Resonant Words...NAME your city, town or suburb

This is not a book to take too seriously! For those of you who havent read it, its about a woman who searches for happiness in her life after a messy divorce, and her journey takes her to Italy, India and Bali. Its written in bite-sized packets of ideas (108 in all) and I find this structure appealing, it suits the way I read now: a little at night before falling asleep. Its a good book, well written, and certainly a great holiday read. I think I am perhaps the last woman on earth to read it, as its sold over 5 million copies, and there are probably lots of blog posts about this novel about it already, so wont go on about the spiritual messages,etc contained therein. It touched me at a simple level, as the book invites you to ponder a basic question: are you living the life you wish to live? A big question. And then there is the issue of choices, as the author's choices unfold through the novel, I found myself asking, have I made choices that are good for my life?
And Im still thinking about that :)

One idea i did find kinda nice in the book was that all cities/places (and perhaps even people themselves) have a word that sums them up, that resonates volumes about the spirit of the place. The author suggest that NYC's word might be ACHIEVE, and LA's might be SUCCEED, and also rather predicatably, Rome's would be SEX.
I was wondering about my own home town of Launceston: what would Launnie's resonant word be? Probably PLOD, i think. An agrarian verb, that would describe the sense that most people here just continue on the path they have always been on, unquestioningly. Maybe also SHY: its a shy town, certainly. It reveals its beauty slowly; behind the folds of its valleys lie surprises!

I'd love to hear the resonant word for your home town, be that a state, city or suburb! (Please dont feel that you need to locate yourself too precisely if you are at all worried about doing that in blogland)

magic forest

A stolen day; the first day EVER I have had both children in school and no work to do (well, nothing that cant be put off until tomorrow!) and a plan to walk up Mount Arthur. My artist friend M shares a love of mountains, and alpine forests, so convincing her to come with me was not hard at all. Soft footfalls on the spongy forest floor, our echo less voices lost in the tangle of trees, filtered sunlight highlighting the profile of moss covered rocks that look like ancient turtles sleeping. Its hard not to be reverent in a forest such as this. And this is one of your newer forests (we think maybe it was logged 100 years ago, and has regrown?) Only the occasional tree over 80 meteres high.

After an hour and a half of steady climbing, a short steep struggle up boulders discarded by some playful giant, brings us up above the forest canopy and into the cloud line.

House preening (continued)

I think i need to follow up on yesterdays post regarding the domestic duties that befall the stay at home parent.

After suggesting that I would try to resist the frantic pre-6pm clean up (preparing the house for the arrival of the bread-earning partner) as I was suspicious of the motivation to do this house preening, I DID end up dashing about and sort of mostly cleaned up before S came home (thinking "I said I wouldnt do this...but i cant help myself as its really ME that wants this clean, actually, HEY, GUESS WHAT, Im doing this for ME, not him" and then I did some yoga. And meditated on that thought. ANd I realised that husband's arrival is just a convenient deadline... and I do LOVE the motivation of a dealine.
BUT: The washing stayed on the line, and when S came home, i finished my yoga, chucked washing on a spare chair, gathered dinner together, asked the girls to clean their room, and S vacuumed. As he did this I realsied that S and I have the well rehearsed domestic dance that we have performed for years together when we both return from work. The 7pm shuffle? Not sure what to call it, but we get oodles done in about 90 minutes. It goes a little like this: I chop the veggies, then he cooks the dinner, I bathe the kids, he cleans the bathroom afterwards, I serve the dinner. Eating happens. He collates the plates and stacks the dishwasher while I read bedtime stories, sort through the piles of toys/washing neaten bedrooms, ready bags for the morning. Strangely, the routine remains much the same with me not working as much. Hmmmmmm...

It doesnt really seem fair anymore that Steve does all this, when I can do it during the day. I really must stop bloggin, and get the dinner on!

ITS NEARLY 6 PM!!!!!

So my thinking now, after 2 posts and much pondering on the subject:
I think I will consider my domestic daytime activities as a kind of yoga seva (a service to others that is practiced with loving kindness) rather than a self imposed patriarchal role I need to adopt.

that record that keeps on spinning around in my head

My dear friend Kel was writing here, about the issues surrounding expectations of the 'stay-at-home' parent when the breadwinning partner must go out into the world during the day to earn a living. [Usually, yes, this stay-at-home person is the women, but in her case, at this stage in her life, it is her loving man]. Bizarrely, her tables are turned, and she finds herself in the position of returning home after a hard day at the office, and writes about how confronting this is to find a series of loaded emotions about the domestic duties (perhaps not always?) being performed. And yes, she acknowledges all the attendant variables of small children needing attention, and how hard it is to get much done with littles about.

What Kel's post brings up for me is that I now am that person at home, the "non-bread-winner", and my youngest child (now 4) is growing up fast. For the first time in my life, I dont have a great deal of paid, proper 'work' to do (only about a day a week which I squeeze in around my home-based life). So I can do more stuff about the house now. And I do. Theres lots to do too: washing, cooking, cleaning shopping, etc . The question is how much do you do?

I hate the tyranny of expecting the kids to put every toy away, making sure benches are clean, tidying surfaces. Its appallingly trivial in the scheme of things to get het up about this shit. And yet, this feminist mum finds herself at 5pm racing about the house, asking the kids to pick up toys, tidying piles of books, maybe even vacuuming before daddy comes home. I can almost feel myself wanting to find a highball glass for the G&T, slippers, and cigar as hubby pulls up the drive. WHY are these 1950's ideals of domesticity lurking in the recesses of the brain of a women who was spent years at university educating myself, and further years professionally deploying these skills??? DO these thoughts feed osmotically from some bygone cultural ether, cosmically, quantamly perhaps from another less liberated universe? [And before you think it, yes my mum probably did show me how to do this, as she was the 50's housewife reinvested in the 70's, and my dad kinda expected the "treatment" of wifely servitude, but now she is quite a different kind of woman, openly resisting this kind of attitude, and she certainly doesnt expect it of me. My hubby kind of thinks its funny that I do this...he probably thinks its quaint. Archaic, but quaint!

So time to change the record, this brain-tune is not working for me anymore! I'm going to try not to do the crazy-mad 'run-around' tonight. I will do some yoga instead! The house is (mostly) OK, dinner is easy tonight (salad and fritata) and well. If I do wipe a bench down, I will do it beacuse I want to, not because I feel I aught.

Plastic cup?

Dining out in Tassie is always a bit of a hit and miss affair. My hubby and I are FOODIES....yes siree, we like good food and we have been spoilt by living in Adelaide for many years where the reliability of restaurants is a given. You can be confident in Adelaide that if you spend $50 a head on food you are in for a pretty lovely dining experience, at a large number of establishments. Not so here in Tassie.

S and I had a belated valentines trip away to the east coast of this heart shaped isle, and spent the night in a rather lovely The view from the dining room is lovely: splendid even. But the food was a bit like my palette was staring at a neighbour's beige colourbond fence. Tasteless Sushi, poorly sliced sashimi, woeful tempura: and this was from a specialist Japanese restaurant charging much more than Adelaide's equivalent establishments.
For me, the saddest moment came when I asked for a glass of water, and the waitress suggested that I should get my own from a water cooler in the far corner. OK. I can do that. But when I looked for a glass, there were only plastic cups. I asked for a glass from the waitress (another traipse across the dining area) and she was shirty with me. Hmmm. Not only do I find a plastic cup awful to drink from (it reminds me of a dentist surgery waiting room, which is not a good thing if you read my last post!) but its totally environmentally mental too.

Wow, this post really is turning out to be a bit of a whingey rant, so I shall finish on a positive note:
Sleeping with the sound of the ocean entering my dreams, waking to the fantastic profile of cliffs below the cabins, and the morning sun shining in on the bed sheets (as well as being away with my lovely gentle and caring man) was uplifting, and restorative. Maybe there is other food for the soul worth blogging about!

Cracks in the system

I am working for a dentist with an obsession about gaps. And cracks. He requires an absence of both in his picture perfect house. Its ironic that of all the projects I have managed, this project... the one that is meant to be gap free, seems to be attracting gaps and cracks at every turn. The builder, the engineer, all the consultants have worked so hard to try and deliver him perfection, only to be confronted with the reality of gaps between things, and, well, the consistency of imperfection.

I have a theory that the more anxious one is to create perfection (in anything) the greater the likelihood that impediments to this will come your way.

Head and house in a spin!

Still full house, and lots going on with my mum, sister and her partner all bunking in with us. Hubby is busy preparing Courses for students who are about to return to campus next week , and Im off to Adelaide for a short work trip. Whew!

And in the midst of all the comings and goings in the house, I cant believe I am sooooooooooo neglectful. For the first time ever, I completely forgot to collect my eldest daughter from school. Can you imagine how awful I feel? I looked at my watch at 3.16pm, after driving the 20minutes from town to where we live....and I thought hmmm..... Ive forgotten something..... hmmmmmm......FARRRK! I was 16 minutes too late to collect her, and the school is back in town!
So after a desparate and deflating call to the school I burnt rubber and flew back along the highway to pay penance at the school front office. Poor darling girl was sitting quietly reading a libary book. After a kiss she says "dont worry mum: I knew you would come!"

And now I will wait by the letter box for the speeding fine I know is coming. Sigh... and it is my karmic due. Strangely enough I am happy to pay it as I think, this time, it's deserved.