Just imagine it.

Had I a camera I would have taken photos of the numerous culinary delights I created this weekend like a regular domestic goddess. Despite fighting off a bug and feeling a bit weary, I just had the urge to bake, and cook and use up a fridge full of veges. A friend gave me organic double cream and a jar of organic marscapone which obviously necessitated the making of cake. Yesterday I made cauliflower and potato soup, flourless orange/almond cake, and pear compote which I've used today to make banana and pear muffins. I finally got around to making my own sourdough leaven which is proofing as I speak and seems to be doing what it should be doing, ie frothing up nicely with a slight beery smell. So tomorrow I will make my first ever rye sour dough loaf! Never thought dough would get me so excited but there we have it.
We have been cleaning up our front and back gardens and shed in honour of the glorious weather promising spring. Slowly but surely our garden is becoming a lovely place to hang out and hopefully we'll have a little pergola with shade cloth and a baby grape vine before the heat of summer hits.
Next thing to do is mend and adjust the funky frocks hanging on the study door, ooh I can't wait to get into those. Unless of course I am pregnant by the time the weather warms up - that would be both wonderful and disturbing given that all winter I've been rotating the same three outfits without too much complaint knowing that frocks are awaiting!
A wonderful musical discovery today - well music recommended by a friend - a six CD anthology of American Folk Music recorded in the late 50's.(thanks Mike for keeping us well fed in the music department, and you too Martin while I'm at it) Apparently Bob Dylan 'borrowed' the exact anthology from a friend prior to his rise to fame. You can hear the influences so clearly. There's such a mix of spirit and joy and darkness in those songs. Makes me want to pick up my guitar more often and sing whatever is in there. It's so easy to not do it. And yet lately each time I've played and sang for a few hours of an evening I've spent the following day feeling like I've had some profound spiritual cleansing!! Why wouldn't a person want to experience that more often and just say 'bugger the dishes'.....
Beau's perfect joy right now? A simple Ikea train set that he bought with the coins in his money box. He clutched it to his chest in quiet satisfaction all the way home and hasn't stopped playing with it since.

All Things White and Airy

This is our kitchen (above) in need of a paint job!




I am reliving a love affair with all things Scandinavian - especially the white walls, white floor boards, quirky and hyggeligt (means cosy but more...one of those untranslatables) with beautiful fabrics and textures and interesting found and designed objects/furniture. They just have a way that I think, having lived in Denmark for two and a half years, has a lot to do with spending a good deal of time indoors due to long, dark winters and therefore needing to make the inner environment light and airy and beautiful to be in for hours on end. In considering what to do with our little semi detached Melbourne house, I keep going back to this idea. Essentially our house is full of light with big windows and I can see it glowing and feeling spacious with a white paint job and colourful bits all around. You can see more photos of Mettes gorgeous apartment (the other two photos above are of her place) on her blog which is full of other beautiful things including her children's clothing and pottery. It seems Mette lives not far from Arhus where I lived. It was an interesting time for me, learning the language, getting married, rushing home to be with my mother as she died, marriage ending not long after and I haven't been back since. Feels like another life entirely now. But I would go back in a second to see everyone, being on good terms with my ex and felling like there is still a connection to the place.

All together now

K and I have been together for 7 years today. This day marks the day when we 'knew' we were going to be together. Lismore Northern New South Wales. The Winsome Hotel. A synchronistic meeting, an exchange of phone numbers and a quick kiss that felt like much much more!

Just came back from a great choir practice. They are wonderful people, fun and easy going and sing beautifully and it's such a pleasure to stand in front of them and hear the songs. I've never lead a choir before now and it is teaching me so much - bringing me back to music in a much more community-minded way; expanding my appreciation of musical genres and teaching me to be humble and assertive. I've had so much fear around music since I was a teenager and first declared to my desperately unhappy mother that I wanted to sing. She couldn't hear it because she had so many unfulfilled dreams of her own and so I guess took on a certain guilt around the dreaming and the hours spent teaching myself to play and compose.
My father has rediscovered his own voice in the last 6 years and sings in a choir in WA. It's so good to connect with him on that level and listen to him talk from his heart about his love of singing. It doesn't matter how old we are, it's never too late to do these things.

Beau and I rode to our friends' house around the corner this morning in the winter sun, that glorious first hint of a spring not too far away. Seeing Beau walk freely around the park lands has me yearning to get to the country. He would truly be in heaven living on acreage (as would K and I) with lots of animals about and lots of great jobs to do outside. We spent all Saturday in the garden, mulching and clearing rubbish and relocating the chickens and Beau always wants to help. He helps cook and clean and fix and dig and fetch and push.....they love it the little ones, to just do whatever it is we are doing. I feel like we could get rid of all the toys and there are still a hundred things to do.

Sunday evening we had our forth Co op collection. Lots of families coming through the house of our friends up the road. Lots of kids, lots of chatter, lots of helping hands and LOADS of really good food being sorted and weighed and bagged and bottled....So many other ideas are growing from our co op. Craft group, recipe book, sustainability (which is where it started really) bartering, working bees...it's a dream come true and it makes life in the suburbs a whole lot more exciting.

(Something weird is happening with the time down the bottom of each post. Believe me it is not 4.30am as I write this!!)

crafty

Not long home from craft night, a monthly occurrence now and so very fun and good and a long time coming. I'm making a string of felt birds for Beau's bedside - following projects will be a doll for Beau and to learn to knit. I rode my bike, glorious to weave through the back streets and felt free despite the burning in my lungs and thighs on those hills.
It's late and the small blonde alarm will wake me at an ungodly hour but I will sit awhile yet and read some more of Cold Mountain -wonderful if you are in the mood for journeying against horrendous odds and wayfaring strangers and women working the land at a time when women didn't work land they sketched and played piano.....most likely you have seen the movie which in its own right was quite good and if you agree then you must read the book. Charles Frazier is the author. I do love a good journey, hence I loved Cormac McCarthy's novels. It's such a luxury these days to have a book that engrosses me enough to have me stop cleaning while Beau sleeps of an afternoon and sit by the window and read. It's always been that a book has had to grip me within the first page otherwise I wouldn't go any further. Nowadays I give them a little more time. I have author binges, for example I'll read four Isabelle Allende novels and then 3 Gabriel Garcia Marquez and two Cormac McCarthy etc etc. I'll be needing a new book soon. Any recommendations???

Inspiration

Now and then something comes along that just totally blows one's mind yes??? I found this through Camilla Engman's wonderful blog (her art work too, is amazing). Some people just have that touch. I love it.

A Picture

Yeah I know it's not very lady like but it shows two facts about me; 1) I absolutely love to feed my face and 2) I have a tendency towards the ridiculous whenever someone points a camera at me so in terms of self portraits it's really quite revealing. There's a hint of a fear of narcissism as I post these - and then I reflect upon the comfort of knowing something of other bloggers' lives and identities and how being a bit more transparent in life can be a beautiful thing.

The day of our wedding above. Dec 2003. One of my favourite wedding shots next to the one of K and I pulling 'sharkies' which I don't seem to have on my hard drive but will post it because it's very fetching.

So given that I have no new pictures to post, here are some 'old' ones. As I said I personally can't digest endless paragraphs of text (unless I'm reading a novel) without the relief of pictures to break it up, so these are for you if you a similar........

Mental note ; must ask K to show me how to get photos off my phone.

I must go to work. This is the time of day when the last thing I want to do is to go to work. What I want to do at 3.30pm is to have a cup of tea, eat some cake, enjoy Beau's scruffy , woozy emerging from dream land, and await K's arrival home and avoid venturing outside into the cold wind. (Love the cold, can't do wind). Just as well my job is not at all like a job but more like doing some chores with good friends.

Bad Blogger Bids For Second Babe

Oh hell, really I can't sit around waiting for a camera before I get it together to write a post.......I was never one in favour of too much text and not enough pictures. And I've been experiencing the same desperate grasping of time as Soozs and Janet - squeezing Other Stuff (which sadly even includes a conversation with K at the moment) in amidst the routine. I did manage to organise a craft night at home last Thursday with a few very lovely friends and their knitting needles and biscuits. THAT felt damn good I must say - something I've long wanted to happen and again if I wait for the Right Time it ain't never gonna happen. A bit like having a baby, or going out on a girl's date with my friend Bridget, or finishing this painting (overcome with guilt sigh...). I took one look at Soozs' pictures of the Winterwood store and immediately went into deep Craft Envy. I love felt. I love it. I especially love it all rolled up in splendid colours like that. I have ordered many things from the store via mail but still never set foot in there. Craft night once a month will surely give me renewed reason to buy more felt AND to learn to knit! I know gods it's sad isn't it. I don't know how and I know once I start there'll be no stopping the wool, the hours of meditative click, click, the glorious things I shall make....Where do I start? Can I take a knitting pill? Help!!!

Beau is getting four molars all at once which has brought forth not surprisingly a host of behaviours that usually occurs whenever a non-family member joins us. And the usual sleep disruption and not knowing what he wants except Boobie and lots of it......I can't even imagine what it must feel like to have four huge teeth piercing my gums.Bloody painful. The other morning Beau looked up at me in the bathroom after our morning shower and said "Mummy a beautiful Queen with Boobies" He can have just about anything he wants when that much cuteness comes around.

K has been through a period of doubt about having another baby. Some of his concerns have been his age and health; his job which is stable but which wouldn't support us if I stopped working my few but necessary shifts; debts; more sleep deprivation; non-existent sex-life/relationship time; less freedom to travel and study.....probably all the very normal anxieties of a 40 something year old Dad who still hasn't found job satisfaction and who has never left the country. I've tried on the whole only child prospect as a result. To be fair to K and to double check my own motives for having a another child. It's gotta be now or never really. Guy's can buy a whole lot more time at this age than us women. Does it sound really lame to say that I strongly feel like there's another little being waiting to come on in to our lives? I've considered the possibility of not being ABLE to conceive and that's a different matter. But there's the willingness to try, the openness to it, the idea of not one but two fantastic babes that leave us completely exhausted but completely enraptured and there's the companionship of siblings that I remember myself and that when all things adult were seeming oh so dull there was my brother to escape with to the record collection....

Truly if it came down to practicality I would be happy to sell this house and be debt free and move to a cheap house in the country and enjoy family life without it having to succumb to looming limitations of an economic nature. But I doubt it will be necessary (and maybe we'll do it anyway). I must say then that our calm conversation around the issue has given K the space to come to it on his own. Now we are mutually open again to that little being hovering around and it feels good, rich, natural, exciting, and still a bit scary.