramp to the train station at Preston Market, carrying Indi in the Ergo, feeding her while I walked, pulling my trolley full of organic fruit and vegies and nuts and smoked salmon and (OK, getting distracted by the food... Must... stay... on... track.... - I'm really hungry at the moment, can you tell...) yeah and catching the train and well I just felt like a pretty damned good mother to be out and about like that, doing our shopping to feed us good healthy food, bringing it home without using up any fossil fuels, carrying my baby and feeding her while I walked. It felt good. I felt proud of myself. I spent so many years being so critical of who I was and what I was doing, so many years, that now that I am in a place in my life where I am really *proud* of myself, am really happy with what I am doing and how I am doing it, I just felt it needed to be said. To be proclaimed.

So I did.

My Crunchy Boy

2008-07-09T19:29:00.004+10:00

Well we have had a big adventure these last three days. Not an external adventure, not overland, but an adventure of the heart, a feline adventure of the spirit.

This wonderful creature you see pictured here, the wonderful Mysterious Crunch as he is called, has been the main protagonist of this tale. A little background on him might set the scene nicely. Crunchy is called Crunchy because about a month after Indi was born, in the middle of the night, Mat and I would hear a definite crunching coming from the kitchen area where Dr Chops' food is kept. This was an unusual sound, since Dr Chops swallows his dry food whole. Another way we could tell that it wasn't Dr Chops is coz we could see Dr Chops sleeping at the foot of our bed. A couple of times I caught this new renegade out, and saw a white-ish cat from behind as he scooted out the back door at the sound of my footsteps (we keep the back door bolted a little ajar, to let Dr Chops satisfy his urge to romp about at night). So this continued for a while. Once to my utter surprise, I found Dr Chops and Crunchy (then unnamed) asleep together on the couch on our front porch when I got home! Crunchy ran away as soon as he saw me, still very shy. Then one day Mat found Crunchy asleep in his studio, the room right next to the back door, on the couch. I was secretly thrilled! I employed my very best cat etiquette and slowly, ever so slowly, inched my way inside the door to the studio. I made sure not to make direct eye contact, used lots of slow blinks and projected my energy just right, and soon enough I was patting my new white and tan friend, who was purring loudly! So friendly! Almost too friendly! Before I knew it he was climbing on to my lap, trying to almost suck the pats out of me... it was like he was starving for some love, poor poppet! What a sweetie. From that day on he has been living with us, sharing mealtimes with Dr Chops and winning us over with his big heart. He lets Indi pat him with her over-eager fat little hands, as she grasps and pulls at his fur, squealing with joy, and he just sits there, as though he understands that this is what kids are like. He seems to really love her actually.

So that's Crunchy. Eats like a horse. Big heart. Lovely person.

Three nights ago as Crunchy got off his usual couch right by the heater, where he sprawls for hours at a time, I noticed he was limping horribly, and basically couldn't put any weight on his left back leg. Upon closer examination I could see his toe was very swollen and misshapen. He was lurching around in a really upsetting way, and obviously distressed. He also wasn't eating, which for Crunchy is a BIG DEAL. He usually eats as much as I am prepared to put down in front of him. He has developed a lovely little paunch in the five months or so that he has been with us. So anyway, we decided to keep him inside til I could take him to the vet, despite Crunchy really really wanting to go outside. Unfortunately Mat accidently let him out while he was letting Dr Chops in, which he felt really bad about when our friend told him that cats usually gang up on weak sick cats, and that Crunchy would be in real danger out there. Poor Crunchy!!

I walked the streets calling his name, twice that night, but nothing. I kept getting up in the middle of the night to check, but no Crunchy. I actually felt ill I was so worried for him, and felt guilty that I hadn't bundled him up right away to the vets, that I could have prevented this. (In reality I was juggling a baby, a cat, visitors, a grumpy reluctant husband and a billion other things.) It wasn't very abnormal for him to be out all night, or even til late morning. It was when the sun was setting the next day and no sign of Crunchy that I really began to worry.

But it was weird. By the end of the day both Mat and I had this odd inner sense, a deep intuition, that things were OK. That things were as they should be. That if he had died fighting in the night, that Crunchy had died as he had lived, a free spirit, true to his inner nature, fighting til the end. He's a tough cat, and it was a fitting departure. It was weird for two people who love their animals truly and deeply to be acting so calm about the disappearance of one so dear and cherished. But we were.

By the second night, we had pretty much accepted his death as being certain. It had been a cold and rainy two days, the coldest of the winter yet, and there was no way he would have stayed out knowing there was a warm place with food for him to come, especially when he was in pain. So I went to bed with Indi, feeding her to sleep as per usual. After a few minutes Mat pokes his head in the door and whispers to me "Guess who just walked in the door?" and my eyes almost fell out of my head they opened so wide! I grinned, and poor Indi lay there blinking as I whisked my breast out of her mouth and ran to the kitchen, where dear little Crunchy was scoffing down as much food as he could. He glanced up at me, blinked me a smile, then kept eating hungrily. I almost cried with relief! I got him some more food and then crouched next to him, repeating his name with love and relief, over and over, and when he was done (the picture above was taken just after he finished eating) I picked him up and carried him to a spot right in front of our heater, on a soft futon. He purred for a while as I patted him with love, and fell right asleep, no washing of his face or anything. I was so amazed. It was like looking at a ghost. I had been sure he was dead! He slept in that spot til morning, when we took him to the lovely kind vet, who washed his sore abscessed foot, gave him a painkiller and some antibiotics.

He's still recovering, still sleeping a lot, and his foot still looks pretty bad, but he's back, with us, in a warm place where he is loved and cared for.

My little angel

2008-06-22T20:51:00.004+10:00

OK, this is gonna be a bit of a gush, a bit of a self indulgent ramble about how much I absolutely adore my little girl, my little princess! (Although if blogging itself isn't self indulgent I don't know what is!) She is just the most beautiful thing I have even encountered, ever laid eyes on, and I've seen a few beautiful things in my time, let me tell you! Really, it just blows me away how absolutely perfect and wonderful she is, in form, in spirit, in every way. She has eclipsed our lives totally and utterly! Both Mat and I are truly smitten. She has us squarely in the palm of her fat little squishy hand! Those hands!! Is there anything more adorable than the hand of your baby child, those triangular fingers so fat at the base, the softness, so plump she can't even really bend them properly, it's just too adorable for words.

At the moment she is sleeping. So contentedly. She got to sleep fairly easily tonight, it's been a big day, with two lots of lovely visitors to our house to entertain and enlighten her, and not-very-long sleeps throughout the day. She was rubbing her little eyes while I cooked, patiently sitting in her dads arms while I chopped and stirred, and continued to rub while I held her in one arm and added spices and stirred with the other. I just wanted to get our lovely beef stew on the boil so it could simmer and cook away while I lay with my beautiful baby and helped her into her night of rest and rejuvenation. So she can grow. And learn. Those are her two jobs in life really, to grow and to learn, that's all she has to do, and she is doing them very well, thank you very much! She has been doing them since she was born, she's a natural!

She really is such a spritely little thing, she has such a good sense of humour! I just love love love love love (did I mention I love?) the way she will raise her fat little hands to her mouth and giggle away whenever she sees me being silly or doing a funny dance or making a funny face - she makes me do the silliest of things! And I love being silly for her! We laugh together and really share the joy of the moment, our eyes locked and linked in shared happiness, pure exuberance! I find myself doing the craziest of dances, or repeating nonsensical phrases over and over, simply because they elicited a smile or a laugh from my beautiful queen. I used to think she was the princess and I the queen, but no, she is really the queen! She has so much power, she dictates what will happen, when it will happen, how it will happen, and never lets us forget it! And I, joyfully, am her willing subject, her court jester, who will do anything to make her beautiful heart smile, and to see that smile shine out of her gorgeous face.

This is what life is about!

The Art of the Knit

2008-06-11T21:54:00.011+10:00

Well I seem to have stumbled upon a huge secret world... well, secret to me until I stumbled upon it, at which point I realised it is a BIG thing - yes, knitting. It's *massive*. Lots of people knit. Really ugly stuff. Some people knit cool stuff. I wanna be one of those people.

So yes, I recently taught myself how to knit, again (about the third time...) and am currently making a magic red hat for my little sweet thing Indigo to wear when it's freezing outside. This is my first ever proper knitting project. When it is finished and I can call myself an accomplished knitter, I intend to widen my creative horizons and make more interesting stuff, like toys and creatures and other cute things. There is actually a Japanese thing called Amigurumi (don'tchya love the Japanese?!) which are tiny little super cute creatures, usually crocheted but often knitted, and yes, they are tiny, and yes, they are super cute, here have a look...

Seee? I wanna make a cute little Amigurumi pear! Or three!

And a mushroom with a cutey little face...

And a little teensy weensy cyclops... every little girl needs her own teensy weensy liddle cyclops to cuddle...

So yes, I am enjoying this new phase of creativity in my life. It's nice.

I'm also quite impressed with knitting itself, knitting as an art form, knitting as a craft. I'm quite impressed that anyone ever came up with it. If everyone in history was as lazy as I am, we would all be sitting around under trees shivering, trying to wrap leaves or bark around us to keep warm. It amazes me that someone actually took some wool (OK it amazes me that the wool was ever taken OFF the sheep and then stretched and spun into yarn... I mean, it's really quite cheeky when you think of it, stealing a sheep's wool, but quite ingenious!), OK so they take the wool, the yarn, and then they take these two sticks, and figure out how to wrap and weave the yarn around these two here sticks, and keep wrapping and weaving and wrapping and weaving, until they end up with a jumper! Freaky! Coz it's really quite complicated in a super simple kind of way. What I mean is, once you know how to knit it's quite simple, but to have actually come up with the whole thing, well that just seems mightily impressive to me.

So as I knit away I feel connected to this amazing group of women who have not only developed but have passed on this wonderful technology from generation to generation, and it feels good, it feels good on a really deep level, to be doing this. What seems so wonderful to me is that it involves so many connected things - it's creativity, it's technical brilliance, but it's also about nurturing, yourself and others. When you make someone something they can wear, you're helping them be warm, you're helping them be well. Especially back in the time when you couldn't just pop down to Sportsgirl to pick up a jumper, back when if you wanted a jumper you had to bloomin' well knit yourself a jumper - the art of knitting was developed as a nurturing technology. Like cooking, another of my deepest joys. Both are fields that engage you on deeply creative levels, and which enable those around you to live richly, to be well. I don't think it's a coincidence that this new activity of mine mirrors one of my all time favourite of things to do. I think it says a lot about who I am, and what I like to do.

Going out and about

2008-05-28T18:50:00.003+10:00

I'm just loving going out and about with Indi these days in this amazing Autumn weather, cold yet not too cold, and so full of colour. I pop her in the Ergo, a wonderful carrier lent to me by a friend (thanks Sif!), and off we go on another mum and bub adventure. It's the kind of adventure that, if you're Indigo, you can fall asleep during! She's rocked about rhythmically as I walk, with her head leaning against her mumma's chest, tummy to tummy, warm as toast. It's so nice having her pressed against me, so close. I often wonder what it feels like for her - it looks like it would feel really lovely.
So some days we walk the local streets, with me admiring all the front yards and houses that we pass. This is something I truly love to do - I love the way a front yard just says so much about a household, about the people living there. I love observing the different plants people have collected, how they are arranged, cared for, how much effort has gone into it (or not, in many cases). I love my front yard, and spend a lot of time there, not just gardening but sitting out on our front porch on one of the two lovely big overstuffed chairs donated to us by our next door neighbour. Indigo and I spend a lot of time there, everyday. So I love it when I come across a front yard with furniture like a chair or a bench - it's amazing how it can transform a garden from a sterile place with a few plants to an inhabited outdoor 'room'. Just today I passed a row of pretty terrace houses, with tiny front yards, each with a small front verandah, and one of them had an orange retro looking upholstered chair, just a single seat, placed at an angle looking out on the street, and immediately I knew that whoever lived there just loved sitting there. I could feel that it was a spot where much enjoyment had taken place. It kind of hummed with it. It felt good. I think that's kind of what feng shui is about.
So yes she sleeps and gets her late morning nap while I walk and walk and walk - I have lost a bit of weight and am getting a really good idea of the terrain of our neighbourhood, getting a real sense of where we live. I like this. I used to wish we had a dog so I would be forced to walk more, but really there is nothing to stop me just stepping out for a little jaunt now and then. And all the better if I can do it while my lovely daughter sleeps soundly against my tummy (although my hips have been complaining a little as she gets heavier, I will have to get her used to the pram soon. I'm not really looking forward to it, she'll be so far away!)
Other days we go to the market, or the local shops, where she is more likely to be peering out from her comfy and safe perch, watching with wide eyes as the enormous and colourful and chattering world goes on around us. I love watching her in this mode, you can just tell she's taking so much in, processing so much, learning so much, just by observing, just by being there. And of course there are the countless people smiling with joy just at the sight of her, peering down at her and speaking baby talk to her. I used to kind of wish they would not get in her face so much but lately she is really lapping it up - she has been smiling back at them more and more often and winning them over completely!
It's actually quite amazing how much power she has. She opens people's hearts and brings people together just by being there. I always lose count of the number of people I end up chatting too as a result of wearing her around, and they are always the sweetest little encounters, tiny moments of shared joy as we all smile and share and love her, just for existing, just for being so goddamn cute!
I'm really loving it actually. I'm loving the sense of community that being a parent has brought to me. It's like a club, a huge, really huge club that exists, with free and automatic membership to each and every person who has ever been a parent. Mat and I noticed it right away. We are both fairly marginal people who have always dwelled on the fringes of society, never really fitting into the mainstream, or even many subgroups. Kind of a lonely place sometimes. But as soon as Indi was born, we instantly became members of this great club! We'd get smiles and nods everywhere we went, and still do. People give you more time to cross the street, are more likely to stop for you in the first place, if you are walking with your child, and they smile knowingly as you nod in thanks. It's a club that is totally unknown to you if you are childless - you can see all the people out there with kids, the sea of prams out on every shopping strip and cafe and playground, you can see them there, but you have no idea that they are all so connected, bound together by the invisible force of shared experience. And what an experience! The paradox of brutal difficulty combined with the sweetest of joys is completely unique and unmatchable by anything else.
There is a deepening in the eyes of these parents who I suddenly feel so connected to - you can see it as that knowing smile hits you. With that one look you can see that this person has already gone through what you are going through now. Even if the person is old and grey, you can see that they have not forgotten. You can see that they are kind of walking with you on this amazing journey, that the terrain is familiar to them, and that they know things about the road ahead of you that you don't know yet.
So we continue to walk, sometimes just the two of us, sometimes as a family when Mat joins us, and with each step we move forward on our amazing adventure together.

My Cat Eats Cake

2008-05-21T22:54:00.009+10:00

And chocolate. Contrary to the panicky statements made by my cat loving friends that it is "bad for them!". "It's bad for you too," I say, "stop being such a finger wagging hypocrite." I don't give him much, he doesn't want much anyway. But I give him some. It seems mean to sit there eating delicious chocolate, with him sniffing around clearly interested, and not offer it. He is my friend after all. If you were sitting there with your best friend on the couch in front of the heater on a winter's night, enjoying each other's company, snuggling even depending on how close you and this friend were, and then you brought out a yummy stash of the finest organic chocolate laced with orange essence (or peppermint, both favourites in this house) and began eating it with relish, would you not offer your friend some? Would you continue eating your chocolate despite the pleading looks and suggestive motions of your friend? I think not. It would be rude. Well I think cats, and all our animal companions (I refuse to call them pets, that is so demeaning) deserve to be treated with the same respect one would give to a cherished human. Away with the double standard, I say! Even calling them "animal companions" is a bit daft, considering that I am also an animal, and therefore Mat could legitimately call me his animal companion. But then Peter Singer's coining of the term "non-human", although factually impeccable, is a bit humanocentric, despite it's attempts not to be. And "fluffy friend", although kinda nice, always makes people laugh at me, which doesn't quite work either. I don't know that there is an easy way out of this. So bear all of this in mind when I use the term "animal companion", please.
Anyway, back to the story of what my cat, Dr chops, eats. He eats chocolate, as I mentioned, but he also enjoys bits of cheese, and ham, and sliced turkey. Like all good food lovers he enjoys his deli goods. He also likes cream - he will tolerate milk if there is nothing else but only really the organic unhomogenised stuff, he won't touch regular milk. He likes KFC. When we are having an eggy fry up for breakfast he loves to have some runny egg yolk - I used to fry him up his own egg coz runny egg yolk is a favourite with everyone in this house. And tonight I discovered he likes coconut cake - a particularly yummy concoction I concocted up off the top of my head this afternoon (why it took me so long to combine the joys of coconut and vanilla I shall never know). He was licking the crumbs off the plate so I asked Mat to cut a thin slice for Dr Chops and crumble it for him. It's all gone now.
So my aim here is not really to showcase the gastronomic adventures of my wonderful spirit cat. I am actually making a point. A point about our animal companions. Humans have so successfully separated themselves from nature that we have decided that when we live with an animal they are our playthings, and that certain kinds of animals living in an urban setting must all be owned (such as cats, dogs, guinea pigs, miniature pot-belly pigs, or any kind of pig really), and that any cat, for example, that is living a free life that doesn't involve humans is a "stray", which must be captured and subdued, have it's genitals forcibly removed under sedation (!!) , and either given an "owner" so it can live in a house, or killed! I mean really, how shocking is this?!?! We buy and sell these beings without a second thought. We breed them, and then separate children from mothers at will, preventing almost every one of these poor creatures from ever spending more than 6-8 weeks with their mums. Those poor mums! I think this is so sad! It's actually really quite insane. We are all so conditioned to see this state of affairs as being quite normal, and even right, that chances are you are thinking that I am a bit loopy right now, and clearly "one of those people". But think about it. Our human systems of interaction are not set in stone. They were not handed down by some mystical deity. We made them up. And we can unmake them. Unfortunately for the non-humans we have opposable thumbs, more complicated brains and are often stronger (than the urban creatures anyway), so in this case might wins. But is this right?
I have a beautiful book that I bought from a lovely second hand bookstore in Warrandyte on one of my lovely random drives into the countryside that I used to enjoy once upon a time before I had my beloved daughter. It is called Cats of the Greek Islands, or some such thing, and is filled with the most beautiful pictures of these most fortunate of the world's feline creatures, living amongst the people of the Islands, never as pets, but as true citizens. They loll about in groups and clans. They wander. They have babies. They look after their babies, and stay by their side, until mother and child naturally feel the inclination to be more independent. They sleep curled amongst each other, and they play cheekily, as cats will do. They eat fish at the wharves when the fishing boats bring in their catch, and are loved by the residents, who also give them tasty tidbits from time to time. And most importantly they are free. They are truly free.
In my next life I'd like to be a well-fed and happy cat living on one of these islands. In the meantime, while I am a human in my current form, I take it upon myself to make the life of my beautiful feline companions, Dr Chops and The Mysterious Crunch, as comfortable and autonomous as possible. And I think I am doing a good job - they are two very happy cats. And very well fed.

Onions and Garlic

2008-05-20T23:11:00.005+10:00

I had the best time with Indi today! She is such a spritely soul, so full of joy and humour and good cheer. I like her a lot. I mean, clearly I LOVE HER to absolute bits and pieces, a force of love so powerful it leaves me breathless... but on top of that, I really LIKE her. She's my little buddy.
So what's with the root vegetables I hear you ask? Well, just as I was gathering the aforementioned edibles from my pantry, about to work up a magical soupy treat in my new pressure cooker, I turned to Indi who was being held by my beloved in the kitchen - they often hang out with me while I cook which I love - and showed her the items one by one. "Onion" I said as I held up the onion, and "Garlic" I said as I held up a clove of garlic, and much to my surprise and sheer delight, she burst out laughing! Now there is no sound on this planet that pleases me more than the laughter of my cherubic daughter, and no sight more look-worthy than her face full of glee and joy as she chortles away, it's just the best. So Mat and I burst out laughing right along with her. And, as I tend to do when I spring upon some action which pleases my daughter, like a court jester wanting to please my queen, I repeated the above actions - "Onion", "Garlic" - and this time there was even more laughter, she positively cacked herself! If she could have slapped her thighs she would have. So yes, for the next TEN MINUTES, I kid you not, I repeated "Onion" [chortle chortle], "Garlic" [squeal chortle giggle], with Mat and I laughing right along with her and both our hearts just bursting with love and joy. Now the interesting thing was, the garlic was much funnier than the onion for some reason. I experimented by replacing the garlic with a carrot, which also got a fair few giggles, but then when I brought the garlic back, well, it was clear, the garlic was HILARIOUS.
I'm laughing just writing about it.
Kids are so cool.

My spiritual journey

2008-05-18T23:28:00.007+10:00

I had a realisation today about my evolving spirituality. I realised that I have travelled through and beyond a number of traditions and spiritual spheres, which have each served me at the time and have led to the next, and that each successive shift has happened naturally and in its own time, without me consciously thinking about it. This process has been taking place over the last twelve years or so. I started with yoga and hinduism, and spent a lot of time studying yoga philosophy as well as actually practicing meditation and physical yoga practice, and then moved on to Buddhism and Vipassana meditation, again with lots of study of buddhist philosophy and taking part in ten day silent retreats, then went all New Age with tarot and reiki and manifestation and the like.
So then I wondered - where I am now? It's hard to say.
I don't meditate or do yoga in the classical sense at all. I rarely do reiki, except with my cat Dr Chops, who is a reiki master and loves to receive it also. I don't agree with a lot of Buddhist philosophy these days as it is based on the cessation of suffering as the road to enlightenment, which I find ties in with my problems with the New Age movement and it's focus on rainbows and light and its tendency to shy away from the dark. This is the case with yoga also, there is a lot of repression of the darker parts of ourselves, and an insistence on feeling good. I think the dark parts of ourselves and of the universe are important. The dark is an essential element in a balanced system in my opinion, one half of the yin yang. Although Buddhism acknowledges the dark, it seeks to eliminate it, whereas I believe that dark times and difficulty are actually an intrinsic element of an evolving consciousness, and that the seeds of hardship bear the sweetest fruit in the end. Not that I go about looking for trouble, don't get me wrong, I think life tends to hand you your fair share of difficult trials quite naturally (in a karmic sort of way mostly, but not always) and it's our job to look for the lessons and to grow and evolve as a result of living through the hard times. Also, I definitely believe in natural cycles, in our own personal winters and springs and summers and autumns, and that you need to sit through the cold winter where it looks like not much is happening before you can get to the spring when your spirit blooms with a million flowers and then bears fruit in the summer which you can then harvest in the autumn.
What I do on a spiritual level is kind of hard to describe, very hard to describe actually, and also quite personal. I have learned over the years to keep sacred areas a bit secret. I used to go shouting from the rooftops whenever I had a spiritual breakthrough, I was always so excited, but it took me a surprisingly long time to figure out that I would always burst my precious bubbles of delight by making a big song and dance about things. These days my spiritual experiences barely get spoken about, they live in a private room in my heart, and it feels so much better that way.
But even if I wanted to go into detail about what I actually DO as a spiritual practice, I would be hard pressed to list anything, or describe an actual process. But my spirituality is a huge part of my life, and gives me untold joy and fulfillment. It is one of the best things in my life, alongside my relationship with my beautiful man and my amazing heartstoppingly gorgeous child. And my cats. And my sisters. Oh alright, my mum too. My spirituality enriches my life so much, it is where I grow, and get closer to the best me that I can be, the me I am working towards bringing into my daily life. I am so thankful that I have this cosmic space to loll about in.
That reminds me, gratitude is one of the biggest parts of my spirituality. Being grateful is one thing that I do do on a regular basis that I could comfortably call a solid element of my spiritual practice. I think it is an essential part of a happy and harmonious life, and paves the way for you to work in harmony with the universe. I'm not sure about the actual mechanism, but I do know that it works. Being grateful is a powerful force, and should be practiced regularly!
So I'm left with more questions than answers today - Where is my spirituality now? What does it involve? How do I speak about it? Do I speak about it?
There is a part of me that thinks some questions are better left unanswered, and some things better enjoyed than over-analysed.

Geraniums

2008-05-14T23:11:00.009+10:00

I'm very into them at the moment. They have such a strong life force. After months of neglect over summer once Indi was born, the only plants in my front yard to look chirpy and well were three geraniums by the driveway. A year or so ago I stuck three cuttings haphazardly into the ground, and then forgot about them, and now I have three lovely happy plants all bushy and covered with flowers blazing away. Any plant that can withstand drought conditions over summer without watering gets my praise and recognition, and as a result I have been on a bit of a rampage of late, procuring cuttings from here and there to bung into my yard. I have never come across a plant that strikes so easily from cuttings. You literally just have to pick a branch off any existing bush, trim almost all the leaves off, except for the little young ones near the tip, and poke it into the soil about an inch deep, or more if you can be bothered, but that's it. They barely need a glance after that. And with a new baby this suits me fine! They occasionally need for you to pick off the dying leaves and the dead flower heads, a bit of a prune now and again (or not). I just feel they are very good natured beings, and have decided to build up a bit of a collection. So there you have it, I like geraniums, they are good.

The Dark Side of Motherhood

2008-05-14T00:22:00.005+10:00

It's funny how sometimes it's easier to speak of difficult times when they are in the past, rather than while they are happening. Now that I'm feeling like I've found my motherhood groove and am grounded and well, I want to explore the side of motherhood that for some reason is not explored much in the wider world. The times when it's not nice, and lovely, and wonderful. When it's actually so hard, and so huge, and so demanding, that it threatens to smother you and your life as you knew it. The times where you find yourself wondering if you've made a big mistake that you can't undo. The times that find you going through the motions but panicking inside, wondering whether you can really do this for years and years and years.

This side of motherhood isn't talked about much. Everyone's too busy telling you how it's the most amazing thing you can ever do. Maybe it's because everyone who has difficulties as a mother is reluctant to speak of her experiences for fear of being judged a failure by others who seem to have it all worked out, who seem so together. Or maybe we fear that people will think we don't love our children if we are struggling to be happy being their caretakers. Or maybe it's because, as the days and months and years go by, and our hearts swell with the love that grows along with our growing children, the difficult times pale into the distance and are not easily recalled. Who knows why it isn't talked about much, but the reality, or at least my reality, is that it was largely only when I spoke about my own difficulties, whether they be current or in the past, that others would open up and tell me that yes, they too had difficulties, and yes, it's a hard hard job, and yes, they had struggled with this same thing and that same thing... Don't get me wrong, it was definitely reassuring to hear that I wasn't the only one who had had a hard time with breastfeeding, getting out of the house, driving with my crying baby, the sheer unrelenting grind, it definitely helped to know that it was a common thing. But why was I only hearing these stories *after* I opened up? *After* I had gone through the torment of feeling like I alone wasn't coping.

I think women should make a point of telling all mothers to be about all the hard times they had, so that when the new mothers find themselves in deep dark places that are lonely and scary, they know that others have stood there, that others have felt their pain, that it's not because they are failing and it's not because they are not cut out to be a mother after all, that it's just a part of the gig.

There is one person I know who did this, and it made a huge difference to me. She told me while I was pregnant that she cried every day for two months after giving birth to her beautiful child. She told me that she was scared she had ruined her life by having a child. She is now a happy and wonderful mother to a thriving two year old child. Knowing that she went through what she did helped me. It made me sad that she went through it, but it helped me to know about it. It made me feel OK.

So next time you see a pregnant woman about to have her first baby, rather than regale her with tales of bliss and happiness, which I'm sure she has been showered with, maybe the best thing you can do for her is to tell her about your three most difficult times as a new mum. Reassure her that if she struggles, which she will, she is not a failure. She is not doing it wrong. There is probably nothing wrong with her baby. It's normal, and it's OK to talk about, and it will pass.

I'm liking this mum thing

2008-05-13T00:32:00.006+10:00

I feel like my heart has had to grow in capacity to accommodate the huge pulses of love that wash over me these days. It's like my skin just can't get enough of my baby little big girl, I find myself rubbing my arms and hands all over her and kissing her soft round almost heart breakingly smooth cheeks but I can never seem to get quite enough. I just love it when I'm holding her tight against my chest and she's flopped against me with her head on my shoulder - I can't help but squeeze her and drink her in. I had a big session of this on Mother's Day as we walked from my delightful cafe breakfast to the car, I just spent the whole walk in bliss squeezing and smiling and trying not to trip over. I somehow managed to make it to the car in amongst all the joy.

That was just one of the many lovely moments I had on my first ever Mother's Day, which was such a beautiful day, thanks to the efforts of my gorgeous partner-in-life Mat, and the simple presence of my angel-girl. I was genuinely surprised at how much Mother's Day actually meant to me. Mat has been telling me almost every day what an awesome mum I am, and how impressed he is with me, which is so nice, but there was something about this day when Mothers are universally recognised and valued and thanked that really touched me. I think after struggling with the whole new mother thing ever since the post-birth happy hormones wore off around week five, and really having to dig deep to stay afloat a lot of the time, it was just really really nice to get a special day of recognition. It actually makes the hard bits easier to handle when you know that your efforts are being appreciated and valued.

But the really nice thing is that the hard parts have actually become easier. For the last few weeks I have really settled into my new role as Mother. And I'm really loving it! There are still the really hard times, I mean, this is the hardest thing ever, really, but it's also just amazingly rewarding, like nothing ever before. I am loving my girl more and more as she grows and weaves herself deeper into my heart with each new day, each new smile, each new thing that she can do. It really does feel as though we are enmeshing , that each new day more and more tendrils of her being delve into my heart and mind and spirit and more and more of my tendrils enter and wrap around her shining being. She is becoming more and more interactive, more aware and responsive, and I'm really loving it!

And I think I just had to go through an adjustment, as most mothers do, and do a bit of grieving for all the lost freedoms that I so took for granted, and that I have had to let go like a silk scarf on a windy day. But I think I have mostly come to terms with it all and I feel really settled at the moment. Settled and well.

She sleeps, I surf

2008-05-11T22:36:00.002+10:00

One thing I really quite adore is to have my baby girl sleeping on me, against me, with me. Right now she's sleeping on her side on the breastfeeding cushion, pressed right up against my chest. I have to reach over her to type. She feeds in her sleep occasionally, then lets go. She stirs, wriggles. But she's with me, the whole time, our bodies warming each other. We're both safe in the absolute certainty of the presence and wellbeing of the other. When she needs me I am *right here*. I don't even need to wonder about whether she is sleeping OK, or whether she's crawled out of the covers, or whether she's still breathing (every new parent knows this feeling I'm sure). Coz she's *right here*. In fact she is right up against my heart.
These are special times. She won't be sleeping against me on a breastfeeding cushion all her life. Probably not for many more months, even. So I am drinking this wonderful rich warm experience in, relishing it, like a thick hot chocolate on a cold night.