la meme chose

Friday, January 27, 2006

From Alison

What were you doing ten years ago?

Spending summer in Melbourne, working as a locum radiographer at the Royal Children's Hospital and sitting in cafés. Oh, and taking post-dumping and ultimately ill-fated vows of celibacy so I could concentrate on my Masters degree.

What were you doing one year ago?

Stomping around Cambridge in the snow pushing Rebecca in very heavy and unwieldy three-wheeled pushchair.

What were you doing one hour ago?

Writing.

List five creative things you'd like to do this year:

• Attend a bluegrass fiddle workshop (this one's already sorted).
  
• Join a music group. Can't decide between classical or folk, singing or fiddling (time and energy are limited). Will see how the aforementioned workshop goes.
  
• Attend a creative writing course
  
• Get some more poems published.
  
• Finish the short story I've been trying to write for the last two months and can't get my head around.

List five snacks you enjoy:

• Double flat whites
  
• Lattes
  
• Black jellybeans
  
• PBJ sarnies
  
• Brazil nuts.

List five things you would do if money were no object:

• Take Jack and Rebecca on an extended family trip across Canada
  
• Use the time I would normally spend earning money to write
  
• Pay someone else to obsess about the housework
  
• Help those close to me who needed it
  
• Buy an apartment in one of the good bits of Paris.

List five bad habits:

• Harbouring grudges
  
• Projecting
  
• Demonising people
  
• Kibbitzing
  
• Drinking too much coffee.

List five things you like doing:

• Kibbitzing
  
• Drinking too much coffee
  
• Watching Rebecca sleep
  
• Getting completely absorbed in a piece of writing
  
• Time alone with beloved husband.

List five favorite gadgets:

• Coffee perc
  
• DVD player
  
• Food processor
  
• Mobile phone
  
• My PDA, if I could get the bloody thing to work properly.

Name one thing you like about yourself:

My determination.

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dearth nadir

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Apologies for the dearth of blog entries lately. I have been writing: I just haven't been writing bloggable stuff. This is not my subtle way of signalling some existential crisis, btw - it's just my roundabout way of explaining that I've been doing a bit of, erm, creative writing (there - I've said it: I feel better) and it's siphoning off the time and energy I usually spend on blogging. Sod 500 squid year and a room of one's own: I'd settle for being able to sit down at the computer for more than 35 seconds a day without having to type one-handed while using the other hand to keep a certain person's flailing and sticky little mitts off the keyboard.

Quite by chance, and by dint of capitalising on someone else's misfortune/lack of planning (defaulted on payments, apparently) we have a childcare place for Rebecca two days a week: Mondays and Thursdays. It works on so many levels: Mummy gets to spend the time earning actual money and talking to adults about matters other than tantrums, toileting and toddler taxonomy; Daddy gets a welcome breather from the onerous responsibility of being the sole money-earner (as long as I can keep getting people to pay me to do stuff). But most importantly, Rebecca absolutely loves it: other children, a huge sandpit and all the playdough you can eat - what's not to like?

I barely feel guilty at all...

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moore mater with less art

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Yesterday afternoon we went for a strenuous trundle up through the Bot Gardens - strenuous for Mummy at least, whose entire body formed a 45 degree angle with the ground as she shoved the pushchair up the steep Sculpture Walk. Still, at least R learned to say 'Henry Moore'. (And 'bye-bye, Henry Moore' too, which she came up with all by herself.)

Purpose of all this pushing was to drop into Vic Library to beg them for a Borrowers Card so I can do some research for the crop of literary biogs I'm supposed to be doing for my old employers, who are quite amenable to hiring back former employees as freelancers. Of course if Vic tell me to get stuffed I'm not sure what I'll do - it's a long, long way to the UL. I'm to wait a week while they consider my application, the 'reasons for use' section of which I scribbled blotchily and with many crossings-out as Becca squirmed and shrieked in her pushchair. 'I promise I won't be bringing this one on my visits,' I explained lamely with the library clerk, who gave me a watery smile. Now at the UL we'd have both been slung down the front steps without ceremony. Afterwards I dropped into one of Vic's new coffee shops, where the owner recognised me because I used to work in his twin brother's café upstairs something like eight years ago, and gave me my flat white on the house. What a country!

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when the going gets tough, the tough subcontract

Monday, January 09, 2006

Rebecca has entered an aggressive phase, frequently attempting to hurl much larger children off pieces of play equipment she wishes to use. As I babble lame apologies to their affronted parents, the children themselves respond by staring at Becca with pious reproach. We're a peaceable people, as a whole, and possibly Rebecca's North Cambridge start in life has ill equipped her for a kinder, gentler life in NZ. It may also be that what with all the moving around she's been far too much around adoring (and largely uncritical) adults and not enough around children her own age. Most of the local kiddie groups have finished for the summer, but I am doing my best to find a few in the hope that frequent contact with other children will knock a few rough edges off her. In a purely metaphorical way, of course.

The current plan is for me to find part-time childcare for her so that I can take on contracting work. An appealing side effect of which would be that some other sucker would have to figure out how to deal with her incipient sociopathy - for a few blissful and yet somehow guilt-saturated hours a week. Ha! Oddly enough, I'm finding myself reluctant to pick up the phone.

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think big

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Had a brilliant idea yesterday when trying to contort myself out of the station wagon in a particularly exiguous parking spot: since supermarkets and megamalls now have designated parking spots for the disabled and for parents with infants, why not set aside extra-wide car parking spaces for the overweight? Not only would this obviate those embarrassing trapped in the car situations, but as the spaces would be situated in the furthest reaches of the carpark, it would also promote gentle aerobic activity. How's that for social engineering? Dibs on designing the signage, btw.

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moveable feast

Thursday, January 05, 2006

things rebecca eats:

• sand;
  
• sunscreen;
  
• aloe vera body lotion.

And I'm not convinced she hasn't been at the dog's biscuits, either.

In other news, Jared and Sharyn hit town today. Now all I have to do is confiscate their passports. (This evil idea originally spawned by a certain Melanie of Cottenham, Cambs.)

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in brief

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Welcomed 2006 at a decent hour, although not necessarily a decent fashion, with an impromptu skinnydip (or, if you prefer, chunkydunk) at Waikawa Beach. Squelched back to the bach in some of our wet clothes (disrobing having been a mid-swim process), the remaining garments fluttering like standards on the end of a forked stick over my shoulder, drying out in the hot wind.

Today marks Jack's first day at work, and my untimely return to fulltime Bug-wrangling. It's gone moderately well so far, apart from a protracted battle of wills concerning the necessity of a midday nap, during which the collected contents of a bag of nappy sacks, one of swim nappies, and, worst of all, a new pack of wet wipes were systematically emptied out and strewn over the bedroom. So I feel the Bug won that one on points: serves me right for leaving the kit within purloining distance of the cot, really. Cleaned up mess, changed sheets (a surprising amount of moisture wicks out of a pack of wipes into a flanelette bedsheet) and explained to the Bug that if this sort of carry-on, er, carries on, I will be placing her on Trademe forthwith. Which pronouncement she greeted with an expression of stony-faced defiance. So it's going to be one of THOSE mother-daughter relationships, then. Anyone after a part-time editor/writer/translator?

She's still asleep, in an almost calculatedly angelic attitude. It won't last.

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