shapeofthings | Entries tagged with life

Urk, busy Toni is busy.

Workin' overtime to meet a deadline, sorting out the old house, settling into the new, drumming, living & loving.

Managed to get out bushwalking on the weekend: headed up to Mt. Field with the awesome Hobart Kat. Good times were had and the dodgy hip held out. This weekend is finishing the repair-work & gardening at the old digs and hopefully finishing assembling furniture here at the new. Took a raincheck on an invitation to a sailing trip that was as much about networking as leisure. Thankfully the weather's forecast to be grim anyway so we're rescheduling.

On the trail to Twilight Tarn, Mt Field National Park

Have dispatched 2 poor little meeces thus far, and am not finding evidence of any more whiskered squeakers. Will leave the traps set for a few more days just in case.

Speaking of, here's a mini-rant about modern rodent control: my local supermarket only sold one type of mousetrap - a re-usable plastic spine-snapping design that does the job quickly and cleanly - but several types of rodent poison and sticky traps. This horrifies me! I dislike killing anything but recognise that mice in the house need to meet their demise (catch & release will only result in their inevitable return). So if I'm in the business of death I want to make it as quick and humane as possible for the poor little critter.

Back-breaking traps do this. A quick snap and it's all over bar the involuntary twitches. It's not nice, but as far as deaths go it's a pretty neat one. Poisons, on the other hand, are a horrible way to go: the animal suffers painfully, potentially for hours. Sticky-deaths aren't all that much better, causing significant distress to the whiskery one.

So why only one form of quick death but so many options for cruelty and suffering? Because we don't want to confront that we're killing another creature. Snap it's back in a trap and you have to despatch the fuzzy corpse the next morning, getting close and personal with the consequences of your actions. Poison the nibbler and you hope you'll never have to see the body, living in sweet denial of your death-dealing ways.

You know what? Harden the fuck up Australia. Either way you're taking a tiny life; make the right choice and do it quickly and less cruelly and deal with the viscerality of your actions. That or leave the rodents in peace and take up veganism. At least then you'll have an ethical leg to stand on.

***

Meanwhile, have an opinionated post about capitalistic democracy, toxic culture and change over at the Shape of Things to Come. No guarantee of factuality or logical consistency is made.

(it's late, I'm tired and ran out of arsedness)

g'night!

Current Mood: snarky

Erk. The last few days haven't been exactly friendly.

After taking 3 days leave last week to get everything packed so I could move on the weekend I'm still in the old place, only half packed, with everything in chaos. What happened? I got sick. I started feeling rotten on Thursday morning, but I just put it down to (completely plausible) fatigue and burn-out. By Friday morning I was clearly sick but thought it was just a cold and I'd push through to get the move done. Yeah, not my best decision...

Friday (the 13th!) was the day my lease began on the cottage and I was due to go to the Real Estate Agents to sign the paperwork and collect the keys. I went via the chemist where I bought some cold and flu tablets, ate one, then drove across Hobart. Once at the Agents I found out there'd been some mis-communication with the landlords and my little cottage was still full of their furniture (it was an optionally-furnished property). Hasty arrangements were made to get everything I didn't need removed before my scheduled move on Sunday.

Tired, frazzled and full of snot I made my way back across to the other side of the city, stopping one suburb from home to duck into the post office to send off some of the things I'd sold in preparation for moving. By now I really wasn't feeling well and all I was thinking about was getting home and collapsing, well aware that I really shouldn't have been driving and grateful that I was almost there with only easy roads ahead.

*kathump*

Reversing out of my car park I was so out of it that I'd failed to notice a pale-coloured car behind me and had backed straight into it. A quick inspection showed some damage to the bumper and perhaps the headlight, and that no-one had witnessed the incident. I hesitated for about 5 seconds, re-parked my car, wrote down all the relevant details then went into the nearby offices to find the owner of the car and fess up. Choosing to drive whilst sick: that's going to cost me about $500.

Still, it would be a lot worse if I didn't have insurance, and the lady I hit could see how sick I was and was very apologetic that she'd have to make a claim (she had the damage checked first to see if repairs could be avoided or provided for less than my excess - how nice is that?). Perhaps my honesty has gained a few karma points as well. Who knows?

Details sorted, I got back in my (completely undamaged) car and very slowly made my way home to collapse into bed and stay there for most of the next 36 hours. Yeah, it wasn't just a cold. I was properly sick.

The rest of my weekend was largely spent sleeping, interspersed with a little TV watching. I didn't pack, I re-scheduled moving and I didn't write that job application I'd intended to.

Today, Monday; I had emergency warden training scheduled, a course I'd already missed my first booking for due to illness. I knew I still wasn't well but was determined to make it. I gave myself extra time to drive to the training centre, took the back roads and stayed well under the speed limit. Thankfully I made it there and home again just fine, though I really wasn't safe to drive yet. The course finished at 1 pm (I passed!) and I had to decide what to do with the rest of my day.

I came home and called work to report in sick, logging in remotely to check for any important emails or meetings (none - I'm not sure that's a good or bad thing...). I've been sick a lot lately: repercussions of my shitty sleep situation and letting myself get too stressed out. Was calling in sick yet again the right call to make when my employment future is shaky? I really don't know. Part of me feels guilty: even though I am still sick I didn't come home and go to bed.

There were a few useful business hours left in the day and I was reasonably functional. What should I do? I could have a go at getting that job application done in time (it'd be a stretch) or try to get a few more things sorted for the move. I decided to make a quick call to my ISP to sort out getting my internet connection transferred, then have a go at the job app. An hour later I finally got off the phone to the ISP with no connection yet sorted for the new place and the sneaking suspicion that I got talked into a plan that's of less value for the same price. And that's if a naked DSL port becomes available at the exchange. For now the Cottage will have no internet at all and I'm going to have to look at a pay-as-you-go wireless account just to get me by while I wait for a port that might never eventuate as they can't put me in a queue. Apparently I have to call back every month to re-apply until such time as a port becomes available or I get desperate enough to pay the exorbitant fee to have a phone line connected to the cottage.

*headdesk*

The poor service and high cost of data in this country is criminal, and I'm in a capital city. I truly feel for our country brethren, who find themselves utterly shafted by the telcos. I'm not quite sure how much sorting out a decent internet connection is going to cost me, but it's going to cost either a lot of time and frustration or far more money than it should. Possibly it'll be both. Still, I was nice to the call centre people and they've waived the last month of my bill for my troubles. More credits in the karma account for everyone!

By the time I finally got off the phone the last thing I wanted to do was write a job application, especially as the job would be a significant ($15 to $20k) pay cut and, if offered, I'd have to take it before I find out what's happening with my current position. So I chose not to write the damn thing. This may turn out to be a very expensive decision if I do lose my job! But then when I rang the would-be-new-boss on Friday to ask about the job I didn't get the greatest vibe...

Strangely enough after all the faff and frustration of calling the ISP I was actually feeling a lot better. I thought about packing a few more boxes but quickly accepted that what I really wanted to do was head over to the Cottage to check the place over, see if the power had been connected and that the landlord had finally removed the unwanted furnishings. I grabbed a few things I'd already packed, threw them in the car and drove over to the western shore (finally feeling actually safe to drive!). I'm glad I did.

It turns out my new neighbour, Oliver, is the landlord's son and is responsible for maintenance on the property. He came over to introduce myself and helped me to unstick the latch to the electricity meter so I could switch on the power. Once inside I discovered a few items that still needed to be removed so was able to hand them on to Oliver for storage. We also picked up a few small repairs that needed doing and I discovered that he's really keen to keep the place nice and fix up anything I need. Win!

I know living next-door to your own landlord might not be ideal, but I got a really good feel from Oliver, and since my partying days are well behind me and I'm pretty much a dream tenant, I can really only see the benefits. Also, I found out that the Cottage is over 100 years old!

It was also the first time I'd been able to view the property without it being full of someone else's furniture and really get an idea of what it's going to look like with my things in place. Oh it's going to be lovely! The whole place just feels welcoming and very me. I think it's going to be a wonderfully happy home. I can't wait to be out of here, away from my increasingly inconsiderate housemate and the shitty sleep situation and into my very own cottage. Yes, it's going to cost me a lot more for rent and bills, but at a significant saving to my mental and physical health and well-being. That's the kind of expense I really don't mind paying.

On the way home I stopped off to pick up a few things for dinner and a bunch of bright yellow flowers. The flowers, along with a thank you note, were dropped at the door of my friend Kat's house to say thank you for dropping around some emergency supplies to very sick me on Saturday. I hope they made her evening.

Current Mood: optimistic

Hahahahaha...

Not just burnt out, but also sick! Perfect timing there, virus, what with the moving business requiring physical labour and early starts, plus a job application to write that's going to require the brain to work.

*slump*

Current Mood: blah

Weekend photo zen over at the Shape of Things to Come.

Right, I'd better go shower and throw some things in my pack. I'm being picked up in an hour and a half and taken to airport. Flying up to spend the long weekend with my family, a thought that has me equal parts pleased and apprehensive. Wish I had the time at home to get on with the moving prep. Ah well!

Happy Easter my LJ lovelies!
xoxo

Current Mood: busy

Hello again. My hard drive has gone phut so I have borrowed the work lap top overnight to catch up on the digital world. Thankfully I'd backed everything up about a week ago, and I really did need a new computer but I could do without the expense right now. I may see how long I can muddle along with the borrowed lap top, but I do miss Photoshop!

I've been in a wee bit of a slump these last two days: a combination of crashing back to reality after a wonderful Melbourne trip and a general lack of sleep. My sub-conscious is being very annoying right now, doing the mental equivalent of digging into the bottom drawer and the back of the cupboard to see what emotional debris have collected in the corners. I understand it's a reaction to recent events and perfectly healthy, I'd just prefer if it didn't result in semi-lucid dreams and broken sleep.

Is it just another toni-quirk or do other people have a subconscious that likes to test their true feelings on an issue by throwing up a range of scenarios and evaluating any emotional response? Bah, even my subconsious is a scientist: test, test, test.

So I've been sleeping badly, distracted and a little frayed around the edges. I may have even indulged in a little sulking and eating of chocolate. This evening, though, I've given myself a stern talking to and set about looking after myself properly. If I'm going to insist on living this crowded and complicated life (as it seems I am, since every attempt to slow things down a little is quickly abandoned when something shiny comes along) I'm really going to have to take better care of myself and find some self discipline. That means eating properly, sleeping properly and giving myself time and space to work through assorted cares and concerns.

So tonight I went out into my sorely neglected little garden and picked a bucket-load of kale, made lacework by an infestation of cabbage moths^[1], and cooked myself a mountain of kale and mushroom dahl. Shortly I'm going to go tackle the dishes and the washing, then settle down with a mug of sleepy tea and think a little.

Uncertainty around my employment future weighs heavily (desipite having plans for scenarios A, B & C, scenario D - current job ends and alternate job prospect fails - remains a concerning prospect). As much as there are many other things I'd like to invest my energy in, it seems now is the time to focus on my career and doing what I can to build my employment prospects. At least I have a fair idea where I actually want to take my career now: a better position than I was in 6 months ago.

Life is complicated, but it's also full of beautiful things and wonderful people. If I'm going to survive it all I'm going to have to get better at the whole balance thing. I've got to look after myself if I'm going to keep running. *grin*

Much love!

Hah, amusing to see what photos are on my werk computer c.f. backing up my phone.

[1] Because I'm ~~a hopeless hippy~~ an ecologist I dislike using poisons in the garden and generally just accept a portion of my crops will be lost to the snails, bugs and grubs that are meant to be in a garden. Sometimes, however, things get out of balance (especially as establishing a well balanced garden with the birds, bugs and lizards to eat the pests takes more time than one generally gets in a rental) and action must be taken. So today vast quantities of kale were picked, the caterpillars and eggs removed (the laciest leaves will wind up in stock) and the remaining plants coated liberally with derris dust. One day, however, I will have a proper balanced garden!

Ooh, speaking of, I made my first batch of tomato relish for the year on Monday; a colourful mix of yellow Snow White and purple Black Cherry toms. Should be good!

Current Mood: determined

It is Christmas Eve; most everyone has returned to their family seat, but not I.

I'm here, in Hobart, slowly plugging away on an overdue work report and eating cheese & salami. Espen is alseep on my couch, snoring softly, and outside the rain falls gently. Later, perhaps, I will bake.

Tomorrow won't be a special day for us. I'm planning my usual Sunday hike on the Mountain, and perhaps a more-indulgent-than-usual meal. What is special is spending time with an old friend I don't see often enough: Longreach is an awfully long way from Hobart.

Tuesday will be an exiting day though. Tuesday we head off to the Franklin River for our week of rafting. I'm very excited and just a little nervous. You'll hear all about it when I get back!

So Merry Christmas and Happy Festivus, my LJ friends. Thank you for journeying with me through what has been a very challenging but immensely rewarding year.

Much love,
T.

Cradle Mountain, with Myrtle Beech (Nothofagus cunninghamii) in leaf turn.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: @home

Last night the Awesome Hobart Kat came over. We drank wine and gin, ate sheep's cheese and curled up on the couch to watch Julie & Julia. It was an utterly lovely evening, however I temporarily forgot that alcohol is not my friend. I trundled off to bed a little after midnight, nicely tipsy and fell straight asleep, only to wake up at 4 am with a body too over-loaded with boozy sugars for sleep (and a brain that decided to fret over a small worry). Annoying! I finally accepted that I wasn't getting back to sleep at 5, so got up to enjoy the dawn and made cake.

Yes, half past 5 in the morning, on about 3 hours sleep. is clearly the time to start baking. I have a dozen Christmas cupcakes (bischoffsbrot, if you're wondering) in the oven now, plus a loaf of seed bread gently rising in the warmth. The cupcakes smell amazing, but I cannot try them! They are being baked as gifts for friends, and since I'm not eating them and Housemate had normal flour in the house they are made with wheat. After almost 5 years of cooking entirely gluten free it was very strange to bake with wheat. There was only one flour to measure! No getting the right ratio of corn starch to rice flour to soy flour, no adding xantham gum to bind; very odd indeed. I'd also forgotten how wheat batters handle: its so sticky! Hopefully they taste as good as they smell.

Once the bread is done I'll have to decide what to do with the rest of my day. I'd planned to go hiking, though I'm not sure how I'll manage on so little sleep and there's plenty of things I could be doing around the house. I'll venture out to the Farm Gate market when it opens at 9 to pick up some fresh local veggies and hopefully some goat (I haven't had goat in years, but I hear there's a new seller at the market with locally raised, happy Boer goats and Dorper lambs. Mmm, happy ethical meat is tasty!). I have an afternoon tea date with my new friend Norm, a retired geologist who lives out the back of Wellington, where I go walking, and gets a little lonely for company. Then I think I shall have a quiet evening and make an attempt at an early night. A decent night's sleep would be a very welcome anomaly.

Oh, cake is done. Onwards!

Current Mood: okay

Taiko! Why did I not take it up years ago? It's music, exercise and socialisation all wrapped up in one energising package and served with a dash of Japanese culture.

I missed the last two weeks of training due to sickness ( it's hard to drum when you can't breathe properly) so had a steep curve today to catch up to the rest of my class. I do so enjoy being challenged and stretched to the very edge of my capabilities. I made plenty of mistakes, but by the end of the class I had all the rhythms down and was managing at least a vague semblance of the more complicated forms. By the time we stopped my arms ached, I was covered in sweat and on a total taiko high.

The only downside is getting home at 9 o'clock and still needing to eat dinner and wind down enough to sleep at a reasonable hour.

Do-ko, don-do-kon!

Current Mood: high on taiko

I had forgotten that a swim could feel that good!

Woke up this morning with the urge to hit the pool. After almost 2 weeks of being too sick to do anything more strenuous than go for a walk it seemed a good idea to listen to my body. The pool was quiet and sinking into that blue, bubbled world was pure bliss. I don't know what happened, but after a couple of laps to clear the cobwebs and test out my lungs everything just clicked. My stroke corrected itself to be stronger and more powerful than ever before (I suspect taiko's helping): 50 metres has never felt so short!

I have no idea how far I swam; I didn't want to stop! Eventually I had to once my calves started cramping up. Now I'm tired but I feel amazing: really alive and physically present with a body that's working like it was born for this.

Feels good. =o)

Posted via m.livejournal.com.

It's an unseasonably hot, summery Hobart day, I have good friends visiting and an invitation to lunch from a family famed for excellent Chinese-Australian food. So what am I doing at home, faffing about on the internets?

Laryngitis. That's what I'm doing. Again.

After a week of living with the all-night spluttering I finally contracted Housemate's Hacking cough of Horror; however it got lost on the way to my bronchi and made itself at home in my larynx. Since I'd much rather a dose of laryngitis than a chest-full of lung butter I'm considering this a victory. My immune system has been making an heroic effort to fight this off while I've been out gallivanting around mind-bending museums and bucolic beaches, but today I just need to potter about quietly and gently nudge my life into order.

I don't really mind missing out on lunch, truth be told. I've had two-and-a-half days of near constant socialisation and was in serious need of time to myself. Social and outgoing as I am, I'm still an introvert at heart and I need my solo time to recharge.

So guests have been packed off with the car and I'm pottering around the house, refreshing my wilting garden (some of my herb seedlings cooked in the greenhouse yesterday - oops!) and generally enjoying a quiet Sunday around the house (and I did manage to take my guests out to the Farm Gate market this morning, where I stocked up on some amazing local produce, ran into the fantastic Nat and had a natter with Ross about Hobart Slow Food - a lovely way to spend an hour). Later there are plans for catching The Hunter at the State Cinema (special guest star: the Tasmanian landscape) plus, if I have the energy for it, experimenting with that possum meat for dinner.

But first, I need to hang out the washing...

Broken Pod, Adventure Bay, Bruny Island

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: @home

Hello! I have much I want to write about, but I have gone and made myself stupidly busy. Instead, here's a photo from the Hobart Botanic Gardens back in September. I can't quite get my head around it being November already later this week!

The work week just gone was busy, but in a good, productive way. My project is finally coming together, and I'm also doing some environmental auditing work which I'm finding surprisingly enjoyable. I got out on a site visit on Friday, and as always it was great to get out of the office and into the real world to talk to people and learn about how everything works. So a good week, but tiring after being away up in Scottsdale last weekend, visiting the estimable

flinthart clan, where it was discovered that bad marshmallows make for excellent blow-gun ammunition. A mighty battle, of course ensued.

As

flinthart himself explains it:

"The marshmallows were a bit disappointing, though. We thought we'd scored, when we found them in 'Chickenfeed' - a Tasmanian overflow store. I mean - they were plain! White! No nasty pink or yellow or swirly shit. What could go wrong?
Ah. Artificial vanillin. That's what could go wrong.
Tastes almost but not quite entirely unlike vanilla, to paraphrase the great Douglas Adams. Marshmallows shouldn't leave a bitter aftertaste, should they? Nor should they burn in quite the fashion these did. They were unnervingly like unto marshmallow, without actually being marshmallow, and even the kids gave up on them in short order.
Happily, we had some decent lengths of PVC tubing about. I took the opportunity to deliver a lesson in the use of the blowgun, using my children as moving targets, and rather nasty half-marshmallows as projectiles. The kids took to the idea with alacrity. They climbed the big swing-fort, and blatted marshmallows back at me. Meanwhile, Smileyfish grabbed a blowgun for herself, and ran around shooting at either side as the opportunity arose.
The whole situation was made more ludicrous by the marshmallows. They didn't quite fit. We had to tear them in half, and sometimes they still didn't fit, and sometimes they got sticky as hell. You never knew if you were going to successfully blast a marshmallow at your opponent, or perhaps blow up your own sinuses with back-pressure, or simply just make a sort of flubby, farting noise while a half-marshmallow vibrated its sticky way down your blowpipe and fell out the end with a pathetic sort of flup.
A good time was, therefore, had by all."

Genghis Flinthart prepares marshmallows for battle!

This weekend disappeared in a blur, despite setting time aside to chill out and relax. I was out Friday night (the date - more to come on that - plus drinks and conversation with friends) and Saturday night (dinner and Circus Oz with Kat), so I've been quite the dirty stop-out. Today I've put in a mammoth effort in the garden, doing about 8 hours work (and consequently could really use a massage). It's starting to look mighty fine out there, and I'm finding it surprisingly satisfying to be able to wander out and pick myself the fixings for a salad or some veggies for dinner. There's still much more to do though: the back yard is a total disaster. It's pretty much bedrock back there, so it's not worth the effort of trying to grow anything, and until recently almost nothing at all grew there, which kept it very low maintenance. But now the big gum trees are gone, the sun shines down there, and with a thick layer of sawdust still covering everything, there's nutrient and substrate enough for life to find a foothold. The result: weed central. *sigh*

The garden will have to wait a while though: my old Brisbane friends B&A are coming to visit this week! They're arriving Thursday afternoon, and I'm taking the Friday off to lose myself in weird art at MONA, which I'm really looking forward to. Saturday, I'm planning on taking them over to Bruny Island if the weather's fine, then Sunday is slated as a day of feeding my friends a veritable feast of the finest in Tassie produce.

In fact, I don't seem to a have an un-booked weekend now until December. Given I have a massive end-of-year deadline as well, the rest of 2011 is looking pretty crammed. As well as work, guests and other adventures, there's swimming Tuesday nights, Taiko on Wednesdays, and brass band on Mondays if and when I get my act together. Somewhere in there I need to fit in catching up with friends I don't see often enough, keeping on top of the domestic front and getting enough time in the forest to keep me sane. Good thing I thrive on challenges, then!

I hope your weekends were filled with all kinds of goodness. Samsara people: can't wait to here how it went!

Much love,
T.

Current Mood: bouncy

Bah! I am annoyed with myself for making some silly choices this weekend. Now it's almost bed-time, I'm only just eating dinner and I haven't finished the jobs I wanted to get done this weekend. On top of that I'm tired, by body clock is out of whack and my digestive system is decidedly unimpressed with what I've been feeding it. Still, my dinner is tasty & healthy, the worst chores are done and my euphonium is greased, oiled and in top working condition for my nervous foray to join the local brass band tomorrow night.

It really is silly, y'know? I stayed up til nearly dawn both Friday night and last night for no good reason at all. Or more accurately, for a very silly reason indeed. And I ate things I shouldn't have because I was awake so late. Now I've got a big few days in front of me and I'm starting on the back foot. I really do need to get better at this!

I did try to go for a walk up on Wellington today, despite being tired and sleeping late. I was, however, thwarted by the weather. Snow! In mid October. It was so very pretty, but also wet and windy and I really wasn't dressed for that kind of weather. I ran around in it with a big, stupid grin on my face until the damp seeped through my cotton trousers and I decided I'd better head home and warm up.

Right, time to do the dishes, put away the ironing and tuck myself up in bed. Tomorrow is coming, ready or not.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: intermittent rain

I missed work on Thursday and Friday, feeling down and out with a viral infection and a cantankerous digestive system. Much sleep was had and I was feeling better by Saturday morning, but still not up to my usual standards of weekend business. So a slow-paced, relaxed weekend was had and the housework ignored, allowed to back up for another week.

Saturday morning I slept late then wandered into town, pleased to leave the house for the first time in days. I hit up Salamanca markets in search of a new heat pack, but came home instead with a punnet each of snap-pea tatsoi and spinach seedlings. I then met up with new friend D, a lovely woman from Melbourne who owns a property here in the sleepy village of Hamilton, whom I met on the plane on my last flight back home. We grabbed sushi for lunch then wandered over to the Hobart Botanic Gardens to check out the Spring Festival (verdict: an event best left for breeders as it was rather kid-centric, but there were some interesting displays on veggie gardening that were useful). After getting caught in a downpour on the way back to the car I came home, set up the little plastic greenhouse I'd bought a couple of weeks ago and potted out the morning's acquisitions.

The evening was spend digesting a generous dinner of grilled fish, baked root veggies and sauteed greens, curled up on the couch with a Discworld novel.

Another sleep-in this morning^{^}, then I was up and off to check out the Hobart Farm Gate market, which I'd heard had improved since last time I'd bothered. It's still tiny, over-priced and over-gourmet, but yes it's getting better and I spent far more than I'd been intending to. I came home with 5 tomato seedlings, 4 rocket seedlings and some sea-celery, a native herb, as well as 3 succulents to pot up for my desk at work, some new-season pink-eye potatoes, salad greens and a small pot of goat's curd. Nom. I also brought some usual meat from a man who's turning necessary, licenced culling of native animals into an interesting butchery business, selling wallaby and possum. I've eaten wallaby before (and actually chow down on kangaroo fairly regularly), but have not yet tried possum, so I came home with a little frozen pouch of each and will be trying my hand at possum stew sometime soon. D had success recently with a possum pie, which encouraged me to give it a go.

Hopefully you're not too horrified at the idea of eating the local wildlife. The way I see it, sheep and cattle do terrible things to Australian soils, which just aren't designed to cope with hardened hooves and close-cropped grazing. I've seen first-hand the effects of over-grazing on our delicate pastures. Added to that is the cruelty involved in large-scale farming and the colon-cancer link to beef and I eat as little meat at possible, trying hard to source sustainably raised. Since I do actually eat meat, I try to make my protein sources as environmentally friendly and sustainable as possible, happily nomming on feral deer and rabbit, or tucking into a tasty roo fillet or some organic, free-range chicken or pork once every week or two. Since wallabies and possums are subject to population control via culling on nearby Bruny Island, it makes sense to use the meat. These animals lived free, healthy lives and died quickly. I think they're going to be tasty!

After the market it was home again to do yet more potting-out of my latest veggie aquisitions. Since the weather's currently bi-polar, swinging between gorgeously warm and antarctic chills, everything went in the little greenhouse, which is rather full. This should also serve to protect my tasty seedlings from the ravages of the hoard of snails currently infesting my garden. I loathe to use poisons, so generally have a live-and-let-live policy to most garden pests. I'm happy to sacrifice a leaf here and there to the balanced garden ecosystem. This year, however, the snails have been into everything: my kale turned to lacework overnight. So I've taken to going around the garden once or twice a week, collecting up the snails I can find and causing mass mollusc carnage by the application of boiling water. I must have picked up at least 50 of the slimy critters yesterday. Poor things, I feel so guilty topping them, but when my greens are constantly nibbled back to stubs I feel I must take action.

Once the weather's more consistently warm and the snail numbers have died down I'm going to have to find room in my tiny garden for all my tasty seedlings. As well as the veggies in the greenhouse I have dill, coriander, Italian parsley, garlic chives and chillis coming up in the germinator. It's going to be crowded out there! Oh how I wish I wasn't renting, so I could dig out all the pointless ornamentals and make a proper garden out of this place (I'd murder for some citrus trees). The things I could grow! I've definitely contracted the gardening bug this year. It works in so well with the whole low-impact, sustainable lifestyle I'd like to cultivate for myself.

Gardening done, I ran away from the icy wind and rain outside, taking refuge in my kitchen and whizzing up a batch up roasted garlic hummus. Oh my! I am never, ever buying hummus again. Yum!

Leaving my kitchen untidy and muddy shoe-prints over the floor, I decided to head out for the afternoon to visit my fantastic friend N after skipping her birthday dinner on Friday night due to feeling unwell. Armed with a tub of hummus and an edible bouquet of tasty things from my garden I set off for a pleasant few hours of drinking blueberry tea and nattering. Now I'm home, fed and procrastinating about doing the dishes and cleaning the floors. Plus there's clean laundry to put away, ironing to be done and the house is in need of general cleaning and tidying. Oh how a hot shower and a night curled up with Granny Weatherwax becons...

^ I've been ridiculously tired the last couple of weeks, sleeping far more than I usually would. Coupled with the vitamin deficiency I'm getting a little concerned and will make a doctor's appointment this week to get everything checked out. It might be something, or it might be the last 9 months of frantic business finally catching up with me. Either way, I'm incredibly grateful for finding myself with 3 weeks in a row of quiet weekends and minimal commitments and I'm rather enjoying just losing myself in a book or lazing in the sunshine. Novel but nice, and I'll know I'm feeling better when I start getting bored.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: ABC Classic FM

Tomorrow morning I pack my bags once more and fly home to Hobart. I have had a most excellent little holiday, but I am ready to be home again now. I've had a chance to put my brain back together a little better and I think I'm ok to cope with my day-to-day reality once more.

I am tired, my muscles are a little sore and after 6 days of laryngitis-induced near-silence I finally have my voice more-or-less back. Grand adventures have been had and shall be posted about once I'm home and have sorted out the photos. I'm on an alcohol and cheese break as of now for the next month or so while my body recovers from the abuse and neglect of the last 3 weeks (work trip to Brisbane, back in Hobart but too sick to do anything, then far too much wine & cheese in Victoria).

Life, eh?

Current Mood: content
Current Location: Melbourne

If the slide's been long and all downhill, or you're bogged down in that sinking feeling;
When hope is sometimes hard to find, and it's been so long since the sun was shining;
Recall there's only so far you can fall before the ground comes up to meet you;
And sometimes when you're stuck down there, profound truths will come to greet you;
Take from the journey all you can, though you may not know it's value until later,
It is the trials that make the man, and these struggles will make you greater;
But above all this, please do remember, when you hit rock bottom to take a minute
And look back up on where you've fallen from to see there may be beauty in it.

xoxo

Y'know, having the 'flu is very, very dull.

On the plus side, at least I'm getting some time to chill out at home. Shame it's cold, wet and grey-grey-grey.

Bleh.

Current Mood: sick

There’s a hole in my heart where the rain gets in, and the weather’s been inclement.

I’m feeling rather waterlogged and the smell is quite unpleasant.

The drainage works are underway, a patch is in the planning,

I’m sketching out a new design, but lately it won’t stop raining!

***

It's not a slump, a temporary state of affairs to be suffered through. It's a major shift, tectonic.

I discovered my map of 'how life works' was faulty, so I tore it up, and now I need to figure out (a) where I am, (b) where I want to be, and (c) how to get there. That means poking at everything that hurts to work out why,and grabbing onto everything that makes me smile to work out why (and hopefully not destroying it in the process). I'm ferreting around in my head to see what parts of the mental map were broken (Oh look, I have co-dependent behaviours. Ooh, I over-value a sense of security. Hey, when confronted with uncertainty I try to over-control everything else in my life.) and trying to re-wire them better.

This is slow, hard, painful work and I am an impatient person. There’s not enough shiny stuff going on right now to balance out the ledger, so occasionally I'm sinking down into the mire. But I WILL GET THERE! I will not keep cycling through the same faulty patterns again and again.

Things are changing. I just need to work out the shape of things to come.

Current Mood: determined

I live in a nice house, in a nice, quiet area, with good neighbours and excellent landlords. It's a luxurious house, really, by my standards. It's bigger and newer and prettier than I need (though really not well designed). But it's not a home.

Home is a place where the neighbourhood has it's own culture of integration, a community where people care to know you and look out for you.

Home is a place where friends and neighbours drop in for a cuppa when they're passing, or drop off some garden herbs or home-baked treats.

Home is a place that nourishes the soul as well as sheltering the body, a place warm with shared laughter and dreams, watered by tears wept with company.

Home is where you come to visit, and I feed us and we laugh and hug and dream of bigger futures and it doesn't matter if the paint's peeling or the door is cracked and I can hang my pictures on the walls and wander through the garden that's just a little over-grown and rambling in an enchanted kind of way. It's the place where the light slides in all golden and buttery, burnished like a well-loved soul, and the outside tries to follow it to feed on the joy that flourishes inside.

I want a home to go to.

Current Mood: thoughtful

The lesson about balance would seem to be one I need to keep learning.

Life is complicated, scary, messy, joyous and beautiful.

Current Mood: amused

I knew I'd been pushing it, my mind, my body, my spirit. I came home from Melbourne teetering on the brink of total exhaustion, ready to collapse. Yet I did not stop.

More change, more challenges, more rapacious consumption of all life has to offer.

I've started a new job, new office, new career direction, new routine.
I've worked with my careers advisor, mapping what I want to do, where I want to go.
I've sought feedback and constructive criticisms from my previous workplace, deconstructing my ego and learning painful lessons.
I've hiked and danced and moved until my body would do no more.
I've grieved for the loss of the good times Alex and I shared, for the dreams that never came to pass.
I've sought out friends and social engagements, strengthening my little circle.
I've thought about and pondered my relationships, in all their splendid complexities.
I've decided that I am exactly the person I choose to be.

And in the process of doing, learning, choosing and loving I have pushed myself too far. Physical, mental, emotional collapse.

Now it is time to exhale. To retreat a little, fold in on myself, gather up my loose ends and weave them back together.

I need to remember how to rest, how to give myself the time and space I need to process everything I've learned. Reminding myself that taking down time is a need, not an option; that it's ok to let go for a little while. It's so hard when I feel like I'm missing out on moments of living; that opportunities and adventures are passing me by.

I need to love and care for myself.

I can't remember the last time I slept properly.

x

Current Mood: hopeful

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Shape of Things to Come

November 2020

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Page generated Jun. 11th, 2025 08:06 pm

the quiet revolution

inspiration, aspiration, motivation

Entries tagged with life

Sumimasen to the squeamish

Costly choices

(no subject)

Never enough hours, no matter what I do

Tie up your shoelaces

The world turns, the days shorten

Sleep FAIL

Bang your drum

Aqua-baby

Immune-flail

At least I'm keeping out of trouble...

~o0o~

Another quiet weekend

Homeward bound

Bottoming out

(no subject)

Notes from the frontier

Somewhere to come home to

Blue Monday

Whoops