narrating kayoz

One blissful day, or, Meeting Trish, Eating Oysters and Getting a Fabulous Massage. Mmm...

Yesterday was a day worth repeating.

First there was the morning. Then there was the afternoon. And then there was the late afternoon. Mmm.

But perhaps I should begin at the beginning. For Mother's Day this year I got a gift voucher. It was for a massage, a special kind of massage, from my husband. He is a qualified massage therapist, but this is not the sort of massage he would give anyone else. I leave the details to your imagination.

But the trick was finding the time and space - kid free time and space - to make the most of such a gift voucher.

Actually, that's not the beginning. The beginning was more than two years ago when Trish first said, "Let's get coffee together." At the time she was working and I was working. On my non-work days I had Liam. On my work days I didn't have a car. Also I was heavily pregnant. And then she got sick. Long story short - we never managed to get together before Mikaela was born.

Roll forward two years to Trish emailing last week to point out that with neither one of us working now (not for money anyway) we had no excuse. So yesterday morning we had coffee. We got a lovely sunny table at Cafe Fontaine on the top level of the Canberra Centre, and for two hours we talked and drank coffee and ate yummy blueberry pancakes. And I'm here to tell you that in person Trish was just as lovely and interesting as she is on her blog.

We talked about the way people can seem different in person to the way they do on paper - pen-friends, or job interviewees, for instance. And yet somehow I never made the connection to the two of us, meeting for the first time in person, after a few years now of reading and commenting on each other's blogs. Afterwards I thought about it - was she different in person? I decided that one meeting was perhaps not enough to go on, but if I had to make a call I'd have to say not particularly. Luckily we decided to get together again in August, so I will pay more attention then!

While I was having this lovely morning with Trish, Liam was in school and Kaely was at my mother's house. Liam finishes school at 12:30 on Fridays, but my child-free day didn't end then. No, my mother picked Liam up and took him home with her, while I picked up Chris for a romantic lunch date. This was planned as a sort of last hurrah before I go back to work next week, as well as a nice lead-in to using my gift voucher later in the day. But it also worked out to be a celebration of me finally posting off my bound masters project the day before.

We went to Delissio in Curtin. Mmm, yum.

We started with a dozen piping hot Oysters Kilpatrick, served around a hill of rock salt. That cost $24 which is about what I had initially planned to spend on this whole meal, but they were well worth it. Then we each had pasta dishes. Mine was a chicken, sundried tomato, pesto sort of thing. It was very good, though not out of the ordinary. Chris had something with seafood (predictably). I didn't pay attention to what exactly it was, but he looked like he enjoyed it. To finish we shared a Lindt chocolate fondant. A hot chocolate pudding with a lightly crunchy crust and a gooey chocolate sauce centre, served with a mint coulis and just enough cream. It was as good as the oysters and that is saying something. To keep ourselves hydrated we also had a glass of wine each with the meal and coffee with dessert. We were the last people in the restaurant (everyone else looked like they had to go back to work, poor dears) - we didn't get out of there until three.

Of course, a single glass of wine - even when strung out over a couple of hours and a solid meal - is enough to put me to sleep. So it was just as well Chris took some time to set up the massage room when we got home (with candles and an oil burner and so on), while I got to relax with the last of the Diana Wynn Jones series that has been my reward for finishing my project. Then, finally, I got to use my gift voucher. And let me just say that despite working professionally as a Rolfer and remedial massage therapist, Chris does a darn good relaxation massage when he sets his mind to it. And what there was beyond that, is not for this blogger to tell.

I'm creating a new category called 'the story of my life' I think I'm stealing it from Dawn.

Oh yes, there it is on her list.

That's all.

Happy Birthday Mikaela!

Kaely is two today.

We didn't do much by way of celebration, but we did have a cake with her cousins at our weekly visit to their house and pretend like it was a party. Not that they noticed the difference.

And now I am going to bed.

Writing Goals

I am setting myself some writing goals. Here they are:

1. Get cracking on querying and writing some articles based on the research I did for my masters project. I came up with a few ideas and even some target markets six weeks ago, but was too focused on finishing the project to get to them. I haven't written or even queried an article since the article I had published in Artlook quite some time ago. Now is the time.

And one of the things I gleaned from the festival session on writing for magazines and newspapers was that I should think about aiming even lower than I had thought - ie not worrying about the money.

I was disappointed, back when I had my ideas and started looking for magazines to target, to discover that several of the most relevant ones accept freelance submissions but don't pay. Now, my concern wasn't so much that I really want that money (and the recognition it implies), though I do. It was that I figured writing for free wouldn't particularly increase my credibility with other markets.

But apparently, that's not true. According to Rhonda Whitton, targeting unpaid markets is fine, just to get the runs on the table. You don't have to tell the next magazine you're querying that the last one didn't pay. You just say "I've had five articles published in magazines," or "I've had articles published in national magazines" or whatever might be true.

2. Pull out that trashy romance novel I wrote and revise it. Or at least look again to see if it's worth revising.

Sometime after that post that I linked to, I decided that i didn't want to write romance novels after all. That was still not what I wanted to be doing, so really I might as well stick to my public service writing job to do the writing that I don't want to do (but that does pay), and focus the rest of my time on the writing I really want to do. Which at the time I claimed was literary fiction.

So I didn't revise the novel.

Was that I bit of an excuse, do you think, to avoid the hard yards of revision? Well, partly. In truth I do still want to write literary fiction, for a few reasons that range from snobbery to the fact that I love that sort of writing (and reading). But do you know how hard it is to make a living from writing? Well, it's a darn sight harder to make a living from writing literary fiction. Or even to get it published in the first place.

I read a trashy romance the other day, for the first time in quite a while, and as I was reading it I felt justified in my previous decision. It was awful. The writing was not good, that was part of the problem. But I realised afterwards that probably the main problem was not the writing, but the alpha male. I *hate* alpha males. But you don't have to write (or read) alpha males.

So I'm going to revise that romance novel I wrote and see if I can get it good enough to be worth submitting for publication. If nothing else it will be a very good exercise in self editing.

3. Look at turning my masters project fiction into a novel. 'm thinking of taking three of the characters and weaving their stories together into a novel form. The way it is now is very distinctly 'literary'. One of the things I would have to decide is do I keep that style - which allows it to do some things that it wouldn't be able to do as effectively as 'popular' fiction - or do I go with, say, a chick lit style. Which has less flexibility (though the term chick lit covers a wide range), but is more publishable.

I do also have another chick lit novel I want to write, that I had thought I might have a crack at starting in nanowrimo this year if I don't happen to be pregnant by then. But, at this stage I'm thinking that will have to wait.

And now I am off to get ready for my last workshop in the Canberra Writers Festival - 'The Big “O” or Opportunities in Erotic Romance Fiction'.

Happy Solstice!

Winter solstice, in this part of the world.

Which means that from tomorrow on, the days begin to get longer again. Lovely.

Awesome exhaustion

I am completely exhausted. This is mostly because I have been up since 4:45 this morning, thanks to my darling daughter Mikaela. But it's also because I spent the entire day (from 8:40am to 5:40pm) at the Canberra Writers Festival, which I have to tell you was awesome. It inspired, motivated and excited me. But yes, the sum of all that is exhaustion. And an ear-ache (possibly unrelated).

The best part is, I get to go back tomorrow, and again the next day! Yay ACT Writers Centre.

More details to come later in the week when it's all over.

Writers festival weekend

I am very excited to be spending most of this weekend at the Canberra Writers Festival. I've never been able to do that before. I went to a couple of sessions from the Canberra Readers and Writers Festival (a slightly different beast) a couple of years back, but I haven't been able to make it since, what with me studying on Sundays and Chris Rolfing on Saturdays and small people needing mummy milk at bedtime and what not.

I'm still missing out on lots. For instance there's the session tomorrow night called 'We need to talk about motherhood: Spotlight on Camilla Noli'. If you know anything about my masters project* you would get why I would want to go to a session with that title (even though I haven't read Noli's book). But it's from 6:45-7:45, and after being at the festival all day, I really need to be home with my kids at that time of night.

Tonight I went to a short session which promised to have three writers talking about "their writing, its priority in their lives and how it fits into the rest of their schedule". It was interesting, as these things always are, but as none of the writers appeared to be a mother of young children, it wasn't directly relevant to my own struggles to prioritise - and figure out the priority of - writing. The writers were: one very, very successful Australian romance writer, who's been making money from writing since she was seven (and as far as I know doesn't have any children); one retired diplomat who may or may not have children (but I doubt he'd have young ones), but doesn't have to worry about making a living, since he's retired with - I presume - some decent superannuation, after 30 years in the public service; and one ministerial speech writer, who works from 7:30am till 10:00pm most days, and fits in poetry writing here and there, mostly in her holidays.

They were all interesting. It is always interesting to hear what brings other people to write. But in truth my fantasy panel for this talk would consist of people like my (RL and blog) friends, Sarah Tiffen (author of two recent books of poetry, and mother to three children the youngest of whom is a year older than Liam, and someone who definitely prioritises her writing, but not without a lot of effort), Sue Hines (Canberra writer, mother of two now moreorless grown-up children, and author of YA novels Out of the Shadows, The Plunkets and the forthcoming Water Boy's Story), Dawn Friedman (writer and blogger extraordinarie, who for years managed to fit in (some of) the writing she wanted to do around homeschooling her two children, and now fits it in around her full-time job writing for her company Smart Cookie Communications). People whose struggle and experience is more similar to mine, in other words, but way ahead of me in the actually writing and actually getting published stakes.

Nonetheless, I am very excited to spend the whole weekend (minus the evenings) at the festival. In less than two weeks I will be back at my public service job (or some public service job - I'm not sure exactly what it will be yet, but probably something to do with writing and editing and websites), leaving my masters project and my two dedicated writing/reading/studying days each week to become a distant memory. So this is like a last gasp of fantasy life where my writing is not for a government website (however interesting that may be). I'm hoping it will help motivate me to keep the faith and keep fitting in some of the writing I want to do, as well as the stuff they pay me to do, over the next eight months, without uni.

________
*Oddly I'm not actually sure how much I have ever said specifically about my project, but according to the abstract, it comprises a work of fiction and an essay, both of which  "critique some of the master narratives that appear to exist in relation to motherhood, and in particular journeys to and away from motherhood, in Western society and culture.... [focusing on] mothers, non-mothers, infertility and pregnancy loss."

Meditations for kids

Following a post from Trish a while ago at Imperfect Parent, I borrowed a book from the library called Meditations for Kids, by Kids. It's not the book Trish was talking about (which was The Wishing Star: Meditations for Children) - they didn't have that one in the library. But I liked the idea of reading a meditation with Liam each night before he went to sleep, so I thought I'd try the one they did have.

It's been a good experience. We've been right through the book once, and are half way through again. Sometimes Chris reads him a meditation after Liam and I have finished our 'book & chat' time and I have gone off to nurse Kaely and put her to bed in our room. Or sometimes if Liam is still awake when I've got Kaely down, I read him one then.

Each of the meditations is written by one of four kids in a family. The youngest was, I think, four at the time of writing (he's only got one or two in there) and the oldest was about ten (she has a lot). They all have the same basic structure - you go into your peaceful garden, hang your worries on the worry tree, take a few deep breaths, let go etc. - and they tend to have lots of comments about being safe and loved.   In the middle of that, some are rather quirky. But all are engaging, as far as Liam is concerned. One includes a dolphin ride into the quiet depths of the water. Another involves Pixies. Many involve friendly talking animals.

At first Liam said he wasn't going to 'do' the meditation, he just wanted to listen. Now he tends to close his eyes as he listens and take the deep breaths when instructed, but he still often bounces up at the end to ask for another one. Recently when he did that I told him the idea was to stay relaxed afterwards and let himself drift off to sleep. I don't know if he took that to heart, because I haven't read him one since then, but last night after our goodnight kiss and cuddle he said "I think I could just lie here and drift off to sleep now," so maybe he did take it in. Either way, I think we'll keep up the habit of bedtime meditations. It's a soothing way to end the day (and lets face it, the pre-bedtime part of the end of the day is usually anything by soothing), and I like the idea of Liam gradually developing the skills of mediation, or at least of relaxation.  It's something we could all do with more of.

Done!

Yesterday and last night I spent two or three hours just working on the final proofing of footnotes and other formatting of my major project for my masters. The thing I've been working on for a year now. I still found a few errors in the bibliography and footnotes, and spent a while getting the table of contents, headers and footers right (I moved the essay and fiction into the same document, along with an abstract and table of contents at the front, so had to create a few section breaks and what not. And deal with Word's annoying little quirks).

Aside from that I also spent an hour or two finishing a final proof of the fiction and finding a few more sentences to change, and few more words to delete. The whole thing (fiction and essay) still works out to be about 500 words over the upper end of the word limit, but my supervisor seemed to think that was okay. Better than the 2-3000 words it was over at one point.

Anyway, what this means is, that I am done! It still needs to be printed, finally proofed, bound, and of course posted, but basically, it's done. Once it's posted and I am done for real, I will be free of uni for about eight months. Then I'm going to have to figure out how I am going to fit in writing without my set study days, and what I should focus on in that eight months. But first, a well deserved break. And the Canberra Writers Festival next weekend. :)

Dottie & Speckles

I take back what I said about Dottie being completely intimidated by the old chooks. When I fed them this morning she - I mean he - got in there and got his fair share right along side them. A week ago he was still running off the moment they looked at him. Poor Speckles is still missing out on all the best bits. She gets enough, but it looks like a stressful process. Once we have that fence finished (I know, I've been saying that for a while now) I will bring Fluffy around the back, into the vegie -garden-chook house, and I might experiment with moving Speckles down there too.

Mikaela sleeps

Last night Mikaela went to sleep by herself in the cot.

I mentioned she did this for a nap a couple of weeks ago, but that time there was quite a bit of grizzling involved and several return visits from me. Tonight there was none.

Not that I've been trying to achieve this or anything. But tonight she nursed on one side, then the other, then back to the first. And wasn't asleep. So I said, "Do you want to go into the cot?" When she agreed, I double and triple checked - that she wanted to get in the cot, that one over there, that Mummy would go and pack the dishwasher (not hang about chatting). Yes, yes and yes.

So then I stood up, asked for and received a good night kiss and cuddle, and put her in the cot. Usually at this point she would sit up and start playing (with anything available - blanket, cot sides, whatever) or chatting. But no, she just lay there, and let me cover her with a light blanket (she's in a sleeping bag anyway). And I left. Now I expected that she would chat to herself for a bit and then call me back. But she didn't. I did hear her murmuring occasionally in the first few minutes, but that was it. That was now over two hours ago and she's barely stirred since, so she clearly did go to sleep. Amazing.

Sometimes, when we are in the part of our bed time routine where we all sit on Liam's bed and 'read' books, Kaely decides she wants to get into bed with Liam instead of going into her own room (our room) to nurse in the rocking chair and go to bed in her cot. So we let her do that and usually about 30 seconds later she comes out to us. Liam is in on the joke, but he's quite keen for her to eventually share his room. Anyway, she did that tonight. And then went to sleep in the cot by herself. which makes me think, maybe her moving into Liam's room is not as far away as we might think. After all, Liam moved into there when he was only about three or maybe four months older than she is now, and that was also by his own choice. Mind you, he wasn't falling asleep on his own yet at that point. But he wasn't being nursed to sleep either, Chris usually lay down with him.

And as for the night weaning, after that hell night it went back to being pretty good. In fact, the very next night she slept right through from about 7:30pm till just after 6am. She hasn't done that again I don't think, but she has been pretty good, and okay with Chris being the one to go into her. I won't claim she's night weaned until I go into her and she doesn't ask for milk, but it's looking pretty good, I must say.

Another rooster

Have I mentioned yet that another one of our chickens has turned into a rooster? She - or rather he - didn't start crowing until well over 20 weeks, which I thought was supposed to be unheard of. And he is completely non-aggressive, nothing like the silky rooster we gave back a few months ago. The big chooks, who are about half his size now (he is enormous) have him completely intimidated, but he isn't aggressive to the other remaining 'new' chook, Speckles, (who is tiny, about half the old chooks' size, or a lot smaller than them anyway), either, and in fact those two are basically inseparable.

They - the new chooks - must be about 35 weeks old by now, so quite fully grown. Out of four we bought the first weekend in February, two have turned out to be roosters, one, speckles, has a massive sclerosis and is very small, and the last one, Fluffy, our remaining silky, has moved out to the front of our house (still a fenced space, though she could get out if she wanted) to escape persecution. We're still planning to get a (silky) playmate for her, though surprisingly she seems relatively content on her own.

We haven't decided whether to get rid of Dottie, the roster, or not. We were planning too, but Chris suggested this morning that we just ask the neighbours whether she is bothering them, and if not maybe we can keep her. I mean him. He is a gorgeous bird, a Australorp-Wyandotte cross, with rich green feathers and a glossy tail. We're all quite attached to him now, and Liam is very attached to the idea that he could mean we get baby chickens next Spring (though Liam doesn't yet know how this works). He made me promise that if we do get rid of him we'll get some fertilised eggs - of course, first we need a broody chicken. The problem I foresee with getting fertilised eggs is ending up with more roosters who we haven't the heart to eat... But anyway, that's a problem for another day I suppose.

Kaely talks

Mikaela's favourite phrase at the moment is "My do! My do!"

I remember when Liam was going through the same phase, but I don't remember how he expressed it exactly.

Hell night

Hell night is a bit of an exaggeration really, because she only woke up once. It was just that the once was two hours long and involved quite a bit of hysteria. Chris spent the first 1/2 hour with her, then I took over. So I guess I was a little premature in my comments yesterday. Oh well, we'll just keep trying and see how it goes tonight.

Night weaning progress

Well, we started night weaning Mikaela on Saturday night, that is, two night ago. So far it's going well. Last night I *think* she woke up once before Chris came to bed (but after I was in bed), and then she didn't wake up again until 5:10am. That's not particularly unusual, she has phases where she'll do that for a few days or a week, and then she'll go back to waking at twelve or one or two or three or some combination there of. And 5. And it sounds good (sleeping from 12-5am being the very definition of sleeping through the night, oddly enough), but actually it's a bit annoying, since usually I am then up with her until six, when she may go back to sleep, but I know the alarm will be waking me up in perhaps half an hour. So basically, when she wakes up at five, my night usually ends at five.

Not so last night. Night weaning means that when she wakes up, Chris gets up to her. That's only temporary, once we've got it into a routine we'll take turns. Probably have three nights on (with both kids), three nights off and then alternate Saturday nights, or something like that. But back to the point, last night she didn't wake up until 5:10, when Chris went down to her. But was he up with her for the better part of an hour (or more)? No, he had her back down within ten minutes. And then she slept until 6:45. So like I said, so far it's going pretty well.

I forgot to prepare her the way I did with Liam (I'm sure I've talked about that here, but can't find the post to link to). I think I mentioned it, almost in passing, on Friday night when we were having our last nurse before bed. Then all day Saturday I meant to remind her with each feed, but all day I forgot. So I told her before bed on Saturday night. I said that we wouldn't be having mummy-milk in the night any more after bedtime. If she woke up in the night she could go back to sleep by herself (I always tell her that!), or Daddy would come down and rock her to sleep. And in the morning, at breakfast time, we would have mummy-milk again.

She woke up twice on Saturday night, once quite early, when Chris would usually be the one to go to her anyway, but she cried each time. Chris was able to settle her though, and in the morning she slept in till almost 7:30, which was lovely.

Then on Sunday I reminded her a few times during the day, while she was nursing. And Sunday night I reminded her again, and finished by saying "And if you wake up in the night, who will rock you back to sleep?" "Daddy!" she replied, quite happily. Tonight we went through the same routine. So hopefully, tonight will be as easy as last night. And after a couple more days of this, I will try going down and soothing her to back to sleep, without breastfeeding, and we'll see how that goes.

Right now though, I am going to bed.

Firecracker night

Kaely and I are sitting in the study hiding, while the rest of the family (including Pa and Nanna) is outside setting off fireworks and sparklers. Mikaela does not like fireworks.

Addicted

When you say to your husband "I just need to do something on the computer quickly" so that you can have a quick look at PackRat on Facebook, you know it might be time to take a serious break from the game. Then again...

From Hi-5 to Finn Brothers - which would you prefer?

One of the great things about having a six-year-old child, as opposed to a four-year-old, is the music.

When Mikaela was born Liam was right in the middle of an obsession with a single Hi-5 CD, which lasted several months. We heard that album over and over and over again. So did my mum and step-dad. Poor Mikaela, it was her main introduction to the world of music!

But later that year, he has developed a taste for adult music.

In quick succession, Liam decided he liked Indigo Girls, Crowded House, Victoria Stanborough, Tori Amos and others. His latest craze is with the Finn Brothers (Neil & Tim Finn).

There is a down side to this, which is that we are 'forced' to listen to the same albums and some times the same songs, over and over, before he gets sidetracked by something else and moves on. For instance, he's been in love with one of the Finn Brothers' albums now for several weeks, and so while I occasionally manage to get something else into the car CD player, that one CD has been in their on repeat for most of that time. And it's only a relatively recent preference for Liam. Even one's favourite music can eventually get worn out under those circumstances, but on the other hand - it's still better than listening to Hi-5!

June is National $21 challenge month

We have taken up the $21 challenge this week. That is, the challenge to feed our family for $21 for a week. That's not counting food we already have in the house of course. The idea is to use what you have in your house, cook from scratch, and see just how you can do without so much packaged food.

Our grocery spending week starts on Wednesday. And I'm afraid I miscalculated in the shops last night and I already went over - I think I spent $23 on food. Oops. But that will be it until next Wednesday night.

The $23 covered milk (5 litres, which will last our family about four days), powdered milk (that was over $5 on it's own!) so that we can use that in cooking, making the fresh milk last longer, cheese (1kg block of tasty cheese lasts our family about a week), and fruit (8 apples, 4 bananas and 5 mandarins) - in addition to the few apples we had left from last week, that's enough for an apple each day in our morning porridge, for Liam to take two pieces of fruit to school each day, and a few pieces left over to eat, which the kids will no doubt gobble down in  a matter of two days or so.

We couldn't do it every week - well, not if we want to drink that much fresh milk and eat that much cheese - because I didn't buy any vegies and we would normally have another fruit shop mid-way through the week. And of course we would some weeks need to buy other things like flour and honey (honey we could have used this week) and whatnot. But it was/is still an interesting exercise. Mikaela and I baked some plain vanilla biscuits this morning, and we will have to make our own bread on the weekend. We have enough potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and onions to cook a roast on the weekend (and a free range chook in the freezer that I got on special a week or two ago), and some frozen vegies to go with them. And we have a couple of pumpkins left from our pathetic autumn harvest - though I'm going to be using up one of those in a pot of pumpkin soup for Liam's class at school next Thursday. But aside from that we tend to buy our vegetables fresh each week, so luckily we have lots of frozen meals at the moment (several each of vegetarian chilli, chicken and veg soup, basic tomato sauce (add beans or tuna or whatever), and bolognese sauce. So we just need to add pasta or rice to any one of those and we've got a meal.

In the Simple Savings newsletter about the $21 challenge (linked above) they ask "What canned food have you got?"

Tuna, corn, salmon and asparagus all make good fritters, risotto, quiche or potato cakes. Baked beans are a good addition to casseroles, sausage bakes, soups and toasted sandwiches. Tomatoes are great for casseroles, pasta sauce and soup. Turn tinned fruit into puddings, muffins, crumbles and pies.

Well, we have very little of any of those things at the moment, except tuna which we have in abundance due to a recent good special. But we will be changing that over coming weeks, as we make a habit of stockpiling. We do have some food stockpiled from when its been on special (we could probably survive the week just on the salsa, rice crackers and tuna we have in the cupboard if we needed to), but not basics like tinned tomatoes or dried beans. That's going to change, because I want to do two things to save more money

1. Buy more food in bulk (eg flour and dried beans)
2. Go to supermarkets less

I'm assuming that by stockpiling more, I'll be able to cut down on supermarket shopping significantly, and just go tot he markets to buy fruit and veg. (Though there is also the milk and cheese issue.) And I'm hoping that by doing this we'll be able to afford to buy more organic food. That's the plan. And now that I am practically done with my masters project (if not, quite, actually), I am hoping to have some more thinking space to devote to this sort of thing. I'm also hoping that we will be able to finish the permanent chook run fence this weekend, so we can start collecting our eggs again. Though we may then need to spend more money on food for the dog!!

The sound of metal on metal

We were very nearly in a car accident yesterday.

I was driving down the Parkway (freeway, speed limit 100kph, two lanes each way), on the way to drop Liam at school. It was raining, though not hard, and the traffic was slow. Up ahead I noticed a car swerve into the left hand (slow) lane, perhaps thinking that we were going to have to merge anyway, if there was an accident up ahead, but then a few cars later it swerved back into the - now slightly faster - right lane. Why people do this is a mystery to me. It simply cannot make that much difference to how quickly you get where you're going, and frankly, it's dangerous. My suspicion is that someone doing exactly that is what caused the accident we weren't quite in.

Traffic was slow, as I said, but still moving along okay. I would guess no accident up ahead, just Canberra drivers in the rain. The brake lights of the car in front of me came on, so I gently slowed also. Then I realised there was nothing gently about the slowing, the traffic was almost coming to a stop suddenly. So I put my brakes on significantly harder. Luckily tailgating is a pet peeve of mine, so I had plenty of room. It did cross my mind though, as I quickly slowed, to hope that the driver behind me was paying attention. She was. Unfortunately the driver behind her either wasn't, or hadn't left enough room.

There was a thunk and a crunch and as I glanced into my rear view mirror I saw the car once-removed behind me bouncing off the one immediately behind. I think the rest of the traffic managed to steer clear, and both cars were moving off the road, even as I was wondering if I should stop, and realising that I couldn't, being in the right hand lane and already moving on.

I hope no one was hurt. I told Liam - who had clearly heard the accident, though not seen anything - that they seemed to be okay, as they were both able to drive off the road, but of course, I don't really know.

It really drove home for me how easy it is to be in an accident. I mean, I never have been (touching wood as I type) and I've never even seen one happen before. Though once, as Chris and I were heading down to Melbourne in the driving raining, a car spun out of control on the other side of the road, spun onto the median strip, and looked very likely to spin off it right into our path. But didn't. The driver managed to get control finally, just before he hit our side of the road.

But that's just it. In either of those cases, there was nothing we could really do. Certainly for the driver behind me yesterday, she did everything right, but still, someone crunched into the back of her.

Last year one time Liam accidentally peed in his car seat, and the next day (while the cover was drying) I let him sit in the middle seat with just a lap belt, just to drive across the suburb. I went at 40kph the whole way. A few weeks later I read of a girl - about four or five I think, I can't quite remember - who was in a car accident driving in a school (40) zone. She was only wearing a lap belt too. And she died, of internal injuries caused by the belt. I've never let Liam do that again. And I know, it's highly unlikely to happen, but the thing is, sometimes accidents do happen, and you can't actually control the when.