Just Nicky

Non-Starter February 29, 2008

I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. Maybe I should have stayed up after settling Leila back to sleep at 5.30. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s Friday. Whatever the reason, nothing was as attractive as staying under the doona this morning and that’s still where I’d like to be. But there was a boy to be got off to kinder and a life to be lived so I am up and about.

I’ve given up on taking Leila to swimming. We’ve missed four lesson in a row now - 2 because she was sick, last week because I got caught up at kinder and this week because I didn’t even try to get there. I do still want take her, but I think Friday morning is a bad time for us. I’m going to ring and see if I can defer the rest of the lessons, credit them to next term and try to change to a Monday afternoon or a weekend. Tuesdays and Thursdays are out because Leila’s at childcare and I don’t want to put Finn in the creche on Wednesdays.

I’m going to focus the rest of today on dealing with a few phone calls I need to make and getting myself and the munchkins organised to meet up with Mark at Queenscliff for camping (weather permitting).

Pick-me-ups

Look on the Bright Side: 100 Tiny Tips to Improve Your Mood

I might try some of these when I’m feeling a bit better.

Found via The Happiness Project.

Linkin’ February 20, 2008

I’ve come across two blog entries this morning that have hit a nerve with me and made me think. And they’re definitely worth a blog entry from me.

It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. - G K Chesterton

As I’ve said before, I read The Happiness Project every day. Sometimes the entries are a bit wordy to read in between scooping things out of The Little Princess’ mouth and repairing The Foozle’s lego and though they rarely prompt any action, they often make me think a bit.

This entry has really resonated today. Particularly the Chesterton quote above.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been talking to my shrink about just how hard I find it keep myself moving and interacting. How what I want to do most of the time is crawl under a rock somewhere and hide from the world. Becoming Kinder president and taking both kids to swimming lessons are part of my plan to push myself out there. I enjoy these things (and I always knew I would), but I still find really difficult to do so I’m always fighting the little voice (which the shrink tells my is my critical superego) that says I should just stay home and do nothing because that’s easy and safe.

Hiding is easy. Being a living, breathing, interacting human being is hard.

Oprah’s Clutter Man: “It’s Never About the Stuff”

I read 43 Folders most days. Some of the posts are about things I’m not really interested in, but a lot of them are about reducing clutter and getting greater control over your life. These posts are important to me, since I feel like that is a lot of what my life is about at the moment.

They’ve talked about Peter Walsh a couple of times and I’m busily resisting the impulse to add his books to my growing unread pile. I will buy them one day, I know, but I’d like to try to do without them for a while first. Their latest post about him has a couple of quotes that hit a chord with me:

We all have stuff. What we had to do was tell people’s stories through their stuff, and see them realizing what their relationship to the stuff had become.

What is your vision for the life you want to live, and do your life choices reflect that vision? Specifically: Is your home a space for the life you want?

I’ve been aware for a long time that my relationship to shopping and having stuff is very much learned from my mother and that, for her, it was all about growing up during The Depression and trying to recoup the related emotional loss and emptiness by having things. I’m trying to unlearn what she taught me (when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping) and teach myself new habits to pass on to Finn and Leila. This is why I’m resisting the temptation to buy Walsh’s books.

I also want to learn how to live in the space we have, rather than wanting to move to a bigger house, just to accommodate our stuff. Our reality is that we won’t be able to afford to move from this house for some years and Mark has said a few times that he never, ever wants to move again, which is fair enough. But we can’t keep bringing things into the house without at least as much leaving. And I want our home to be comfortable, attractive and easy to live in. In short, we need to make this space the home we want it to be for as much of our lives as possible.

Article - One man’s trash February 19, 2008

This is really more for my own reference than anything else: Some charitable groups that could use some of our unwanted stuff.

From brassieres to bikes, the most unlikely items are needed elsewhere.

Thunderbirds Are Go

Things have are suddenly getting rather busy around here. It’s a bit of a shock to the system.

The kinder committee is underway and I have committee members email addresses to chase up, bank authorities to sign, meeting minutes to type up, folders of stuff to read and a working bee to attend. Finn started his full quota of kinder sessions this week. Leila is healthy again and back at childcare. Mark is as busy as always at work and going on camp in a few weeks.

I’m wondering when I will find the time to take Finn shopping for new shoes, get my hair cut and coloured (it sooo needs a colour) and plant out the plants I got for my birthday.

All very good and very healthy … I think.

Mea Culpa

I am a dreadful stickybeak.

But I’m over it now.

Buddhist Thought for the Day February 13, 2008

This is the way of peace: “Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.”

Sorry

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

(full text)

Like so many events the Prime Minister’s apology to the Stolen Generations crept up on me. I rarely watch the news and am so immersed in my day-to-day existence that I tend to be unaware of things like this. Events of national and historical significance tend to just slide on by. I am clueless.

So I hadn’t set aside the time to watch it. It just so happened that I’d had the TV on to amuse Leila (who has turned into super-clingy baby recently) when the ABC Kids’ programs were curtailed early for the apology.

I liked it. There was a little bit of political point scoring, but that’s understandable, given that the previous government were so obstinant and had used its fair share of emotive and divisive language about it. What I like most is that it is done. And it didn’t seem so hard in the end, did it?

Of course, the talk about compensation has begun and that was always going to be the case. Money going to individuals seems unlikely to me though, because it would be politically nasty and, even if it went forward, the hoops through which people would have to jump to get it would probably be pretty horrible. It would be better, I think, to plough funding in the name of the Stolen Generations into positive programs to address inequality as reparation for the damage which that policy has done and continues to do to indigenous families and communities.

I Coulda Been a Camper February 10, 2008

In the last week this parenting thing has felt like running a marathon on a treadmill - working my guts out and going nowhere fast.

Finn has done well at kinder, but he’s still doing orientation so is only going twice a week, rather than four times. 6 hours a week of that kind of stimulation is really just a tease to a kid who’s been to childcare since he was tiny. At home he’s been argumentative and just plain silly a lot of the time. It all ratchets up a notch when Mark get home too as he’s missing having his dad around to hang out with. Every morning after Mark leaves for work Finn tells me that he wants to go everywhere Dad goes. And some mornings I dearly wish he did.

I know this is all due to the transitions from childcare to kinder, from having Mark home every day to him being back at work and so on, so I’m not tearing my hair out yet. I’m confident that as the weeks go on, kinder begins in earnest and our life settles into our new routine Finn will settle down and go back to being the easygoing kid he usually is. In the meantime though I spend a part of every day wondering whether my head really is going to explode.

Leila, for her part, has been ill all week. I had to collect her from childcare early on Tuesday and she couldn’t go on Thursday and missed her swimming lesson on Friday. She’s gone from having an incredibly runny nose,to throwing up, to running a mild temperature and now seems to be just really, really grumpy so I’m hopeful that she’s on the mend.

It seemed like a bad idea to take her camping this weekend so she and I stayed home while Mark and Finn went to Portarlington. Mark offered to stay and let me go, but I’m a fair weather camper at the best of times and knew I would probably worry about Leila if I went so I was happy to stay behind with the bub. In hindsight I think I might have preferred wrestling with the tent to dealing with the grumpy Little Princess. I’m knackered.

And so another week begins. With any luck Leila will be back at childcare on Tuesday and, with Finn at kinder, I will have a whole 3 hours of not carrying a child around, getting snot on my clothes, or having an argument about why we need to brush our teeth every day.

February 5, 2008

Being awake at 1am, with hayfever, on a warm humid night in Melbourne sucks big fat ones.

Think I might go overdose on antihistamines.