Another technology driven PC detox

I think the Hill PC has finally carked it this time. My usual tricks to coax it back to life are failing. And giving mouth to mouth resuscitation to an inanimate object is beginning to look a little suspect. Desperation isn't pretty. So I am falling back on my blessed library, again.

Its been a wet week here in Central Queensland. It has rained daily for most of the day for about two weeks and is forecast to continue for another week. As you know we live in a shed. Cooped up in a 56 sq m space with two boys and NO INTERNET ACCESS is driving me a little loco! All the things I could be reading, writing, researching.... but alas no. Time is spent mopping up the water that seeps (gushes) in under our door due to the overflowing gutters, and attempting to wash the boys clothes after they frolick in the muddy puddles. Am beginning to think my pledge to never buy a clothes dryer is under threat.

Twice this week the bridge to our township was closed due to it being overtaken by the flooding waters of Reliance Creek. Its a phenomenal sight. But better if you are on the side that you want to be, and not waiting on the other for it to subside

I'll show you photos if ever the PC is resurrected.

I hope you are all well and dry and enjoying some sunshine. Send some my way, won't you, please?

Until I grace the local library again, keep well.

Juliet

A Happy Wedding Anniversary!

Yesterday was the 4^th Anniversary of my Wedding to Alan. I remember it is four because it is one year less than my eldest sons’ age and one year more than my youngest sons’ age. We’ve fit a lot into our four years of marriage (six years since we met at The World’s End Hotel – so apt!). There’s been a son, a wedding, another son, an interstate move, an intrastate move, a move within a town and a move up a hill. We are both Arians – perhaps this constant need for change and moving forward is indicative of that? Or we just bore easily. Either way, we like to put ourselves through experiences that constantly seem to rank in the top 10 most stressful things to do. Thankfully thus far we’ve avoided the awful ones of divorce and death (and long may we continue to avoid those!).

We don’t tend to celebrate our wedding anniversary very fancily. Yesterday morning I gave him a card and his present – two packets of Natural Confectionary Company Licorice (his favourite).  Yesterday evening he brought home take-away pizza and gorgeous cakes for a family dinner al-fresco. (We were going to be all posh and eat in a restaurant but given the bridge had been flooded out earlier that afternoon I’d decided to stay put. Given the wetness of the wet season so far, someone is going to be getting an inflatable raft for Christmas).

But that’s us though. Low-key. Family oriented. Our wedding was lovely. We had our ceremony and reception at a homestead in their beautiful garden. All in one place so no traipsing about; everyone available for photographs.  Our wedding cake was a delicious croquembouche – yay for eating with hands. Our music was played and sung by our immediate and extended family - I walked in to my sister-in-law singing John Denver's 'For You'. (Read Bern Morley's post for more 'wedding songs').  It was intimate and peaceful and friendly and fun. We drove ourselves home in our full wedding outfits singing ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’ to our very well-behaved but very tired by then 11 month old son.

You don’t have to be married for long to realise that despite all the organisation of the wedding day, it is but one day out of many days and will soon become a distant but cherished memory – a bit like childbirth in that respect.  It is all the days ever after that require the preparation and effort and care and attention. And so it should be. I like being married and I like being a mother and although it can be tiring and draining, it gives me joy enough to want to do it always.

Sometimes it can feel like this

So, to my lovely husband thank you for four marvellous years and here is to many more. May they continue to be joyful and interesting and loving. And I re-iterate here as I did four years ago these few words from my vows to you:

I asked for a man who would make me happy, and I got that, and much more besides.  I got a man who knows that the most important ingredient in any meal is the love and care that went into making it; who makes music that can break my heart, soothe my soul and make me dance with wild abandon, who makes me feel so comfortable and at ease that I feel I’ve known you all my life and perhaps beyond.

I got someone who I trust with my life and my love. I am so very lucky.

And I give to you, someone who will always appreciate you, who will honour your trust and commitment, who will share your dreams, return your affection and join in your laughter. I give you someone who will love you all the days of her life.

Semi-self imposed PC detox

The computer is stuffed... again! It has been playing up for months and months and has been repaired twice but to no avail. Think the monitor (LG - 2nd one to stuff up on us) is the culprit but can't prove it - all evidence thus far is circumstantial.

I'm currently on the pc at my lovely, awesome local library (I am the loudest, but FASTEST typer here!)

Have decided not to rush out to get the computer fixed. A) have better things to spend money on - bills (!), speeding fines (!!) and my big boy's 5th birthday. B) it is running my life instead of the other way around.

I am looking forward to the detox actually (although not completely stopping as my mobile phone has Tribe and can access FB and Twitter for free). However, no computer at home will hopefully give me one less but very big distraction. Time to actually engage with my two boys instead of thinking about something to Google. (Look up SunnyMummy for a great blog entry re 'engaging' again).

I've got lots to do this time of year, as we all do. My H's 5th birthday for one, and getting him ready for school the other. Uniforms to buy, trips to the school to get him acquainted. Can't believe I'm 'grown up' enough to have a school boy son!

Have finally decided on the school. Possibly the one that will be less convenient but the one that we think will be best for H. It has a separate little campus for the Preps, a Junior Campus (Yrs 1 and 2) and a Senior Campus (Yr 3+). I like the idea of little areas and moving campuses as a way of moving up the year levels. It seems a lovely little (700+ kids!) so far.

So I will be endeavouring to enjoy some 'dis'connected time from technology and a reconnected time with what is truly important. Hell, I may even do some housework.

So until I come into my lovely library again, wishing you good health, wealth and happiness.

Asking life's big questions...

Yesterday evening whilst dining alfresco on a sumptuous meal of home-made (man-made by hubby and the boys) pork schnitzels and red cabbage and apple, I was absent-mindedly peeling the label off the back of the beer bottle (James Boag if you need the detail). From across the table comes a sly wink and ‘how ‘bout it’ kind of look from my husband.

In my young adulthood (and probably a little bit before) it was decided by whom, I do not know, that peeling the labels off beer bottles was a sign of sexual desperation or as we’d probably have termed it ‘horniness’, or ‘gagging for it’ or something equally as sophisticated and erudite.

Being from South  Australia it was quite common to go out and see labels of Cooper’s Pale Ale and Sparkling Ale lying on pub tables, and occasionally stuck to the sweaty forehead of some utterly trousered young ‘un.

It has been a long time since I’d drunk in a group of mates and certainly not among ‘young people’ for a long time and I was wondering, does this supposition, that label peeling is a deep-seated psychological indication of sexual neediness, still hold true today?

What do you think?

This Sunday I am looking forward to

I love Maxabella's 'This Saturday I am grateful for' and thought I would follow it up with my own 'This Sunday I am looking forward to'.

 As a school kid and an employee, Sunday evenings were filled with a little bit of dread at the week ahead. Well, lets turn this around and decide on things that we will look forward to instead. (And now that I don't work outside of the home I don't have that 'job dread'  but do have 'job envy' instead!).


This week I am looking forward to:

• being clearer headed, reducing distractions and getting down to the nitty gritty. Time to get my caca together!

• getting more engaged with my boys. I am an 'observer' by nature but my boys will only be young and un-self-conscious for so long. Time to get involved IN the silliness. They especially love singing the Beach Boys' 'Don't worry Baby' (although for a while it was 'Don't worry Marvin'. I don't know who Marvin is?!), so we'll play and sing and dance along to that I think.

• Hubby came home saying he had a 'surprise' on Friday night for this coming Friday. He has organised a babysitter so we can go out for a wedding anniversary dinner. I'm looking forward to this of course. Also have to admire hubby's smarts for telling me a week in advance so that a) I can prepare but B) so that he can dine out on the brownie points he's earned for the week in advance AND the week after!

• I am looking forward to the sunshine that I am hoping will come after a week plus of overcastness and rain and drizzle, which I'm sure the whole east coast is experiencing. I'll try to enjoy it for more than just its practical ability to dry my washing!

• And if this fine weather keeps up I'll take the boys to the Harbour to the playgrounds (old and new) where I can take in views like this of the Whitsunday Islands (and dream...).

What are you looking forward to this week?

Link up here and let us know what you're looking forward to.

This Saturday I am grateful for...

In keeping with Maxabella Loves ‘this Saturday I am grateful for:

·         Modern medicine – hello anti-depressants!

·         For friends near and far, relatively new and those I’ve had for more or less half my life. For reading my posted-unposted-posted-unposted blog entry about the return of my little black cloud of depression. Who gave me ‘we’re thinking of you’, ‘we’ve been there’, ‘you’ll kick its butt’ words of encouragement and support. A kazillion thank yous

·         For my husband. The eternal optimist, the conqueror of problems head on. For him coming to realise that listening is helping, and that giving me a hug is a powerful black cloud combatant

·         For my boys for being joyful and silly and funny and loving. You’ll get me through.

·         For the Beyond Blue website for all its information and assistance. And especially for this little reminder about why I am prone to depression

             High-risk personality being: 

·         A lifelong worrier

·         A perfectionist

·         Sensitive to personal criticism

·         Unassertive

·         Self-critical and negative

·         Shy, socially anxious and having low self-esteem.

A good reminder so that I can keep those rampantly negative, nasty, pessimistic thoughts at bay

·         For all the blogs whose owners admit their own depression. So comforting to know we are not alone. For blogging full stop for giving an outlet to creativity, self-expression, a safe place

Today I am especially grateful that my husband is doing the grocery shopping (he is much better at it) and who is braving the barbershop with Mr 3 who vocally and vociferously detests getting his hair cut. Thanks Hon! x

If you or anyone you know is showing signs of anxiety of depression. Beyond Blue is a great resource. http://www.beyondblue.org.au



The house that Hooli (wants) built

As shed-dwellers you can imagine that the building of ‘the house’ is a common goal and much speculation goes into what kind of house we would like, what rooms we’d have and where, and especially how to take the most advantage of the almost 360 degree views (without spending $300,000 on glazing...). While pouring over my latest, gorgeous copy of Sanctuary Magazine (eco-builder wannabe porn) I have given some more thought to the idiosyncratic features I would like my ‘dream’ house to have (warning: more dot points).

·         My sons will have their own bathroom, 90% of the floor will be a drain. 10% of the floor will be a very narrow bridge between the door and the bath/shower. We will collect the greywater from the bath via the drain and that alone will sustain the 1 acre of semitropical rainforest on our hill. It is a complete circle of life – the mud they subsume into their clothing and skin from the property will be returned to the property.

·         80% of the ceiling of my husband’s own private toilet will be exhaust fan. Self-evident.

·         My toilet will have its own bookshelf. And a reclining toilet if such a thing exists by then.

·         I will follow Virginia Woolf’s advice and have a ‘Room of My Own’ (and the current $AUD of $500 a year – hopefully). In MY room I will have all the furniture that I have had to prevent my husband from donating to hard rubbish collection (he lacks all sentiment for my childhood bedroom furniture). It will contain all my books (including outdated uni textbooks). It may possibly also contain a home brandy distillery and a life-size cut-out of Colin Firth. It will be double-insulated to be soundproof. Whether this insulation will take the form of padded walls is yet to be determined.

·         It will have a big, open concrete bunker-esque type rumpus room – aka The Boys Domain. They (husband, two boys) can run amok here. Drum kits, pool table, Wii – whatever – they can do their boots. I will not hear them in my womb room.



From New Directions in Australian Architecture, Stutchbury & Pape Architects



·         This concrete bunker will also double as our cyclone shelter. At first warning of the approaching cyclone I will be airing this room out of all congested testosterone induced aromas *shudders*. Windows will only be closed at the sight of the first cow flying over our roof. Boys stink.

·         It will have a freaking awesome verandah (sorry, outdoor room, entertaining area – whatever Jamie Durie is calling it) on which we ‘will watch lightning crack over canefields, laugh and think that this is Australia’.

·         It will have a gourmet kitchen with European appliances in which my husband will whip up sumptuous meals while his apprenctices (the boys) assist as part of their training to be the 2015 and 2017 Junior Masterchefs.  It will also have a microwave for the nights ‘Mummy’s cooking’ so I can reheat the leftovers.

·         It will be so freaking environmentally sustainably, passively solar, wind-generated (from the inside – boys!) that David Suzuki will ring and ask to board with us.

·         Cupboards and drawers won’t have handles. I hate clutter!

·         It will be self-cleaning. That was a given, right?

This isn’t too much to ask is it? I’ll be the perfect client for any architect, builder, tradesman (shirt on or off). As long as the final product is so awesome that Kevin McCloud  (pause for Kevin McCloud *swoon*) flies out all the way from the UK to do a special episode of Grand Designs. That can happen, right? Now where is my 2B pencil and graph paper - I have a home to build.

What rooms or features would you like in your dream 'if only' house? Especially, just for your benefit...

'Its all academic'... a little self-indulgent reminder...

I'm trying to find my old university assignments on the external hard drive thingy. Its been updated semi-regularly, generally when there is a cyclone approaching. I just wanted a little trip down memory lane to remind myself that before pregnancy hormones and years of breastfeeding (can intelligence leak out through the nipples?) that I did once have a fairly good brain.

I may be cheating with the majority of this post in that I am going to include a poem I wrote as part of my Honours thesis five (5!!) years ago. And let me tell you, I ain't no poetry writer. Not having studied poetry (avoided as much as possible), I don't know if it is any good. It may be a little too tied up in my thesis (a thesis about women and comedic writing) to be understood generally. I'll introduce it only by saying 'it came to me' while soaking in a bath, during my thesis writing years.

Here goes...(complete with footnotes perhaps?)

A Womb of One’s Own

A ‘womb of one’s own’ at the End of the Mile

Quiet

But for the dog’s whine conversing with the gurgling of my belly

Dark

Pitch dark

No candles even, to seduce myself with

Amniotic bath water

Hot

And like a HB pencil shaded over a coin

It will reveal the imprints and ridges of today’s massage

I feel tomorrow’s bruises today

I’ve been worked over and over

Pushed and pulled and prodded

Looked forward to it for days

It has wiped me out

The silence is deafening

(To use a worn out cliché – but I feel just as worn)

I’ve avoided this silence for weeks

It loomed too large

My mind is unmoored

It soars away from this floating body

I worry that I will never get it back

But I also worry that I will

Would be a shame to reign it in so soon after release

My mind is quieter with external commotion

It is soothed by white noise – it’s boisterous Other

Random, unorchestrated, omnipresent sounds

Noise which comes from nowhere and everywhere

Saying everything, meaning nothing

Does this make white noise ‘feminine’?[1]

Externalised, Othered, illogical and multivoiced

Many theorists would say so

How can ‘white’ noise be feminine?

It contravenes binary oppositions

White/Black

Good/Evil

Presence/Absence

Speech/Silence

Man/Woman[2]

Darkness penetrated by sensory light

Tripped in neighbour’s yard

Lights, camera, action

Star in my own ultrasound video

Study my hands and fingers

Moving like a flamenco dancer’s, only slower

Rediscover proprioception

Where am’I’, in relation to my-‘self’?

He answers another emergency call

‘She was staggering down my street’ he blathers

‘She’s holding her baby in her arms

There’s blood

It’s everywhere

How do I cut the cord?

The umbilical cord, how do I cut it?’

You’re asking the wrong girl

Mine’s still attached

It is a long cord of cables, wires, optic fibres, bits and bytes

Hello and Goodbye

Open and Send

‘Mum, make him leave me alone’

‘Mum, what’s for dinner’

‘Mum, can I borrow $20 bucks’

‘Mum, he’s leaving me alone, how can I make him stop?’

This cord is strong

Stronger than vines

Like Tarzan we will swing from these cords

Through our own jungles

The releasing of cords starts outside my office window

Men and women escaped from the maternity ward

It is too real in there

They pace

And pace

Squats punctuate contractions

‘Get a room!’ I scream at them, silently

Inhale, I float

Exhale, I sink

Simulated hypothetical drowning

Unlike Virginia at the end of her life

The womb of her own

Was not a small domestic suburban bath

But a river

That had been somewhere and was heading elsewhere

But I’ve never been ambitious

I want to stay in this bath forever

A second chance

A reincubation

I could develop again in this womb

Play me music through the locked door

(Puccini, I like Puccini)

Speak to me, so that I will know your voices when I am reborn

Intellectual stimulation in-bathroom (not in-uterine)

I would regenerate

Refreshed

To start anew

But could I survive out there?

Born agains can be difficult to bear

Obtrusive mobile vibration and precocious beeps

Disrupt my reverie

If I were to drop the phone

Would I die in my womb of my own?

A circle of life

‘Closure’

Just like technology wants

Cordless, remote and senseless [3]

What do you think? Should I give up my day job? ;-)

---

[1] ‘… it is quite common for women’s writing like their speech to be regarded as trivial: “’The silent sex’ was never considered to be actually non-speaking.  Talking constantly, women emitted chatter, gossip and foolishness.  Gushing forth torrents of empty words, babbling contradictorily, all sense cancelled out, leaving merely white noise”, Gallop, 1980: 274 in Mills, S. (1993) Discourses of difference: an analysis of women’s travel writing and colonialism, Routledge, London and New York: 118

[2] See M. Klages,1997, ‘Notes on Hélène Cixous “The Laugh of the Medusa”’, University of Colorado,

http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/cixous.html, [accessed online 26^th September 2004]

[3] With respect to écriture féminine, ‘…Cixous stresses that the inscription of the rhythms and articulations of the mother’s body which continue to influence the adult self provides a link to the pre-symbolic union between self and m/other, and so affects the subject’s relationship to language, the other, himself and the world’, S. Sellers, (ed),1994, The Hélène Cixous reader: edited by Susan Sellers: with a preface by Hélène Cixous and foreword by Jacques Derrida, Routledge, London and New York: xxix

Elegant sufficiency

We have a little tradition in my family that once we have finished a meal we declare we’ve had ‘elegant sufficiency’.  Which whatever its origins  (elegant sufficiency definition)  , is a beautiful thing to say. I’ve had enough and what I had was elegant and I enjoyed it.

We don’t seem to use the word ‘sufficient’ any more. And certainly not in relation to what we have. It seems increasingly difficult to find that emotional/physical line between what is enough and what is too much.

As I’ve mentioned before I live in a shed with my husband and two sons. You can see a photo below. It certainly isn’t fancy, it certainly isn’t big at 56 square metres. But it is sufficient. It is shelter that keeps my family dry in a very rainy wet season; it keeps us comfortable - warm when it is coolish and cool in a warm, humid sub-tropical climate. It has so far kept the winds out and we will find out in a predicted prolific cyclone-season whether this will remain the case. But so far, so good.

 

So my ‘laundry’ is outside – a washing machine under a verandah – but it still washes the clothes. Sometimes to free up space in the shed we move the dining table under the big verandah – we are happy to dine al-fresco and look out over our verdant, hilly, cane sugar and cow strewn surrounds, serenaded by cicadas, kookaburras and gobbling bush turkeys. Yes, we use a dinner set that I bought for my ‘glory box’ (oh I was so old-fashioned and daggy) over 15+ years ago but they hold our food perfectly, the cutlery set I got for my 21^st, on tablecloths (when we’re being posh or have guests) that my mother handed on to me from aunts before her.  I sleep on pillow cases I bought when I was 18 years old and my boys sleep on a Holly Hobbie pillowcase I had as a little girl. I’ve managed to hang onto a ‘hutch’ (bookcase/ drawers) that was my brother’s and I first piece of bedroom furniture.  

And I am completely comfortable with this. They may not be new, or pretty or ‘trendy’ but they are functional and they have history. Why discard something that remains useful?

I love op shops and the hunt for perfectly good, sometimes funky, items of clothing (a gold cheong-sam my all time favourite find). And it isn’t, as someone once told me, due to low self-esteem and my not feeling ‘worthy’ of new or expensive clothing. (!!!) It is because the items still have value – their $ price is irrelevant to their usefulness or prettiness. It saves the planet from having to produce the resources to make more stuff. And the money goes to good causes. Buying brand new seems to make less sense from any rational viewpoint than re-using and re-imagining already existing items.

‘Minimalising’ is popular and there is a movement of people who are endeavouring to have less in order to have more. To consume fewer physical things, so that we personally aren’t overwhelmed with clutter and the inherent responsibility to store and maintain what we own. To be less busy doing things we feel obligated to do or don’t enjoy doing in order to spend more time with loved ones in soul-giving pursuits. It would do us and our planet a favour to embrace sufficiency over excess. Adequacy over endless growth.  Appreciate what we have before pining for a new thing that will satisfy for only so long. And often isn't it for show, the proverbial 'keeping up with the Joneses'? And how often, deep down, do we really even like the Joneses? Why is their opinion the gauge of our self-worth?

This isn't to say that I don't covet the new or want pretty things. And it certainly isn't to say that I know the 'sufficiency' line when I am eating! I don't as my waistline and arse would attest. 

However, I do think we should bring ‘sufficiency’ back and brand it ‘elegant’ once again.

I'd rather my child was gay than...

In follow up/ conversation with these preceding awesome posts Nerdy Apple Bottom and Woogsworld, I have come up with another list (damn my love of dot points) in response to those people to whom being gay or looking like anything they perceive as gay or effeminate is too much to accept.   This is at the risk of putting forward any of my own (mainly political) prejudices.

These are in no order other than how they sprang to mind:

I’d rather my child was gay than a heterosexual...:

·         bully

·         rapist

·         paid up member of the Ku Klux Klan

·         paid up member of the Republican Tea Party

·         Sarah Palin

·         wife beater

·         child abuser

·         person who is disrespectful to little old ladies or men

·         fraudster

·         armed robber

·         corrupt cop

·         that abuses their position of power or responsibility

·         unable to take responsibility for their own actions

·         who commits genocide

·         bigot

·         who destroys or denigrates the environment for their own gain

·         who claims to be Christian but lives a judgemental, closed minded life

·         member of the board of the Commonwealth Bank and voted for a doubling in the mortgage rate rise. (See Bern Morley's The only way is up - baby for a fantastic evisceration of banks).

·         moronic thug footballing type of any code who does what his mates do because he can’t think for himself

·         exploiter of others

I know from experience the difficulty gay people have in coming out, and in continuing to not be themselves to those they know won’t understand or accept them. It is such utter bullshit that they feel they have to do that.

I for one believe that homosexual couples should have the right to marry and to have children if that is their wish. When that happens it will go some way to de-stigmatising homosexuality or bisexuality or whatever.  When all people share the same rights and responsibilities then hopefully differences or variances in sexuality or any other aspect will be so utterly irrelevant as to not be a point of discussion.

It will start with us and our kids and we can make it happen.

Do you agree? Feel free to add more.

You know it is going to be a long wet season when...

Your sons get creative with the mud that surrounds your house like a medieval moat. And relax, I know it is mud, although it looks more sinister and worthy of psychoanalysis.

Oh God I hope it rains before the mud sets and before hubby gets home - I can't be arsed washing the car.


Only 3-4 more months of this. Wish me luck!

Wordless Wednesday: Sunshine on a cloudy day