narrating kayoz

Befuddled and bothered by climate change and colds

I read a(nother) scary article on climate change the other day - how it's happening faster than experts were predicting, etc, and how dry continents like Australia specifically will be impacted over the next forty odd years. I must say it was sobering to realise that in forty years I'll be rather past my prime, but even more sobering to think about the world my kids will be trying to make their way in.

I wondered - if we really took this seriously, would we be trying to have another baby? Not for the reason I remember my peers spouting back when we were in our teens - that the world was just too nasty a place subject them to - but more just in terms of the added burden more people place on the planet's resources, and more specifically on our own resources.

Well, we are still going to try for a third baby, climate change (and many other practical considerations) be damned. But we're also going to sit down and plan out a bit more concretely what we should/can/will do to climate-change-proof our own lives. We already turn off things at the wall, use (mostly) energy saver lights, and will have replenished our roof insulation within the month. But bigger projects we've talked about like getting a big tank put in, a proper grey water system (as opposed to the hose out the window type), solar panels - those things we can't afford right now, but can be more seriously about planning for. And then there are other things like putting in as many fruit trees as we can fit and getting better at growing our own food.

Of course, some of these depend on whether we are really staying in this house for the long haul or not. It is west facing, on a weird shaped block which gives us little good sunny yard space and has one less bedroom than we'd like. But it's got a great view, it's in a good location for our needs, it's got some lovely things about the yard as well, and one less bedroom means a smaller carbon footprint anyway.

That is some of the sort of conversation we've been having in our house over the past few days. Interspersed with conversations about planting heirloom tomatoes, getting another Silky chook or two and why we have come down with yet another cold. But much time and many kid-focussed activities have passed since I started writing this post this morning, and additionally my brain is now anti-histamine befuddled.

Busywork, blogging and bandannas

Thursdays are my busywork days. Every day is a busy day, but Thursdays are the day I do housework and cooking and so on. Also they're my only 'free' day, that is, my only day without a regular commitment (aside from school drop off and pick up), and aside from Tuesdays (when I usually hang with my cousin and her two daughters, four months older and twelve months younger than Mikaela), most of our regular commitments are structured around Liam. So I tend to use Thursdays to make any social engagements I might want to make for myself, or for Kaely.  Hence the state of my house (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).

Today I had my Dad over (which involved driving over to the other side of Canberra and back - about twenty minutes each way - to pick him up, and again to return him, though we did that as an extension of school pick up) but also tried to get the busywork done. I did cook a huge pot of chicken passata, and tidy up a bit. I also did a load of washing, but thanks to Kaely only taking a 25 minute nap (courtesy of having dozed off on the way back from picking up Dad I think), I forgot to hang it out. Damn.

Actually, what I meant this post to be about was the fact that I have posted every day so far in May. That has surely got to be a record. I noticed the trend on about the 3rd, and decided to try to keep it going for a week. Then today I knew it would be hard to find time (what with the busywork, and the exhaustion that usually arrives on Thursday night as a result of not sitting down all day. Not that that's particularly unusual, I'm exhausted every night!), so I thought, 'Well, if all else fails I'll just put up a post pointing out that I posted every day for a week. Even if one of those days was just a quote from someone else.' But now the kids are in the bath (supervised by their fabulous father) and because I cooked this morning, I have dinner taken care of. So I can sit here and rabbit on about busywork and blogging.

Oh, my first mate (Liam) is calling, having finished his bath. I think I need to go tie a bandanna on his head, as all good pirates have.

Anyway, did you notice, I posted something every day for a week? And now I've started another week. I wonder how long I can keep it up for?

Taking it all in hand

When I say I am feeling a little overwhelmed, what I am mostly referring to is the state of my house. All the outings we've had lately (birth refresher classes, information evening and tour of Liam's school to be, calm birthing refreshers etc, not to mention Chris spending last weekend in Sydney) would be easier to handle if our house wasn't in such a state.

Over the past couple-few months (I can't remember now when it started, but it was a few weeks before Easter I guess) we've been having a lot of work done on our house. Not really renovations as such, but still fairly disruptive - things like having an ensuite toilet put into the massage room (sorry, Rolfing Studio), having all the outside woodwork repainted, the deck fixed up and repainted, the gutting replaced & water tanks put in, other various outside bits fixed up (roof ridgecapping, gables etc), and then inside we've had shelves put into cupboards (finally we have a linen closet and more kitchen shelves and a place to put brooms/mops etc in the laundry), the back door (which was really an indoor door and was rottting) replaced, a hole patched in the living room ceiling and a falling down ceiling panel rescrewed and most recently (as in yesterday) the living room/dining room/front entrance hall painted. We had painted a couple of the walls ourselves starting with a big long one that has since had large bookshelves fixed to it (hence the need to get it painted) right before Liam was born. Since then we've been living with a two mustardy-yellow walls and the rest pink.

Of course what all this means is that we've had the yard filled with rubbish (it's amazing how much rubbish all that produced) and tools and ladders, and various messes in the house for too long. Most of the yard is finally cleaned up now (though the plumbing for the toilet has still not been inspected, weeks after it was finished, so we still have a big hole in the ground), but the of course to compensate we had to empty out the living room etc yesterday - all the pics on the walls, all the toys, all the books in the front entrance hall (not the ones on the wall we already painted thank goodness), etc. So all that is now littering the spare room/study and the massage room.

However, I've decided it's time I took it all in hand. My plan for today is to put as many of the pics back on the walls today as I can (need to buy some more picture hooks as some of them were just sitting on nails the previous owners had left), and iron/wash all singlets etc we painted at the T-shirt party/baby shower my mum had for me a few weeks ago. (Plus the few sets of new baby clothes people couldn't resist buying, even though they were instructed not to!). And maybe I'll even sort through some of the zillions of hand-me-down baby clothes (with an amazing preponderance of pink) we've been given, but I don't want to over plan and end up exhausted and disappointed with not getting it all done.

I would also like to write a couple more coffee break columns for Canberrakids (yes, a foolish time to take on a new commitment, but I did it anyway - they are looking for more contributors though, not necessarily regular ones either, so if you are in Canberra and a parent...) before the baby comes (I've written a few to be going on with), but... we'll see. My Sunday writing time this week is out, since we have a birthday party to go, & next Friday I don't get my morning off because my Mum (at whose house I shall shortly be dropping Liam, hence my plan for a productive day) is going to be away. So I shall simply do what I can, and hope it's enough to keep my sanity.

Spring industry

It feels like summer today. When I came home from work, after taking time to help Liam undress dolly and make her a skirt, followed by a quick rummage in the dress up box to make skirts for Liam and Daddy too, I changed into a sun dress and took Liam for a walk to the park. That's right, a sun dress. At 5:30pm in the evening of a Canberra October day. Definitely not normal. And even when we got home, a little past six, I was plenty warm enough. And still am now, though maybe I'd be beginning to get chilly outside.

Summer lethargy hasn't set in yet though, I'm happy to report. Instead we are in the middle of Spring industry. In the past two weeks between us Chris and I have

• had an electrician come finally and fix the light fitting in the study, which hasn't worked since we moved in three and half years ago, as well as replacing the down lights in the kitchen/family rooms which worked only intermittently, installing new - wired in - smoke detectors, and most importantly redoing our fuse box (which was archaic) including adding a safety shut off,


• had a pest inspector come to check out the termite situation, another thing we'd been meaning to have done for three and a half years, since when we originally bought the house (five years ago) there were termites in the fence and the garage, but no nest was located - happily, it was still all clear,


• Mowed the lawn (that was Chris),


• submitted the article I had due and received good feedback from the editor (that was me), and


• interviewed both parents and siblings for the memoir piece I have to write for my next uni assignment, plus written about 9000 words worth of notes (for a 2500 word assignment, hmmm) (that was me too). Oh, and I got my last paper back and I got an HD for it, so all in all I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Now we just have to get on with painting the deck and pergola. I painted some of it before winter set in, but then I got too busy with uni and it got mostly too cold to paint. And basically one of us has to be looking after Liam, or ready to go down to him if he's asleep, or we need to get someone to baby-sit - both of which have been hard lately because I've been so busy studying/writing - any baby-sitting we've had has mostly been to facilitate that. But, only two more weeks of uni to go, and then it's summer holidays. So the painting will definitely be the next big priority then.
[edited - to fix the embarrassing typo in the very first line]

The joy of doing dishes vs the joy of finishing my essay

Yesterday our dishwasher broke down. Actually, it may well have broken on Friday, since we hadn't put it on since then. Not that we didn't have the dishes. We did. In fact, I packed it, completely full, on Saturday morning. And then, somehow forgot to put it on. And because I spent the rest of the day studying, and Chris spent the rest of the day trying to keep Liam out of my hair, we didn't look in there all day. So come Sunday morning, when I opened it up to unpack and repack, I was confronted by a dishwasher full of dirty dishes. These were in addition to all the dishes we'd accumulated on Saturday of course.

Does that not sound like such a bad story? Two days worth of dishes can't be so very bad can it? But it gets worse. Sunday I was studying and Chris was keeping Liam occupied while at the same time cleaning house. Why? Because we were having a dinner party of nine that night. My brother and his girlfriend are visiting from the States very briefly, so we had a family dinner at our house. But because the dishwasher wasn't completely buggered, it took Chris a while to notice that it wasn't working - it did the rinse cycle then stopped. It had been doing that a bit last week, and in fact we had someone already booked to come and look at it this morning. So when Chris happened to notice that it had stopped, but not finished, he started it again. It did the rinse cycle, then stopped. In desperation, not wanting to believe that it was completely hopeless, I am ashamed to admit that we tried this more than half a dozen times between us over the course of the day.

It wasn't until lunchtime, when Liam was napping and I came up for air, that Chris broke the sad news to me. Our dishwasher was done for. And we had a lot of dishes to get through before the 6pm dinner guests arrived. Plus Chris had to cook that dinner, and there were other household cleaning chores to do. Goodbye essay, hello housework.

Not that I'm complaining. Tonight, for instance, I was planning to study. And then I saw the kitchen - I did some of the dinner party dishes last night, and Chris did some more today while Liam was asleep, but there were still some left - and today's dishes of course. So instead of studying, I got to rediscover the joy of having a clean kitchen by my own hard work. And, having it clean at night. Normally we leave the dishes till the morning and pack/unpack the dishwasher and generally clean up while Liam either watches Play School or draws/plays with play dough in the high chair. And by lunch time it's all a mess again. This way it is nice for the evening and will still be nice when I get up tomorrow. And the bonus is - no study time.

Oh yeah, have I mentioned how much I hate studying? Was that me, three or four weeks ago, thinking I might like to do a PhD next? Who am I kidding? Studying sux! And believe me, Liam agrees. He is truly sick of mummy going to work so much. Did I mention his latest excuse for not having a bath/eating dinner/getting dressed etc? He says "No Mummy, I'm too busy. This is my work!" No kidding.

PS The truly sad part? $140 spent today to get someone to diagnose the dishwasher's problem, $400 more to fix the it. We already spent around $200 on it about 18 months ago. An equivalent new one would be around $1000. So now we have to decide: do we cut our losses and do the environmentally irresponsible thing, dispose of this one and buy a new one, OR do we fix this one and hope that we don't just have to spend another $540 on it next year?

PPS I wouldn't hate studying - I think - if only I could get paid for it. If I could do it instead of my paid job, instead of instead of Liam & Chris time, that would be OK. Fun even. I think.

PPPS I do realise that there is an alternative to spending either $400 or $1000 - sucking it up and doing our own dishes. But believe me, we are not good housekeepers. We are not good dish washers. Actually, we suck. We should not sacrifice our dishwasher. Truly. That one extra thing to fit into our day would probably be the thing that pushed us all over the edge. Liam especially.