What I'm Reading Now

When in Brisbane on Tuesday I bought two books - The Winter of Our Disconnect by Susan Maushart - about a mother and three teenagers who pulled the plug on their technological world and survived and Getting Unstuck by Timothy Butler ("Fresh ways for you to think about who you really are and what makes you happy" - The Washington Post).

I've read Susan Maushart's columns in The Weekend Australian over the years and mostly enjoyed them. This book is quite entertaining and the blurb on the back says The Experiment changed their lives ....for the better.

On page 77 I came across a paragraph that was very relevant in our house this week. It goes, "An article I read at the start of The Experiment advised teachers to 'give up the struggle' to prevent children from text-messaging one another during class, citing a University of Tasmania study dubiously titled '2 text yr m8 is gr8!' The study found that more than 90 per cent of ninth- and tenth-graders - including those in schools with strict (LOL) no-phone policies, regularly engaged in the practice".

My story goes - Drew and his phone are never apart for more than the time it takes him to shower or play a game of touch footy. His connection to the outside world, via his phone, is everything. Last Thursday, after his Japanese exam, he was sitting in his Biology class. Apparently he texted me, saying that "Jap went well, I think I passed. Can you come and pick me up?" - but I didn't receive the message. Then at lunchtime, his Biology teacher came up to him laughing, with her phone in her hand. His hand went automatically to his pocket (he thought she had somehow got his phone). She handed him her phone. He read the message. It was from him, telling the recipient that Jap had gone well, could you come and pick me up! His Biology teachers' name sits just above 'Mum' in his phonebook - he had sent her the message instead of me. So, during Biology he sent his Biology teacher the message intended for me. She got it at recess. She saw the funny side of it; I'm not sure the Principal would have.

The other book will take a little while to work through. There are some big changes on the horizon between now and the end of November especially for me as a parent (Gibbo's life won't change much!) - the end of my involvement with all things school related and the possibility that Drew will spend next year way, way, away from me. It will be bliss to not be tied to a school routine after 18 years of being so and it opens up so many doors to other opportunities and the chance to rediscover Maryanne and to do some of the things I've wondered about and put on the backburner for so long. There's the tiniest frisson of anticipation now and again when I think about what might be. Then again, there's a lot of emotion to deal with between now and when he steps on that plane so I need to stay grounded for a little while yet.

Emails From Megan

I once read a book called Letters from Susan - a collection of letters that a daughter had written to her mother, telling of her travels around the world. I really enjoyed the book but, unfortunately, there was a tragic ending to the story. I guess that's what led to the book being published; if there had ben a happy ending there would have been no reason to do so.

One day I'd like to collect and collate some of the emails that Megan and I have shared over the years, especially some of those from her first six months at College in 2006. Priceless some of them (to me anyway but probably not to anyone else - and Meg would maybe cringe at some of them now. I've kept them all, archived away).

We've always emailed a lot; barely a day missed in four and a half years but there hasn't been so much of it going on this last six months (obviously) but now that she's back at work, they've started again. I want to record one lot of communication because the ending of it warmed my heart and made me stop and think how true her words were.

I'd been to the doctor yesterday morning about an ongoing problem with my ear. When I got back to work, this exchange began (Megan in italics).

Aren't you the best momma! Thankyou. How's your day? Did you put the drops in your ear yet?
Yes, put the drops in but my ear/head is starting to hurt
Poor your head. Just go home. Lay on the couch with Nut (note - Meganspeak for Coco, the dog, as in coconut) until 5.30. What's for dinner?
Dinner? I have no idea
Chinese!
Mmmmaybe
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes! Pllllllleeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaasssssssseeeeee.
Are you begging?
No. Pleading maybe? Not begging. I'm giving you eyes like Coco gives me.
Doesn’t work on me
Hmmm.
Lets see at 5pm. I’m hungry now.
Maybe if you keep thinking about how hungry you are you wont be able to help yourself and at 5pm we'll all go and have Chinese! When will Greg be home?

He’s on the road now, eta 4.30 – 5pm
OK. Maybe we could get a little bit of Chinese for him as well. I'm so excited we'll all be together again. It's not a family when someone is missing.

It's a fairly mundane exchange that I thought was going nowhere until that last sentence and it made me stop and blink - we might think or feel these things but we don't often say them and to see them written made them so powerful. When one of us is not here, there really is a hole.

I might start a new little segment called Emails from Megan and pick out some of the more interesting exchanges from the archives.

It's A Jungle Out There...

especially if you're a slug or a snail in search of a juicy morsel. The vege garden continues to delight (both humans and bugs). The kids always know where to find me.

The zucchini's have exploded and we make delicious zucchini pie -- 

 the original tomatoes still look great - 

 and it now appears that I (slightly) overplanted Station 2! There's mint, coriander, peas, eschallots, spring onions, brown onions, orange carrots, purple carrots, broccoli, cauli, cabbage, betroot, capsicum and cherry tomatoes all in this small area - oh, and a little pink rose geranium that I'm nurturing. What a harvest there'll be if everything can find room to grow.

is this view really enticing if you're a slimy creature looking for a feed?

This is the pumpkin that Megan checks on every second day, desperate to pick it.

The view from a distance.....the little bare station in the middle (Station 3) is going to be the herb garden. It's been down for quite a few weeks now so should be ready for planting. you can't see in the photos but I've made another station (4) from a mixture of sheep manure and sweepings from Andrews' yards, chopped lucerne, sand, black soil and feedlot manure; I've been leaving it to mature so haven't planted into it yet. It might be interesting to see the results between the two different mixes.

This little vege patch is Megan's, just outside the gauze room. It has peas, lettuce and tomatoes planted; we've eaten quite a few lettuce leaves already.

Smoke on the Horizon

Driving home a couple of weeks ago, Drew and I were baffled by the smoke in the sky. At first I thought it was a low cloud bank, telling us there'd be cold weather the next day but as we watched it, it turned into an enormous smoke cloud - it must have been some big stubble fire wherever it was. Once home, I raced inside and grabbed the camera - when I took the photo direct it was quite dark but if I focussed on the ground in front of me and half pressed the shutter button I picked up the light around me - then when I took the photo of the sun, there was light (a little trick I picked up at the photo course I did last year, one of the few tips I can remember). These are the result - I liked the dark one so much I made it my new banner (obviously hey?).

What's Been Going On?

What a great day! Woke up to rain and gusting winds and a warm, toasty loungeroom.

Meg and I bravely headed out to do the chooks - sometimes I wonder about her! She makes me laugh often - and she's really enjoying life at home on the farm. She just finished her second week of full-time work in town and is six months away from finishing her Masters degree. At the end of this Uni year she will have been studying for five years - 3 full-time and 2 part-time.

She is dying for a pumpkin to ripen in the permaculture garden. It's a bit late really, a self-sown one but looks like it might go the distance. We rarely frost on our ridge so fingers crossed. Here she is, assessing its' progress.

Drew is ploughing through Term 2, Grade 12. The last two weeks have been heavy with assessments including a dramatic monologue from Macbeth to write and deliver in character for English; a Drama analysis on a Brecht play; three Japanese exams and a 10 minute multimodal presentation on "finding the sacred in the earth community" for SOR. No wonder he doesn't want to get up in the mornings! He continues to grow and change. We go to the doctor next week for his medical for the student exchange application. I think there might be a couple of vaccinations to catch up on because I've tended to skip a few along the way. The school is presenting a theatre restaurant next weekend - he will play the part of the Train Inspector in Mystery on the Orient Express. It is his job to be the conduit between the audience and the stage and to encourage audience participation. I'm a bit anxious (as I always get) but he assures me it will all be fine (such confidence in the young these days).

Gibbo finally came home again last night. He spent 2 days in Brisbane at head office then three days in CQ trying to tie up supply and catching up with the couple of properties up there that he looks after. It was good to have him back.

On Tuesday I took my brother to Brisbane for some medical tests. I had to pick him up from his home and deliver him back so we probably spent 8 hours total in the car together. That's more time spent together in one day than what we've spent alone in a couple of years. We talked a lot about the state of the world, family and growing up.

While he was at the hospital I walked to Mary Ryan's and bought two books and had a coffee. I just cannot help myself in a bookshop; I have to buy a book. I can walk into a hundred dress shops or shoe shops and not buy a thing (and barely be tempted) but put me in a bookshop and I'm immediately seduced, sucked in by a great looking cover or a fascinating blurb on the back.

A friend has asked me to make a full bodysuit with hood for her daughter for the athletics carnival at the end of June. The kids all dress up on these days and Lucy wants a gold one. I borrowed a pattern off an old school friend who assures me it will be "dead easy" to make. I've made many ballet costumes over the years and if it was for one of my kids I wouldn't bat an eyelid (well maybe I would at the thought of Drewboy in a golden full bodysuit) but when it's for someone else a certain element of "I better do this neatly" comes into it. If it works I'll post a picture; if it doesn't, I won't!

It's only 9 weeks until we leave on our trip to Singapore/Ireland/England for the Golden Oldies Cricket World Cup. I still can't believe I'm travelling half way around the world to watch a bunch of hasbeens play cricket. Anything but cricket.

Meet Honey

Honey is a delightful little package who belongs to one of the girls at work; she went away for a week so we looked after the little one, much to Coco's horror. Another dog in the house? How dare we! It took a little while for things to settle and Honey survived her visit. She is incredibly cute but has a tendency (still) to wee everywhere when she gets excited. Lucky we've got cork tiles.

It's been quite a week...

or ten days or so. Drew was in the Rostrum Voice of Youth Comp; Megan got a full time job in town so will be around for a while yet; Drew decided to have a gap year and head to Canada next year on a student exchange; we went to Gibbo's nieces' wedding in Toowoomba; we spent Mothers Day down there too (the girls went to Highfields for coffee and cake); Drew went to Nitro Circus in Brisbane with Dugald (awesome); Gibbo went south again, to NSW and Victoria, chasing cattle; I went to the chiropractor and feel worse than I did before; Drew and I went to his first drama workshop for this term; Coco went to the vet and was speyed and had her dew claws removed; we had 6 Japanese visitors for lunch on Friday and another six are due on Monday; Chris left us today to move to Brisbane to start his new job on Monday.............and Jessica Watson arrived home today. Follow. Your. Dream.

I'm tracking down birth certificates (Gibbo's has gone missing?!?); applying for passports (Gibbo's has expired) and preparing to pay for the balance of our trip to England.

The permaculture garden is travelling well; we're picking tomatoes and zucchinis and getting lots of eggs.

Life is busy.

Here's a selection of photos taken at the wedding; at Highfields for morning tea and at the camp oven lunch on Mothers Day.

Chris is Leaving Us

After weeks of emailing, phoning, cold calling and drop ins, Chris has scored himself a job in an architects office. He's made three trips to Brisbane to drop his portfolio at as many businesses as he could find. In the end it was a simple phone call that did it for him and after an interview yesterday (that obviously went really well) he got a call asking him to start on the 17th. This is an excellent development for him as he has to do 10 months in an office before he can go back to Uni to finish his degree.

So we will bid him farewell on the 15th/16th; Meg will be sad to see him go and we will miss him too. It's been nice to have another quiet, introverted Virgo around the place in amongst all those other really loud people (one that I married and two that I gave birth to). I sometimes wonder (in a good way) how they turned out so different to me!

Cricket Report

There's not a lot to report from our cricket trip to Bundaberg for the annual two day carnival. The boys in the blue and orange tartan hats lost 5-zip - a first I'd say! Pretty dismal performance all round. I walked from the fields into town and spent the morning wandering the main street area then went back to watch some of the action, took a few photos and had a little rest in the front of the car.

Our motel accommodation was interesting. It would have to have been one of the most ordinary rooms I've ever stayed in - and we had the honeymoon suite!!??!! I don't want to think what the rest of the rooms were like!

Sunday I visited the nearby 'zoo' -

then walked along the river to a coffee shop, took my time over a capuccino and the Sunday paper then made my way back to the cricket.

The boys played their last game before lunch so we took advantage of the early finish and came home via Howard to have a look at our two blocks.

This was only our second visit since we've owned them.