The penultimate post - NaBloPoMo as therapy

This posting every day business is hard. I hesitated to sign up for NaBloPoMo this year because I haven't been terribly well in the mental health department lately. I'm on anti-depressants and they are helping but I still feel quite fragile and don't have as many spoons as I'd like to spread around. When I'm down I tend not to post as much, my commenting on other people's blogs dries up and eventually my tweet rate slows as well (that's the last to go, 140 characters I can usually manage). I also stop reading books.

Back in August I set myself a goal of posting a decluttering story every day in the hope that it would a) get the house cleaned up and b) bootstrap me out of the depression by forcing me to engage online. A fake it till you make it ploy. The house did get a bit more organised and I did post most days in August, but in September and October with 3 and 6 posts respectively I was right back to hibernating again. The things I had hoped we'd achieve by the end of September are almost all done, a mere 2 months late, but the house doesn't look even a little bit tidy. Moving rooms full of stuff around creates chaos, I'm going to have to start the decluttering and tidying process all over again once we have everything settled in place.

I rather suspect that without the impetus of NaBloPoMo I'd not have been engaging with people online very much at all this last month, it's been a difficult time even without the depression. I'm glad that I was motivated to post about my visiting my Grandma and saying goodbye to her and that I was able to share the story of her life. I've enjoyed looking through old photos and I've even written a few posts that I'm quite proud of: my thoughts on turning 40, the one about swimming and my sentimental tea post.

I love being part of the little corner of the blogging and tweeting community that I've settled in, that there are so many people out there who are full of love and acceptance and caring for others, with whom I can share stupid geeky jokes and from whom I can learn so much and who are so supportive and understanding. It takes a certain amount of effort to reach out and engage and sometimes I don't feel able to do that, but the benefit I get from making that effort is huge. So I'm glad I drove myself to do it this month, even though I didn't feel like it, thank you NaBoPoMo for not letting me give up and an even bigger thank you to everyone who has read my posts, left a comment or chatted with me on Twitter - you're all awesome.

Now I just have to figure out how I'm going to keep myself going through December...

50 Things post No. 45

Enough about me, let's talk about you for a while

I suspect I already know a fair bit about most of my lovely readers, given that if you comment here and blog yourself then I try to make sure I visit your little corner of the net too.

However, indulge me anyway (especially if you haven't commented before!), say hello and tell me a little about yourself? Pretty please?

Feel free to ramble in any way you like, or if you prefer you could answer the following questions:

Who are you?
How did you find my blog?
What keeps you reading?
What, if anything, would you like to see more posts about?
Should I do a Christmas blog giveaway of a gift voucher for my shop?
What is your favourite colour?
What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

50 Things

Via Kath at Sleepydumpling

I think the 50 things challenge started life as a challenge to write a list of 50 things on one topic, but the version Kath is blogging requires writing your own list of 50 topics, followed by a post on each of them. As it turns out coming up with the list is proving a non-trivial challenge in itself.

1. 40
2. Swimming
3. What are you reading?
4. What are you watching?
5. Learning
6. Pets
7. School
8. Do you work?
9. Volunteering
10. An ode to Vegemite
11. Grandparents
12. Music
13. Mum taxi
    
14. Shopping
15. How I met your father
16. Camping
17. Sleeping
18. Dried leaves in boiling water
19. Comfort food
20. The first movie I remember seeing
21. David
22. Creativity
23. Friends
24. Christmas
25. Simple pleasures
26. Public speaking
27. It's all rather confusing really
28. Outside my comfort zone
29. Shoes
30. Birthdays
31. Childhood friends
32. Sex
33. Historical reenactment
34. Pizza
35. Tom
36. Teachers
37. Singing
38. Caitlin
39. Travel
40. Happiness
41. Adam
42. Gaming
43. Television
44. Theatre
45. Mental health
46. Stars
47. Cake
48. Dancing
49. Surprises
50. Blogging

I doubt I'll do all these consecutively and possibly not in this order either, so we'll see how long it takes me to get to the end of the list - could be quite some time!

Seriously though, why NaBloPoMo?

I made reference in my first post this month to the fact that I've been blogging very little of late (ok, most of the year) and I'm sure I've mentioned before that not blogging and not posting comments usually means I'm not traveling too well. I did think twice about signing up for my third bash at daily posting for a month. Would it be too much pressure? Could I come up with something to say each day? What if, instead of inspiring me, the commitment ended up being another source of stress in my life?

Reality check: No one other than me is going to give a rat's arse whether I manage it or not - get a grip woman, if you're not having fun, stop!

So, why am doing NaBloPoMo again? Because it's fun and challenging, because it nurtures new connections out there in the blogosphere and each time I do it I find new friends, or they find me, because I value the blogging community and want to participate in something that helps build that community and because it feels damn good to set an achievable goal and reach it. And I could do with that feeling around a bit more often.

There's a great tool for finding some of those new friends - go have a play with the NaBloPoMo Randomizer which will take you wandering though randomly selected blogs from the blogroll of NaBloPoMo participants. Drop in on anyone who catches your eye and leave a comment, there's nothing like lots of comments to stoke the blogging fires. I'm adding my randomizer finds to a NaBloPoMo folder in Google Reader so I can come back and see how they're going each day.

If you're doing NaBloPoMo this year and you want to show some appreciation for the lovely Eden of Fussy who organises the event, visit the NaBloPoMo site and drop a coin or two in the tip jar (the donate link is in the right-hand sidebar).

Interview at The Mum Files

The lovely Lisa asked me if I'd be willing to be interviewed for a guest spot on The Mum Files, I thought long and hard for...oh 2.3 seconds?...and said "yes, of course!"

Anyway, it went up last night, so if my sudden flood of content here in the last few days hasn't been enough for you perhaps you'd like to click over to my interview at The Mum Files and say hello.

Bootstraps, I has 'em

Now I just need to work out how to haul myself up by them.

Some of you may have noticed a distinct lack of new content around these parts of late (go on, please say you've noticed?), poor old June has a mere 3 posts to its name! I think it's time I did something about that, don't you?

It's not like I haven't had time really, there have been plenty of hours during which I have sat with my laptop on my knee and wandered around the blogosphere thinking to myself "I should post a comment there" or "ooo! I should post on that too" and sometimes I click into the comment box or open a new post in Blogger and then sit there with no words coming until I click away again. Apparently my brain has been able to manage the intent to write but not the act of doing so.

Work has been busy, much busier and more overwhelming than I'd signed up for when I took the job, but I'm enjoying the work and the people in the office are lovely. Plus we've just got ourselves another pair of hands in to take over some of the stuff that Jen and I were simply not getting around to, so my to do list suddenly got a lot shorter.

Kid and school stuff has swallowed a fair bit of time and energy recently too. There was the Family Fun Day at the school weekend before last - rides, stalls, art show, raffle, auctions - a huge production and although I'm not much involved with the organising, as P&C president I try to be around and do whatever I can. The kids have taken turns at being sick on and off all term, David is at home coughing up a lung today, but luckily none of it has been anything worse than a bad cold (and, yes, they shared with me too).

This weekend we have Tom's Drama class performances of Midnite by Randolph Stow. It's a great book so I'm really looking forward to seeing the show. They do a 3:30pm and 6:30pm show and I've committed to cooking scones, serving supper at the first show, helping backstage at the second show and taking some of the costumes home to wash after the shows. Yes, I'm a twit.

Last week Caitlin auditioned for Annie, we haven't heard back from them yet but she seemed to have fun doing the audition, there was lots of smiling and hugs and her telling me she loves me and that I'm a wonderful mum. (Apparently because I took her to the audition, and possibly because when we came out of the audition and it was raining, I danced around singing "I'm singing in the rain..." in front of all the other kids and parents which she rather oddly seemed to think was ok and cool and not embarrassing at all.)

The dog tried to kill the small grey cat this morning. Unfortunately my leg was in the way so she ended up with a mouthful of my calf instead of cat. High speed staffy teeth hurt even when there's no actual biting involved, just a collision. Clara subsequently spent a good 20 minutes sitting on the landing half-way down the stairs wearing the most abject expression of contrition I have ever seen and begging with her big brown eyes for my forgiveness.

Here's what it looked like this morning, the bruise is developing nicely as the day goes on.

Just a few minutes prior to this incident I'd been admiring how well Clara and Jack were getting on as big brown dog ever so gently nuzzled up to huge fluffy ginger cat, tail wagging and politely asking if he'd like to play. Jack will now tolerate having his bum sniffed and will touch noses in greeting before wandering off again. Samantha turns into hissing, snarling, scratching hell cat whenever Clara comes in sight - hence the homicide attempt. Still got some work to do there.

The second unit of DVD shelves is in place and we have 6 empty shelves ready to accommodate future growth in our collection. Adam has also catalogued the entire collection on his laptop, we own a little less than 500 titles but a significant proportion of those are boxsets so there's well over 500 disks. Bit of a worry really...

As for the bootstraps thing, I figure I'd better stop waiting for the muse and just bloody well write something every day, mundane or otherwise!

Why it's more than a week!

As I brought up my poor neglected blog to contemplate perhaps, possibly, perchance actually posting something, into my head popped "it's more than a week!" instantly followed by an inner recitation of the following*:

Emmeline
Has not been seen
For more than a week. She slipped between
The two tall trees at the end of the green...
We all went after her. "Emmeline!"

All the way through to:

Where have you been?
Why it's more than a week!" And Emmeline
Said, "Sillies, I went to see the Queen.
She says my hands are purfickly clean!"

Now, my hands are indeed purfickly clean but I can't claim to have seen the Queen recently - or indeed ever, not that I harbour any such ambitions being inclined to the view that Australia really ought to detach itself from the British monarchy if only we can work out a way to do so without completely stuffing up our system of government...but I digress - rather I have been expending all my blogging mojo on building a blog for the school P&C (here).

Anyway, if you're another person who finds their life being narrated by involuntary poetry, or are prone to occasional public recitations, you might like to peruse this post over on In a Strange Land, I'm enjoying the discussion happening there.

Meanwhile I shall try to cease being Bisy and promise to be Backson.

*It's Before Tea by A. A. Milne, instead of music earworms I get poetry earworms.

Interview time

I've been a little slow with this one! Back at the end of January Liz at Eternal Lizdom invited her readers to request an interview from her, which I duly did. Shortly afterwards, her questions arrived in my inbox and I opened a draft post, began to write, got stuck and it's been sitting there ever since. Today I determined to finish - and here it is.

This is one of those pass-it-on meme type things so if you want me to interview you, leave a comment and say “Interview me!” and I'll send you 5 questions to answer. Liz also invited her readers to ask their own questions of her, that seems fun too so if there's anything you want to know about me, ask away!

Now, on to the interview:

1. What's in your fridge? What do you have to always have in your kitchen? Brave enough to share a picture of your fridge or pantry?

I like having a well stocked fridge and pantry so the answer to both of the first two parts of this is usually much the same. These are things that are in my fridge pretty much all the time: milk, cheeses (low fat slices, fetta, brie, smoked cheddar, edam), ham, salami, devon, butter, margarine, eggs, bacon, pickles (dill, sweet mustard, onions), mustards (dijon, wholegrain, american), kalamata olives, capers, anchovies, juices (breakfast, lemon, lime), salad dressings (balsamic, coleslaw), sauces (soy, fish, oyster, sweet & sour, worcestershire, tartare, cocktail, tomato, BBQ) mayonnaise, spreads (jams, lemon curd, lime marmalade), minced garlic, chili paste, wasabi, carrots, tomatoes, baby spinach, cos lettuce, shallots, cucumber, broccoli, mushrooms, lemons, grapes, apples, low fat sour cream, yoghurt.

Here's a photo of my fridge post-party after yesterday's BBQ, the bottle of Coke makes me cringe, I hate the stuff, but the containers full of left-overs will make meals today nice and easy.

My pantry I hate, it's a horrible design with half the shelving tucked into the corner on the left and accessible only by people with extra long arms and x-ray vision.



The oven used to be above the bench beside the pantry, when I got a new one it wouldn't fit in the same spot so Adam built these shelves for me to sit in the now empty space. My pantry shelves go right back to the wall behind the spice rack.

2. What's your parenting philosophy? Do you wish there was something you'd done differently? What concerns do you have as you move forward in your parenting journey?

I don't know that I've ever tried to articulate what I do as a parent in terms of a philosophy. I've just done what felt right, what worked. I listen to them to find out what they need. I've always explained why when I'm asking something of them. I'm honest and open with them, if I'm grumpy and impatient I'll tell them I know I'm over-reacting to things and that I'm sorry (but that they'd better bloody well cut it out or my head will explode!) I tell them I love them all the time. I make a conscious effort to notice and say thank you when they do good things. I tell them how proud I am when they make an honest effort at something.

The one thing I wish we'd done differently was not to have bought so many gorram toys. We indulged them because we could and we paid for it. Kids who think they are entitled to stuff are not pleasant creatures. I had to do some pretty heavy-handed deprogramming on that front when David was about 6. Even now they have a habit of assuming that pretty much anything is theirs for the asking and then being terribly put out when we don't deliver. I'm often heard exclaiming "Which part of "NO" are you having trouble understanding?!" (Actually I exaggerate, they're not too bad now.)

I'm looking forward to watching them grow up (a lot!) and as we approach the teen years I'm conscious of the need to keep communication lines open and of the potential difficulties that come with negotiating the transition from authority figure to friend. I hope that I've established a strong enough foundation of trust and respect between us that when the hormones kick in it doesn't get too horrific! But mostly I just plan on taking things as they come.

3. I know you love to read. What 5 books have had the greatest impact on your life?

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien - I read The Hobbit when I was 8 years old and we were living in the US for a few months. It led me to read The Lord of the Rings as soon as we got back to Australia and my Dad could dig out his old copy - a single volume paperback edition. I took 3 months to read TLOTR and it was the beginning of my love for SF&F. (As I sit in the lounge room with my laptop the kids have the Return of the King DVD on, I keep getting distracted and watching the movie instead of writing.)

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut - my first encounter with serious hard sci-fi, this was lent to me by my year 7 English teacher.

The Bible - does that seem an odd pick for an atheist? I grew up as a member of the Uniting Church (an organisation for which I stil have a great deal of respect), my understanding of human nature, my ethics and my morality have as a foundation things I learned from reading and discussing the Bible as a child and teenager. It would be dishonest of me to leave this complicated, beautiful, terrible, very human book off this list.

One day, possibly when I was still in primary school, maybe early high school, I picked up a book from my parents' shelves, the title of which I don't even remember. It was a history of and comparison of religions. Learning about the history of religions and the huge variety (and also the sameness) of religious thought across time and cultures was both fascinating and enlightening.

I'm going to have to stop at 4 because I can't pick out any other single book as having had a notably significant impact for me. Everything I read teaches me something, that's one of the things I love about it.

4. What is your Aussie impression of the US? If you could have a 5 minute, private conversation with President Obama, what would you tell him? What do you want Americans to know about Australia?

Oh my. This one's a bit tricky. See, my last in person experience of the US, back in 1985 was as a miserable 14 year old who had been dragged away from her first boyfriend to come and live in Boulder, Colorado for 5 months while her father was on sabbatical and working at NCAR and the HAO. I hated it. My favourite shows were not on TV, and we had no money to spare so we didn't have cable. I felt out of place at school because the subjects everyone else was doing didn't match up well with the Australian curriculum and I ended up with a very peculiar timetable which had me spending time with and befriending people who were up to 3 years older than me. On the up side one one of those older friends saved my sanity by turning out to be a D&D playing, sci-fi reading geek and thus a veritable soul-mate. Plus, she lent me all her Alan Dean Foster books to read - thanks Kris, I wish I'd managed to keep in touch with you back in the days of snail-mail.

Erm, I'm rambling.

I don't see the US as a monolithic entity that it would be reasonable to make any blanket statements about. I feel resentment at the ubiquitous American cultural influence on Australia but I have a passionate love of certain American TV shows. I hated the way the Howard government sucked up to the Bush government but I know that Australia does benefit in certain ways from a close diplomatic relationship with the US (there are some big disadvantages too unfortunately). I'm disturbed by the level of hatred shown by some sections of the US population to other human beings but I know there are people just as bad here in Australia (and everywhere else) and that there are many Americans who fight every day for an end to such prejudices.

If I was to be in a position to speak privately to Obama I think I'd be hard pressed to think of anything to say beyond "Good luck, watch your back and please, please, please bite the bullet and get universal health care happening for the US!"

What do I want Americans to know about Australia? Hmm, let's see...I know! You know all those stories about Australia's dangerous, deadly wildlife? They're ALL TRUE! Especially the one about drop bears. Also, Vegemite is the most delicious thing ever and you must try it one day.

5. Why do you blog? What got you started? What do you get out of it?

For me blogging is a creative outlet, a way of participating in a community and a way to record things that I don't want to forget.

Way back in my teens I was a pretty regular diarist (note to self: you really should dig those old diaries out and get rid of at least some of them - yes, I've still got them) but I hadn't done any journaling for years. I didn't keep a pregnancy diary, I never filled in those Baby Books I was given when the kids were born and I was an absolutely chronic at forgetting to bring the camera when we went out somewhere.

When I started Weight Watchers (again) back in Feb '06 I got involved with the forums. WW, in their wisdom, has very limited forums - no pics, peculiar defaults for the display and sorting of topics and threads etc - so many people were keeping a blog to document their "weight loss journey" and I hopped right on board. When I look back over the first, say, 18 months or so of my blog I'm sometimes tempted to do some pruning. There's a lot of stuff in there that irritates or saddens me now but there's also a bunch of kinda cool stuff too and my past is part of who I am today so I baulk at getting rid of it.

By now I'm thoroughly hooked on the journaling aspect of blogging, I'm now prone to responding to events by reaching for my camera and thinking "I have to blog this!" (I'm not always quick enough with the camera though.) I have visions of the kids, or indeed myself, reading this stuff years from now (to which end I may use this one day). I love being part of the blogging community. I love the laughter, learning, challenges to think, companionship, the chance to commune with like minded people, the discovery of common ground in diversity.

And I get a huge kick out of the fact that there are people out there who have never met me and actually want to read what I write.

Yeah, time to 'fess up, it's all about the ego boost folks. So leave comments dammit!

Absolutely Fabulous

Break out the Bolly folks, I have it on good authority that this blog is just fabulous darling. (Sorry, can't read the word "fabulous" without hearing it in my mind à la Ab Fab) Anyhoo, thank you so much Liz, I'm very flattered :-)

There are rules associated with this blog award: Name 5 other fabulous blogs and share 5 things that you find fabulous.

So, first up, 5 Fabulous Blogs.
(This having to choose thing? It is hard!)

1. Hoyden About Town - Down to earth Down Under feminism from Tigtog and Lauredhel, and a fabulous commenting community.
2. In a Strange Land - Deborah is a Kiwi transplanted to South Australia blogging about feminism, parenting and politics.
3. Sophie in the Moonlight - Heart wrenching, courageous and full of hope, Sophie shares her experiences of being bipolar.
4. A Room of Mama's Own - MPJ's writing is full of her fierce love for her family as she blogs about autism, addiction and self-discovery.
5. Grab Your Fork - Whenever I read one of Helen's delectable posts I end up ravenous, quite apart form anything else there's all these gorgeous photos of food.

And now, 5 things I find fabulous.

1. Misty mornings, or any time of the day really. Especially when camping. When we went to Beorg-wic back in October there was one afternoon when the clouds rolled down into the valley, settled over the campsite and turned the whole forest into a magical misty realm.


2. Hot chocolate milk with butterscotch schnapps.


3. Ocean waves breaking against the rocks. I could spend ages just sitting and looking down from the cliff tops on North Head.


4. Hugs from my kids. Every afternoon when I pick the kids up from school each of them comes straight up to me in the playground for a big hug and kiss, even my gorgeous 11 year old boy. I reckon that's pretty special. Every night at bed-time they all still want mummy hugs in bed. I hope we will always have hugs for each other. (I still get and give hugs with my mum and dad.)


5. Stanton and Killeen Grand Muscat. OMG so good. The first time Adam and I tried this, a few years ago, we'd just bought a mixed case of their wines at the cellar door and were offered a free tasting (usually you'd pay to taste this one). We looked at the price and regretfully chose to be sensible, leaving without buying a bottle. Half an hour later we were driving along the Hume Highway still savouring the aftertaste and saying to each other "we SO should have bought some!" So I got him a bottle for Christmas a few weeks later.
   

Never do anything by halves

Or even just plain old wholes apparently.

Somehow NaBloPoMo's 30 posts in 30 days turned into 41 posts in 30 days. What can I say? Once you're floundering for something of interest to post pretty much anything starts to look post-worthy! It's been fun, I've found new blogs to read and I've spent way too much time sitting on the lounge with my laptop on my knee and the dog cuddled up against my leg and there's been a whole heap of new traffic here in my little corner of the net. It's been lovely to "meet" those of you who have left comments, thank you for dropping by :)

Now, I suppose I'd better get on with the stuff on my to do list for today, first up - wash the dog!

Questions people ask

Every now and then, when I'm futzing around doing nothing much I pull up the keyword searches that bring visitors to my blog. I'm sometimes disappointed that it's really not that interesting but then perhaps it's better not to be regarded as an expert on the matter of ugly underarms.

BBQs. Quite a number of people end up here looking for the Beefmaster bmh4cs BBQ. What they get is one of my menu plans. For the record, it's a good BBQ, we're pretty happy with it.

There's a whole bunch of folks who want to know how to fix a flyscreen, don't look at me, that one's still broken a whole year later!

My roast pumpkin and couscous salad is getting quite a few hits, I wonder if anyone ever uses the recipe. Traffic to the fruit mince pies recipe is picking up again, 'tis the season and all. For those of you looking for vegan fruit mince pies, I'll get ZB on the case and we'll get back to you ok?

Speaking of the season, my Firefly Christmas poem is still finding new readers on occasion.

The Evil League of Evil and its high achieving leader Bad Horse send an awful lot of people my way, I hope they enjoy the screen caps.

This I have no clue about: "middle age indulgences tinsel". The mind boggles.

Oh, and folks, 3 hours sleep is definitely not enough. Do you really need to ask?

Appreciation

Dina has given me my very first blog award, and given the nature of it I really ought to bounce it straight back at her - thank you Dina! - but that's not how these things work. Instead I get to pass it on to others and spread the blog love around.

So here's my thank you to all the lovely people who come regularly to visit me here and reassure me that I'm not just casting my messages in internet bottles adrift on a shore-less sea. Here, have a flower and know that I appreciate you :)

Ariane
Deborah
Em
Heather
Ingrid
Lisa aka Indii
Mary P Jones
Megan
Mel
Nat
Susan
Suze
Tracee
Trisha
ZB

I had to draw the line somewhere so I somewhat arbitrarily settled on anyone who has commented 6 times or more in the last 6 months. Believe me when I say I appreciate everyone who visits whether they comment or not, I see you there in my stats and it's lovely to have you here :)

Seems maybe I did break the blog...

...but only a little bit.

Commenting wasn't working for some people for a bit there, it should be ok now though. If it's not working for you please do send me an email!

Everyone needs a cheer squad

I know a couple of my readers (multitude that you are :P) are joining the NaBloPoMo challenge and there's nothing like regular comments to keep those posts coming. If you've got a moment click on over to these fine folks and say hi sometime, or lots of times even.

• Em at Shrinking Yoda, check out her cute kid and the costume she made for him. It's been a while since Em was blogging regularly and I'm looking forward to the coming bounty of posts.

• Dina at The Girl Who Wished She Was Australian, US dwelling lover of all things Aussie, including Vegemite!

Is there anyone else who has signed up to NaBloPoMo? Let us know in the comments, I wouldn't want anyone being left out. In fact, even if you're not NaBloing, pimp your blog anyway, the more the merrier!