New Year’s Resolutions: 2012

I know, it’s not exactly an original topic for a blog post, but hey, I need to jot them down and by putting them here I feel as if I will need to stick to them more… or something.  Anyway, humour me, here they are, in no particular order:

1. Try to get the Dude into a routine.  This means getting his meal times a little more sorted out, as he’s a hungry boy but only when he’s not too tired, and also getting sleeps happening on more of a schedule, as I think he’ll respond better to that and I might actually get some peace. I’m getting closer to achieving this already, given that he now has 12 hours sleep a night (mostly) and a clear two sleeps per day, and I can roughly predict when they happen. Roughly.  I’d like to get him into going to bed earlier, as currently he goes down between 8 and 9 most nights, although saying ‘goes down’ implies that I put him to bed and he stays asleep for the night, which never happens.  He is slowly improving, but most nights I spend a good half hour to an hour settling him down the first time, then have to go in twice to resettle before we finally go to bed about 10:30 or 11.  My mum says I should just get over the fact that I can no longer be a ‘night person’ and go to bed early with him.  I’m still in denial.

2. Finish NaNoWriMo.  I’d like to finally do this, having attempted and failed for a number of years now.  I’m not sure what it will take.  Actually that’s not true, I know exactly what it will take: some discipline, daily targets, sticking to a routine.  Refer back to number 1.

3. Study.  I really want to do my Masters.  Probably Arts, probably creative writing or life writing.  I’m also thinking about finishing off the Grad Dip in Editing and Publishing I started a few years ago.  That way, I might actually be able to start working towards my dream job, editing books in a publishing house.  I realise that now I’ve left work to have the Dude, I have a once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity to rearrange my career into something I actually want to do, instead of constantly being branded a ‘project management professional’ or being offered marketing jobs, which I’d frankly rather chop off an arm than consider.  The marketing and advertising machine and all who sail in her totally shit me.  Although I do like watching The Gruen Transfer.

4. Get a job.  Money is really tight.  I’m talking really tight.  Okay so it’s not to the point where we have to ration our food or stop eating meat or can’t ever have takeaway, true, but it’s not great.  And me not working is making it super hard.  It’s hard for me because I have this mortgage and all these bills to pay but no income.  Actually scratch that, I have Centrelink and their awesome $24 per week.  Strangely enough that doesn’t suffice.  So I need to start earning an income again and I really don’t want the Dude in care just yet as I don’t want him catching all sorts of colds and diseases from all the other vaccinated, non-breastfed, chemical-ridden kidlets, and I also don’t think it’d be good for him to be away from me for that long, so it’s going to have to be working from home.  Which is doable.  I just have to find the time.  Refer back to number 1.

5. Write more.  Yeah, this one always makes an appearance.  But it needs to be there because I do need to write more.  And by writing I mean working on actual stories that will one day be published, not blogging.  How I’ll ever find the time is beyond me, but I must have this one in the list just in case its presence helps make it happen.

6. Blog more.  I go through phases of being really good with blogging, but then I slack off or Christmas happens or I forget or the Dude has a hard few days or weeks or some other shit goes down and I forget I have a blog for a while.  I would like to blog at least once a week minimum, preferably more.  Again, no idea how I’ll find the time but I just have to.  I read all these blogs by all these other awesome mums and think, how do they do it?  But they don’t have the Dude.  Although The Feminist Breeder is one that I am pretty amazed by, her baby is currently not sleeping at all at night yet she still manages to blog and presumably do all her other stuff like work and study and be a mum to her other two kids and a wife to her husband.  But she might actually be an Amazon.  That’s what I think anyway.

7. Move house.  This isn’t much of an actual resolution, but I want to have it in there because it’s something big that will be happening next year and it represents something bigger for me.  I guess it represents a compromise, but at the same time it represents a new phase for us as a family because we’ll finally be in a new place, an actual house, and even though it’ll be in shitty Sydney it’s one step towards what I want.  A small step, but a step nonetheless.

8. Refinance the mortgage.  This has needed to happen for a while, pretty much ever since I let the fixed interest rate lapse and started paying way too much to a stupid finance company in WA who handle my mortgage from a bank in Adelaide for my house in Canberra.  Yeah, makes no sense.  I’m close to getting this sorted, although it means husband taking it on technically as he’s the breadwinner, but by marrying me he gets half the house anyway so I figure that’s fair enough.  Once I’ve done this, I’ll be paying so much less that the rent will more than cover it, so paying bills will be a little easier.

9. Discharge all debts.  This one is important, not just because I need to be debt free, but because I don’t want to end up with a terrible credit rating like my dad and be unable to ever get a loan.  I also hate the stress of bills and debts hanging over my head, and it’s particularly hard because what is hanging over my  head is automatically hanging over husband’s head and he doesn’t need all that.  He shouldn’t have to pay for my inability to manage my finances.  So I plan to get a little extra money when I refinance so I can pay off all the debts and consolidate.

10. Refurbish my house in Canberra.  I’ve needed to do this for a while, and just recently when the carport randomly collapsed I realised it needs to happen in the new year.  The house is nearly 40 years old, and although the kitchen and bathroom were re-done not long before I bought it in 2005, that was six years ago now, seven actually, so it’s definitely time to do something.  I shudder to think what it’ll cost to deal with the issue of the water leaking from the bathroom upstairs through the ceiling of the laundry below it, but that has to be tackled.  In addition there are a few other things like a pergola that I’d like done.  I need to speak to a real estate agent to gauge just what I need to do in order to improve the value without over capitalising.  As it stands, I have great equity in the place and excellent tenants, so I’ve done well.  But if I don’t do something soon it will all fall down!

11. Collect all my stuff from my shed in Canberra.  Back in mid 2007 when I went to London, I sold a lot of my stuff, but the stuff I didn’t sell or give away that I still wanted to keep; important stuff; stuff with sentimental value. I packed it all into my little shed in the front garden before I left and when I came back in January 2010 I peeked in.  It was all still there.  That’s as far as I got.  I haven’t been back.  When my tenant rang to say the carport had collapsed, I thought she meant the shed.  It’s not exactly the most stable building in the world, just a little tin shed someone bought from Bunnings.  I can’t believe it’s still standing.  And I wonder what state my stuff is in!  There’s so much important stuff in there, pictures and stories from my childhood, an Edwardian sideboard that was in my parents’ house which I always meant to refinish, some random art projects, all my artwork from my year at art school, probably even books that are no doubt damp, mouldy or eaten by insects… There’s so much stuff I can’t even remember half of it.  At some level I’m looking forward to going through it all, the process of rediscovery, but the thought of seeing just how much it’s been destroyed and then trying to work out what to do with it and how to get it where I want it is not appealing at all.  No doubt I’ll update about that at some point…

So that’s it.  Bloody long list!  Only I could write 1500 words on my new year’s resolutions…

The Melbourne dream is rippling and shifting

Like in the Matrix when things begin to bend and twist impossibly, my Melbourne dream is a little shaky all of a sudden. I’m not sure what I want.

It happened when I agreed to head down to Melbourne for the first time since the Dude was born. At first I suggested that going for a holiday would be like teasing me, showing me yet again how great life in Melbs could be and then making me come back to horrible old Sydney. But I realised I wanted to catch up with all my friends and so I plucked up the courage and went.

I stayed Thursday night with a friend who I used to live with in London, then Friday and Saturday with another friend I used to live with in Canberra, then back to my London friend’s place on Sunday night and home Monday. It was great being there, the cooler, dryer climate feels much more me, and it was so great to see friends again. Even the public transport feels so much less stressed and more organised than Sydney.

But something began to twist out of place as the days went on. Something was off. It wasn’t just because I had the Dude with me and he is a handful at the best of times, neither was it any change in me or my mind. But without me having any part in it, something shifted. I felt an odd harsh reality, like I’d idealised Melbourne somewhat. And I really missed husband, I think in his role as partner and as father. I guess a number of little things niggled at me: my ex-London friend’s house was quite cold and a little noisy; and my ex-Canberra friend is so enjoying her freedom with her boyfriend and no kids or real responsibilities.  I don’t fit in there as well as I thought I did.  Or, to be more precise, home isn’t just a physical place.  I knew this before, but sometimes it takes an experience to really get it.

The first house I stayed in is quite lovely, although not something I’d buy or live in. The aspect is terrible so it doesn’t warm up, and the layout is a bit weird. In addition, the train track is over the back fence. It really is a nice place, though, renovated so well by my friend and her husband, but just not me. But I guess you sacrifice space and noise for a prime south east position. I had a great catch up with my friend, let’s call her Robyn, even though I’m not sure I like the area too much, despite being walking distance to Carlisle St and Chapel St, funky little shops and cafes. I find it a little too exposed and in the thick of it, but I know that’s why my friend loves it, she wants to be where the action is and would probably go stir crazy in the suburbs. She has a baby six weeks younger than the Dude and a very different parenting style and philosophy from me, however that doesn’t stop us enjoying hanging out and discussing parenting, swapping ideas and hopes and fears.

The other friend I stayed with, let’s call her Spanish Queen (though she’s neither Spanish nor regal), lives in the north eastern suburbs. It seems more secluded there, slightly further out of the city but still close enough to anything you’d need. Her place, again, while beautiful and perfect for her and her partner, is not somewhere I’d live. It’s a little small, no real yard, and can get quite cold. I’m a big fan of the old passive solar. The bed was ridiculously comfy though and the Dude was clearly more comfy as he slept past 11am! We had a quiet night Friday then on Saturday night SQ invited a few of our other mutual friends round and we had a lovely meal at home with plenty of catching up. I had to take the Dude off to bed about 10 so I said goodnight and SQ said she was going to meet up with her partner (let’s call him King Henry) out somewhere but vowed “I won’t be late”. I didn’t mind either way as we were off to bed. About 1:30am I heard them come home, and stumble into bed. Then at 2:30am I woke to a loud knocking and banging on the front door. SQ’s house is a bit of a fortress so I knew if they’d locked themselves out there was no way they’d get in. I couldn’t understand why they’d come home and gone back out again but I got up to let them in. It was SQ alone, absolutely smashed, looking totally confused about why I was at the door. She’d taken a taxi home but somehow had no money to pay for it! She tottered in like someone with early onset Parkinson’s, and rummaged in her wallet which was lying on the counter, only to find no money. Her scarf and bag and keys were strewn around the kitchen. “Just pay with a card,” I said, but she was adamant that wasn’t to happen. The huge burley African cab driver was getting impatient standing in her driveway. I heard her trying to wake KH: “There’s a man at the front door and he’s really angry, he wants money!” I heard her implore, only to be met with disinterested groans; there was no way KH was going to be roused from his drunken slumber. Out tottered SQ again, getting a bit more flustered. She glanced around the kitchen and spied a bottle of Shiraz someone had brought for dinner. Grabbing it off the bench and waving it above her head she called to the now furious taxi driver, “will you take a bottle of wine?” He politely refused. It was at that point, with her apologising to both me and the driver while rummaging through a jar of change that I went back to bed. I lay there thinking, what the hell am I doing here? I want to go home.  Now with the Dude I feel really weird when people are drunk or rowdy around him, like it’s fundamentally wrong and I just want to be elsewhere, take him away.

Of course when I relayed the story back to the two hangover victims (neither had any recollection), it was hilarious and didn’t seem too big a deal but at the time I didn’t want any part of it.  I kind of felt momentarily angry at my friend for being so drunk and crazy at her age, with all her responsibilities, but it was really silly of me to react that way.  The fact is, she’s got no kids, and that’s how she likes it.  Anyway, the rest of the trip was quite lovely, going for long walks and having some catch ups with various friends.  I realised though that even though one of my friends, SQ’s sister, is pregnant now and people are settling down, at some level I don’t necessarily just fit in with all of them and their lives.  They are still very different in terms of their values and beliefs and the way they are living their lives.  I think before I was somehow a bit blinded by this idealised view of a Melbourne life and was thinking of it in terms of hanging out with those people all the time, when really it’s not what it seems.  I was a bit disappointed by SQ’s sister actually, as she was generally disinterested in talking about her pregnancy and anything relating to it, and at one point declared she didn’t want ‘unsolicited advice’.  Another post coming on that subject.  Suffice it to say, they are very different from me, and I can’t allow my rose coloured glasses to give me false impressions of what life there might be like for us.  I have to think about me and my family and what works best for us as a unit as well as individuals.

When I came home, I was very glad to be here, despite the fact that it is Sydney!  And oddly enough, Sydney put on some cold weather upon arrival, just for me!  There’s still a lot more thinking to be done about our final move, and while I still hate Sydney and don’t want to settle here, Melbourne may not necessarily be the home of choice.

The baby shower enigma

34 weeks. Finally I’m starting to feel slightly tired and heavy, even though everyone said, ‘just wait til you hit 28 weeks, you’ll be exhausted!’  I’m fine, just noticing things are a bit of an effort.  And sleeping is not as comfortable as it once was, despite my newly acquired body pillow – husband with jimmy arms which step up a level after a few beers is also not conducive to comfy sleep!

So I had a ‘baby shower blessingway thingo’ (as I’ve awkwardly dubbed it) on Sunday.  I was reluctant to have it, for a number of reasons:

1. I’m not an organiser – do I really have to do stuff?

2. I’m not a good socialiser – love people, especially people who make sense to me, but socialising really takes effort for me, being the proper anti-social introvert.

3. I don’t like being the centre of attention.

4. I don’t like clichés and silly, girly banter – I like things down to earth.

5. I’m not that keen on ‘baby stuff’, oohing and aahing over supposedly cute outfits etc.  Babies in general I don’t really know what to do with and I’m not really that interested.

6. I find the whole ‘motherhood’, fawning over babies, talking about babies constantly to be a little full on and not ‘me’, despite the fact that I’m ridiculously excited about meeting this little person currently poking his/her elbow into my right hip bone.

7. I’m not good with ‘women’ stuff – being in homebirth circles you end up inevitably connecting with women who have rituals about their periods, worship the ‘Goddess’, do women’s workshops and consider themselves feminists.  I am completely happy to be female (way better than male, der!) but I don’t feel the need to draw attention to being a woman.  It is what it is, I am who I am, meh…

So it was with some fairly harsh pre-conceived notions and scepticism that I agreed to having a get together organised.  Luckily the friend who did it is absolutely freaking awesome, so incredibly creative and clever, and has a similar sort of ‘no crap’ kind of attitude to me, so I knew she’d do something that fits me.

Because it was in Canberra, where I grew up, I found myself inviting people who I hadn’t seen in a really long time, as well as people who I see quite often.  It was bizarre seeing all those different people in the one context.  My mum was there too.

Oddly enough, it turned out to be absolutely amazing.  We didn’t hold any hippy women’s rituals, nor did we play games involving bottles and nappies.  But it was perfect.  I realised what a mix of women I know and consider important, and how each had things in common with the other, via me.  Everyone participated in their own way, for me, and the various things people said and did all resonated and meant something.  I still can’t believe all those people came along just for me.

As we drove home I suddenly realised the purpose of a baby shower or blessingway or ‘get together thingo’, whatever you want to call it… This baby is going to be born fairly soon, and this get together just helped round it all out for me.  I felt so warm and fuzzy, it was ridiculous, so content, like I’d tied up all my loose ends and could just retreat into birth world and do what I was meant to do.  What a feeling!  On a practical level, no, I haven’t tied up all the loose ends, far from it in fact; but on a spiritual level I feel so ready, it’s insane, it’s like this perfect progression from woman to mother is occurring, and I’m completely content with it.