narrating kayoz

Those golden nugget pumpkins (or whatever they are)

In the back you can see the pumpkins.
In the middle front you can see the poor, downtrodden zucchini which I planted despite the lack of room, because I figure if I get any zucchini's out of it that's better than none. There's an even smaller on at the side, which you can't see.
Of course, I could have just ripped out the pumpkins - or one of them - since we don't use that many pumpkins and I have two butternut pumpkins planted already (they didn't fit in the tiny garden though) - here's one climbing the lemon tree:

but I couldn't bring myself to do that to such healthy plants:

"The journey to live a simpler...more sustainable existence"

In searching for information on golden nugget pumpkins* this morning I came across two interesting sites. One is the blog of a woman who describes it as a "diary of her home and family on a journey to live a simpler, more thoughtful and more sustainable existence". It's called The Tin House. The second was a SMH article by Jackie French called "Self Sufficiency on a Balcony" (though she covers a back yard as well).

I haven't finished reading either of them (not that you ever really finish reading a blog, but I've really only skimmed a few posts so far), but the idea, particularly of the blog, got me thinking. Maybe I should do a similar thing here. Not that I don't still use this blog as a baby book, memory dump, soap box, etc, but maybe I should also use it to document our efforts to move towards a more sustainable, ethical life.

Because documenting things can often be enough to motivate one to do them better. It works for me anyway (that's how I've lost 12+ kilos in the past seven months, bringing back to my several-years-pre-pregnancy weight).

The thing is, as soon as I came up with the idea I started getting cold feet. Why? Because of all the things we could be doing but aren't, or are doing but could be doing more or better. It's frankly embarrassing.

Things we are doing to some people seem great, to others seem token. Things we aren't doing to some people seem over the top and to others seem essential.

For instance, we decided to buy a freezer last year, so we could buy in bulk and cook in bulk and have somewhere to put it all. But we spent many months over the project because we wanted to buy a second hand one, for environmental as well as economic reasons, and we didn't want it to be too old or the lack of energy efficiency would make the whole exercise a little pointless (we figured). So that's good right? We're trying to teach Liam that to reduce or reuse is better than to recycle. But in the past year we also bought (new) an iPod dock, various picture frames, large plastic boxes (for storing hand-me-down clothes till the kids grow into them), a plastic drawers thingy for storing stationary, a plastic water jug, a toy pram for Mikaela, a baby monitor and no doubt a thousand other little things that I don't happen to be able to see from where I'm sitting. Oh, and this laptop upon which I am typing.

Whereas my sister and her husband made a pact at the beginning of last year to buy nothing new but groceries and underwear. I don't know for sure how well they've done, but I know they are still doing it.

Does that mean they don't buy cling wrap? I don't know, but I know we do - I try to minimise it's use (eg using containers with lids to store things in the fridge), but I suppose if I were trying sufficiently hard we wouldn't need to buy it any more.

Also we've changed most of our lightglobes over to the long life fluro ones, we've got water saver shower heads, and small tanks on each down pipe (and a big one to feed water into the toilets and laundry is in the pipeline), which this year are supplying most of the water for our garden. But we also have an evaporative cooler which we use frequently in the summer. And three computers! (One is pretty old, and one is not very new and was bought for us by Chris's dad, but still.)

And we buy some organic produce, but lots of not organic (and some imported), simply because of the money. But of course if we didn't buy laptops and iPod docks maybe we could afford more organic produce. Then again we are doing out best to grow our own. And our chickens are supplying us with all our eggs, but of course, their food isn't all organic either.

 

See what I'm saying? To document our journey towards a more sustainable existence I have to admit to where we are on that journey now.

Anyway, The Tin House has a list of blogs she likes to read with titles like 'Aussies Living Simply' and 'Down to Earth', so I'm off to browse the web for more inspiration.

 

__________
*Because the zucchini plants we bought from Liam's school fair turned out to be some kind of pumpkin - I *think* golden nuggets, or maybe minikins - and I am trying to figure out how to tell, and also how to tell when they're ready to pick.

Mikaela likes (baby book entry)

At the moment, at 19 months and some odd days, Mikaela likes:

• balls
• toy cars
• real cars
• mummy milk
• lying on her back on the floor/deck/ground
• grapes
• water play
• putting on shoes - her own or others'
• porridge
• racing around the house with her brother
• playing chaseys (with anyone who will chase her)
• biting (mummy does not like this however)
• sitting up at the table in a 'big kid' chair (aka a normal chair)
• climbing up onto the table, from said chair
• climbing in general
• going outside
• going for walks in the stroller
• her toy stroller
• Liam's tricycle (she can't reach the peddles, but she likes to just sit on it)
• running around naked after her bath

She still doesn't talk much, or not clearly, but she is learning more words and signs. Her favourite word (aside from mummy) is ball, which was also her first word, and which she says a lot.

She can sign for

• drink
• mummy milk
• food (not consistently)
• down
• all done
• more
• no
• yes
• bed

Bed is the newest one, which she just did properly for the first time tonight, when we were out late at my cousin's and she got tired. She signed bed to me, and when I said "Do you want to go to bed?" she did her excited whole body nod. So we went home, and now she is happily asleep in her bed, which is where I need to be too.

Frustration

Liam: No, that's not funny Bradley, I'm frustrated.
Bradley*: Frustrated about what?
Liam: About something!
Liam: Just don't talk to me right now, I'm just too frustrated.

Liam: Bradley, I need you to help me, Bradley. Bradley, I'm telling you what I need, I need you to help me Bradley. Bradley, I need you to help me!
B comes over
Liam: Oh, I've done that now.

________
*This is a pseudonym for one of Liam's best friend's. Hopefully it's the same one I used last time...

Once people talk, things change (or thinking 'aloud' about my research project)

In a 2005 article Elissa Foster records a friend’s experience of pregnancy and miscarriage in 2000. Noting that keeping a pregnancy secret in the early months is a common practice, Foster wonders how her friend’s experience “may have been different if her story had joined others in a collective tale of desire and loss” (Foster, 2005, p. 67).

Geraldine Dooge answers this question, in part, in her forward to Always a part of me: Surviving Childbearing Loss (Collinge, A, et al., ABC Books, Sydney 2002) when she writes: "Once people talk, things change" (p. xiii). That may seem somewhat simplistic, but at the same time, it's true. Until people talk, nothing changes.

Foster notes that women’s stories have traditionally been consigned to the private rather than public sphere, considered as gossip. Following Dale Spender (1985) she notes that the “political implication of trivializing women’s talk is that women remain powerless when they remain isolated from each other, and unable to voice their experiences in ways that might transform existing power structures” (p. 63).

This is at least partially where my interest in life writing comes from, which in the context of my research project is extending to an interest in autoethnography, narrative theory, and of course literature. My piece of fiction for this project mimics (I think) autoethnography, but of course the narrator is fictional, and so are the stories she tells, her own and other's. So where does fiction fit into this process, and what's the difference between the roles of 'literature' and popular fiction?

I suppose one might expect that literature would tend to challenge, undermine or at least revise master narratives by giving voice to counter narratives. Whereas popular fiction would presumably be expected to support and reinforce the master narratives, or dominant narratives of our culture. For instance, that all women want children, that those who don't have them are to be pitied and/or reviled (to put it bluntly). But does popular fiction have to do this? And can't it reinforce some while undermining others? This literary vs popular fiction question is just a sidetrack really, but something I have kept coming back to ever since I started this masters.

Of course, part of my interest in all things life writing probably comes from the simple fact that I keep a blog; that I have been doing so now for eight years. But it goes both ways: one of my reasons to continue to keep a blog is this idea that when people talk, things change. And when we don't, nothing does. So maybe I'm only talking to five people. Maybe I'm not talking to anyone today. But if I don't put it out there...

And on that note I must close, because my house guests have just called for final directions to my house.  :)

__________

Dooge, G, (2002), 'Forward' in Collinge, A, et al., Always a part of me: Surviving Childbearing Loss, ABC Books, Sydney

Foster, E. (2005, Spring), “Desiring Dialectical Discourse: A Feminist Ponders the Transition to Motherhood”, Women’s Studies in Communication, Vol. 28, no. 1,  pp. 57-83.

Mine, wine, shower

Mikaela is at a really fun stage of development right now where her language is just starting to take off. Not that most people could tell she was talking at all, but we can.

First there's the sign language. We started doing sign language with her when she was around six months old, in the hope that being able to communicate her desires relatively clearly before she could talk really would have the miracle effect the books say it will have - namely, avoiding much of the frustration inherent in being a helpless baby/toddler who can't even communicate her desperate thirst.

At first it was a bit disappointing. I think the book* we read said it could take anything from a few weeks to a few months for them to pick up the signs, but we were impatient. In retrospect I'm thinkin' the fact that she couldn't even sit up properly yet at six months means it would have been wise to wait a bit longer. After a while she seemed to be getting the sign we did for mummy milk, although her version was somewhat different and could have just been waving her arms wildly in the air.

However, in the last month or two she has finally really perfected the signs for mummy milk, drink, more, and down, which has been really exiting. It's so great when she walks up to me and does the sign for drink, and I think, how much harder would it be to figure out what she wanted if she couldn't do that? Of course, she also does yes and no, although he head nod is still more like a whole body nod, and she does food/hungry, but not as routinely.

And then there's spoken language. A little over a month ago I predicted that her language would start to take off by about Christmas. At Christmas I was doubtful, but now, a couple of weeks later, it is really happening. She is starting to repeat all sorts of words back to us - albeit not terribly clearly. Until now we could count her words on one hand - mummy, daddy (or diddy), more, ball. Those are still her clearest ones, but in the past few days she's added mine, wine (we've just been down the coast for the weekend and I guess she saw a lot more glasses of wine than she usually does), shower... and I'm sure some others, but can't think what they are.

*I can't remember what the book's called off the top of my head (Baby Hands?), but it was the only one in the shop that used Auslan - Australian Sign Language - rather than the American version, ASL.

Garden notes

• Planted some of that lovely blue daisy, pulled out from my mum's back yard in the garden next to the massage room, and another bit out the front under the bedrooms. Hopefully the 34 degrees celcius predicated for today won't kill them.
• I stuck a bit of the same kind of daisy in a pot a while ago (late Spring?) and it has grown phenomenally quickly.
• I planted two new zucchini seedlings in the vegie garden during the week, to make up for the fact that the first two I planted have turned out to be some kind of pumpkin (golden nugget I'd guess, cause they're bush forming, not running - the actual pumpkins are growing very slowly though, wonder if I should feed them more?).
• Also a row of different lettuces along the edge of the garden.

What Privileges Do You Have?

An interesting privilege meme, from What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.

(Following Dawn, I bolded the ones that are true for me and commented in parenthesis when appropriate.)

1. Father went to college (or university, as we call it here in Australia, college usually referring to year 11 & 12)
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college (My Granddad insisted that she study part time and work part time, and she ended up deciding she liked the work - working as a lab assistant in the ANU Research School of Biology - better than the study (psychology), or so I understand. Of course, her brother was allowed to go to uni full time, but to be fair that was about seven years later.)
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home. (Easily. And even more in my other childhood home, aka my Dad's place.)
9. Were read children’s books by a parent. (by both in fact)
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 (pottery, drama and piano, only the third one seriously, the others were more holiday programs I think, or something I did for one school term)
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs. (Not the actual fees, which are deferred and paid through the tax system here in Oz, but my mum supported me with only minor work by me to supplement. I paid my own way through my honours year though.)
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels (When I was about eight I spent three nights in a motel at the snow, with my Dad, his girlfriend and her daughter, but generally we either stayed with family or in a run down holiday house down the coast owned by my grandparents - I know, still privileged though.)
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 (Not all, but probably mostly, though as a small child I'm sure I had a lot of hand-me-downs from my sister, and as a sixteen or seventeen year old I discovered op shops.)
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them. (Nor a hand-me-down one neither.)
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home (Still mortgaged, but not rented, which I assume is what this refers to. One of my parents anyway.)
25. You had your own room as a child (from age 6)
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up. (Very occasionally.)
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

Happy New Year everybody!