That Guy

So you know that guy? The one you met in your twenties. The one you grew quite fond of; loved perhaps, but not in that way? Maybe one of you even said to the other, ‘I love you, but I’m not in love with you.’ Maybe the two of you got drunk together one night and laughed and promised to get together if neither of you had found your one true love by the time you were 35. Maybe there was just the slightest edge of fear in your laughter.

What if...and go with me here...what if after a decade of ups and downs and yet more downs, you let go of the last in quite a long line of cool, but troubled men that seem to constitute your ‘type’. And what if you realised that you were actually and absolutely over those men and their seemingly endless troubles. And what if you looked up one day and realised that the only man who could meet your myriad requirements in this, your 37th year, is that guy. You know the one?

He’s the guy that’s been your friend for a dozen years. He’s supported without question as you grieved one man and as you fell for the next. He’s loved your children, who’ve called him ‘Uncle’. He’s shown them (and you) what a kind respectful man looks like when there was no one else who could. He’s driven you to the hospital countless times over eight and a half years, the palm of one hand covering one eye or the other. He's given you money when you needed it and when you didn't and scoffed at any attempt to pay him back. He's relied on you in turn and valued all those little things you've done for him.

So now he lives in your garage and you and he work slowly away on making a good thing for each other and your children and you can’t lie and say it’s been an easy process, this making of space in your life for another, after so long more or less alone, but as weird as it is, it’s really beginning to seem as if it might just work.

You know that guy? No? Just me then...

Summer's End

Summer fizzled out with nary a whimper. We walked home from the park through the drizzle, with L. poking indignantly at the pusher’s plastic rain cover and dropping rice crackers and green acorns through the gaps onto the path for her indulgent Sissy to retrieve.

I feel worn. After all this. This disappointing, wet and sodden summer. The summer when we were finally going to move away from here and didn’t. Couldn’t. Struggling with housework. Still. Not really making school all it could be. Should be. Doing okay really. Getting by. Making slow progress. Sigh. Endless mountains of dishes and no end in sight because we live in this house with the shoddy plumbing that can’t run a dishwasher. Oh Lord, how I loathe dishes.

And these damn headaches. Which seem to have come about, because that last resort laser surgery damaged my vision. But worse still, the dread. Because it would be worth it, except that that last resort surgery didn’t work. And I’m squirting enough ointment into this eye each night to drown a puppy and I’m still lying in bed in the dark wee hours every night or three or five in pain. And all I can do is keep my eyes closed and just hope that it calms itself and spares us for a little longer from a trip to the hospital to sit and wait for four, five, six hours for some patronising young insect to scrape or poke my cornea with a needle.

And here’s the thing. I need to write. For better or worse, it’s a compulsion. I do it in my head all day long. And then can’t get a minute of peace to chisel it in stone. So here I am, after midnight, tap-tapping away, even though I know that by staying up, being tired and worn I’m risking that pre-dawn stab in the eye.

These are the choices we make. Us. We. People living quiet humble lives. This is just me, having a little whinge on the Internet, knowing I might have a sore eye before dawn. Not an activist, demonstrating for the right to participate in government, knowing I might be dead before the sun rises again.

{this moment} - 'Bath-time Boots' (23rd time today)

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

Inspired by SouleMama. 

Grace In Small Things: 11 of 365

I can't help noticing that you're quite a bit blurrier than when I saw you last (prior to my laser eye surgery). You should really take better care of yourself. You're giving me a headache. In fact, I've had quite a few of those since the surgery. I'll have to get right on that.


In the meantime, along with headachey, I'm also tired, maybe a little pre-fluey, I have darker shadows than usual under my eyes and I have raised my voice to N. multiple times over the last few days. I'm thinking it's probably time for a little grace...


Finding the joy in small things...


1. Those perfect little baby curls.

2. Pomegranates.

3. Our wonderful food co-op and the amazing friend who keeps it all ticking over.

4. The dragonflies. Because of all the rain this year, we are plagued with mosquitoes. The silver lining is that these beautiful creatures also fill the air.

5. Inanay by Tiddas. We've been singing this beautiful song with our lovely homeschool choir and now I just find myself singing it all day.

{this moment} - Lucy's Place

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

Inspired by SouleMama. 

The Spiderpup Chronicles - Sock it to 'Em

First came the flood. Then, apparently, it was time for pestilence. And also famine, because I was so traumatised by the pestilence that I was feeling quite delicate and couldn't cook, so we had to buy expensive and unhealthy convenience foods from the supermarket in order to avoid starvation.


I was folding washing - a little hobby I indulge fairly often - most days, in fact. I poked my thumbs into a blue sock and... Ouch! Hmmm... In my experience socks are not generally painful. I looked into the sock. There seemed to be a piece of grass inside it. Obviously there was a very pointy piece of dry grass inside the sock and annoyingly, I had spiked myself on it painfully. I should probably just have poked my thumbs back in there a bit more carefully, so as to avoid the pointy grass and continued folding.


But, once upon a misty-eyed flashback, I was a small, anxious child watching That's Incredible when they featured the story of a little boy putting on his coat. His father helped him into his coat. 'Ouch! There's something sharp!' They take off the coat. The father runs his hand along the lining. 'Nothing sharp.' They put the coat back on. 'Ouch!' They take the coat off and the father turns if inside out. 'No. All good.' They put it back on. Ultimately, of course, they find that a deadly spider has been biting the boy. In my mind, the boy dies a horrible death because his father failed to take him seriously enough. However I suspect the 'incredible' bit may have related to his miraculous, against the odds, survival.


Either way, that awful story has stuck in my head for over three decades, so naturally, although I knew I was being paranoid, utterly ridiculous, in fact, I chose to push the sock in the right way from the outside, propelling the 'grass' out onto the floor.


This is what plopped ingloriously onto the carpet:

Unfortunately, this is not a photo of the actual spider. It's one I prepared earlier. I was too busy making uncontrolled sobbing noises and flapping my hands to get a photo at the time, but I assure you, it was identical in type and, hideous scuttling legs included, was bigger than my hand.


Here is a picture of the actual sock in question, however:

...Right before I had it burned... Not really, but I did stamp on it a few times and check for eggs.


Many spider aficionados would have you believe that the huntsman is completely harmless, but their venom is, in fact, mildly toxic, so when I began to feel ill, albeit mildly so, we thought we'd best ring Poisons Information to check that the baby wouldn't become some kind of freaky mutant spider-baby if I breast fed her. Unfortunately, huntsman venom has no effect on breast milk, so ultimately, no good came of the affair at all. In fact, not only do I have a renewed fear of spiders, I'm also now a little afraid of socks.

{this moment} - Reading

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

Inspired by SouleMama. 

Laser eye

So I'm off to have laser eye surgery tomorrow to try to fix a chronic eye ishoo. I'll see you when I see you...I hope. 


I've been cleaning up a bit for the last couple of days in the vain hope that I won't be tripping over things while I recover. The children, however, seem to be working at cross purposes. In fact, they actually seem quite invested in me tripping over things while I recover. It's understandable, I guess. I did take the television away. They need to entertain themselves somehow.

Sustainably Free

Noodlehead wrote an interesting post recently on fear and its role in stifling creativity. At the end of it she linked to Craftypod's series on Free and Sustainability. The discussion continues, but what I took from it immediately was the simple notion that in order for a blogger to provide free content in a sustainable way, there needs to be some reward. This is true whether this content is a sewing tutorial, a writer's literary efforts, photographs or just family news.

For some bloggers, the reward will be monetary or material, by way of ad revenue, sponsorship or increased sales for their own businesses. For most of us, it will come primarily in the form of feedback from readers, usually comments.

Which got me thinking about all those blogs in my reader that I enjoy every day, most of which I have never commented on. I knew that I should be commenting. I like receiving comments too, but I hadn't made the connection that in reading blogs without commenting (or supporting bloggers' businesses, where possible), I was making the provision of free content unsustainable.

So, if you've come here wondering about this strange person suddenly commenting all over your blog like a twelve year old let loose with a can of silver spray paint, I just want to say, thank you for your blog. I'm sorry that I read it for so long without properly showing my appreciation.

{this moment} - Waiting

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

Inspired by SouleMama. 

Someone Round Up the Unicorns!

This was our backyard earlier this evening. Just so you know, it doesn't normally boast lake-side views.

This is our front door. Those are cloth nappies from when N was a baby, pressed back into service because we ran out of towels.

This was the local CFA station tonight. Don't worry. I have it on good authority that those two are just about to do something heroic. ...Any second now...

...And it's still raining...


We're thinking we should start rounding up two of every animal. So far we have two pairs of guinea pigs and a female cat. It could be a brave new world, my friends.

The Rope They Used to Hang Her

We walk together, most mornings, through the park; me on foot, N on her lately conquered bike and L in her pusher, pointing excitedly at birds and dogs and yelling, 'Kitty! Kitty!'.


Yesterday, there was a woman watching her pre-schooler by the swings. As I strapped L into the baby swing, she nodded towards N and asked, 'When do schools go back?'


'I'm not sure,' I told her. 'We homeschool, so I tend not to keep track.' She asked a little about homeschooling then and after a minute, sensing a receptive ear, began to talk about her own time at a private girls' school.


She spoke about the bullying; lunchtimes spent alone and finally, 'the label'. She couldn't bring herself to say the word in front of the children. It was as if it were some obscenity and for her, how could it not be? It was the rope they used to hang her.


'Lesbian', hissed behind hands; made dirty in the speaking; giggles and titters, all directed at an uncomprehending twelve year old who just wanted somebody to sit with while she ate her lunch.


It was all so near to the surface, bubbling over, spilling onto the tan bark surrounding the swings. 'Thirty years later...' She spoke quietly, but with force. '...I found out through Facebook that a girl who came to my house told everyone that I hit on her.' She looked puzzled and slightly embarrassed for a moment; twelve again. Then she shook her head. 'And that began seven years of misery... Anyway, I won't be homeschooling this one.' She nodded towards her daughter. 'I'm too dumb. But there's no way I'll send her to a private school. No way.'

Prayers and Hot Air

Summer arrived at last. I won't complain about the heat. I've been yearning for it for months; to feel hot to the core; languid and dripping with sweat.


We should, perhaps, begin to be more careful what we wish for, however. All those years of drought; all that yearning for rain; prayers and hot air; fumes and vapors; factories and cars and longing - all warming the globe in barely perceptible increments.


Two years ago, it felt like the world was burning; now everything is sodden - with the same end result; lives lost and rent asunder. One way or another.