on missing

Verily enjoying the super close-up function on my camera. It sees details that my eye can't see.

As Hanna commented last post, missing can be nice. I completely agree. It's easy to take the one you see the most often for granted. And take for granted that they will always be there. I experienced all kinds of emotions as we were planning K's departure. There has been a huge letting go, and I found myself mourning our relationship in some way as if we were saying good bye for ever. Which on one hand sounds ridiculous given that we will only be a month apart, but makes sense in light of the unpredictable nature of life. We never know what will happen at any moment and so every moment is a letting go. And so we miss each other and the moment of return is all the more precious.

Beau of course doesn't have any concept of the time; that K is away for four weeks means little, and he expects him to be home at the end of each day even though he knows K is in India. He has been incredibly loving and helpful during our long days together. Beau seems to understand that we will be moving (back) to WA. He has begun asking on a daily basis "Can I bring ...... to Western Australia". Three moves in three years is probably a little confusing for him, and that we are 'at home' here but it's M's house...... I think at the least he will be able to withstand change without too much trauma in his life. We hope. We also hope there won't BE too many moves until we find our Home.

And to pass on a wonderful initiative that Esti posted on her blog...You Are Beautiful

Dresses and Goddesses

In honor of it not being Friday here is an amazing Indian designer who I found through the Sartorlialist .
Anyway I've hardly been committed to regular Friday Frock showings. So have a look at Anamika Khanna and weep with joy.
There's very little in her collections I wouldn't desire had I an appropriately sized disposable income. It's not often I see couture that looks like something I could actually wear. She has some truly gorgeous textiles.

Other than that........ slowly making steps towards moving Westward. Organising some one to take over the choir, getting removal quotes, researching schools and rentals. Even just to tell people that this is what we are doing, is a big step. Beau has started asking on daily basis if this or that toy or item will be accompanying him to Western Australia. It's interesting that as usual, as soon as a firm decision is made, synchronicities appear. Many friends seems to know someone who is moving/has moved to the town we are particularly drawn to, and they all have great things to say about it. In my experience indecision creates chaos Everything shifts and converges when a choice is made and energy is put behind it. Which just supports my theory that ultimately it doesn't really matter what we choose to do (as long as we are acting out of awareness) Life will soon let us know if it isn't going to be possible.

K leaves on Saturday evening. Beau and I might join our friends at their family farm for a few days. I can imagine us mainly just settling into our own rhythm and breaking up the four weeks with visits and excursions. I might even finish the White Tara painting at long last.


I worked on her a little last week and it felt good for so many reasons not least of all because the recipient is due to give birth next month. This will mark three and a half years since she 'commissioned' me to do it! She will be the third Tara I will have painted. The first was Green Tara as a wedding gift for my brother and his wife;



and the second, the White Tara I painted as a kind of meditation leading up to Beau's birth.
I felt a very strong connection to Tara when I began practicing meditation, probably due to Rinpoche's connection to her and due to the amount of times K and I sang her mantras in our first years in Melbourne. For a while we shared a house with like minded friends with whom we did Green Tara practice every morning for a couple of weeks. During this time I had a number of lucid dreams in which I thought to sing her mantra in order to 'see' her. It was a very special time and not unlike the honeymoon period one experiences in the beginning of a relationship. These paintings have been a way of me keeping in contact with Tara at a time where physical practice is rare. She is the Mother of all Buddhas, of everything and for me she is Skeleton Woman too. May she also visit your dreams now and then.

The Domestic Goddess is Out or It Don't Mean a Thing if it Aint Got That Zing

Ah me I'm bamboozled by this day just gone, in a fog of not-enough-sleep, no homework done, a 24 hour battle with a three and a half year old will (and consequently my own parenting), combined also with what may well be PMT OR pregnancy, these days it's never quite clear (wishful thinking for the most part). This is the to be expected polar opposite day to the post below. Also grappling with the fact that I've given my sincere blessing to K to fly off to India for 4 weeks and that simultaneously I feel all manner of emotions arising at the prospect of him being away for that long, ranging from deep love and understanding, to fear of life changing radically beyond my control as a result of his pilgrimage, to confusion as to how he can so easily do this when I find it so challenging to give myself an hour here and there to catch my breath or have a nap or just be with myself.
I lay in bed for hours last night watching awful thoughts arise and fall, like some morbid soap opera dealing in only fear and loathing. Thoughts that have absolutely no basis in reality but are simply the spawn of an ego desperately trying to assert itself amidst change. After all, we are also planning to leave in a few months and whilst my heart sings at the thought of returning to the Indian Ocean and all that lies close to it, many sly mental tricks are playing themselves out.
A dear friend and I were having lunch together on Saturday (yes I do let myself out now and then), and I found myself referring to my mental habits as the committee of the displeased, who are basically a bunch of all the voices who have ever made me feel guilty about following my heart. We had a good laugh which was extremely therapeutic as I aspire to not taking myself too seriously, especially when I'm hormonally challenged.
Anyway we noted that I am pitting myself against an intolerant and fearful panel and that allies are what are most needed. So I won't be sharing our plans with people who aren't prepared to be open and enthusiastic about the following of a heart. And I won't be the voice of woe to K, as he prepares himself to follow his.
If I look deep into my heart then what I am doing is exactly what it wishes. All the battles and fear and loathing are just part of the challenge of staying on the path. I really need to trust more in my body's wisdom and in the quality and location of the feelings that arise when something needs to be decided. If there's a zing in the chest area it's good thing.

market day and softened by the sea

Collingwood Children's Farm market on Saturday. Wonderful place, animals to pat and feed and milk, good produce to taste and buy, lots of happy folk......it's hard to believe one is in the city. Beau took the goat photo. I would love a goat. A goat loves a goat.



Had a very relaxed, slow Mama's Day. Had a great urge to be by the sea in the afternoon so we rugged up and went forth. How glorious. The treasures I found! I love to collect shells and glass all softened by the sea as we too felt. It's what I miss about the west. That Indian Ocean that I saw every single day for the first half of my life. The smell , the light, the waves, the sky. The eyes can rest on endless blue. We are planning to head back to the West in a couple of months. A long slow decision involving the extraction of ourselves from a pretty special community of people. The pull is so strong we have to follow it. So K will go to India for a few weeks and then we will start preparing to leave. It feels good. Big. Sad. Long awaited. Well timed. Good.

skeleton woman begs for audience

What an autumn this is. Shedding more than leaves around here. Autumn has got me all topsy turvy. My head has been full to overflowing. Let go let go let go is my mantra. I hold my drawing pen and hover over white paper. We talk about where to go after winter. Freedom brings fears. Let go let go let go. She's in the cave putting new flesh on rattling rattling telling me to stay with it and watch and wait. Don't bolt. There's a winter yet and then a spring. Life is living us all whatever move we make.
This is the bit I always forget. Whenever I have big decisions to make (at least they always seem big) I feel like I have to do everything I can to bring a good outcome. And along the way there are many people to please and many factors to consider. Exhausting. Something good happened at Amma's feet. A pause long enough to show us what it might be like to just be.

So I'm feeling very emotional and open. Beau and I have spent many days at home talking, making things, dancing and singing, walking in between rain showers. We all spent last weekend driving around the country looking at property which was great research but rather exhausting. It was a little charged for me with the feeling that we have to buy a house now. I've been holding a vision of a family home, a place where we put down roots, unpack completely, and where our kids love to come back to years from now. Lurking beneath that has been the feeling that it's wrong to wish for it, a kind of spiritual guilt that I adopted somewhere along the way to fit in with my conditioning! So I'm again reminded that true freedom is of the mind and that it doesn't matter to pure awareness what we do or where we go. The most important thing is to BE present and aware and then whatever we do is the right thing.

K is planning a trip to India to sit at Arunachala where Ramana Maharshi spent most of his life. Perhaps we will all visit there together some time. K has never been out of the country and given that we are hoping to have another baby, this may be his last chance for a while. More importantly it's something he needs to do, he is compelled, which is a beautiful thing.

I've started a short course Writing and Illustrating a Children's story book. Something I've wanted to do for a long time.

Beau is watching Charlotte's Web, gorgeous story, and shaking off the last bit of a temperature from the weekend. Another slow day at home for us. Yay.

Market, Mudbricks and a mad, mad wind

A lovely Saturday with friends out of town at their beautiful place surrounded by trees. We sat by the fire all day and ate, ate and laughed and turned lights out for Earth Hour at 8pm and continued the same activities by candle light. Good for the soul. Rainbows and kangaroos and cake. We love our little house but oh how we long to be in such a place surrounded by bush. Everything slows down. The colours of the Australian bush are so soft, a calming focus for the eyes. I do love it.

I hope your roofs are in tact. Ours is banging around like tupperware in this mad wind. Climate change eh? Hadn't noticed.....

PS that's Tahli's beautiful pregnant belly not mine. Not this month, though I was absolutely convinced I was. I woke up Sunday morning feeling excited to think there may be a positive test to see. It was still dark and Beau needed a pee and he said sleepily "Mama have you got a broken tummy?" And i stood up to turn the light on and there was a bit of blood on the dyne. Damn they are spooky sometimes aren't they the little empaths! My brother and sister-in-law are on IVF, and just had their second transfer which sadly was not successful. I hope it happens for them soon. I think they are handling it with enormous presence and grace despite the emotional and physical roller coaster that it is.

Woolly Weather and the Holden Whisperer is missed.

It's February and we have the heater on and I am knitting scarves. We'll be making gender non-specific snow persons next.

I have been making this....

A double batch of granola, my favourite cereal. (the cup of Black Adder Licorice Tea is for consuming on the side)

For the regular batch;
75g dates (stoned and chopped)
75g sultanas or raisins
50g blanched or chopped almonds
50g raw cashews
50g macadamia nuts roughly chopped
2 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup grapeseed oil
1/4 cup pear juice concentrate
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 150C combine mix fruit and put aside. Combine nuts and oats separately and set aside. Heat oil and pear juice concentrate in a saucepan til simmering then pour over the nut/oats mixture and mix well. Put into baking dish and press down to about 3 cm. Bake for an hour, stirring now and then until golden brown throughout. Cool in baking dish and then stir in the fruit and store in an air tight container.
This is my version of a recipe in Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion. You can use honey. I prefer the concentrate because it's low glucose. You can add other nuts or dried fruit of course. For me this is sweet enough in fact you could probably leave out honey/concentrate all together and just use dried fruit.

I have also been here.
To purchase this.

It was very difficult to leave the establishment due to all the yummy, affordable, desirable, colourful woolly stuff. In Borders today I tossed up between '400 Knitting Stitches' and 'The Knitter's Handbook', eventually choosing the latter for it's broader content, but seriously people 400 DIFFERENT STITCHES!!!! ??? I have to have that book. It shall be mine oh yes it shall. (I'm a gonner aren't I......)

Did I mention that Beau is out of nappies and off the boob?? I do believe I did. Sorry, repeating myself. Baby number two is knocking on my reproductive door and my heart simultaneously.

We are currently car hunting. (she said quickly deleting all posts raving about the joys of car-less life) Station wagon lovers that we are, and who wouldn't be with kids, dog, Camberwell Market booty storage needs.....My father has been working on cars, trucks, boats, bikes anything with wheels and a motor for most of his life and while all my other mates were buying; trashing and pumping money into mysterious new cars as teenagers, I drove around in a small green Mazda 1300 that Dad and his TAFE Automotive engineering class built from the ground up. They built it, cleaned, it spray painted it and primed it for me and it went on and on and on and on. And when on the rare occasion anything did come loose (it was usually from neglect on my behalf) Dad was there to fix it. So Consequently I have Trust Issues with Mechanics. Thankfully we now have one who is of Dad's ilk. My brother and I call Dad the Holden Whisperer because for example, K and I bought our last car here in Melbourne on the basis of Dad listening to the engine on his mobile phone in WA. Say no more.

What was my point here....?? I'll move on. Just to clarify the whole car free thing.....Beau is now of a weight that coupled with my lack of fitness, makes carrying him around on the back of the bike a dangerous sport. But more importantly the Big Move is nigh. Foggy though the details may be, the act is inevitable and you won't see me riding around dirt country roads on the way to the shop with a new born baby and a toddler in tow. I do still prefer to walk, ride or train/tram/bus it whenever possible because the irony of it all is that I do hate traffic.

K and Icurrently in the midst of Detox. Not that there's a lot of Tox in my body to De so it's a bit of a break from daily cake really. I do feel rather light and good and pious as if the Lord is watching me and He is pleased. This is part of Preparation for Conception of a Baby and makes us sound like a pair of Control Freaks when actually we are a pair of hippies who generally leave everything up to the Universe. Given that we're officially in our 40's, a bit of conscious effort won't go astray.

OK I'm going now. K is 1 meter away from me at his computer. It's a disturbing picture. Aint no babies gonna come from this kind of an evening...

back

We are back a week now still tanned still caught in the bliss of long beach days and balmy nights, Fremantle Doctor and South West landscape beauty. Can you believe in the west they still use SPRINKLERS! And hand wash their cars as if 'drought ' were the subject of a fairy tale. The mining industry is booming and house prices are outrageous and everyone is beautiful and tanned and hardly any one seems to know about gluten free and the only people found knitting on the beach are those from Melbourne....and the roads are quiet and the city is a country town and the train line follows the glorious coast line and the river is enormous and the sky is big and blue and the air smells like the sea. Blessed by dear friends and sea breezes and Dad's oasis down south and daily swims we survived the heat. Whilst there the idea of staying was tantalising. Now 'home' we feel the bonds to our people here and they are strong ties and we are no clearer as to making The Big Move or not. It helps to be happy wherever one is and to also feel free to do what one wants to do when the time is right so we will enjoy our little Melbourne cottage and our dear community of fellow Time Travellers and wait for the signs to spin the Tardis off into the void again.

I have been feeling inert since arriving home a day late (missed our flight because I apparently cannot register 24 hour time) via the midnight horror flight. I think it's because we had only just moved here and then flew off to the west, had a brilliant relaxed family holiday and now must negotiate the busy avenues of Responsibility and Routine which, once I recover my inner map- making skills, I'm sure will again be the bedrock of this Melbourne Life.

For anyone planning to fly Tiger Airways across this land I say with affection that the landings were superb and the service was comical; on return the same guy who took our luggage at check in was still cleaning the plane when we queued bleary eyed at the gate miles along the tarmac. He ran about with rubbish bags and ropes flustered but smiling and then, we imagined, slipped into the cockpit to fly us home. Had he been the one to come around with the tea trolley an hour later, we would not have been at all surprised. It will have us chuckling for a long time.

Beau had a wonderful time reacquainting himself with the Family Elders down south who bought him icecream and rolled about on the floor endlessly with him, dancing naked with us tipsy adults (clothed) on a hot Freo evening, learning to summersault, submerging his hands in Toby and Ryonens' fish tank, driving proudly about in 'Felicicy's car',being buried in cool sand at the beach, being loved and flung about by the gorgeous Jim and Anna, feeding lamas and watching and listening to Dimity and co. sing opera under the stars in Balingup, hearing the story of our aeroplane journey over and over before bed, and discovering finally that Kookaburras 'are laughing because one of them always farts', hence overcoming his mortal fear of said bird. He was pleased to come home to our new old house (god we have completely confused the child), to his train set and to Flash our faithful hound, and to his friends and to swims at the pool and to a good night's sleep. Out of nappies and almost off the boobie.

Whilst away the sensational Amber taught me to knit (between glasses of Sav Blanc and witty and philosophical conversation). At last I understand the fuss, the addiction, the blissful hours on the couch, the hunt for the perfect ball of wool and the benefit of wooden needles. I am planning a luxury solo mission to the Yarn Barn at earliest opportunity and anywhere else you can recommend to find such goodly gear. I haven't made any thing in particular but have been happily knitting and pearling and seeding and casting on and 'frogging' (!) and casting on again and experimenting and seeing how neat I can be. Honeymoon stage.

I too feel enormously hopeful and emotional after reading the PM's compassionate Sorry speech (I didn't hear it as we were in transit at the time) and any cynicism that may be lurking within has moved aside to make room for the possibility of healing and change. May it be so.

Gentle Landing

We went to the Aquarium today (first time for me). All very cool with sharks and rays swimming overhead but so noisy I couldn't wait to get out of there. Would be amazing to be there with the emulated silence of the under world. I guess we'd have to gag and bind our children so perhaps instead I'll where ear plugs next time. Here is my favourite fish of the day. Nature has a wonderful sense of humour.

Thank the goddess for supportive friends, mild weather, perfect timing and the dear, welcoming friend into whose house we have gently landed at last. We have moved into this fully furnished house - a place that just instantly feels like home, as if the things in it we have always had around us. M's energy and aesthetic resonates with our own so there has been little to do other than fill cupboards and fridge and clear away boxes. I am completely exhausted and I love it here. The boys reflect the same sentiment. Beau has ridden the move smoothly and even prefers to sleep in his new bed. K still one armed but taking care of all our technological needs as only he can. The photos will show how lovely it truly is. I feel like this is a place to spend half a year recovering and creating and visioning, and just enjoying. Good to be back in the old familiar 'hood.


Watched 'I'm Your Man' (Leonard Cohen Documentary) again last night. Yet again I feel the wave of inspiration that hit me during the first viewing. Leonard himself in all his profound wisdom, dignity and poetry as well as the performers who covered his songs at the Opera House. I have played my guitar more since I first watched the DVD a month or so ago, then I have in years and my oh my it feels GOOD. I have to say also that the Irish film 'Once' has had the same affect on me. Music music music.

I have craft books on their way from Winterwood and a lovely spot in which to make manifest their contents.

Oh and it's official. We are now debt free. (deep sigh of relief) All is well.

A Huge Splinter in the Palm is Worth Three when You're in the Middle of Moving House

OUCH. My poor husband is in Emergency as I type, with a God Almighty Splinter protruding both ends through the fleshy part of his thumb. Gulp. Battling Ivy in the garden in stage one of pack- and- prepare- to -vacate- house. They're talking plastic surgery. At least he has 5 weeks holiday from now on. It was an eye opening moment when I realised that we had no car, no available cash for taxi and no ambulance membership and that we are currently, in such situations dependent on the good will of neighbours. Fortunately they are fabulous.

We had such a lovely slow weekend with stillness and music and eating and friends staying the night. The kind of weekend where we were oblivious to the time, where we ate when we were hungry, where the guitars were constantly picked up and plucked, where the kiddies reveled in us all just being together in one place. I truly appreciate friends who aren't in a hurry to leave and with whom one can move with the general energy and flow of the day.

I will miss the light in this house and the view of trees from every window. I will miss the insulation that has it be 10 degrees cooler inside on a hot hot day and I will miss the exquisite violin playing I hear from over the back fence from time to time, and I will miss the friends with whom we spontaneously pop over to visit because we live so close. I will not miss the bathroom nor the ivy.

We are out of here on the weekend and then we fly to WA the following week for a two week holiday with family and friends which will be our first holiday together in three years. I'm thinking beach and not a whole lot else. My father lives 5 minutes from some of the most glorious coast in all the land. Whenever I'm there I find it hard to believe that I left such wholesome geography, which granted does not provide many of the culinary, creative, and cosmopolitan delights that Melbourne can, but of itself can offer a great deal to a family who in actual fact only utilises one of the above (food). For me it obviously has a lot to do with spending my childhood there near the ocean, but also the general laid back pace, the sense of space and the access to nature and family. I love the forest and the shadows cast by trees on the highways in the golden dusk light and the sunset over the ocean and the dependable sea breeze. WA is far away from everything (except divine beaches) and never a cheap option flight wise but it's still home. Whenever I walk out of Perth airport there's a familiar smell and a feeling that settles my cells and my soul. There are people there who have known me all my life. It's romantic yes and would mean leaving some very dear people here. So we will go there together and see how it feels. Maybe it's time to go back. Many of my friends have done so and say that it's the best thing they could have done for their family life. I suppose we will know.

No crafting been done of late but once moved I have a doll to make. I'm hoping that When The House Settles we can squeeze out a new Sewing Machine for moi. For the good of the whole family. For the sake of creative joy and daily sanity. For practical necessity.For the promotion of the beautification of the world in general. Any thoughts on a good model?

Old Shoes New Year

Beau's world. Regularly found prostrate on floor immersed in miniature rail road land. "Beau likes smokey trains mama" (still speaks of himself in third person). Understatement! We gave him the wooden set for Christmas. Winner.

Didn't take photos on Christmas Day. I wasn't well. Wound up with a fever in the night. Still managed to eat an ample amount of gourmet Christmas Fair.

New Year's Eve spent at friends' glorious mudbrick house in the bush. Sat on the front lawn until 4am (I even out-partied K!)singing and playing guitar. We sang up every 80's song we knew including the Violent Femmes entire 1st album. Sober as a judge i was and that's the way uh huh uh huh I like it. Beau has mortal fear of Kookaburras hence he did not leave the safety of the house nor did he appreciate being put at the mercy of a chance kookaburra meeting at the river the next day. Poor love. That kind of fear is big. I remember it well. And I remember it passing too.


Beau's (and my) favourite shoes, too small now. Time for many new things now, shoes, home, lifestyle, work.....
Two and a half weeks until we move. Much sorting and packing to avoid until last minute.
Happy New Year lovely people.

Blanket Stitch my world

The beautiful babe went to sleep early and so here I sit joyously, indulgently crafting the night away - making soft trees (see dodgey web cam photo above) thanks to Suse's lead, out of glorious felt, hand stitching and thinking about how many periods in my life I've found myself huddled in the light hand stitching something in a state of meditative bliss. Now with a renewed creative surge; four years ago when I recycled children's clothing and hand stitched felt motifs on everything; and ten years ago at art school when I hand stitched little tissue paper mache shellacked squares into cubes - 480 squares making 80 cubes (people thought I'd gone batty "It's Process Art man") . Each time I sit down with needle in hand I think about my grandmother who embroidered and crotched prolifically. I never knew her as she died when I was under two years old but I feel a connection to her in this way. I vaguely remember my mum swearing at her Singer so I guess the gene must have skipped a generation. Mum had her own thing going on flying light aircraft (THAT gene may well come back through my children, not me!)
So yeah soft trees, what a delight, for the nativity set growing on the mantle. I passed up K's corporate Christmas Do for a Night On the Felt. We have my Work Do tomorrow night and one a weekend is simply enough for me. Did I mention that I've resigned from my job and have but one more week of 4.30am starts and lifting boxes and standing on my feet but sadly simultaneously only one more week of hanging out with wonderful co workers/friends/employers and customers, good food, stimulating adult conversation (the lack of which could be my undoing!) and daily dose of belly laughing. Truly a fabulous job for so many reasons but so often has me exhausted and dreaming of more time with Beau and K and allowing room to reorganise our family routine to provide more time together in general. With neither mortgage nor debts (can I just say the latter one more time.'nor debts' ahh the sweetness of it) there is much potential in this change. We are regularly found drooling over country real estate these days, just to keep our sights on the ultimate goal.
Back to soft trees and Grant Lee Phillips (of Buffalo). Listening to his Nineteen Eighties Cover album which, if like me you were molded by that decade, will bring you much joy and perhaps even a sentimental tear. Great covers like Under The Milky Way Tonight, Love My Way, Boys Don't Cry, Wave of Mutilation and other gems.

Have a wonderful weekend y'all

Greener Pastures

Well. What a great week. We sold our house before auction at the right price with a good settlement. Huge relief. And a new government. With Bob Brown at last winning a seat in Senate, by primary vote thanks very much! HUGE relief. I personally feel that only good things can come of that!
We have sorted out the hows and wherefores of moving into our friend's house in January. The timing has been perfect and the move looks to be easy given that we can just store our minimal possessions and move into a gorgeous furnished house. I've never been very good at holding onto things. I get very excited about culling everything down to the basics when there's a move afoot. Probably because I/we have moved so many times in the last 20 years individually and as a couple/family. I had everything I needed at one point just after mum died. I got rid of it all to go off on a feral romp around the country free of material encumbrances and it seems I've been unable to hold fast to such things since. Which is quite amusing given that I have a HUGE fetish for Inside Out magazine and daydream about our own oasis in the country where we live happily ever after. It is time to put down roots. There'll always be the need to get up and go somewhere but I strongly feel the need for home and community and familiarity. And a sense of creativity being expressed through living in and knowing a place intimately. I've accepted that we have realistically given up our chance of owning a house in the city. Which is OK. Happy to rent and even happier to start a life in the country.
K and I really REALLY need to reconnect and save our relationship which has hung together on a thin thread for a year and a half. For the first time ever I've found myself imagining life as a single parent which is how I've mostly felt (trite as that may sound to a single parent). It's easier to imagine no relationship over a dysfunctional one. Our differences are more pronounced than ever and we've become so habituated to managing without each other that I wonder sometimes if it wasn't for the beautiful Beau would we still be together but then it's partly due to the changes brought by parenthood that our relationship has changed so dramatically. Was a time when I would just get up and leave a place or a relationship or a job or whatever, if the joy had gone out of it. I'm pretty good at moving on and starting again. But that gets to be very exhausting, and repetitive. Same shit, different scenario. And motherhood has shown me those parts of self that keep me more connected, like true patience and compassion and determination and forbearance and deep unconditional love . It would be pointless if those things didn't filter out into the rest of life. The wee ones are teaching us how to love and to Stick It Out.
So many photo worthy moments of late. If we could only download the contents of our minds something like Dumbledore's Pensieve. I look forward to buying a camera and putting images with words. I could talk and write all day but jeeze how boring for us all. I love seeing all your pictures - how you all look at the world and what you make and where you live. Soon I will have lots more to share and if all goes accordingly more time for craft and baking and adventures.

Not drowning, waving

Drowning in snot. My little boy and I like his father before us and countless others we know. This shall be known as the Spring of the Great Snot. Weeks and weeks of it and then a fresh bout of what feels like heavy bronchitis. A week at home sick alone with a sick child....VERY testing, and here I am now taking a moment on day two of Beau refusing midday nap and both of us dragging our sorry butts around the house - Beau asked for Little Mowgli Movie (Jungle Book 2). It's so cute I cannot tell you and I said no no no until my need for time out and his need for chill out became too obvious. He's sitting so still on the couch with the most heavenly smile upon his face and every now and then looks over at me and repeats his favourite bits with a chuckle. For so long I resisted letting Beau watch anything. K and I don't watch TV, just DVDs now and then, and we hoped to keep Beau from the Box for as long as possible but well, there's no denying that as a family without extended family, in times of need a DVD of wise choice is a bloody Godsend. Granted Beau has only ever seen 3 movies, Mary Poppins, and Jungle Book 1 and 2 and maybe watched Playschool 3 times in total.

The sale of the house is going ahead, auction booked, inspection days penciled in and a weekend of hard yakka ahead to prepare for photos next Wednesday. It's all going very fast which will probably prove to be a blessing. Ironically of course the more we do to clean up the place and prepare for sale, the lovelier it feels to me. Ah dear. How difficult it is to be a human being sometimes, with all these desires and attachments. Thankfully the Universe (be it that to which we may credit our fate) has thrown out the life boat in the form of supportive friends, a place to rent for half a year and what we are told is a seller's market so we will come out of this OK. And that will be the biggest breath of fresh air I could imagine. There have been so many times this last year and a half where we have not felt OK. Just as well there's much more to life than owning a home (which we probably will do at some point again anyway). At last we are coming back to a place of freedom, in our minds more than anything, and flexibility. The tight chord around our life is loosening and finally, teetering at the edge of 40, I may just be about to live the country life I've dreamed of. If I can just hold my nose and jump in......

Here, there and everywhere .

A week on from my little holiday and I am starting to get the Oh Dear I Do Miss the Land of My Birth Blues. I do believe that the flying of me over there and the degree of lovin' I received from friends and family was a meditated plan to have me return to Melbourne with the planted seed of desire to up-root my boys from our home of 5 years and gypsy it back to WA with her Indian ocean smells and big clear blue sky and lolling coastal train ride to increasingly gentrified but still so pretty and dear to my heart Fremantle. Oh west coast temptress with your quiet, unpretentious facade harboring creative potential and the promise of your fertile southern shores. I was determined not to come back romanticising you in any way. I had Eckhart Tolle on the MP3 player both legs of the plane journey - you'd think that his utterly inspiring advice on being always present right here right now would have permeated somehow. But alas my mind being what it is, despite odd moments of clarity and awareness, dips and dives between here and now and there and then and before and later!!
This is not to say that the joy of returning home was in any way depleted. Such bliss in my heart to see my boys crouched at the gate - Beau's delayed but beaming recognition of my return which carried on over the next few days through sweet happy exclamations of "Mummy home from aeroplane" (inferring that he thinks I've been up in the air all this time?) We have swung back into the routine that keeps our shared life sane and steady - that isn't always easy to bare when it costs our relationship time and energy but is still worth sticking up for when the mind goes a romancin' with the idea that 'everything will be better when...'. K and I are trying to practise presence in our lives so that the challenges of busy city lives as parents and partners and home owners do not undo us and we are grateful for the good people we have around us here. We talked last night about how we are feeling - about moving states, about having another child and the amazing one we've already been so fortunate to bring along. We have hit a stasis of sorts where my wish for a bigger family and to simplify and slow down are in the sort of contrast to K's wish for meaningful employment, travel, study and spiritual pilgrimage, that means we need to sit with it all and find out if we can do it all, and if only some of it - what will be let go of. K's wise last words of the evening were "let's not try to DO anything unless we are doing it from a relaxed, present. aware space". That's dead sexy talk that is! Lovely man. Excellent co pilot on this sometimes turbulent journey through time and space. Now I must sleep before I go analogy mad.