A change in the air

I chose awesome (obviously).

After some flip-flopping about lots of different things, I decided Melbourne had too much to offer right now (on so many fronts), and couldn't be ignored. Plus, coming home in October gave me the chance to spend 10 days with various family members on the US east coast (and in autumn - eeep!) on my way home. The photo above is from a walk in Ithaca.

What next? I'm not entirely sure. Probably not journalism, the industry's just too dire these days for me I think. I'm throwing my CV out there a great deal right now, but also very seriously looking at a Master of Urban Horticulture. We'll see. But there are so many exciting developments and fresh things going on in my life that I know it's going to be an incredible year, and a particularly wonderful summer. Just remind me of that in a few weeks time when my Canadian bank account is drained and no job has materialised!

And I'm Back in the Game!

(Every time I say that phrase in my head, which is actually surprisingly often, I imagine Joseph Gordon Levitt in 10 Things I Hate About You saying it. So now that you're inside my head, let's begin.)

Sorry for the long absence, full-time work + full-time study makes you really busy, and things don't get to calm down much when you then have two weeks in which to do all of your assessment for the semester and then - because your landlords' son wants to move into your home - pack up all of your stuff (and your boyfriend's stuff because he's still studying for an exam that will make or break his postgrad studies) and move it to your parents' house in about one million trips across town in a car the size of a roller skate. Things don't really get any calmer when you have to co-ordinate the final parts of your move and signing a new lease from across the Tasman.

But it's all over now, and WE HAVE A HUGE NEW VEGIE PATCH!!!! It faces north, it doesn't have a dense mat of tree roots that regrows as fast as it can be dug out, it doesn't have a big shady tree covering it for most of the day. Sure, there's still plenty of that landlord favourite wall-to-wall concrete, but there's also plenty of lovely rich soil bursting with worms, and I'm absolutely loving having things actually grow for once.

I'll get onto garden and life related things in the next post, but for now, let me re-introduce myself by way of a quiz which I completed months and months ago but never posted: (I've updated some of the answers though)

I was tagged a few weeks ago (now many months ago) by Pepper Stitches, who has a great crafty blog with lots of fun links and stories - you should go and check it out!
I was meant to answer some questions, the original list can be found over at Seeds and Stitches, but like most others I've just answered a few from the list. I'm meant to tag others but I'm a bit shy when it comes to things like that so I don't think I will this time.

What is your current obsession?
Planting vegies that might actually grow, and the furniture, painting and pottery in the Mad Men offices.


Image via Shelterrific

What would you eat for your last meal?
Too much. I'd then probably vomit out my nose as I infamously did in a friend's front garden when her lovely Lebanese mother fed me lovely Lebanese food until I pretty much did burst. Spaghetti bolognaise, lentil and hamhock soup, chocolate and wonderful fresh fruit and vegies would undoubtedly feature on the menu of a last meal.

What was the last thing you bought?
Some radish seeds, a bunch of terracotta pots and some potting mix. I actually went out shopping for clothes, which I hate doing, got depressed by my own lack of trendiness and style, so retreated to the nursery instead, where I figure I get far better bang for my buck in terms of money outlay-happiness experienced.

What are you listening to right now?
My housemate playing guitar in the next room. When I'm listening to my choice of music, it's Teddy Thompson's latest album for brisk strolling, The Beach Boys for doing the dishes, The McGarrigle Sisters for rainy afternoons in the kitchen, Catatonia when I'm at my desk.

What is your favorite ice cream flavor?
Always chocolate.

What is your favorite colour?
Green. It's beyond ridiculous how much green is in my wardrobe!

What is your dream job?
A journalist. Which is what I already do. But a proper, full-time journalist. Who gets more money.

What are you going to do after this?
Finish some job applications, plant some rocket seeds and then see a friend's gig.

What is your favorite smell?
I really love the smell of wet tomato plants, daphne, jasmine, earl grey tea, and clean bedding dried on a sunny day.

What are you most proud of?
Changing to become more like the person I want to be. And changing who I choose to have around me as part of that journey.

How many times do you press the snooze button before you get up?
I have been known to press it for up to two hours. I understand that this is both shameful and foolish. It probably won't stop me from doing it again though.

It's good to be back folks. I'm probably meant to tag some people, but I'm a bit shy about stuff like that. Although I was incredibly stoked to be tagged, so it seems mean to not tag anyone. I'll definitely tag someone next time I'm tagged for something and I'm back in the swing of blogging and commenting (although I've absolutely been reading plenty of blogs, I've just been very quiet for awhile)

Oh my giddy aunt.

What a stupidly busy few weeks. And it's not really likely to calm down anytime soon, so I really don't know if I should bother getting back into posting when I'm quite liable to disappear again, but I guess I just want to.

I've been so busy with a newspaper internship which was meant to go for the first two weeks of August but which is still going and has now been extended to November. That's full-time and then uni and other work slot in around it, and so far so good, but it doesn't leave large swathes of time for things like gardening and blogging. But I did have a couple of things I wanted to share, so I'll at least keep plugging away at getting those posted.

I feel bad for not commenting on all the posts I've enjoyed reading, but it has at least been nice to still have a constant feed of exciting things other people are doing to read about.

I think maybe this blog needs to change a little as well. I think I was so inspired by reading other people's creative blogs or blogs about their fabulous garden that I forgot that I don't live a particularly creative life, nor is my garden fabulous. (Well, I think it's kind of fabulous but that's because I remember when it was all concrete and weeds and mouldy newspapers and broken glass, but I didn't take any of photos of it back then, so I can't even prove how far it has come.) Anyway, what I'm trying to tell you is that perhaps my first angle was a little flawed, so maybe I need to branch out and find other things to also talk about that are just as satisfying for me and interesting for you.

So forgive the explanatory post, hopefully I'll return soon with something a little more noteworthy.

Wait! Here's something noteworthy:

This is the most important thing I learnt last year. When I learnt it I told lots of my other incredibly busy, driven, perhaps slightly over-achieving friends, and then we all sat back and sighed and felt a little bit better. And sometimes now we still tell it to each other when we're stressing ourselves out with our own actions. So here it is folks.

Detach your sense of self from your achievements.

That's not to say you can't be proud of them and take joy in them, but just don't get so caught up in them that they drown out your other ideas of who you are and what makes you a good person. So with that little gem I'm off to bed. Hopefully I'll see you all soon, and will get back into the swing of posting and commenting.

The pain of rainy days

When I first saw the rainy days theme over on Meet me at Mike's, my thoughts immediately turned to the kind of descriptive writing about my surrounds that I so love creating. But I thought about the theme a little more, and thought that maybe I would instead tell you about why I find rainy days somewhat bittersweet.

For a couple of years rainy days meant dropping everything. Checking the Bureau of Meteorology website to gauge every river in the state, watching the rain maps become peppered with turquoise dots, then royal blue dots, then green, as the rain continued to fall. Phones would be buzzing, emails would be flying, and then the culmination would be a station wagon packed full of people and gear with four whitewater kayaks strapped firmly to the roof racks, heading out to whichever river seemed the best pick. Driving for hours, either into the dark of night or early in the morning watching dawn break over a nearly-empty freeway.

As we neared the river we'd peer over every bridge in anticipation, trying to work out if the river really had risen enough. We'd pull up to a clearing, usually with no marking but one that had been handed down by word of mouth or internet forums. Pile out of the car, check the river level, work out a car shuttle to have a car waiting for us at the end of the day, and start pulling on layers of thermals, tight homemade fleece vests, wetsuit booties, and waterproof pants and tops with tight latex gaskets that don't allow water in at your ankles, neck or wrists. As we put on our helmets, spray decks and life jackets we'd make sure everyone used the same river signals and was feeling okay about the river we were about to paddle.

Depending on how hard the river was, your heart might start beating a little faster as you dragged your boat down to the river. If there was only a small eddy of smooth water before entering the flow of the river, you'd ease yourself into your boat carefully before pulling out to make way for the next person. Even in your first few paddle strokes you would feel the power of the river flowing beneath you. But you would also feel the comfort of your boat responding to the moves you had done so many times. A slight lift of the knee, twist of the stomach, a touch of your paddle on the water. The feeling not of being in control, but of being in sync with the river.

Of course the rest of the day had plenty of stories, but I think it's that first feeling of working with the river that I think of when it rains. And now? Now the thought just makes me sad. In a state like Victoria with such enduring drought, now when it rains for days you're lucky if one river comes up. And because it's so rare, you're no longer confident you can tackle that harder river, so you don't go. And because you're out of the habit, you don't drop everything to seek out the river, now when you've made plans with people you keep them rather than apologising with 'Sorry, but an amazing river came up'.

But I find it so sad to have lost it. To have lost that pure feeling of joy coursing through my body as I pulled exactly the move the river demanded of me. To not float through gum tree lined stretches with just a few close friends. To no longer be able to identify myself as an adventurer, an outdoors person. So for me, rainy days can be a pleasant, cosy day in Melbourne, but they can also be such a strong reminder of a person I was, a person I liked being, a person I quite possibly will never get the chance to be again for whom I'm still grieving.

These are some photos from a kayaking trip to New Zealand, not long before my kayaking habit died away a bit. (I couldn't seem to find any on my computer that captured the feeling of rainy Victorian kayaking.)


Part way through an hour-long walk to the start of the Lower Toaroha River


Putting in a move on the Lower Hokitika


Heading off the Maruia Falls

Contemplating

So it feels like awhile since I last posted. I keep writing posts in my head but then not getting them down quickly enough, and then they just seem to stagnate and by the time I come to write them they've lost their gleam, and it doesn't feel worth it. I wonder if others struggle with this when blogging. And I'm constantly realising that I should have taken a photo because without it there's no post. But I still enjoy the writing in my head, and hopefully I'll just get better at pulling it all together. So next I think I'll write one of the posts I've been mulling over for quite some time, and hopefully I didn't lose the shine by waiting.

That's right, just back away slowly

Having arrived in Sydney at 3:30am on Friday morning after driving through the night, an 11am family get together was probably a big ask. It involved meeting all of Tom's aunts and uncles and cousins and anyone else vaguely related to him (or so it felt) and given that I really only function on a minimum of eight hours sleep (I know, it's pretty decadent) my performance that morning was probably always going to be sub-optimal.

Add to this the fact that one of my jobs involves writing for a mothers magazine. This alone is enough to make people a little nervous, because I'm not to their knowledge a mother. (Nor to my knowledge for that matter, and I would probably know.) They ask me polite questions about what I write about, and when inevitably the word birth is mentioned (or sometimes I'll just say 'vaginas' if I want to shut down the conversation super-quickly) they usually offer up some attempt at conversation about the topic, such as 'I read an article about how dangerous home-birth is, I heard women are dying because of their foolish attempts at this' (or words to that effect). I'm not really a strong advocate for a particular way of birthing because although I have my own views I feel it's something that's pretty personal, but it is something I now know quite a lot about. So I inform them of the differences between home-birthing with a medical professional and free-birthing without one, and that it's usually free-birthing that's dangerous and the media should make this distinction. We then have some chit-chat where I say I think the state of birthing in Australia kind of sucks, I give examples of why, they back slowly away making nervous pointing gestures to outdoors and saying things like 'I'll just...' 'I might go and..' 'Aaah...' etc.

After scaring Tom's uncle away like this I retired to a chair in the sun and only spoke to other people sitting in chairs in the sun. This generally involved the elderly and hungover. This suited me just fine.

Tasks for the holiday: impress the family? Tick.

A Long Drive

I decided to play along with the Meet Me At Mike's Words and Pictures after reading a very evocative entry on Megan's blog. This week's theme is A Long Drive. My mind immediately turned to some of the horrendously long bus rides I've taken as a traveller; this was one of them that happened last year. (It should be noted, the country wasn't as bad as this welcoming drive might have indicated.)

It was already four in the afternoon, and we had no idea where we were going to sleep that night. We'd been in a different town every night for the past week, and had just got off yet another all-day stint on a bus. The border crossing had been horrible as we were heckled, jostled and scammed at every turn. Taxi drivers, people trying to guide us through the process, market stall holders, small children, they all crowded in at us, each trying to negotiate something. As we started to waver, and considered accepting the taxi driver's ridiculously high price, a security guard at the bank caught my eye and gave a barely noticeable shake of his head. It was the jolt I needed, and we fought our way through the crowd until we got to the police station to ask directions.

The taxi driver we finally settled on whisked us off to the official border entry point further along the road, and then took us to the next town, from where we could catch the bus to Lima. He bargained with us the entire time, and even as we paid him more than we'd agreed on, he fixed us with puppydog eyes. As soon as he'd left we bought food, pointing to each item without knowing the price. Tom tried to bargain, naming a price that seemed cheap to us. The storeholder looked at us oddly, and named a sum that was half of what we had offered. We immediately realised how much we'd given our taxi driver in real terms.

We had made it just in time to catch the last overnight bus, and half an hour later we were cooped back up and on the move again. Dusk fell, and the barren landscape became just potholes and small towns that rushed by in the headlights. As a Spanish film started on the television screens the stewardess came around with a small meal. The night wore on, and I'd pulled an eye mask on to try and sleep.

Half an hour later I still couldn't sleep. 'Tom, I don't think I feel very well' I whispered, prodding my half-asleep boyfriend and getting a grunt in return. I writhed in my chair, struggling to overcome rising nausea that worsened with every bump in the road. When I felt the bus slow I leapt from my seat and dashed down the stairs to the door, pushing past the stewardess and policeman checking the bus's papers and only just missing his shoes as I vomited into the dust. They looked down at me as I vomited again, before turning away to finish their paper check. 'Time to go!' the stewardess said chirply as I leaned my head on my knees, crouching barefoot on the roadside.

Soon after dawn broke it became obvious that this was going to be a proper bout of food poisoning. I headed down to the toilet, only to discover a sign reading 'Solo urinario'. I asked the stewardess if I could go to the toilet in the next town. Despite much overuse on my part of the word 'emergencia', we passed through one small town, then another, then another as I grew more and more uncomfortable. Finally I couldn't wait anymore, and used the bus toilet. Half an hour later the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere. Cries of 'Where's the gringa?' rose up from downstairs. I headed down to see what was going on. 'Okay, here you go' the stewardess said, gesturing to the open door. Outside there was nothing. We were in a desert with not a single shrub to squat behind in sight. 'Where's the toilet?' I asked the driver. 'This is Peru!' he replied, 'The whole country's a toilet!'

By the time we reached Lima that evening I became glad of the design of bus bathrooms: I was able to vomit into the sink without leaving the toilet. The bus had only stopped three times in 24 hours - the two paper checks and five minutes at a service station. We finally reached a hostel in Lima and I crawled into bed feeling weak and exhausted. Half an hour later I pulled back the sheets, only to find myself covered in bedbug bites. Welcome to Peru.

Not a domestic goddess, just a girl with a plan and a garden

Mia Freedman is a columnist I often end up reading because she sometimes comments on issues that interest me, but for some reason I find her incredibly grating. Yesterday's column in the Age was all about young women whose 'ultimate goal is to take up life long positions in the home raising children'. 'Who knew there were so many 23-year-olds out there baking, crocheting, gardening, marrying, procreating, making their own pasta and having Tupperware parties?' Freedman asks. I'm not quite sure how we leapt from women in their twenties knowing they wanted children at some point to this summary, but as a 22-year-old who happily bakes and gardens, who knows she wants children at some later date and who seriously considers being a stay at home parent I resent her derision.

I hate that somehow acknowledging that I want a career and then children is seen as lessening my commitment to my career until that point (and after that point), and the fact that I enjoy some elements of domesticity is seen as tantamount to disempowering myself. The sneer of Freedman's 'These women consider themselves empowered underneath their pink gingham aprons' is so palpable, even if she is attempting to give the article some sense of balance at that point.

I think it's a good thing that I know I want a career and then quite probably children as it drives me to make the most of the decade I consider to be for me alone. I understand that if I choose to have children my needs will often no longer come first, and I want to give everything my best shot before that point so that I don't have regrets or resentment about my career being cut short. I'm not going to box myself into saying that I will definitely have children or that if I do I will give up full-time work, I just see it as an insurance plan in case I do want to. I know I'm not alone in this; I have other incredibly driven friends who know what they want from life and see planning ahead as the best way to take advantage of all the facets of life they want to experience. Don't worry, I understand that things don't necessarily go to plan, but I get so sick of people judging women who acknowledge the realities of what they want from life.

And don't even get me started on her claim that Kate Middleton may epitomise this trend. Somehow an upper class woman without a job and with none of the domestic trappings Freedman's so critical of is meant to reflect women who want a career and children but also enjoy gardening? (I also think that if there's a trend for domesticity, it's not necessarily confined to women - plenty of my male friends are also right into all those terrible disempowering activities like making pasta, baking and gardening.)

I actually wrote this post yesterday but decided to wait a day and see if I still felt incensed about the issue. Yep, I do. But interestingly, by waiting I was able to see more comments on Mia's blog about the issue. One of the comments I most liked came from someone called Alice. 'I wonder if she has a blog?' I thought, so clicked on the link - turns out I already follow it!

Jen, This Shelf is Your Life

As I procrastinated away this morning I found myself thinking that I probably needed a little more greenery in my study, so I brought in a pot from the backyard for an indoors holiday. After I'd settled it in place I realised that the tableau I had created pretty much summed up a lot of my life.


Greenery, writing tools and mementos of travel and family.

Any Australian writer will recognise the dictionary and style manual.

The poster I bought when I was about 14 and Mum and I went to France together. It was meant to be a family holiday but my brother ended up having to stay in Australia and Dad had to stay with him, so it was just the two of us. It was a pretty incredible holiday, although I can't believe Mum bothered to take a moody teenager with her. We were both learning French at the time, and she had to put up with me thinking it was mortifying that she was trying to practice her French on the locals: 'I can't believe you Mum, you are SO embarrassing, you keep speaking FRENCH' (said as though speaking French were comparable to picking one's nose or something). Not only did she put up with such brattiness, she also did all the driving (and on the wrong side of the road) which is why this poster in particular brings back memories. She drove the nine hour roundtrip to the lavender fields in Provence twice, because the first day hadn't been particularly sunny, so the lavender looked pretty grey. The second time was incredible though, and we have the most beautiful photos of bright purple fields.


The gourd I bought in Peru from a woman probably my own age. She told me she carves them during the low tourist season, and then brings them into town when us gringos are around. She cut the lid off it for me when I bought it and finished hollowing it out, and all the while her young daughter who was tied to her back, baby-chattering away. Definitely a different way of being a working mother.


And then the turtle belonged to my grandmother. It's something I really strongly remember from her house, so i always like to keep it somewhere where it can watch over me as I sleep or study.

Belated Valentines Thoughts

As I read so many posts about Valentines Day, I decided to share my most memorable Valentines Day with you folks. It's not the one where I was spoilt with the classic dozen long-stemmed red roses, although that had a bit of wow factor. It's one which was much more about starting friendships than romantic love.

When I was in primary school my family moved to Pensylvania for a year. And my first day of school was February 14th. My older brother and I hopped on the big yellow school bus that stopped a block from our house, and headed off to our first day. Only ten minutes into the ride, the bus became stuck in snow, where we sat for an hour and a half. (This was of course quite a novelty. Our only experience with snow until that point had been pristine Victorian Alps cross country skiing. Which may explain why I didn't think it weird to pick up a handful of the first snow I saw when we got to the States and cram it in my mouth. Too bad this was on the airport runway and it was full of fuel. Whoops.)

When we finally reached the school I was so stressed out about things not going to plan that I forgot all the directions I'd been given on our tour the day before. By the time a teacher found me and took me to class, I was bawling my eyes out. Of course because I'd got lost I was even later and had to walk in on my own, and the teacher made me stand up in front of the class to introduce myself. As soon as three words were out of my mouth the entire class, including my teacher, fell about laughing, literally rolling on the floor, because of my Australian accent. (It was a small town.)

But once they'd got over the hilarity of it all, they sat me down and presented me with a little letterbox. And in it was a valentine from every kid in the class. We then (in what turned out to be a pretty common event at the school, repeated on St Patricks Day, Presidents Day, Thanksgiving Day, Everyone Gets a Trophy Day, etc) had a party that revolved entirely around consuming large amounts of sugar. Such large amounts that we had a bag of 'candy' to take home with us. Which probably confirmed all of my healthy mother's worst fears about moving to America. But I did feel like I'd been welcomed, and as though it all wasn't going to be too terrible after all.

Bounty

I'm frequently thankful for having great friends. Fun people who are excellent listeners, thinkers, talkers, doers and carers. And then on top of all that they sometimes pop by with extra little surprises to make me appreciate them even more. Like a mix cd of music they think I might like, complete with a handmade cover.

My favourite track is #4 - Streets of Your Town by the Go-betweens. Or the Langley Schools Music Project singing Mandy. Or really any of the others - M has fantastic taste in music and is far more on top of the scene than I ever will be.

And yesterday G popped by for a cup of tea on the way home from work and surprised me with lovely flowers.

How lucky am I?

One month on

So, a month or so since resolution time. How are mine faring?

Get back to full health: blood tests revealed a B12 deficiency which I've started taking tablets to rectify.

Blog: errr, I'm trying to get into the swing of it, but still find myself having identity crises about which blogs might want to be friends with my blog, and whether anything I say is going to matter to anyone out there.

Make a more productive garden: we'll see, the heat killed half of it, but I've still got high hopes for the zucchini plants and the next lot of planting.

Think more positively: I'm working hard on re-framing negative thoughts, but a lot of bad stuff has happened this month. I'm not sure where the line between excessively negative thoughts and permissible grief lies.

Take more advantage of opportunities I already have: I've started writing again for a website where I already had contacts, have booked in a weekend of mountain biking with friends who can show me the ropes, and got back in touch with a mag I used to work for.

Make more of an effort to expand my friendship circle and do fun social activities: I've been to a couple of parties where I knew barely anyone and not said no to invitations quite as often. It's a good start.

Exercise more, take better care of my teeth, see more of Australia, try some new activities: whoops, next month.