the quiet

I love the quiet at Christmas.

It does make me think of this clip from Simple Men though: really great dance from Simple Men.

I also love how we spent midnight New Year's Eve at our house: sitting in the gutter with glasses of champagne, and listening to big and little fireworks and people at parties and the neighbour opening and closing their wirescreen door and Ray next door turning out his light at two minutes past and dogs barking and sitting with my husband. It was grouse.

Earlier in the night we took Oscar for his first ever fireworks, 9:15 family time on the banks of the Yarra. He was interested at first and then burrowed into Nick's neck, and then we walked over the bridge towards Flinders Street Station as they went boom! People packed behind barricades, the green yellow blue lighting up thousands of heads down there near the river, but we had a free range hardly any people zone, and it felt eery and amazing. I also kept thinking: lots of people in one place, fireworks, children, walking on a bridge. The world really has changed since 11 September and I kept thinking it was the perfect time for an explosion.

As the hippies used to say - just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Other than that, just easing into the holidays, and we have actually once or twice lost track of what day it is, what's it's called. I've also been happily ignoring this blog, and then suddenly not ignoring it.

No witty last comment.

PS read Bill Oddie's autobiography!

silly olympics

For whatever reason, I've ended my day in a stinker, but this made me burst out laughing, and lord knows I needed that.

I have always loved the hundred yards for people with no sense of direction. And it reminds me of a time in a galaxy far, far away... [screen goes wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey] ... I am an undergraduate, I have drunk beer, I have been at a party, and my friend and I are walking home at three in the morning doubling over laughing, with tears in our eyes, reenacting this skit. A police car slows down, we compose ourselves: act straight man, act straight.

Okay I'm going to say something else: sometimes being a mum opens you up to the judgement from other mothers (and self judgement), and it drives me freakin' crazy!! Okay that's all.

validation - or, 'quit your lousy job, kids! It's worth it!'

Tonight I was accidentally in an exhibition. I almost didn't go, but when I did, I saw all of my classmates, three storeys of architecture, landscape architecture and planning presentations, with one of my collages appearing randomly, rather largely, on a f**k off screen above the students. It was a good feeling, I have to tell you, as it has not been easy to be a mother, employee and student, swearing at the monitor (thanks SketchUp) and wondering before I began if I was 'worthy' of being a design student.

As Oscar would say, 'Looook!' There's me! Or, my picture, up on the big screen. I haven't felt this awesome since I was in a short film shown in a Polish film festival in the 90s.

Naughtily, I don't know who's this is, but isn't it great? The coffee cup was part of it - there was a line of them, look closely and you'll see a drawing on it. I actually said 'what's with the coffee cups?' and was thinking of putting them in the bin, and then I realised. And then my friends laughed at me.

I quit my job to do it, with the help of a supportive partner, and I can safely say that I thank myself (and my partner) every day for making this decision. Life is immeasurably better.
And so I drank a wee bit of champagne and looked at people's awesome work and ate free food and took some not so clear photos on my phone and... felt like a dead set legend!

20 sneaky minutes a day...

... over three months, will harvest you this...

...the ultimate sneaky crafty project. Seriously, I only really knit in the car - as a passenger of course. Although sometimes when I am actually driving during peak hour, I have had it on the seat next to me for the times that I stop for the level crossings, red lights or just general slowness. I actually feel disappointed when the traffic moves!
It's Stripy (stripes ommitted this time) by Ysolda Teague - which is a fantastic free tutorial available via her blog, that takes you through designing a pattern from the gauge of your yarn and your measurements. I hadn't done this before, and wrote out many pages of mathematics, and now feel as though I've attended knitting school. It's great.
I've used alpaca from the Bendigo Woollen Mills - they are great out there. They will send you 200g balls for around $13, and not charge for postage (in Victoria, I believe).

more news from the financial... let's call it hiccup...

Overheard remark in computer labs today:

UG: because people just aren't building. So the people who haven't got jobs lined up next year will be fighting for one...

Yikes. I did so much research into this career change into landscape architecture, and it's looking like it will take the rest of my 30s and a good sized house deposit (ha, irony) to do it (I wish for the times of Gough Whitlam when tertiary education didn't set you up for a giant debt), and a large part of my research was around choosing a creative job that also had lots of opportunity for actual, you know, employment.

After graduating from creative arts, I did around ten years of hospitality. Then social research, which was fantastic, and then administration, which just isn't me. What I would love, is to love my work.

I really hope this financial - thing - is, as my financial advisor tells me, a hiccup, rather than a crisis. The upside is that perhaps house prices won't be so heinous, outrageous!, as they have been...

but I'm actually a dynamic self-starter

In the spirit of the sneaky crafty theme, a friend and I were talking today about the many ways in which we have endeavoured to not work, while looking for all the world as if we were.

This might include the gentle art of the slightly furrowed brow while looking at the PC monitor, which is of course showing you very concerning knitting patterns and cotton bamboo that requires your strictest attention. It’s important to remember this strategy only works if the screen is facing away from everyone else.

Other times, I have had to be more inventive. While a ‘keg on legs’ at the Adelaide Grand Prix – ah yes, I have led an illustrious career my friends, the stories I can tell you of hazy, lazy days pruning vines, endless, ENDLESS vines – when I had exhausted my most recent supply of Foster’s Special from my back, I kid you not, before refilling with another 11kg (see: I kid you not) I would walk around the grassy area as if I was looking for someone, leaning slightly forward and focussing my vision in the middle distance: on the outside I was an efficient member of the Keg On Legs team running an important errand, while on the inside I was enjoying a relaxing stroll. The supervisors had eagle eyes and you were easily replaced, so you had to be really good at subterfuge.* At the time George Harrison was rumoured to be there, and I always secretly hoped that I would accidentally find him on my missions, but I never did.

In cafes, if you didn’t smoke – which if you do in any place of employment automatically entitles you to 5 minute breaks by the bins – you had recourse to pretend you needed to go to the lavatory. One particular establishment (okay, it was Babka) had an upstairs bathroom, with a nice view of Fitzroy, and you could climb out of the window and sit on the roof. That was only when I was really exhausted. Meanwhile, the chefs had their own technique of taking a clipboard and pretending to count the produce in the cool room.

Once a friend and I scored jobs selling programs at WOMADelaide, this was a sweet deal. We would sell them for two hours at the start of the day and have the rest of the time hanging around, conversing with semi-famous gospel musicians, which is exciting when you’re 17. We discovered that the programs were free around the corner, for some reason, while we sold them for two dollars. So we bought some lollies and spruked ‘free lolly with every program purchase!’, and working *three* secret weapons of fear, surprise and ruthless efficiency – or, one semi-funny joke and baseless enthusiasm. That seems to work when you’re 17 too. After a while we became a little disheartened and by the time our employer (see: my dad’s friend) turned up to say hello we were sitting with our heads in our hands staring holes in the air – and Colin was moved to observe that we were ‘the slackest program sellers at WOMAD’. Too bad I didn’t get THAT in a written reference.

* I must have convinced my employers that I was a hard worker, because I received a written reference (remember those?) at the conclusion of my employment, which stated that I was excellent in my capacity as a BevPacker, and they signed it. I framed this reference and had it displayed proudly above my own lavatory.

random conversation at 5.37pm

Me: [Trying to find RRR on the radio, and accidentally letting out a blast of static]

Oscar: What was that? That was Oscar's favourite.

Me: Really?

Oscar: More? Can I have some more 'PSSHHTTT!!'?

Me: [Remembering we used to put him to sleep to white noise...]