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.

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.

40 is the new 30

My last day of holiday, still in Perth staying with Felicity who so lovingly flew me over there. I remember the day I met her when we were 18, at the Uni tavern. She was radiant, smiling and verbose and very chic in that Uni Student way in a hounds tooth jacket that was eventually worn by all of us girls at some time or another. We spent the weekend in the country at a wonderful stone lodge surrounded by hills and trees. 35 of us gathered on the second night - a group of friends who have known each other for 21 years and for me it was a rare and precious thing to see them all again and to meet their partners who felt to me to have been there all along. We were there to celebrate turning 40 which most of us are this year or reached last year. I had many moments of feeling on the outside - of suddenly not knowing what to do with myself - partly due to being there sans family ( who help to define me and distinguish me from who I was back then) and partly due to having been away from Perth for so long. But mostly I felt very comfortable with these people with whom I shared the transition into independent adulthood.

The tragedy of the weekend was that my camera has officially expired!!! It really is time to invest in a good one. A reliable one. Thankfully enough photos were taken by others. All the old photos from our first share house and beyond, where it all began, were on display the night of the party...We were so young and gorgeous and free and often quite drunk! I remember how much I loved those people. We were a great little community of 13 or so sharing time, food, philosophies, dance floors and sometimes beds... If any of you are reading this - I still love you all - you have retained your essence and gained partners, children, wisdom, and you can still command the dance floor as uniquely as you did in the 80's. Thank you so much for including me in the celebrations.

Procrastinating

Well still no batteries in my camera.......Too busy enjoying the photos of fellow bloggers....
Had a week that felt like groundhog day every day, but with parts that revealed the bliss within routine. I look forward to some time away ( one week before I leave), to get to know myself again, and come home refreshed and recharged.
Beau and I are going to try playgroup after a spell away due to the biting which seems to have stopped (dare I wiggle joyously in my seat?)
We have been riding around in the frosty winter air feeling good and more fit each week. As K says "Now I know why all those people on bikes ride around with grins on their faces!"

Where's the View?

I really must recharge the batteries in the camera........
and learn to knit,
and mend my favourite silk shirt,
and clean up the skanky kitchen,
...........ahh yes.

Time is going so fast - I mean it seems to HURTLE. IS it just me? I'm sure it has to do with the routine of our week that is repeated over and over. Suddenly it's Monday again and I'm about to do that Monday thing and it seems as though I only just did that!
I think we really need a holiday. Not just time off from work. One of those holidays that 'other people' have -where they book ahead and go somewhere very different form home and have a break! Feel the need to rest and play with my family.

In a couple of weeks I am going away by myself! Good gods I can almost not believe it and at times I wonder if I should (that's how long it's been since I did anything by myself!!) Off to Perth for a friend's 40th and to see family and some friends I haven't seen for almost 20 years!!!! I am excited of course I am. Mostly about the amount of sleep I will be able to have! Six days is just long enough to feel as though I've had a break, but not too long that I will start pining for my boys (we'll see). I love going back to the west. I feel connected to the place. Even though I haven't lived there for 10 years , it's still home. A kind of home. Really home is inside of me. when I'm feeling present I am there. When I was traveling in Europe in the early 90's I would often yearn for the physical home and the familiar, but when I was really present and relaxed and secure I would sense that home within and felt at home anywhere. Because I have moved around so much I find it easy to start again in a new place and make new friends and find a niche for myself. It's been harder to stay still and this is the longest I have stayed in the one place since I was 19. These six years in Melbourne have been good learning. Both K and I have moved through a lot of stuff - issues together and alone, found a spiritual path that supports us individually and as a couple, we've made friends who are like family and we have become parents. We've made blundering financial decisions and crawled our way out and we look at our lives now though still trying to make ends meet, we are paying for our own house, and we are active in our community and we feel loved and we love and we see how happy our son is and we think we can't be doing all that bad!

Saturday was a big mulching day. Bliss. It was truly. I am happiest when the days are not packed with outings and we have materials at home to beautify and create and Beau joyously tootling along beside us with his wheel barrow. I love friends dropping in for tea which is happening more often as friends move closer.

K has been a little down. "Midlife Crisis" he suggested on the weekend. He needs to find a 9 to 5 job that doesn't bore him senseless. And yes I/we believe they do exist. I am so fortunate because I have a fantastic job working for and with good friends where we laugh all the time and have stimulating conversations and sell goods over which I have no ethical dilemmas. The customers are diverse and interesting and I can ride to work from home. It's not a career move but then motherhood has simplified everything for me. I know what I need to do right now and it's challenging and stimulating and rewarding and it's what I've wanted to do for so long. I'm considering what to do when we have school aged kids but I'm not concerned about it. It's harder for the men so often because they spend so much more time away from the family and the home and so they have (understandably) greater expectations of their working lives. Not than one role is easier than the other. We are working towards being able to work from home and eventually moving to the country. We are doing OK in the here and now. More than OK. Just need to find K something he can enjoy 5 days a week. I think it was Barry Humphreys who said he decided he wouldn't do anything unless it was lots of fun!

Beyond the Cave

We haven't left our cave for a few days. It's gooooood...it's cold out there, and without a car there is less temptation to just go out for the hell of it. It's been a weekend of people coming in - we had our first co op food distribution on Saturday with about 8 households coming through to pick up their share and stay for some food. There were kids running about and adults telling each other their stories, noise mess and other signs of joyous social productivity.K and I have long wanted a community like this around us. It makes life in the suburbs so much easier to tolerate, knowing that just down the road live people who think like we do and are working towards common goals. We are all in the process of creating homes that are sustainable and natural and toxin free and as self sufficient as possible. We seem to also share a commitment to conscious parenting. I'm amazed at what each household has managed to do in a short period of time on limited incomes, and our own achievements are in turn reflected back to us which is really helpful especially when one starts to moan about not having been able to do ANYTHING because of blah blah blah. The whole community thing confronts me enormously too. I know it's everything to do with the dysfunctions of early family life that I fear unrealistic expectations of large groups of people and have tended to get caught up in trying to please everyone which is utterly exhausting. But I want so much to have a sense of family and community that is supportive and authentic and able to weather all of our individual projections.
Since moving to Melbourne (from Byron Bay???!!...at the time I thought we'd gone mad!!!) I've really understood how it is possible to feel isolated in a big city. Over these 6 years we have met many wonderful people, some of whom have moved away. some closer, some friendships changed and still new ones forming. But we are all caught up in the daily task of survival and whilst probably by no means to the degree of the average working home owner/parent it's still a challenge to stand still long enough to connect with the world outside. It requires effort. K and I are trying not to pack our lives too full but still we seem to be busy???? Thank the gods for the days I spend with Beau in our little cave, drawing and singing and counting cars and people from the lounge room window, drinking tea with visitors and venturing no further than our own back garden.
Speaking of which, a friend was walking home from our house yesterday and saw a guy cutting and mulching pine trees. We now have a god-almighty pile of it in our driveway - big beautiful steaming pile of mulch for our muddy garden, plus next year's supply of fire wood! Thank you neighbour!!