My Thought Farm

I have had a weird, enlightening, epiphany-filled few weeks where several of the things I've been thinking about over past months and even years have coalesced and fallen into place in my mind. Had I observed the results of this phenomena in my daughter, I would have said that she'd had a developmental leap. This occurs when your child goes to bed one night saying, 'Mama, Baba go sleepy bye-byes.' and wakes discussing the psychological ramifications of popular nursery rhymes on the infant psyche. It's most striking when they're tiny, but I see it still in my seven-year-old and have seen it now in my 34-year-old self.

There's a lot going on in my head right now (hard though that may be to believe) and while I enthusiastically commit myself to my thoughts throughout their conception, birth and toddler-hood, they now seem to have leaped straight to adulthood and have begun spawning baby thoughts at an alarming rate. This metaphoric proliferation is energising, but a little overwhelming. To be honest, at times, I feel scattered in the mind.

On Tuesday, DK and I were out visiting with friends when Wes called on my mobile. He had dropped by our house to deliver something, only to find the front door wide open and no one home. I had, I remembered, taken some things out to the car, meaning to go back inside for something else. Instead, I strapped DK into the car and took off without looking back.

I'm not sure that the excuse of pre-occupation with loftier things would have cut it with the insurance company had Wes not inadvertently come to the rescue and locked up for us.

Web Confessions Redux

Thanks go to Givinya for leaving this blog's first ever comment. Contrary to expectation, it was neither abusive nor porno spam. That's because Givinya is lovely and talented (and in all likelihood, doesn't produce porn). I know this because I read her blog, Killing a Fly with a Ukulele is Probably the Wrong Thing To Do. She is also, apparently tolerant of others' obnoxious ramblings and she likes guinea pigs. Watch out for the onslaught of up to one, count them, one extra reader following that link, Givinya.

Surprisingly, my last blog, Web Confessions, did not result in increased traffic. Although most of you wouldn't have noticed, I did, in fact, oh-so-subtly include a few terms that I felt likely to match commonly searched terms on Google.

What I did not account for, I think, is that Google blog search lists most recent blogs first. Who knew that terms like 'hot pussy' would be so frequently included in recent blogs that mine would be relegated to the recycling bin of the second page of Google results half an hour after posting? It seems there's a whole other genre of blogs I wasn't previously aware of. Actually though, I had more hits off of 'guinea pig' than 'hairy beaver'.

I think that we've all learnt an important lesson from this: cute beats dirty every time. I'm off to buy a fluffy bunny suit. My man arrives home from interstate tomorrow and I'm gonna show him a good time, Baby.

Web Confessions

When I began blogging, oh so long ago, in the misty dusk of April, I put Statcounter on my page. I wasn't going to tell you this, because when I first found out things like Statcounter existed, it freaked me out slightly. Statcounter tells me things about the people who visit my blog. It tells me when you visited, for how long, how many times and whether or not you were wearing pants when you dropped by. It might also tell me what brought you here. In fact, it might tell me the search terms you typed into Google to find this blog.

I'm telling you all this because last night some poor, unsuspecting surfer typed the words, 'web' and 'confessions' into Google and ended up at The Pig Blog Web Log. This diversion from what might have been the seeker's purpose occurred because I included the following phrase in my blog: "My secret confession is that I love those squeaking rodents so much, I could squeeze them until their beady little eyes shoot from their heads like stars across the night sky." I suspect, perhaps unfairly, that the searcher had other things in mind. I can only imagine (with some considerable glee) their disappointment as pictures of cute fluffy guinea pigs began to load. Unfortunately for some, guinea pigs are not in the least bit sordid (except when they play chasey...ahem...).

I can't help but wonder what other inadvertent turns of phrase might bring hapless readers to my blog. That's the thing with the web, you never really know what you're getting.

Regardless, the blog must go on. Here are my (completely unrelated) thoughts for the day...

I was thinking about getting a cat, but it might be uncomfortable in summer and I certainly don't want a hot pussy. Maybe I'll get a big hairy beaver. Then again, there's always the risk of ending up with a smelly beaver and I really don't want that either. Perhaps I'll just learn about animals from watching TV. Tonight SBS is showing a documentary about the breeding program for untamed Sumatran Tigers in Indonesia. I think it's called 'Big Hot Pussy has Wild Sex'.

The Pig Blog Web Log

Aside from various and sundry insects, a dozen toy dragons and myself, of course, my daughter, DK, has three pets. As far as we know, they are all guinea pigs, although it is possible that one or more of them is a tail-less sewer rat passing.

Theo - Suspiciously rat-like

They are her dear pets and she spends countless hours loving them, reading to them and placing them atop her head, where I suspect they would stick like velcro to her chronically knotty hair were she to let them go. While I don't approve of this practice, it's not a battle I choose to wage. I assume it will be won easily enough one day when she makes a hapless hat of a piggy with a full bladder.

In spite of all this little girl adoration, it is me who inevitably does a majority of the pig care. To be fair, this is mostly by design. DK can be a great help with general cleaning, but I don't entirely trust her seven-year-old grasp of the importance of good hygiene in the prevention of zoonotic infection.


We also have strict rules regarding pigs and hand-washing as well as the non-kissing of furry beasts (relatives excluded). Having said that, I have, myself, been caught more than once with a disgruntled guinea pig pressed firmly to my lips. My secret confession is that I love those squeaking rodents so much, I could squeeze them until their beady little eyes shoot from their heads like stars across the night sky.

We love all of our guinea pigs equally, of course, but we love Karen more equally than the others, not so much because she is a particularly loving, intelligent or kind-natured pig, but because she tolerates our attentions less disdainfully than the others. Her sister, Justine, distinguishes herself in that she is so pitifully lacking in endearing qualities that it is hard not to love her. Theodore is the baby of the 'herd' and thus holds the special place that the baby holds in any family.

The Tolerant Princess K

Theo arrived unexpectedly on our doorstep one Saturday afternoon in the hands of a thirteen-year-old distant neighbour and her brother who had heard of a recent bereavement in our piggy family. He was the product of their backyard in-breeding program. After a sudden and inevitable proliferation of piglet pups, Theodore said, 'good-bye' to brothers, Alvin and Simon and came to live as Justine's 'special friend'. (They like to play chasey a fair bit...ahem...)

Had our neighbour come alone to our door to ask, 'Do you want him?', I would have said, 'No'; 'We don't have a hutch for him.'; 'We're not ready for him.'; 'We're not sure we even want Justine to have a litter anymore.' But since she brought the tiny baby Theodore with her, there was only one possible answer.

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

Well yeah, it does, and let me tell you, I'm very strong, but what doesn't kill you can also make you bitter and fairly dysfunctional. Sometimes what doesn't kill you makes you incapable of having an emotionally intimate relationship with an adult human. That was true of both Hammond (my partner) and I. And no, love didn't conquer all and we didn't have our hearts opened in an overwhelming rush, but we did manage to make a life together...apart.

We love each other and we show it the only way you have left when words fail you or you've said them all before in purer times when there wasn't quite so much baggage in the spare room. I raise our daughter as a single mother and he visits and goes home in the morning and we might not see him for a day or a week or a month, until he calls again.

That's the family you condescend to. You don't understand why anyone would choose this life. You don't understand that some of us never got a choice. No-one chooses to have their guts ripped out by emotional shrapnel. It might not be the life I would have hoped for, but it's what I got and I choose to love it for what it is.

My life is not a compromise.

A Different Sort of Blog...

The point of starting this blog, aside from the fact that I was poncing through the world subjecting all and sundry to verbal blogs anyway, was to make myself accountable to an audience (however small), in order to force myself to write. After precisely a decade of 'writer's block', it was never going to be easy, so thanks heaps for the aggressive nagging (you know who you are). I am deeply touched by your vehement show of concern for my personal development. You can stop now by the way. No really... Stop. Now. Please.

Anyway, I was thinking that if this was a different sort of blog, as opposed to the slightly uptight, semi-perfectionistic, fringe-dwelling ramble that it's shaping up to be, it would be far more sustainable. I really love blogs of all shapes and sizes and have identified several main types. What follows is an example of what I have dubbed (just now), the Mommy Procedural Blog. Like procedural cop shows such as CSI Springvale, the Mommy Procedural Blog focuses on the nuts and bolts of everyday life, allowing us a bland, but inexplicably fascinating window into the different and not so different lives of others. Often, they are tantalisingly short, only hinting at the epic story behind the story. Occasionally they are not tantalisingly short and meander from one side of the road to the other like a drunk driver until they hit a tree, bounce off and take to the road once more.

If this blog was a Mommy Procedural Blog today's entry would read like this:

Today we went to the mall. They were handing out free vegetarian hot dog samples on tooth picks. We took thirteen and served them with carrot sticks and ketchup for a nutritious and money-saving dinner. We kept the sticks for a craft project later in the week. We're planning to bind them together with cell-o-tape to make a fishing rod for Quinn's birthday. I can't wait!

See! Tell me you don't want to know more, in spite of the fact that there is not a single point of interest in that whole paragraph.

Okay... I promise I will try not to wait until I have something to say before I blog again. I will also try not to blog about blogging more than 50% of the time. Ooh! Another blogging genre, the Blog Blog!