End of an era

I have been thinking over the last few weeks about drawing a line in the sand with this blog and starting a new one. One reason is a change in headspace (I think, apart from the pithiness and ease of Facebook, I've had a bit of Share Fatigue) and another is the request of my son to STOP BLOGGING ABOUT ME. He is growing up so much!

So I've been mulling over my options. One idea was to start fresh, with a new blog provider, call it ARSEQUACKERY (or something a tad more dignified) and see where it got me. But then some of my  FB peeps, who have been blogfriends for many more years, expressed their love for the &Duck space and suggested that I just revamp it and stay here. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense, especially since this one is being Pandora'd and I'd be pretty dumb to let that opportunity slide (thanks for the reminder, GT).

So. I'm going to draw a line in this sandbox, give it a bit of a redesign and start writing again, this time with more an eye to my work and thinking, and trying a bit of more creative writing. I'm moving into PhD territory with my printing (yes! Got in, but with no scholarship yet, so embarking part-time at first), and I want to get the brain juices flowing again. Of course this will be interspersed with the cats, since they are an important part of my thought processes, so things aren't going to change THAT much, really.

Before I rejig, let's say a little farewell to the family side of the blog... with a few photos.

Best Beloved recently got what we call his Masters of the Universe:

As you can see, Bumblebee discovered hair dye. He's taller than me now.

He's also a proud Uncle, and adores his half-sister's now-nearly-two y.o., who lives in WA but comes to visit a few times a year.

His taste in entertainment flavoured our Christmas tree, which was simple but eloquent:

I don't think his Stah Waz obsession will EVER go away.

Everyone wave goodbye to the public Bumblebee. *byeeeeeeeee* {sniff}


Best Beloved is totally in love with his kitties, as am I. Our devotion is constant and goes to fairly silly lengths, so let's just get down to some cat shots.

(long hours being studio cats, poor things)

And here was their Christmas:

So with Pooter happily pilfering his Christmas prawn for eternity, I bid the family version of &Duck a fond adieu. It won't totally go away, but it won't be so present in my blogging activity. Thanks everyone for your kind interest in everything Bumblebee has done over the years as he's grown up in front of you.

Back soon, with a new look. Remember to breathe!

Missing inside the action

The problem with not writing on the blog for AGES and AGES and AGES -- but I don't need to tell you how long it's been -- is that I don't know what to do next. Do I try to make up for lost time? Or do I just blithely go on?  Hmmm.

Maybe a little of both.

I finished Henry Lawson (to be published 2013) and this afternoon I came out of the bubble of trying to keep my head in a state of Deep Thinking while I wrote a PhD application. It's all over now bar pressing the button that says SUBMIT because I'm waiting on one letter from an ex-teacher and employer to upload and then I can press SUBMIT. Right now I have given myself permission to not think too deeply again until I get a message saying that my application has been successful. If it hasn't, I will try again next year and just keep those thoughts ticking along in the background a bit. I won't cry too much, there's so much on my list of alternative options.

So let's decompress a bit:

Here I am, covered in cats. This happens nearly every morning unless I have to jump up early to get to the university to teach. I would like to think that I am reading something about bibliographic notions of textual activity, but odds are that I'm reading Georgette Heyer, which is all I had space in my brain to read for the last month or so.

Let's catch up.

I had my exhibition at UNSW Canberra (aka ADFA) which seemed to go well, everyone who popped into it had good things to say, including a few really wonderful comments about how poetry really comes alive when it's actively engaged typographically and up on the wall in front of your eyes.

Then I went to Western Australia, ostensibly wearing my Print Council of Australia committee member hat but also working in bit of a holiday, taking Bumblebee and Colonel Duck with me. We hired a car and did the Epic Nostalgia/Rediscovery/Discovery (depending on your generation) Driving Tour of South-Western WA. From the Saturday to the next Thursday we drove from Perth to Kalgoorlie, then down to Esperence, across to Ravensthorpe and up to Lake King, then wobbled across to Bunbury and then up again to Perth where I donned my PCA hat and got to work.

We stayed in Kalgoorlie a few days and went to the Kalgoorlie Cup (or was it the Coolgardie Cup?) which was cancelled five minutes before the first race but because we were in the Members' Stand (thanks to my Auntie & Uncle) we stayed & partied and afternoon tea'd and had a lovely time with no horses. No end of scandal though, and we did meet a couple of horses at a big fry-up breakfast at one of the stables next day, so that was nice.

If I show you a few snaps you'll get the drift:

The saddest part for Colonel Duck, even though he'd been there before, was thinking about how much of his youth was erased by the Superpit. It covers the whole of what used to be the Golden Mile of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

Because I was heading that way, and one of my official duties would be to attend the opening of the Fremantle Arts Centre Print Awards (supported by Little Creatures Brewing), I thought it would be jolly to enter a print, in case it was selected for hanging. Then it would be extra fun to be there. So I entered Discontent, the print I made for the Transit of Venus show earlier in the year.

Well, guess what. It won second prize. And I was told two weeks before we left, and I had to keep it secret (apart from my family, of course). What a task! So going to the opening was even more fun, even thought it was crappy, crappy weather, the worst weather of our whole trip.

Here I am, clutching my Big Bunch of Flowers, next to winner Lucas Ihlein of Big Fag Press with his Big Big Cheque (photo from Lucas's Flickr site). You can see more photos, mostly with me cropped out, at the Fremantle Arts Centre site. I was stoked to see Lucas (and his collaborator Ian Milless) win, because he uses a four-plate litho offset press (the Big Fag), which is only a couple of steps forward from letterpress, so as we both joked on the night, the winner was Obsolete Technology!

First prize is $15,000 and it was acquisitional, and second prize is $5,000 non-acquisitional, but they bought the work anyway, which is marvellous. I have bought myself an iPad with some of the money, and the rest goes back into the Press Pit.

It was wonderful to catch up with family that I haven't seen for years, especially new members who were born or wooed since my last visit. I don't know when I'll get back again, but when I do it will hopefully be the same time of year, which is so much nicer than Summer, with all the roadside wildflowers to boot.

I had a birthday, and a wee party to reconnect with live bodies, and forgot to write 'no presents' on the invite, so I got some lovely presents. You all know who you are, I think you're wonderful.

I've been teaching a bit, not just my art school class, but some childrens' workshops. One was at Canberra Museum & Gallery, for Book Week, and the other was at Belconnen Art Centre, for the school holidays.

 

These are two of the books made in the latter class, called 'Hey, don't fall into that tunnel... book!', where we made tunnel books and puppets to go with them. Aren't they cool?

OK, I have to pack up now because Best Beloved is cooking a huge curry fest and he needs me to clean up all my gumph. Some of the gumph involves an exhibition I'm helping to curate for the Canberra Bookbinders' Guild that opens on Friday. Here's the invite in case you're interested:

If you can't read it, or access any images, it says Handwritten, Handbound: Canberra Bookbinders and the Canberra Calligraphers Society exhibition, opening Friday night 19 Octoberat 6pm at the Belconnen Art Centre Gallery. It runs to the 11th of November. I'm on the local ABC radio station (666am) that same Friday talking about it at about 4:20 if you want to tune in.

 Can you feel the busy? Boring, isn't it. More cats, that's what we need.

Naughty little muffins, you see the kinds of ways they struggle to get my attention?

Ta ta for now, hopefully not for so long this time.

P.S., a reminder that if you want me to send you one of my e-newsletters, which should come out more regularly than these blogposts, subscribe by clicking here.

hungrybum internet

Oh, my poor neglected blog. I'm so sorry.

I spent a couple of weeks -- which, of course, were my uni term break -- being horribly ill alongside of Best Beloved who was also horribly ill. Our colds, using the same delightful germs, maybe picked up from the Folk Festival, maybe picked up from my plague-rat students, who knows, mutated in completely different directions. I spent the worst part of BB's grumpiness down in the studio trying to ignore my streaming snot, and by the time it really hit me with a cloudy head and painful throat and chest, he was back at work. Best possible outcome, really.

Then I've spent the last few days deeply immersed in the labyrinthine wastes of Wordpress, updating my work bloggy websitey thing. Why on earth? Because I have been published in The Blue Notebook (thank you Sarah) and am having an article written about me for Matrix journal, and I thought I'd better clean out my cupboards a bit, so to speak.

Of course, I've emerged from that today feeling like I've had just about enough of internet interaction, and then in the shower I realised that it's been weeks since I blogged. *sigh*. It's not you, it's me.

While I collect my thoughts, here are the cats for some light entertainment.


Boyz on da hood. They do this a lot, it's very cute.

We had Easter a week late, and thoroughly enjoyed our cheap easter eggs. Padge even laid one for us, he was so excited about all the festivities.



He especially likes the authentic 1960s mohair cardigan I bought at the festival.

We also hosted Bumblebee's 15th birthday party, which was an evening filled with exquisitely unknowingly beautiful teenagers who had intelligent airs of wisdom and the sweetest innocence. They spent most of the time playing Truth and Dare, refusing to eat BB's too-fancy homemade pizza but wolfing down sausages and bread (some things never change) and cake. The T&D was hilarious, ranging from icecubes down the pants to licking the cat (Padge didn't mind, really) and various forms of kissing. We roamed discreetly between the kitchen and the loungeroom, trying hard to keep straight faces and occasionally biting our knuckles in glee.

Pooter made friends with a balloon, although it took a little while for him to warm to the idea:







We found the balloon, days later, looking sadly neglected and small, so perhaps it wasn't a lasting thing.

All the kids young people went home flushed and happy and B's heart seemed healed (oh yes, first love broke up) and now he's got his eye (and, after yesterday's drama camp) lips on another girlie. He blushes at the mention of her name, so lovely.

Last weekend I forced myself to stick to plan and go up to the Blue Mountains to visit the Wayzgoose Press again. I'm so glad I did, they are such fun and full of good conversation about letterpress and production and libraries and design and whatever else. Plus, when I did get to bed (about 3am, they are nocturnal creatures), I slept with Dr Sista Outlaw's new kitten, Pip, on my head. Afterwards I felt strangely better, so maybe Pip has healing purrs.



He'd like to think so.

And now, if you'll excuse me, nice peoples, I'm going to go for a walk up the mountain with my boys as a nod to the public holiday we've been given. We haven't spent much time around each other lately!

Fizzed rhubarb

The other day I facebooked:

Ooh, how nice! I was just handed a ice-tinkly glass of gin and homemade rhubarb fizz. It's the nicest shade of pink.

And it was too. I drank it before I thought to take a photo, so I decided to recreate it last night.



Isn't it pretty?

It led to a flurry of people wanting the recipe of the fizz. I have to say that it's made by Best Beloved, not myself. That's why he's called Best Beloved. Apparently it's a recipe by Tasmanian preserving expert Sally Wise, from her book A Year in a Bottle. That title makes me think of the novel Brave New World, but Ms Wise is the only author to whom my partner has ever written a fan letter. And she wrote back, the saucy minx. He has all of her books.

So here it is (with annotations):

875g (1lb, 15oz) rhubarb, chopped
875g (1lb, 15oz) sugar
1 lemon, chopped
200ml (7fl oz) white wine vinegar or cider vinegar
18 cups cold water

Combine everything in a food-safe bucket*, cover loosely with a tea-towel and leave for 48 hours. BB recommends putting a colander or something over the fruit to keep it under the waterline in the bucket, as (especially when it's hot) the fruit can go mouldy.**

Strain (BB strains through basic muslin (cheesecloth), which he buys in bulk at the local haberdashery) and pour into very clean bottles*** and seal.

The fizz will be ready in two weeks. Chill well before serving. Open carefully.

GOES VERY WELL WITH GIN OR VODKA. Children like it too, but only if you can spare it.

Makes approx. 4.5 litres (156fl oz)


You can do this with other fruit as well, berries and the like.


* This is a bucket that hasn't been used for cleaning products, not a bucket a-la Mr Creosote. We bought a special food-safe bucket and wrote in large friendly letters FOOD ONLY on it. That seems to work, but I can't vouch for pre-literate children and cats.

** It can sometimes develop a weird-looking scum that looks a bit like mould but isn't. BB chucked a couple of batches until we could tell the difference. The colander thingy helps.

*** We use 1.5litre plastic soft drink bottles, washed and kept once we've finished with them. Don't overfill, in fact leave some space for the gas that will build up. Don't shake the bottles! Store in a cool place, but not the fridge (until it's ready).

Waftings

Yes, still itching and peeling, which makes it tricky when I work with PVA glue like all day yesterday, because at the end of the session I don't know if I'm rubbing off dry glue or skin... but getting much better, no doubt. Skin-wise, anyway.

I discovered that if you do a boring repetitive task (like glueing 50 pieces of paper to other pieces of paper, putting them in the nipping press then out and under light boards) you should listen to Mike Oldfield. His formula of making music is to start slow and gentle and then gradually build up momentum until you get to a Big Ending. It makes each small task seem very exciting, like you're working towards something that will eventually sit up and yell EUREKA! When, of course, the music finishes and you're still beavering away with the gluepot, it's a bit of an anti-climax, but it was fun while it lasted.

I was listening to Mike Oldfield because the CD laser in my studio stereo is borked, and when we were moving I found a few boxes of old cassettes, so I'm working my way through them, falling in love again with my weird music loves of twenty-odd years ago, like Mike Oldfield, Robert Cray, early Billy Joel (before Christie Brinkley messed with his brain) and Ruby among other strange mixes.

Mr Mark, who built the bookshelves and kitchen in our last house, is building us bookshelves as I type - big tall beasties, because the ceiling is very high in this house. They're quite imposing, and I can't wait to see if we have room left over once I unpack the books. Mind you, as much as I'd love to spend this weekend getting the books out, I have to wait. We have to paint the bookshelves and let them cure before the books get to them. Mr M says to leave them a month. A MONTH! Others say at least three weeks. I think last time I waited a week until I lost patience & shelved them, but I will try my best for the sake of the books themselves. The problem is that I can't start preparing and moving my studio until the books are out & up. Sigh.

Happy birthday to Best Beloved, who turned 40 yesterday. We decided that he would do something big for his birthday in the fullness of time (Conversation ranged from buying a piece of art he liked to getting some panniers for his bike. I think he's finally decided upon doing a pizza oven workshop later in the year.) so in the meantime I bought him a few little token presents... and then forgot where they all were! Dammit, senior brain already. So I contented myself with cooking him a nice meal and then bringing out a homemade self-saucing chocolate pudding with a candle in it, only to have (of course!) the candle melt from the pudding end and subside into the pudding as I was putting it in front of him. Sigh. Oh, how we roared.

Bumblebee is mumbling and cranky because on Tuesday he had braces plonked (carefully) on his teeth. Here's the photoessay:


Before.


During.


After. Poor lovey, look at his eyes. He'd just been through an hour of hell.


Natty dentist, sorry, orthodontist who wears funny bow ties and vests to amuse teh childrens and then gives you huge heart-stopping bills.


This is the weird bit about the experience. It was like an episode of a reality tv show, with foundation-caked bottle-blonde chickybabes at the Ortho's beck & call. It's the only time I've ever felt that 'Reality' in tv terms merged with 'real life' as I know it. He obviously like to feel that he's in that universe, with these women at his beck & call. Mind you, all the people who actually did the work prepping B's teeth were very nice middle-aged women whom I'm sure would have fixed Mr O with a withering gaze if he'd dared to suggest that they went a bit blonder. Heh.

So, it's been a week of sore teeth and lips and lots of cool Greek yoghurt and soups. Poor thing, the pain will subside, and two years down the track he'll hopefully look even more gorgeous.


byrd and I have been hanging out together a bit lately, with us feeding him and his lovely new ladylove on Monday night and then him helping me to move a letterpress cabinet on Wednesday. Jolly times, except that he has a raging headcold and now I have it. Ta, luv. While we were bringing the cabinet in from Hume, we dropped into the tipshop at the Mugga Lane Tip. It's the most revolting tip shop I've ever been to, no organisation, everything exposed to the weather, and most things completely trashed. I bought a dead remote with a thought for making it into something else, and they charged me $3 for it! Cranky-making.

I'm ignoring the world at large. There's many things to say but I don't want to say them while my braincells are being suffocated by snot.

I'd like to welcome Leonard Elvis Jones into the world, the new resident at Sorrow at Sills Bend. Great name, great parents, most excellent cat uncle, all a child needs for a good start in the world.

Bugger it, I have to get out of bed to go to work. I'm going to skulk in a corner and write my new typography course and try not to snot on anyone. Then hopefully I can come home and paint bookshelves while I can't smell the fumes.

Housie

We are trying *very* hard to find the right buyers for our house (or any buyers at all, actually), so to the delight of our agent, her proffered weekly editorial to the Canberra Times was not only accepted, but followed through with an interview and -- unheard of for this particular column -- a photographer sent around to shoot us in our lovely unique kitchen.



Click here to embiggen, but it's a bit embarrassing. Firstly, I look DREADFUL, but BB comes across beautifully. Secondly, they took my description of our budding fruit plantings and made it come across as if we're a bounteous Garden of Eden (we're not, there's a lot of room for improvement, but a solid framework of edible things is growing), and thirdly it sounds as though our friend discounted his services mightily. He didn't, formally, but we did give him a pretty tight budget and he did so much more with it than we expected, and we're still utterly grateful to him. I've scrubbed his name out because he's not building anymore, and we didn't want him to be asked if he would do 'just one more'.

You can also see a small fraction of BB's Poole Pottery collection, the jugs, up on the 'floating shelves'. The rest has been in boxes for years, but our new house has ample space to display nearly all of it.

The best bit about the column is that the article straight after ours is reminding everyone that the market is healthy, and yet to find its peak.

So, after prostituting our dignity (and BB's anonymity) and pimping our cats every Wed and Saturday: if it doesn't sell soon, I'm going to be morose. One more week of advertising and then we have to make some hard decisions. There must be a right person out there somewhere. It's a sweet little house.


Remember to breathe, Duckie. You all have full permission to remind me of that. Again, we're not under mud, or on fire, or blown over. That's a good thing to think about.

Recovery mode

Best Beloved is spending two weeks acting in a higher position than his normal reasonably highish one. This means that he has an EA, or for those of you who, like me, have a dislike of acronyms, he has an Executive Assistant who answers his phones, which is quite disconcerting.

It is our wedding anniversary tomorrow, and I got this email a few minutes ago:

From: Linda
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2010 11:14 AM
To: BB
Subject: You received a Phone Call, contact Your wife.


Hello BB

Your wife called. Can you please call when you get a monet.

Thanks

Linda

Is that what you're getting me for our wedding anniversary?
BB

Ah ha
ha ha ha ha hahhhahaaaaaaaaaaa

I don't think so. I'm getting him something better than old French art. I'm getting him brand spanking new Canberra art! But don't tell him that, I can't give it to him until Teffany's exhibition closes next week or the week after.


I did forgive him for the Harry Potter thing. Of course I did. The fact that I was on the brink of sickness that felled me like a hammer blow didn't help my mood that day.

I feel so much better today -- I went through last night like I was in a sauna, thrashing and drenched in sweat, and woke looking like I'd been swimming. But my head is clearer, like someone cleaned my internal windows. I'm as weak as a kitten, and still have to lie down a lot, but I think I'm through the worst of it. Byrd dropped around this morning and said that I'm 'carrot-coloured' but if that's the worst thing he can say I'm pretty happy. He's an honest, observant lad.

I was planning to go to Sydney tomorrow for the day on a mission to link up some artists and printers that I like but I've had to cancel; I just can't physically manage it. I think I can manage holding hands in a movie though. That would be a nice thing to do to celebrate six years (which means that I've also been blogging for just over six years. Yikes!).

Humph.

I had the weekend to myself while Best Beloved and Bumblebee went to visit friends in the Southern Highlands. It was lovely. I had a few wines at a lovely ceramics exhibition by Teffany Thiedeman and then rode my bike to Dickson to get some noodlebox yum. I rented a few DVDs (looking at them the next day, I wish I had made some better choices, but on the most part they were good) and then bought a box of yum, put it in the back basket of my bike and rode joyously home through the night as is my wont when I've had a few wines. At least on that leg of the journey I remembered to put on my helmet.

When I got home I discovered that the box had fallen and opened and I'd trickled a Hansel & Gretel trail of spicy Nasi Goreng all the way home. Luckily there was enough to make a meal, but not the usual extra leftover meal...


So, I had a weekend of watching DVDs while I hand-sewed some envelopes for my Book Art Object contribution, plus good quality studio time. I'm making a type sampler which entails actually sorting through all the assorted typefaces I have. You'd think I'd have done this before, but no, there's never really been time. Now I'm making time.

Actually, there's lots of time in the day at this time of year, when the cats wake one at dawn's crack with pillow purrs and paddy pats on the face to be let out to catch the dratted wattle-eater that has been teasing them for years in the front yard. Sigh.




Best Beloved almost lost the right to that title this afternoon. He rang me at the studio to let me know they'd returned, and this was the exchange:

BB: I did something bad, I'm afraid.

&D: What did you buy? (This being the usual way he tells me that he's bought something large, expensive or frivolous, or all three.)

BB: No, worse than that, sorry.

&D: Did you sleep with someone?

BB: No, um, worse than that even.

&D: What?! What could be worse than that?

BB: Um...

&D: Spit it out, man.

BB: We went to see Harry Potter without you.

&D: [shocked silence]

BB: You still there?

&D: you utter BASTARD!






He's making me a nice meal tonight, has just given me some dark choc-chips to munch while he & B make muffins, and has promised NO SPOILERS.

I'm considering forgiving him.

Passive aggressive non-art making

Wow, last weekend was exhaustipating.

I wanted to just be in the studio this week, binding a batch of Transmigration to fulfill a purchase order (only buying one copy, so there's a nice fresh batch if anyone's interested), but of course, life got in the way, so while I got the batch done, I didn't get a lot else done. Bumblebee's laptop died, 6 months after purchase, so luckily it's within warranty, but the kerfuffle getting it to the techos and then the extra kerfuffly kerfuffle trying to pick it up again hasn't endeared me to the magical world of PCs, no matter how much I love The IT Crowd (that link is to a fun TIC game). I should have bought him a Mac, the techos are closer to home.

Combine that with the Aged Poet needing extra attention, various chores I had to run and some extra argy-bargy when Bumblebee accidentally took my studio keys to school with him and I had to jump through hoops to get them back because high schools don't like parents just wandering into school to talk to their children (unlike Primary Schools, which think you're an anti-social weirdo if you don't pop in once a week... year 7 is a transition for parents as much as the kids), not much art-making got done.

[breathes in]

[breathes out]

Which reminds me of that fabulous Ben Folds Five line: all this breathing in, never breathing out... (from the song FAIR)

And then yesterday I spent the morning helping Bumblebee clean his room. Five shopping bags full of rubbish, two vacuum cleaner bagless cannisters full of crud and a number of plastic boxes full of toys deemed too young for him (one of which is scrawled over with thick black marker saying DO NOT THROW OUT DO NOT SELL), a window open and the removal of sundry dirty clothes (socks thrown behind the bookcase, etc) and fetid towels, his room has finally temporarily lost its goaty reek and you can actually see the floor.

It was with a huge sigh of relief, then, that I went to the studio yesterday, closed the door on the world, rolled my sleeves up and spent a few happy hours playing with type, paper and yellow ink.

You'd think it would be a simple task, but yellow ink needs very clean rollers to print clean and bright and not a dirty olive colour. In fact, the day before, I'd inked up Kitty the Press with said yellow ink, and been very disappointed, even though I'd cleaned the rollers and all the bits around them scrupulously. I decided to abandon the machine's rollers and went out to the local art store (Maureen's, not Eckers-crap, of course) and bought a brand new spotless hand brayer. It is now my Yellow Roller. Not a spot of anything else will touch it.

And thus I progressed from this:



to this:



And I hope you can tell the difference in brightness and clarity. I was completely inspired at the Print Symposium by Tim Maguire's amazing CMYK work, and am embarking upon a spot of colour play as a result. This particular piece is for the latest Book Art Object project. One layer done, five to go.

Today we decided to have a family day, so I stayed away from the studio, even though I'm longing to get back to play with magenta ink. We haggled all day over things to do together: no-one wanted to ride at the lake, all the good movies were over by the time we thought of it, with no afternoon sessions, and we didn't want to stay home and attack the garden. Then I remembered that the Old Canberra Inn, which is basically our local pub apart from anything in Dickson, has free pool tables on Sundays. Bonus! Within half an hour we were happily playing pool, helping ourselves to the free jukebox with its bikie-inspired playlist (I taught Bumblebee the informal and very rude chorus to The Angel's Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again, to BB's vaguely disapproving look, and fell in love over again with Ian Moss and Don Walker, wishing that Jimmy had choked on his own vomit sometime in the 80s), but still, in the back of my mind there was a 'I could be printing right now' sensation. I swallowed it, but it's slightly bitter as it goes down.

I came up with a wonderful music trivia question, and you're welcome to use it if you have to compose trivia nights or whatever:

What have these three songs got in common:

and you play excerpts of 'Bow River' by Cold Chisel (or 'Saturday Night'), 'Errol', by Australian Crawl, and a third one, which you can make tricky by adding your own third or you can make it easy by making the third one a Ringo Beatles song.

Answer? They are all songs not sung by the band's lead singer/s.

What do you think? Got any better or additional examples?



Sigh. Now Bumblebee looks like he's got some horrid throat swelling thingy, so I've dosed him up with garlicky chicken soup and am mentally preparing to not go anywhere tomorrow except the doctor. Sigh. I'll get back to the studio sometime. At least it's waiting there for me, patiently.

Next weekend I'm teaching a book class at Megalo, and there are spaces, if anyone's interested. I'm trying to rustle up participants, because the more people there are, the more I get paid, and I'm not earning anything regular until I start back at the BookStud next year. So if you know anyone that would love to learn how to make booky things, let them know. My bills will be most grateful.

Best Beloved just said goodnight, as he's having a Sleep Head-start (I've worked out a great system: if he goes to sleep solidly first, I can creep in and read an e-book under the sheets for a while, which beats him whinging at me to turn the light off), and as he kissed my neck he said 'mmm, you smell nice, what is it?'

'Hogget.' I replied. It must be, because I slow-cooked it all afternoon. It was delicious, cooked with green olives that had been marinated in preserved lemon & garlic. I guess there are worse things to smell of, but it's not very romantic.

speechless

Every night, before we go to sleep (and every morning, as soon as we wake up), Best Beloved turns on his little tranny to listen to the ABC news.

Tonight, after the usual signature tune, the news started reporting the arrest of a large number of people for drug smuggling.

'Why is this more important than the death of Gary Coleman?' BB suddenly demanded. 'It should be like the death of Diana, people throwing flowers into the street and all.'

...


This is why I love the man. He's just so... odd.

mucking aboot on the farm + hippo barfday to BB

Justin sighed. It was hard to follow your dream when all they did was mock you.

I've been having fun with my Farmville site on Facebook. There are times when you've done all your chores, and there's nothing much else to do. So I've started making little scenarios with my livestock.


Chatting around the grain silo at lunchtime, they were incredulous that Bruce had managed to get an iPad on the weekend.

While I'm creating, here's a birthday appearance for Best Beloved, who turns 39 today. (He's 3.5 years younger than me -- does that make me a cougar? or just a kitty?) I thought, even though (or maybe especially since) he doesn't read my blog, I'd give you a sneak peek at him:



This is probably as close as I can get to portraying him, anyway. I thought about putting him in a shirt & tie, to denote his Servant to Teh Public status, but he does love his Cartman, and his present today from me was two very silly and quite rude tshirts, including this, which delighted him, but we both agree that it will be hard to find places in which to wear it.

I remembered to buy him a birthday cake to eat last night when we went out with mates, and I cooked him a nice breakfast this morning. Tick, tick, tick tick, most of the birthday boxes ticked. Phew!

Body memory

Sorry, haven't been very blogg
Oops, remembered that I swore not to apologise anymore when life gets in the way of blogging.

I've been on autopilot lately; operating 'normally' face to face with people, but feeling really flat and numb inside, the sort of caught-in-a-bubble mood that can be completely indulged by driving the car hard down the highway playing Vienna at ear-blistering volume while tears run down your face.



This is an odd time of year for me: the art school winds up, so I have a less obviously pressing schedule (even though there is LOTS to do), the weather hots up so that my body slows down, but the rest of the world seems to be in a high whizz towards Christmas. I am energised by busy-ness, like a self-winding spring, so unless there are pressing deadlines (I tend to type 'deadlies', which feels right) or people depending upon my efforts, I go into slow mode, and that leaves me time to think or mope, whatever my inclination. This year it's mope, big time.

There are so many names for what I'm going through. Churchill called it the Black Dog, Nick Cave wrote about The Moose in the stairwell. I've been on an internal emotional rollercoaster, which is hard for BB, who is a very smart man but not very intuitive and finds emotional outbursts befuddling. 'What can I do?' is a sensible question when you've been highly trained in management skills and how to motivate a team, but it's infuriatingly useless in the face of someone who wants you to just do something, anything, as long as it's not planned or discussed beforehand. And preferably accompanied by laughter, but he's not inclined to jolly me out of misery: he joins in, which never helps matters.

He sent me a text yesterday, from Melbourne airport, where he'd spent the day:

It's our anniversary soon! What shall we do?

And while I'd like to say everything fell into place, I certainly had a beam of clarity pierce the grey matter.

This is the time of year when bad things happen to my body. Just typing that made my eyes water.

I started writing a list of what happened each year, but if you've been reading the blog you'll know it all. Ever since we've been married, starting from the actual wedding, I've had surgical intervention on my woman parts, mostly for failed pregnancies, but culminating a year ago in the removal of them. All around this time of year.

I'm sure I did the right thing by myself to remove the offending organs (well, they offended me), but I still feel bad about BB's chance to have babies of his own. I console myself with the thought that I have laid a lot of suggestions on the table as to alternatives, with the proviso that if he wants to pursue them he has my full support, but the paperwork/organisation is all his (I think I've done my fair share so far). He's done nothing to date, so the regret can be fully shared in future years.

I think, though, that the combination of time of year and weather and everything is triggering off a large amount of body memory: pain, fear, dissatisfaction, anger, an annual time to take stock and make big decisions about forks in the road. I can't work out if I'm indulging myself or if it's involuntary. I'm unsure if this will pass or build, or be annual or whether I can nip it in the bud. I think having the same routine this year as most of the other years isn't helping (like going to Woodford)... I think I/we need new experiences to avoid this sensation of falling into a pit at the end of the year.

It's not just my flawed body and its memories that has been bringing me down... last weekend Poor Bumblebee had his tender young heart broken by someone we thought was a really good friend. It's a boy in his class who seemed more sensible and sincere than most; he was part of a group of kids who fall in and out of favour with each other constantly, but this boy always seemed to stay out of the pushings and pullings. We had encouraged B to spend time with him after school and on weekends, invited him over a lot, were cheered by B finally finding a friend who seemed to appreciate him for himself (for all his loveliness, he finds it hard to hang out with groups of kids, they always seem to find his weak spots -- he is very easy to tease, he's very thin-skinned). B had so much confidence hanging out with someone who actively listened to him on the same level.

But there was a boy in their 'group' who was very jealous about the afterschool activities, and unbeknown to us was working upon the situation. It's a long story, but ultimately this friend succumbed to the group's mood and hung the phone up on Bumblebee quite brutally, saying he wasn't 'really' his friend anymore. We watched B's face crumple and his confidence shatter on the spot. It was distressing, and made worse by this lad & the rest of the group of lads continuing to ostracise B through the week (not quite silently: pointing and giggling from across the classroom) for nothing that we can actually pinpoint other than it's making the jealous boy happy.

It's sad, and as a family we're all saddened. We feel quite helpless as to what to do. The lad's mother rang back straight after the hang-up and apologised, but didn't sound like she wanted to intervene, thinking it would work itself out. It hasn't, and it isn't a trivial matter. B, who had been feeling secure in that one crucial person's support, feels utterly undermined. He's wary again, and cautious, and we're suffering with him. We all, as a family, feel rejected. We're pretty bad with social upkeep generally, and situations like this show us how thin-skinned the three of us actually are. I went through a lot of them as a young adult, and I'd hoped my child would escape them... but no. So I'm also reliving bad memories of this kind too.

I am pinning my hopes upon high school for Bumblebee. I know it's a whole new big potentially cruel arena, but it will have a breadth that small classroom microcosms don't have. He'll go from a year of 50 students to a mosh of at least 250, and all jumbled up into different classes and groups. The old pecking order will be disrupted, and there will be new opportunities for friendships. And these kids will hopefully learn that you can be friends with each other in different ways and for different reasons.

I can hear thunder outside, which is heartening, but bad for my computer. I think it's time to get out & about, try to jolly up somehow. Harden the f%&* up, as they say.

housekeeping

I hate hot weather. It's always astounding to me how Canberra has long glorious cold crispy winters, sneaks in a few weeks of perfect spring where the evenings are chilly and the days are warm, and then it just thrusts HOT and DRY onto us abruptly. Last week I was wondering whether to leave a jumper or two out in my wardrobe, and yesterday I pulled out all my extreme (hot) weather gear. It's rude. It's horrible, and I wish I lived in Alaska or Nimmitabel* or something.

Hot weather makes me cranky and my skin breaks out. I look like an adolescent at the moment with my spotty t-zone, which is ridiculous with my greying hair and bingo-wings.**

My studio is lovely and cool, but I'm on a weird schedule at the moment where I have to dip in & out of art skool to assess people, and so I never get a clear run at studio time. So I've been writing & thinking & drawing, which is not too bad.

BB still has a sore bottom (have I mentioned it before now?). Caused by riding his bike too hard, it has progressed through many stages of hypochondria from cancer to boils and other alarming things and his hobbling varies depending upon who is watching. He's getting an ultrasound today, so hopefully we'll get to the bottom of it (groan). I can't tell you anything else about it, the details are too revolting and TMI would damage your relationship with me.

Bumblebee is spotty too, increasing in hormones daily, and gaining height rapidly. He's almost grown out of my shoe size, but I don't want my riding boots back because he's trashed them completely. I noticed the other day that his voice has deepened but not breaking yet, so he'll have a very deep voice eventually. He's going through an 80s music phase sparked off by me giving him one of my albums to play after he saw the (new) movie of Fame; I'm trying to steer him into the more electronic side of things, but he loves the cheesy songs, and my ears have started bleeding from all the earworms I carry around all the rest of the day.

The cats are miserable in the heat. I've been planting catmint in weird places around the garden to surprise them, but they're too hot to wander, just lie around the house all day in the cool, stretched to full length on the floorboards. Occasionally I'll step over Padge in the hallway (he can't stretch full out there unless he's diagonal, he's longer than the width of the corridor) and he'll catch my leg with a desultory claw as if to remind me that he would like some food or water please, like some fat English tourist on a Spanish beach.


Padge in my office filling up available floor space. he's not stretched to capacity, and my feet (size nine and a half) are a good size indicator.

Blogosphere as I know it is going through another big purge -- lots of interesting people giving up their blogs, like Alan Loney & Betty Slocombe. Others are starting new ones. It's a dynamic thing, isn't it? I guess I'll just keep on keeping on... that's the beauty of keeping the aim of the blog really broad :)

Happy happy happy that Amanita Design has released a new game: Machinarium. I've downloaded the full version but haven't had a chance to play it yet. I love Samarost and their other games -- good for both adults and kids, with their beauty and reliance upon logical yet dreamy thinking.

And another thing I've been wondering lately... (damn earworms) call me crazy and call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but I'm wondering if my trouble with online Scrabble ISN'T just my crappy connection and the fact that the rest of the virtuniverse is trying to play, but the fact that I have requested that all my playing details aren't broadcast to all of my facebook friends etc. As soon as I vetoed all the notifications and crowings and general annoyances, the software became extremely recalcitrant. Makes me cranky in a very GenX kinda way.

Sigh. I guess I have to go out and brave the heat of the day. I hope you're sitting somewhere cool, maybe even downright frosty.








*not as silly as it sounds. Nimmitabel, between Cooma and Bemboka, is the highest settlement in Australia and even in summer they have to wear a light cardigan in the afternoon. My grandmother was born there. I would be living there now if BB could drag himself away from his career.

**I realised when I talked about the chook-raffle recently that I need to have a glossary sometimes. Bingo-wings are large flabby under-upper-arm bits that wobble when you move your arm. Sometimes they're called 'bye-byes' because they keep waving after you stop. Any other good names for them? Share.

remembering to purchase

**HAPPINESS IS LIFTING A STRAY PIECE OF PAPER FROM ALL THE OTHER STRAY PIECES OF PAPER BESIDE THE COMPUTER AND DISCOVERING A LONE CHOCOLATE BULLET THAT SURVIVED THE GREAT OVERWORKING JUNK FOOD FRENZY OF THE WEEKEND**

[chewing]

I worked late back at the art school this evening, later than I'd expected, but I was elbow-deep in inky type at the time I said I'd go home, and there was no way of stopping until all the ink had done its work.

I had been charged with the job of obtaining more cough medicine on the way home. Best Beloved has his lurgy today. In the past I have called this the Man Flu, but actually factually it is some horrid lurgy all of his own, devised by someone from the tenth circle of hell, and he falls prey to it at least twice a year. It follows a set pattern, and one of the main symptoms is a foul mood. He is normally very pleasant man, but when he wakes up sounding gravelly and grumpy, I run a mile. As long as he has his bed, a bottle of whiskey (he swears the fumes help) and a bottle of this particular cough medicine and a gameboy, he is ok. But ask him a question, try to tell him a joke, wonder what the weather is doing, and you get a very rude and exasperated reply. He doesn't want sooky treatment, he doesn't even want to see your face, he just wants to curl up, sniff whiskey and die. Alone. With the occasional cuppa brought to him. So I tend to stay out of the way.

So. I'd worked late. There was a good chance that all the shops that stock his favorite cough medicine were closed, which would guarantee a really grumpy evening. Oh noes!

Luckily, just down from the art school is a new complex of student residencies. It has a Scottish name, which is very odd because everyone who lives there is Asian. Underneath the ressies is a bunch of shops, one of which is an Asian food store. It's not a fancy store, but every time I go there, it has what I want, and more besides. I went in once to buy some afternoon tea and came out with a very sharp mini-cleaver bought for $3 that is fabulous for chopping herbs. The best thing about the store is that it sells milk, and it's open really late and it's on my way home.

I went in and asked the man behind the counter if he had cough mixture, the one in the box with the nice pictures. He instantly reached for the box of Benadryl behind him.

No! no! the one next to it... his hand hovered over the box I meant, and then moved back to the Benadryl. No, I wanted the other one... yes! The one with the Chinese man on it. Thanks!

As he handed me the box of Chinese cough medicine, he said
Can I ask, how do you know about this medicine?
My auntie studies Chinese medicine, she says it is very good, and we now like it, it works very well.
Ah... that's interesting, because...
yes?
...because you don't look Chinese.

Heh. I don't know why, but that made me laugh all the way back to the car. Back at home, I blessed the store for its flexible retail hours, as BB made a grab for the box, and headed back to bed, leaving me to enjoy Spucks&Spacks in peace. I tell you what, if I could have an album of Don Walker's best Chisel songs sung by Jimmy Barnes' brother John Swan, I'd be the happiest woman in the world. Just putting it out there in the universe, you just never know your luck...

Influenza MF

I'm getting pretty tired of Swine Flu being treated as if it's AIDS. It's an interesting exercise in how germs spread, but that's all.

We've got Man Flu in our house at the moment, which is a much more serious affair, and I wish they could hurry up with a vaccine for that. Poor chookies, wearing their bums out for something that doesn't have a tenth of the domestic impact of Influenza MF...

Blowing the top off

Best Beloved has long been a keen collector of stories about cults, conspiracies and gullibility. His bookshelves are full of people seeking truth and uncovering lies; my bookshelves are full of people dreaming up stories that push the boundaries of reality and normality -- it pretty much sums up the complete opposites of our personalities.

Last night Media Watch had a segment about Channel Nine's screening of Peter Popoff* and his Miracle Water scam. BB was ecstatic in rediscovering one of his old obsessions. I can't wipe the smile off his face, and first thing this morning he sent me this:



It's pretty amazing, and while BB finds it hilarious, I find it poignant. So much faith, so much hope, and you know they're all just going to go home and find that nothing has changed, they're just a bit more tired and have a badly bruised forehead. And that man, wiping the tears from his eyes! Sigh.

I do like the bit where his wife says 'Can you hear me? If you can't you'll be in trouble...' It blows the top off everything, if only because the playful glee in her voice shows how irreverently they think of their 'business'.

And now he's doing it again. Unbelieveable.



* Popoff is, of course, a delightfully Dahl-ish name for such a scammer. I always laugh extra hard because when Bumblebee was in family daycare, I mentioned one day that he had eaten a lot of lentils, and might fart a bit. His carer pursed her lips prissily and said 'we don't use that word here, dear. We prefer POP-OFF'. Gawd, I laughed like a drain, all the way to work.

Comfort zones

TOO MUCH INFORMATION! was bellowed down the phone.

Heh. I do love those moments. Well, I replied, BB needed a small reward for mowing nearly all of the lawn...





He steeled himself and braved the heat on Monday to mow everything but half of the back yard, only stopping because the lawnmower conked out. Now we are experiencing that exquisite but short-lived time when our lawn has transformed from unruly white trash into something that makes everyone else look unkempt. Bliss!

Please note the abundance of plums on the brink of harvesting. Not long now until BB goes completely nuts with the jam jars and our kitchen turns purple.

Bejeebus, it's hot, isn't it? Padge thinks so, and is cooling his fur coat by living in the bathroom:



He's very happy.

I did a similar thing during the holidays, at a wonderful waterhole near Kyogle:



The water was cool and green, the blue sky had a wonder of cloud shapes, and I lay there for ages watching them, fringed by rainforest. Around me, people splashed and played, but my ears were under water and I just floated and breathed.

After a long while, I looked up to see my son and my brother-in-law watching me from the rocks. FOUND ANY EELS YET? they yelled. Ahem. Time to hop out. Still, it was splendid, and I was reminded of it by Fifi's splendiferous recent post about swimming. I'm NOT a swimmer, never have been, but I enjoy water when I can swim within my comfort zone. I do so envy Fifi's being comfortable in the ocean.

I am drowning in blogposts to catch up with. My feedreader says I have 2786 unread posts. Holy mouseclicks. I'll get there, but don't be surprised if I leave really stupid late comments on posts you've written months ago. I seem to start with the people who only post occasionally, because they only have a couple of things for me to read, which is why I nearly fell off my chair catching up with Bad News Hughes' Visit to an Antique Store this morning (warning: that link is not for anyone culturally sensitive or Nice, but it is definitely for people who think dolls are creepy).

OK, enough computer. Time for a cold shower and a bit of studio time. I love cold concrete flooring (in summer!).

Happy anniversary, baby...

I woke up this morning at about 4.30am and couldn't get back to sleep again for hours. I eventually did sleep, and awoke to find the boys had tip-toed around me and gone to school etc. Best Beloved was glued to CNN watching the Mumbai situation unfolding, and so it wasn't until about 11am that he came in to the bedroom where I was being a Roman snotting the Greeks in Civilisation on the gameboy and said

'I just realised -- it's our anniversary!'

We looked at each other and laughed, because neither of us had done or planned anything, and I certainly didn't feel up to doing anything. So we just held hands for a while and made sure neither felt like breaking up with the other and then got on with our day, me lolling around feeling fragile and him cooking a batch of Christmas Pudding.

I'm still pinching myself about the studio turn-around; I'll give out more details about the space when I've signed the dotted line and actually held the key. Suffice to say that my going-to-sleep routine over the last few months has been to lie and imagine a phone call telling me that the space is mine, and then mentally working out where to put all my equipment; by the time I think about opening the garage door and showing the removalists where the press is, I'm asleep. The weird thing about the other day is that the phone call was so close to my dream conversation that I'm afraid that I'll fall asleep halfway through the lease signing! Heh.

So tonight, as it rains (which it, thankfully, didn't on our wedding day), we toasted four happy years, him with champagne and me with a Nudie, which is the most luxurious drink I can think of drinking at the moment, because alcohol is out and I won't touch anything bubbly (believe me, anything gas-filling or producing is torture!).

Have to go. Bumblebee is hassling me to read another chapter of The Pinhoe Egg. Ah! Domestic bliss.

A post that Colonel Duck will appreciate

I wondered, before I was housebound, how I would cope with spending the time in the house looking at all the things that have needed doing for so long and not able to do anything about them. I'm the 'home handy' person in our household; BB is more the 'homemaker' type, into providing routine and nourishment. I didn't worry too much about BB's two weeks off, because he's very adept at lolling about, cooking, watching, reading and listening to the radio. But maybe I've had him wrong; maybe the lolling is legitimate tools-down time from his high-stress office lifestyle. You see, we've never had more than a week stuck at home together, we've only had time off when we've been able to do things to stave off boredom.

So imagine my excitement today when he got up, looking way better than he has for days, and started getting busy in a way I've never seen before. He didn't, as I expected, roll his sleeves up to make Dr Sista Outlaw's excellent pudding now that she's divulged the recipe, no, he went to the hardware store, and came back with stuff that fixes stuff.

Are you sitting down, Colonel Duck?

Since breakfast, he's fixed the leaking toilet that has been leaking for months, and -- gasp -- got my whippersnipper working, the one I got for my birthday back in October and was still in the box thanks to a combination of my busy-ness and inconvenient weekend rains. I can hear the buzzing out there now as he's slashing the backyard jungle. He's also weeded a huge patch of the neglected veggie garden. And now he's gone off to pick up the boy from school.

I cannot begin to tell you how joyful this makes me. There are burdens lifting from my chest! My to-do list is shrinking slightly! I'm writing this because I'm afraid that if I make too much fuss over it to BB he'll stop. He's not big on fuss. So if any of you are talking to him, don't make a fuss either. He really doesn't read this blog :)

But I just HAD to share. It's an amazing day. Colonel Duck is one of the few who will really know why.

Jury Trials

Yesterday I was listening to a bit of a talkback program on Radio National about the jury system:

It's at the heart of our legal justice system but is trial by jury always the best way of delivering just outcomes? Questionable behaviour by some jurors has seen two recent trials aborted. Two other extremely high profile cases are to proceed, despite the accompanying media hysteria. So are there particular cases when decisions should be handed back to the judges? And with the number of exemptions and exclusions, does the jury still represent trial by peers?

It was quite interesting, and covered things like the theory of what to wear if you do or don't want to be picked for jury duty, the lack of incentive to actually do your civic duty, and the fact that when they re-established jury duty in the Russian Federation, they decided to pay jurers as much as the judges.

Today Best Beloved had to front up to the ACT Supreme Court to take part in jury selection. All week he's been deliberating on what to wear: the Donny Darko t-shirt and tracksuit pants? Jeans and a flannie shirt? Tuxedo? In the end he wore one of his work suits and shirts, but added a burgundy bowtie embellished with tasteful gold gryphons. With his current neatly-clipped beard, he looked like a Professor of Norse Mythology or something.

What follows is an unedited email he sent me from his (work-provided) Blackberry:

Right, they even got the time wrong.

Now there's a queue.

Now waiting in a scummy room. I can feel a wall of antipathy, which I ascribe to the bow tie.

I do not recognise anyone, fortunately.

I wonder if some are thinking that they should have donned something ludicrous.

I'm number 58, whatever that means.

The sheriff sounds a little like Fozzie Bear, which is worrying. No he's not the sheriff, just a court officer. Now someone is making up stories about why they shouldn't have to attend.

There's an urn in the corner with instant coffee and Lipton's teabags. I hate to think what the lunch will be. If it comes to it, I might tell them that I only eat certified Kosher vegan organic food.

Now some people are giggling.

Now a man with a dirty checked scarf is pushing in.

There's also a screen and a projector. I can only assume that we will be shown some educational video about the justice system. I hope there is a question time.

Oh, the video is on. It's out of focus, and they have not turned off the lights, so you can only see the white bits.

No Oscars for the actors.

They turned off the lights, so I had to stop writing for a while.

I was interested to note that the all the actors were white, and the fictitious criminal had an Irish name.

I also knew one of the fictitious jurors, so I might have to be excused.

Each person who spoke in the video (other than the lawyers and judges) claimed to be public servants.

They are now having technical difficulties, so we are all sitting round waiting, and have been for half an hour.

The court officer has now told us that the courthouse was built in 1963, which is the explanation for the technical difficulties. Dr Who dates from 1963, and he doesn't have these problems.

There are people coughing. I hope I do not get infected.

Really getting very bored now. And still no apology for the balls up with the phone message and the web address.

Apparently the technical hitch is the the CDs. What CDs? I hope they play some Twisted Sister. And it's DPP's fault.

I've been reading my book, but even that is boring.

Later on he wrote to me and cc'd his workmates:

The court officer is now instructing the potential jurors in how to defraud the court by claiming parking expenses of $15 and then taking the bus.

To which his workmate replied:

Now's your chance to get out of there - ask him if that's ethical.

In the end, they'd selected the jury before they'd got to him. He went happily back to work, but has to return on Monday for another fascinating insight into our local legal system.

He then sent me a delighted email:

While I was at court the chaps printed off some “CRIME SCENE—DO NOT CROSS” ribbons and put them across my door.

It's so The Office it makes me giggle. He loves the thought of being popular with 'the chaps'. Jolly japes!