Hello Queensland, here we come. We're moving North...

Blow the trumpets and bang the drum - The Phone of Destiny has finally rung and we'll be moving to Queensland in January! 

Woo-hoo and hallelujah!

For the past few weeks my Beloved's phone has been constantly at hand as we awaited The Phone Call.Whether pulling down a shed or inserting a cannula my Beloved has been on constant alert.* 

Of course, it was the day we decided that we wouldn't be hearing for another few weeks that The Phone of Destiny finally rang.My Beloved - the med-student, soon to be ex-med-student# -  will start his internship in his hometown in Queensland.

We have had all our fingers and toes crossed for this and have been hoping like mad. Much as I appreciate the green rolling hills of Gippsland and the beauty of the changing seasons down here, these four years have been a brutal and often lonely slog and we're both desperate to be close to family and friends.

My head is a mess of schools and kindies to enrol in, packing up the house, removalists and storage. We'll be staying with my Beloved's folks for a bit until we find a house so we don't have to worry about that, but I am making lists of all the lists I need to write up.

We're fizzy with excitement. 

My Beloved wants to return to his folk and I am looking forward to having a 'village' again. Living so close to my Beloved's sister again is cause for fireworks and champagne just by itself. 

Apart from that, the four years we've been here is double the length of time I've stayed in any other place since I left high school and my feet are itching for a change.

We're looking forward to weekends spent fishing with friends in balmy waters and weekly friday nights wine and cheese with all the family. While it's true that I'm essentially a cold-weather person, and I think temperatures involving sock-wearing are most spurring to my creativity, I spent so much of my twenties on various pacific islands the Pacific Ocean slipped into my blood. I'm frangipani dreaming now.

Queensland folk - prepare yourself - we're coming your way!

#Touch wood. We only have two more rotations to go, so we're hopeful he'll pass…
*Med admin people are a strange breed. Last year when internships were being offered top students missed out on their first preference hospitals because they were in theatre attending operations when their phone rang and they couldn't scrub out in time to answer. Queensland health have a policy of phoning potential interns once, and if they don't answer, going on to the next student on the list. This made us nervous. 
Let the celebrations begin - we're going home!

A Rose By Any Other...

In the early throes of morning sickness with my firstborn, I also came down with a flu-type cold. As well as throwing up I couldn't get warm, no matter how many quilts I bundled under, or how many jumpers I wore, or how many hot water bottles I clutched.
On mother's day, my first as a sort-of-mother, I managed to get down to the local cafe and actually eat something for brunch. As the car pulled into the driveway when we came home I only just made it to the bushes to throw up.
I spent the rest of the week in bed.
The sound of the sea through the open window was my great comfort. And the huge bunch of lilies my beloved bought me for mother's day. He'd left it a little late getting to the shops, so the lilies he got weren't quite open on the day, but watching them open over the week, the gorgeous scent filling the room and then the house, distracted me from the nausea and chills.
I thought of the name 'Lily' in thanks and appreciation.
But of course, we already had a girl's name and a boy's name picked out, and had had since forever. I'd decided on the names Caleb and Amaya when I was about twenty. I'd been reading name books for my writing since I was thirteen, so had gone through a variety of loves, but for nearly ten years, those names had stuck. Caleb I'd loved since seeing the movie Sarah Plain and Tall, wherein there's a gorgeous little four year old boy, and Amaya I'd seen in a name book and it had just stuck with me. It's supposed to mean 'night-rain' in japanese and arabic and reminds me of lovely nights spent listening to the rain on tin roofs and wandering outside in moist darkness.
Before my Beloved and I went out, when I was still trying to persuade him it was a Very Bad Idea, I brought up the fact that I already knew my kids names as a deterrent, thinking any guy would immediately run (fast) in the opposite direction. We were swimming in the warm sea off Honiara, Solomon Islands, and he just grinned and said 'that's odd, those are the names my kids are going to be called too.' When, during the next weeks, I saw that he'd created new computer game characters with the names of my kids I suspected he might be harder to deter than I'd thought.
So choosing names for our first two children was not particularly hard.
Caleb is always called Caleb. Amaya we often call Maisie, while she calls herself, and Caleb calls her, Maya, and she gets nick-named May-May and Maisie-Mu.
Come Littlest, our third child, the problems arose.
My Beloved and I knew absolutely what our baby should be called it were a little boy. Unfortunately, I was absolutely certain about one name, and my Beloved was absolutely certain about another. Thankfully, before war broke out, we discovered we're having a little girl.
We were both certain about a girls name - luckily the same one - and had been set on it since Maisie was born. Unfortunately, everyone else in the family hated it.
And I began remembering Lily. Short, easy to spell and say (although I have to try not to smile when Maisie kisses my tummy and says 'I yuv you yi-yi'' - but she will get her 'l's eventually,) not too popular, not too unusual. There are a lot of famous Victorian beauties with the name - Lily Langtry etc, and my dad did mention that when he was working in nursing homes and geriatrics, thirty years ago, the wards were full of 'Lily's' but names are always coming and going and that doesn't particularly bother me.
One of my great-grandmother's middle name was Lilias, and I have considered having Lilias, shortened to Lily, but the thought of always having to fill in the forms 'given name' and then 'called' put me off, although I often do it for Maisie.  
Lily shares 'Rosa' as a middle name with Amaya and I - both my way of claiming daughters with a different surname to me, and because of my deep delight in roses. It also reflects an old painting of two sisters - Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose by John Singer Sargent.
Our Little Lily Rosa Joy…
Voila, the story of a name…
I love name stories so I thought I'd share. I'd love to know how other people chose names or how your names were chosen.

Savour

Happy New Year and all best wishes for a wonderful 2014!

2014 is a massive year for us, which I'm looking forward to with a mix of trepidation, terror ('school run' - do just the words make anyone else shiver in dread?) excitement and joy.
This year my first born, my baby-boy, my darling, ever-active Sprocket starts primary school.
In roughly four months we welcome our third (and last) baby into the word, a little girl we've already nicknamed Littlest.
This year we're deciding where in Australia to apply for my Beloved to do his medical internship. While our first preference is for the Sunshine Coast near my Beloved's kin, we're also going to be putting down places like Townsville, Rockhampton, Cairns, Mackay, Geelong, Gold Coast, Melbourne. We probably won't know for sure whereabouts we've been matched until… December, a few weeks before my Beloved starts work.
Which leads me to… in ten shorts months, all going well, my Beloved will be a Doctor! The medical sort my dad calls 'quacks'.  These long (and somewhat challenging, if amazing) four years will draw to a close and we'll move on to the next step in our lives. Goodbye Student-hood! (Although My Beloved is already lining up the Masters he wants to start and depending on what specialty he decides on he'll have a further four to nine years of study while working, raking out thousands to sit exams, some of which have a fail rate of up to thirty percent.)
To celebrate my Beloved becoming a Doctor we're travelling to the UK for Christmas and New Year 2014 with my Beloved's folk. Come November next year we'll be packing up our house to sell, packing to hopefully move two states away to the tropics, and also packing for a white Christmas. With three kids.
Deep breath. Very deep breath.
It is going to be fantastic. And amazing and we are all kinds of blessed and grateful. But… deep breath.

Over at Maxabella Loves the wonderful Bron is asking what 'word' people are focusing on for 2014.
And I didn't have to think hard to realise what word I'll be focusing on.
Savour. 
I want to savour every moment of 2014. Appreciate it. Revel in it. Drink it in.
Because time is racing by so quickly and these precious days of my kids childhoods are just disappearing.
This is the last time I'll feel a growing baby kick-boxing within me. That I'll put my hands to my tummy and feel new life within, with all it's wonder and promise. This is the last year that I'll exult in my own newborn, spend hours admiring the ever changing expressions, the tiny curling toes and little grasping fingers as they slowly reveal who they are.
I suspect this year is one of the last that my Sprocket will reach for my hand while we're walking, will climb into my lap when he's nervous, will come to me to kiss it better and for a cuddle for no reason at all.
This year I intend to stop and let my heart sing as my kids run and play together on the shore, carefree and light as birds.
This year I'll savour their amazing, emphatic stories, wallow in the giggles as they tell me of tiny, invisible flying sharks that have hidden their toys and the ubiquitous Super-Villain who moves the bricks, spills the milk and generally wreaks havoc and mayhem.
My kids will be small for such few short years and these years will never come back. I want to savour every moment. Even the ones that have me pulling my hair out and asking the sky various aggrieved, rhetorical questions.
Savour.

Stills from our (very Christmas-y) Week

 - The advent calendar. Once we've lit the Advent lights and read the Christmas stories the kids get their advent  chocolate. Highlight of their days.
-Nativity. I went a little mad on the gold paint this year. It's a little addictive. Grasses, twigs, gum nuts. Everything we found out walking got sprayed… and then the can ran out…
-Our rather lopsided Christmas Tree. Sign me up for Christmas-Tree-Decorating 101. With mostly thrifted and handmade decorations… I seem to have lost the ones from past years and the kids have claimed many as toys…
-Our beach Christmas tree. Now at home on the mantlepiece.
-Our beach Christmas tree amidst the excess of 'stuffs' I threw at the mantlepiece.
-Sprocket, admiring the Christmas candles and eating his Advent chocolate.
-Poppet and Sprocket at the beach.
-Poppet & Sprocket running down to the sea. The day we got the good news my Beloved passed third year med-exams. One more year to go! O the relief!
-Tinsel forgotten on the water.
-My Beloved with 'the limpets'. True joy is floating in the sea with little ones attached!
-My Poppet. She's a klutz like me. She'd just been warned to be careful with the Big M and hold it in both hands. "It was the Super-Villain who did it!"

Joining with the wonderful Em of The Beetle Shack for a very Christmas-y Weekly Stills. Only two more sleeps! (And… being all nostalgic… this time last year.)

We Passed!

We passed.
Third year medicine is finito.
 One more year to go and my beloved will be Dr Beloved and I will be Mrs Dr Dear, just like Anne of Green Gables, but without the red hair.
The biggest exams of the course are over and next year my beloved just has to turn up at all his rotations, look reasonably neat and not offend or kill anyone. (Those of you who know him, don't laugh. He can look neatish when he really tries, and I don't let him go to the hospital in his ugg boots. At least, not during term time.)
Picture me spinning giddily, with joy, relief and pride. (Not literally. When my Beloved called me through to tell me my hands were all over applesauce and cinnamon as I was in the midst of making very sticky Christmas decorations. The first batch is in the oven now and the house smells divine.)
This year was hard. Really hard. And there was a good ten weeks there when I was non-functioning and my Beloved was a. working 10-14 hour days on the paeds wards, b. studying for the major exams and c. doing the vast majority of the kid-stuff as I was busy throwing up, sleeping and wandering around in a sick, starving haze.
Champagne isn't on the agenda (at least for me - the whole pregnant thing precludes it) but fish and chips on the beach sounds like a pretty good way to celebrate! I better go start packing bathers!
(Can I just say it again, we passed. We did it. I am sooo proud!) 

Coming Home

There is always something so lovely about coming home. About rounding that last corner of road and seeing the sea.
As children we always competed to see who would be first to see it, now my own children have started looking out for that first glimpse.
Although we live on the far side of the state now, it's always this little corner of the world, and this little beach shack (actually larger than our house back in Gippsland, but still) that feels like home. This place is the one that holds all my childhood memories of winter swims and then boiling hot baths, mah-jong games and hours of shell-seeking, teen revels when I'd catch the train and then the bus down with friends, arriving in the twilight for weekends of long walks, night-swims and big open fires, the place of return through all my twenties travels. I lived here for a year after my return from eighteen months working in Tonga. When I was evacuated from the Solomon Islands during the riots, this is where I came to await news of when I could return. My Beloved and I lived here for a further nine months while I studied teaching. This is the place my Beloved proposed, the place we were married, the place I spent two happy months waiting the birth of my Sprocket while my Beloved worked overseas - although I listened to family pleas and returned to Melbourne for the last few weeks. (Which I sort of regret, but I get their point that a heavily pregnant woman in a house by herself at some distance from a hospital is not the best idea, but as it turned out, my Sprocket was very late, so when my Beloved returned for his birth we had weeks of waiting.) This is where both our children were Christened.
While all the other places are transient, this is the permanent and the home.
These stretches of sand and sea. These winding clay paths through twisting trees. These changing tide marks and wild stretches of surf, these protected bays and big pools of treasures.
The night we arrived the rain fell in flurries all through the dark hours, and thunder was frequent. With my little ones curled beside me I listened to the rain on the roof, their steady breathing. Felt the kicking of the baby within me, and was perfectly content. My Poppet's name means 'night rain' and listening to the rain on the roof, its lulls and periods of intensity, while she is curled sleeping in my arms, is a recipe for happiness.
We have a week of rain forecast, warm - but wet.
I look forward to rainbows.

Home Alone

(Roses my Poppet picked and carefully placed in holes she dug in the garden, before she left)

The kids, my Beloved and my father-in-law are on their way home now.
They've driven about half the distance down from Queensland and are stopped in Dubbo for the night, with a ten hour drive before them tomorrow.
They've been gone nearly a week. This will be the sixth night that they're away. My Sprocket tells me he's had 'the best holiday ever.'
I've been trying to remember the last time I was alone in a house for any length of time, without a baby or toddler or preschoolers with me. The last time I slept in a bed, just me (okay, and the dog) and I had to cast my mind back… more than five years to when my Sprocket was summersaulting inside me.
My Beloved had gone to work in Vanuatu and, being heavily pregnant, I hadn't been allowed to join him. I'd asked scores of doctors and travel agents and the nicer ones hadn't laughed as they'd explained  there was no way I'd get travel insurance in my advanced state, so my dreams of a lovely tropical baby moon, lounging poolside while my Beloved worked, were scuttled.
Instead I went down to the family beach house and waited for my Baby and for my Beloved to return for the birth. I remember long walks, long baths, candles, music, calm birth classes, visualisations and long one-sided conversations with my Sprocket, awe at the braxton hicks, and feeling very ponderous, heavy and happy. Life slowed to the sound of the sea and the movements of my baby within.
Now, I'm alone in a house again, with only the dog sleeping by me, and the much softer flutterings of my third, and last, baby within, but I'm out of practice of being alone.
The night-sky outside seems very large. I jump at noises. While the first night I luxuriated in all the space and the remarkable rested feeling when I woke without small arms flung over my throat, small knees pressed into my tummy, and yet… it just feels… odd. Skew-wiff.
Through open windows I can hear the birds scuttling in the garden. I light candles without fear of the kids setting their hair alight. Fill vases with flowers without fear of them being tipped.
I spend time talking to my littlest one within, singing to it, willing it to kick a little more.  I make the food my family won't eat - chunky lentil soups and stewed fruits, tuna pastas and rice puddings. I have plans for a long, luxurious bath involving a home made body scrub and rose petals. I stay up late - reading and writing past midnight and then sleeping in - no falling asleep with the kids at 7.30, half-way through a lullaby. It feels ridiculously decadent.
And yet… it feels so strange that not once during the day do I have small, warm hands in mine, piping voices telling me the precise way they want their toast, long involved stories poured out, centipedes thrust at me to admire.
On Skype and on the phone their voices sound so little. Their presence is so big, when they are here I suppose I've started thinking of them as big. But they sound so young.
It's been so lovely to stretch, unwind, sleep. There is no way I would have finished my fifty-thousand words in a month to complete NaNoWriMo if I hadn't had this time. Or managed to sneak away all the excess toys and broken oddments. I am excessively grateful to my Beloved for giving me this time. To dream. To think. To write. To begin to think about getting organised.
But I'm so glad my family will be home tomorrow!

Sprocket & Poppet's Big Adventure

Somewhat idly, in the midst of exam-madness last Thursday, my Beloved said: "Maybe I should take the kids up to Queensland next week. We could drive back down with dad when he comes. Be a bit of company."
My eyes lit up like a thousand Christmas Trees. "What a brilliant idea. What day? You can't go before Monday because Poppet has the dentist. Tuesday. Let me look at the flights for Tuesday. Talk to your parents. The kids will love it."
While my Beloved was still stuttering I had the flights worked out and the kids packed and ready to go. So yesterday we woke at 4am and by 5.15am we had our bleary kids dressed and at the railway station.
Despite the early start, the kids behaved beautifully, excited by the idea of the plane, of Queensland, of seeing Grandpa and Aunty Bec and Sheba… and all the thousands of frogs and toads and beaches. The train eased smoothly towards Melbourne as the sun rose, illuminating the rolling green hills of home. In the city, we caught another train, then the sky bus, and finally, six hours after we woke and tumbled into clothes, I was saying goodbye to my kids at the gate and, hand-in-hand with their rather shell-shocked Daddy (who was still protesting it had just been an idle comment and um, what was happening) they were crossing the tarmac towards the plane.
And of course I cried a little, sitting in the cafe watching the plane take off, because it's the first Big Adventure the kids are having without me. The kids and I have been on many adventures together, caught planes and trains and gone visiting by ourselves, but this is their longest Daddy-Adventure.
After their time re-exploring the beaches of Bribie and the Sunshine Coast, they'll be driving all the way  from Queensland back to Victoria. And of course we drove there and back last year, so they're old hands. But… it still seems strange to be missing The Big Adventure. To know that this is likely something they'll remember for ever and I'm missing it. We've already skyped a handful of times. But to be honest the kids are too busy re-exploring their Queensland World. "In a moment, Mummy." At 7.30 this morning my Poppet was already packing to go to the beach. They're having a blast.
And me? I miss them and miss them and miss them.
But… if I'm to finish the 50,000 words of Nano on time I have 12,000 words to finish by Saturday. (It was 19,000, but I wrote 7,000 yesterday after I dropped them off.)
And a house to deep clean that hasn't been cleaned properly in at least three months as we've been sick and then sick and then sick some more, and then sick with exams. It would be nice to see the floor of the playroom again.
I've a bump to talk to I've been severely neglecting. Walking through the city yesterday I was completely, joyously, overwhelmed by the thought of the little person, growing and kicking within. Hello my littlest one. Who are you? O I can't wait to meet you! Up to now there hasn't really been time to think about it.
I won't feel quite complete until my little ones are home, and my bed feels very empty, but I am so incredibly grateful for this time to catch my breath, to stretch my brain, to write, to play with the house.

Exam Stress & Nostalgia

I should be desperately writing my novel, and I am, I am.
Sitting by a window in the deserted university cafe, all the kids students in Swot-vac or exams, coffee beside me (have I mentioned how much I love being able to drink coffee again? a few times? Let me mention it again). I've got one computer window up on my manuscript, one up on a word count doc, one up on the Nano site to enter my word count, and I'm all set to pound out five or six thousand words. But instead I'm staring hazily around, getting all nostalgic.
And stressed. Let's not forget stressed.
You see, my Beloved is sitting his exams somewhere in the building.
You know, the exams that are the make-or-break. The barrier exams. The exams worth more than any other of the whole four years. Next year is pretty much just a matter of turning up and applying for internships.
This is it. The do-we-have-to-do-this-year-all-over-again time.
Deep breath.
He can do this. We can do this.
But you know exams. And examiners. They're tricksy and mean and completely random. (In my completely unbiased opinion. I'm only talking med exams here. I only had about three exams in my three degrees, and my main exam memories are of pleasantly writing an essay about Byzantium in the sixth century. Something about Malalas?  Okay, the Latin one sucked. Even if I'd understood the Latin bit, I hadn't a clue about 'grammar talk' - past participle? what the heck is that? Med exams are a completely different kettle of fish.)
Anyway, my Beloved is on day two of five. We dropped him off at 7.45am and we'll pick him up at 5.00pm.
Unfortunately, in exam stress, we ordered pizza last night and my Beloved ordered chilli. Extra hot. 10/10 on the heat scale. He's suffering today.
It's almost de ja vu-y, because three years ago (give or take a few months) when he was doing his multiple-mini-interviews to get into the course, he suffered similarly. We'd all flown down from Queensland, then made the drive out to the country, staying in the cheapest motel for the night, our six month old Poppet sleeping on a makeshift bed on the floor, our Sprocket curled between us, and my Beloved decided to break six months of no wheat with… a pizza. And garlic bread.
And suffered for it.
My main memory of  his interview is of taking the kids to a completely wonderful wooden-fort-playground and the Poppet having one of those nappies that just explodes. It went everywhere. And I mean everywhere. And for some reason I didn't have a change of clothes on me (stupid mama) and had to make the trek to Coles with the not quite two year old and the six month old who was…in an interesting state.
But I remember the excitement of driving out the day before, heading through lush and gently rolling hills of green, and gushing over how this could be our home. Can you imagine? This could be our home. For four years.
That amount of time in the one place seemed inconceivable.
And now that time way in the future is now. All going well we'll be on the final stretch soon.
And we're full of the same nerves and stress as we were then, and I keep stopping to tap my fingers on the table. (I should have made sure he got more study time. I should have sent him to the library more often.)
Tap. Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.
Back to writing.
Maybe another cup of coffee?

Family Games - Mah Jong

Unique Wonders - My Beloved won with this hand shortly after I taught him to play, back when we were still living in the Solomon Islands. In all my (um, thirty) years playing he's the only one who has got this hand. He was very proud. 

I think most families have games they always come back to - with us, it's Mah Jong.

In the late 1940's my Great Aunt and her family went to China, where they lived for four years, only returning to Australia when the Communists took over (the boat they left on was shelled). She returned with a Mah Jong set. While my Great Grandmother also left a Mah Jong set (which was possibly older, I'm not sure) it was Great Aunt Jean's set that we played with throughout my childhood. Every time we went down to the beach house, out would come the Mah Jong.

Mah Jong is a lovely, tactile game to play. There's the gentle clack of the tiles as you shuffle, the making of the four walls, the dealing of the hand. First to east, second to south, third to west, fourth to north, and then again, and then again, then first and third to East and one each in order around the table. Tiles are sorted and flower tiles are retrieved from the Flower Wall.

The tiles are solid, cool, the suits and honours engraved in them. 

I think I began playing at three or four, pretty much as soon as I could recognise numbers. I still remember the excitement of playing with the big people, the dark surrounding the small shack, the sound of the sea, the click of the tiles and the great anticipation of what the tiles would bring. 

Mah Jong is very much like Gin Rummy to play. (A fact I discovered on one of the hop-on-hop-off buses going across Eastern Europe. A nice New Zealander taught me to play Gin Rummy - then stopped speaking to me when I won the first four games ...) There are three suits - bamboos, characters and circles and then the 'extras.' The aim is to get four sets of three and a pair, but then there are the fancy hands... the Unique Wonders, the Heavenly Twins, the One to Nine... 

As a child I thought the pinnacle of happiness was to win with an All Green Hand. This would be a hand of two, four, six and eight bamboo, with a pung (or better a kong) of my beloved Green Dragons thrown in for good measure... and if I managed to get a bouquet or a pair of flowers ... all the better. Of course, a one-to-nine is always a lot of fun, as there's the tension of having to pick all the tiles up from your hand, rather than the board, and the dread that a tile will go 'dead' before you get it.

Most places I've gone around the world I've brought a Mah Jong set. Not a lovely old, aged bone or ivory one, but a cheap plastic one, and taught the people around me how to play.

Thus it was that shortly after we started going out my Beloved and I moved into a share house on the shoreline in Honiara, the Solomon Islands and, pretty much simultaneously, I taught him how to play Mah Jong. The house was (is) still, pretty much my dream house. It was all exposed wood and polished  boards, a tree grew through the verandah, the rambling garden was full of basil and chilli, aubergine and tropical flowers, the trees along the sea-line had hammocks to loll in and look out at the-island-that-made-me-sick and the canoes easing by, and there was a leaf house.

When we voted on what to call it, I obviously opted for Green Dragon House. Most people scoffed, but that's what we ended up calling it, Green Dragon House, White River, Solomon Islands. While poker was the main game, Mah Jong came a close second.

Now, the next book I'm writing has a Green Dragon House (indeed a River Valley resting on the top of a sleeping Green Dragon) and a magical Mah Jong set. I am looking forward to ordering the Winds and Dragons about, although of course, my first love is reserved for the Green Dragon.
I'm looking forward to describing the clack of the tiles, the building of the wall, the families coming together.

I got my Mah Jong set out recently when my sister-in-law came to visit, and taught her how to play. While my kids only showed marginal interest in the game, my Sprocket was very good at putting it away, and matching all the tiles together. (Seriously, I even like putting the tiles away - there's something about looking at a tray of Flowers, Winds and Dragons, all neatly ordered, that is intensely satisfying, and even the Characters, en masse, look very orderly. The rest of the house may be a disaster but the Mah Jong set? A thing of beauty.

Maybe not this year, but soon, hopefully next year, the kids will become the next generation to play. I can't wait. 

Seven

It's seven years today since my Beloved and I became a couple, an 'us', a 'we'.
Neither of us are entirely sure of our wedding date (20th? 21st? Um, yeah, around then) but we don't have any doubts about the day we first started going out. Everything else seemed a given from then.
No, I lie. We do have a few doubts. My beloved believes we began going out on the night of the twelfth, whereas obviously we began going out in the early hours of the thirteenth. You can see our dilemma. It's true, we've been bickering negotiating since day one. Through sickness (a lot of it) and health, good times (heaps) and bad, we've squabbled and discussed and debated and made up and began all over again.
It's seven years since I informed my beloved that as just about everyone else in Honiara (and my mum and friend back in Australia) knew we were going out, he probably should too.
We're an old, established couple now, and yet new stories, new skills, new ways constantly surprise us. Our time together seems so much more full, more weighty, than all the years before. Memories like jewels, or vividly coloured, richly fragranced flowers, assail me. So many, many precious moments.
Thanks for the good times, hon, and here's to many more to come!

This time Last Year. All the photos are presently still on a different computer, so I can't play with them (although we watched a slide show last night and oohed and aahed and promised the kids next time we go to the islands they will most definitely be coming. I miss living in the islands. So much.)

Planes and Trains and Automobiles, O My!

The thought of going to an airport, even when I'm not getting on the plane, makes me slightly heady.
I love the idea of all the different 'big' stories colliding. I love thinking about families meeting up after long separations, backpackers setting off on life-changing journeys, lovers reuniting.
I'd like to say it's because my Beloved and I met for the first time in an airport, but truthfully, I loved airports long before that rather inauspicious meeting!
My Beloved and I caught the plane up to Sydney last week, and it lived up to all expectations. As we caught the ferry across the bay in the early morning I found myself nudging my Beloved and saying, "You know, for a place that isn't Melbourne, Sydney's not half bad, eh?"
And there's something about the vast space of the bay, the houses all tumbling down to the sea, the clear light, that is little short of intoxicating. Fuelling my love of travel we also caught trains (be still my heart!) and a bus! We even passed a Central Station, although not NYC central station, it held reflected glory!

I was a little infatuated by the ferries. I have always thought the Melbourne trams particularly appealing, but ah, ferries! And look, look, moi, with the opera house! I always feel a bit odd posting photos with me in them, so please look beyond at the iconic!

The Cove

I was desperate to get to the sea these holidays. I'd been promising myself a few days falling asleep to the sound of the sea for the longest time. But our holidays got eaten with sickness and sadness and in the end the thought of all those hours in the car was too much for me.
We couldn't go to our coastal house, far far away on the other side of the Big Smoke... but we could steal an afternoon at one of my favourite 'close-up' beaches - the cove.
I fell in love with the cove the first time I saw it, and each time we go my love only increases. The hidden sweep of sand, the clear water, the in-rolling waves, the green surrounding. Magic, pure and simple.
My Beloved started back at university today - he has a psychiatry rotation and a paediatrics rotation and then exams worth so much I come out in conniptions just thinking about them. This is supposed to be the most intense semester of the whole course and I am already dreading what I have been told of his hours on his paediatrics rotation.
But... we had a perfect afternoon yesterday: a picnic on the shore, crab-searching, sand-playing... and on the way home we saw an echidna.

It felt like the most beautiful gift. 

Tea With Me

Come, sit down, I've got the kettle on. Make your choice, peppermint, earl grey, hot-chocolate, a coffee? Sugar, milk?

The candles are lit, and if you come on one of the cooler days this week I'll light the fire.
Do come over, I'll bribe you with cake. Store brought, as the kids have been sick and I don't want to risk infection, but the fruit and veg shop do a great sponge.
Settle in, watch the flames. My Sprocket's taking his robots on a grand adventure and my Poppet's putting her dolls to bed.

Easter is one of my very favourite times of year. I love this time to reflect, to remember, to come together as a family. I love the weather - so often there are clear blue skies and a briskness in the air and the deciduous leaves are turning. I always remember my Grandfather at Easter. So often we'd be down at the beach with him and he would take the service at one of the nearby churches and his whole being would beam as he talked about grace. I'm looking forward to cooking hot cross buns with the kids and cooking a big Sunday dinner. The kids have already given the Easter bunny detailed instructions.
What are your Easter plans?

My Poppet had her first cup of tea this week.
Well, really, hot water and milk, but we called it tea. I used the tea set my prep teacher gave me so many aeons ago and it felt  ... momentous. I come from a tea culture. Growing up the kettle was nearly always on or we had a cup of tea in our hands, or both and it's lovely to see my daughter becoming part of it. Already she knows that tea makes (most) things better and Mummy-Needs-Tea. She often brings me 'pretend' tea cups.

And it made me think back to my first cup of 'tea.' I can't recall the very first cup, but it would have been at my Great Aunts', Eve and Margs, house. Most Sunday's we would catch the rattling green tram out of the city (and later when we moved we would walk the forty minutes) and have Sunday Lunch at my Great Aunts'. Come mid-afternoon I would be sat at the little table in the wood-panelled living room and the tea trolley would be wheeled in. There would be cheese biscuits and lemon slices and 'tea' served in a thick earthenware mug, and I would feel so grown up and important. After tea I would look at the curios collected from all around the world in their curio cabinet, or would be allowed to carefully leaf through their first edition of Ida Rentoul Outhwaite's Elves and Fairies, which was pure magic. And then there was their garden...

My Beloved, the med-student, has started his 'Women's Health' Rotation at the hospital. In the next six weeks he has to 'catch' three babies. I am a little jealous. I love the promise and excitement of birth. Each week we watch The Midwives and One Born Every minute and we pretend it's for my Beloved's studies, but really, it's just for me to ooh over the babies and sticky-beak! But ... this is also our first experience of 'almost-real' doctor hours. My Beloved starts at the hospital at seven in the morning and finishes about seven at night. He's rostered on nights and weekends as well ... including this one ... Easter. And while I know many families do this all the time, for us, it's a first and I'm not entirely sure how we'll go. My Poppet started My Beloved's rotation yesterday by waking up and promptly throwing up. Luckily, she stopped after a few hours, but her poor little pale face and big eyes as her body did this to her, was haunting.

Next week (on April Fools day, talk about auspicious starting date!) I start Camp Nano - which is when (like last November) I'm going to attempt to write 50,000 words in a month. This month is going to be more logistically challenging than last November, seeing as my Beloved is going to be MIA for most of the time, so I foresee much coffee and midnight writing sessions. But I'm so looking forward to it. I'll be starting my novel Overly Caffeinated Werewolves (Are Not Pretty) and just thinking about it makes me want to do a happy dance. With Camp Nano, I've been asssigned an (online) cabin of other writers and we'll all egg each other on around the (online) campfire. Most of my six cabinmates are teenagers, but there is one other person my age so I don't feel too much of a doddering misfit!
What are you excited about this week?

Joining with the lovely Em at teacups too for 'tea with me'. 

you got me dancing...

On Valentines day my Beloved put on some of my favourite music.
And my Sprocket said "Dance, mummy, come and dance."
So we all danced. My Beloved and I took turns picking up the little ones and swooping them down and spinning them around and they squealed and stomped and giggled.
I'm happy to know there'll be another generation of kids dancing to music none of their peers have heard about. Silly Wizard anyone? No? Never mind.
Today we're off to Fiddlehead Festival at Yinnar, for more dancing and already I'm humming.
So I'm joining with Maxabella at 52 Weeks of Grateful so grateful for the joy of dancing, for the thrill of the fiddles and for the wonder of music, and the happiness of sharing beloved bands with my kids.  

Book Bender

So I've been going on a book bender.
It's a bit like a beer bender, but you down books, not beer.
It has been an incredible, thrilling, heady, head-spinning few days and nights of 'more', 'more', 'more', I need 'more'. Just one more. Well, maybe two more. Sorry, sorry, I meant three. Or four. Or just more, more, more.
I'd forgotten what it was like to get so totally lost in someone else's world. To only submerge somewhat drunkenly, completely ecstatically, blearily look around, and then dive right back in.
I've missed it.
I probably won't do it again for another 6 months, because let's be clear, the house looks a bit (ahem) the worse for wear. And also my beloved goes back to uni in a couple of weeks so it becomes logistically harder... but o man, it was good.
I discovered two new favourite authors. Which is like having a delivery of priceless champagne arrive unexpectedly at my doorstep (to keep the alcohol analogy going) or a gift of diamonds and pearls. Seriously. The delight of stepping into elegant, engrossing, heart-wrenching, heart-affirming, gut- chuckling story is such a heady rush.

And now I'm deeply, deeply grateful.
I'm grateful for stories.
I'm grateful for kindle, and that amazing ability to press a button and have a new book arrive voila, just like magic. (And you know that thing when an author offers a new book for 99c to hook you in? It works. Believe me - it really, really works. Especially if it's the first book in a series.)
I'm grateful for discovering new authors and all the promise and magic that entails.
I'm grateful for my beloved, who, on rising from our bed in the small hours of the morning to find me curled on the couch, engrossed, just smiled and said 'I love you', rather than pointing out I needed to be up in three hours and would be in a filthy, sleep-deprived temper all day. (Except I wasn't, cos I was too busy reading...)
I'm grateful for my beloved, who did not say I should read less, but said I should read more, as he goes back to uni soon and I won't be able to indulge so decadently till the winter break. I'm also grateful for all the cups of tea and coffee that magically appeared in my hand.
So, I'm joining with Maxabella over at 52 Weeks of Grateful, so so thankful for books, for books and  reading, for discovering new authors, for my beloved and cups of tea and coffee, and for the chance to decadently indulge.

Woo-hoo! We passed. Halfway through Med-School

Woohoo!
The results are (finally!) out and we (that is my beloved) passed second year post-grad medicine.
And while it's been fun, knowing we don't have to repeat the year is an ENORMOUS relief.
We are now officially halfway through. (Big  breath!)
This year has sped by, albeit with some very long moments (and months).
As soon as the long drive is over we'll open the champagne.
Let the celebrations begin!

Benediction of Dolphins

Dolphins! Every time I see them awe and wonder just bubble up. There's something about sea mammals that just brings me joy and makes me laugh. They seem so similar to us - but their world is the great half-known of ocean rather than land. And they seem to feel the same curiosity about us. I suppose it makes sense - we know the land they only see the edges off.
Yesterday my Beloved and I got some kid-free time and headed to the beach. The school holidays being over we got a long stretch of white sand and surf all to ourselves. Bliss. It's been so long since we got some wave-play. Paddling is great, but its not the same as flipping over waves and swimming open-eyed through salty green.
Just as we were wading in (my beloved squawking with the cold, living in the Islands just plain spoiled him!) we spotted fins in the water in front of us.
For the next few minutes the dolphins slowly arced in and out of the water in front of us. The waves and whitewater caught us up and we couldn't see them for awhile. A sea eagle swooped down to catch a silver fish and a fleet of tiny orange fish jumped from a wave, but the dolphins stayed hidden.
And then, just as we got out we saw them again, still close to shore, still just out past the waves in front of us, slowly arcing in and out of the sea.
And I couldn't help thinking it felt like a benediction of dolphins.

The 'H' Word.

I've been pondering this for awhile now - why are so many swear words about an activity most of us really quite enjoy or body parts we're pleased to have attached and in working order.
When really, the truly nasty things all centre around the 'h' word. Whisper it h-h-h-housework.
You know, the really nasty one. Scrubbing poo off a toddlers undies during the Great Toilet Training, the zillions of loads of sheets during a particularly virulent lot of gastro, scrubbing the toilet - anytime, although particularly when an enthusiastic toddler has demanded to empty the potty themselves and then shook it... And that's not even getting onto the stuff that should (ahem) be done everyday, the never ending sweeping, mopping, removal of half eaten apples, disposal of compost and rubbish.
Scrub it. I feel queasy just thinking about it all.
Before we started going out not one, not two, but three separate people (that I know of) warned my beloved that I am Messy. Note the capital. Not just a leetle messy. Really, really messy.
I count this circumstance as fortunate as it left my Beloved no excuse for thinking housework and myself were ever going to be anything but the bitterest of enemies and any cleaning done would (and does) fall largely on his shoulders.*
Myself, I suspect it was not my ability to mop a floor my Beloved was thinking of at the time, and find the warnings entertaining, but then, they've worked out very well for me.
But now I'm at home all the time with a messy house, googling how to mop a floor and wondering if I just stock up on enough bleach will the house magically clean itself. Sigh.
And all I can say is scrub it.

What's your relationship with housework? Friends? Enemies? Frenemies? 

And what would your ultimate swear-word be? 'Scrub it' works for me, but I can see there could be interesting variations. 

*This is as it should be, according to longstanding Anderson Family tradition, as my Dad also does all the cooking and housework. I believe it's very important to respect and continue our cultural ways. My Beloved had time to observe this before we married, so he went in knowing the importance of ensuring that dinner is on the table at 6.00 precisely, with salad and vegetable sides. Of course, he's still learning, so I grant him some lee-way.

Um. Fail.

The sun is shining and the kids are cavorting in the garden.
My Beloved has come home from the hospital for lunch and we're enjoying the great outdoors, keeping an eye on the kids so they don't fall out of any particularly high trees and sipping tea.
"Four years is quite a long time," My Beloved says.
I rush to console him. "But we're halfway through! We'll be out in two years!"
He just looks at me. And looks at me. "Will we? I didn't know you had plans in that direction."
Oh. Fail. Massive fail.
So yes. My Beloved's Medicine Course is four years long and we're pretty much halfway through now, touch wood.
But um. It's also our four year wedding anniversary.
Which I knew, and completely reminded my Beloved of when he first came home (after careful checking of the calendar as the days have been getting away from me recently) and we'd made plans to do something incredibly exciting and romantic like get pizza for dinner.* But that had been whole minutes ago and it had momentarily slipped my brain.
But anyway. Four years today.
It's been fun.

*We made a big deal of the anniversary of-when-we-started-going-out a few weeks ago, so this one's more in the way of a little happy sigh and nostalgia journey.