Littlest (week 5)

 Littlest,

Once again I am a week behind, but I am going photo heavy to make up for the delay and hope my rather addled memory can cast itself back a week.

Last week you had your four week check up (unusually alert was the nurses verdict) and continued noisily gulping down the milk. Your grandad claimed you sound like a demented mouse when you feed but this is clearly not true. When all went well you gazed up at me with flattering intensity, when things were not to your satisfaction you kicked one little foot and punched one little arm with vigour.

I loved the way you curl your little fingers and toes - all going in different directions. You often rested with a little fist by your mouth and just one little finger thoughtfully resting on your lips.

You have a very characteristic expression wherein you thrust out your lower lip and your face seems to go very wide and chubby cheeked. Your brother had it too. It is very sweet, you do it especially when you're having a curvy little stretch, bringing up your knees and arching your back, especially when replete with milk.

You continued to travel exceptionally well. You fell asleep as soon as the car started and remained asleep as I loaded and unloaded you in your sling, your little head just beneath my chin and in the perfect place to drop kisses.

You still made little snuffle sounds when you slept, and sometimes the sweetest little sighings.

You still smelt like baby - milky and possetty but no longer like newborn. I missed the newborn smell - it is so indescribable, so fleeting and so precious. Your smiles and ever growing awareness do make up for it though!

Last week we were still embroiled in sickness - your big brother came down with the horrible fever that has been plaguing us all and I kept him home from school. It's so hard to see your brother sick - he's normally so full of action and movement that to see him flushed and achy and falling asleep in the middle of the day seems ridiculously wrong. Of course, while at home he had enough moments of energy to keep the house in turmoil. He is incredibly sweet with you though, and loves to hold you and sing you songs. (I am embarrassed to admit it was a lot easier to wait with him at ballet for you sister when he was sick - there was less climbing of walls and campaigning for the sweets and chips they sell as fundraisers..)

Your daddy started a new rotation at a hospital further up the highway last week. Nothing much changed. He leaves the house before six am - occasionally before five for the ward round that starts at 6.30 and generally gets home around seven pm. The little car my granny loaned us is not liking the increased drive and he often has to stop three or four times to coax it along.

Last week was also the week we applied for internships for next year, ranking and re-ranking all the hospitals and then deciding to change it all again. It was exciting and scary to realise what a change these decisions will mean. We have no idea where we'll be next year (although strong preferences!) City, country? Queensland, Victoria? We should know in a couple of months. We spent a lot of time in the early hours of the morning with me feeding you while I edited cover letters and obsessively checked your brother and sisters temperatures.) It's strange to think our four years of med schools is nearly (touch wood) done. We're 7/8ths of the way through. (Not that we're desperately counting down the minutes weeks or anything.)

You were smiling more and more and each time it is amazing, so full of joy and wonder and promise

(Photos from our weekend down at the beach - enjoying the sun in your uncles old bassinet out on the verandah)

Writing Wednesday - Ode to Pinterest

As a teenager I would get inspiration for my writing and fuel for my dreams leafing through National Geographic magazines. Our school had a big pile of them, and others I picked up in op-shops.
I loved reading the articles about far away places and dreaming about visiting them some time. Kashmir, Norway, Alaska… I'd read up about them hungrily and dream of 'when'…

But more - I would steal use images from the magazines as the basis of stories.

There are certain images that linger with me still.

There was a particular article about wolves that had a photo of a white wolf sitting on a ledge on a snow covered mountain that struck such a cord with me that it inspired two different manuscripts - the first - Lumi's War, begins in a mountainous region very similar to the one in the photos, the second I'm presently editing - Overly Caffeinated Werewolves (Are not Pretty), and again the otherworld landscape of the wolf people is inspired by that photo.

Considering I first saw the image over twenty years ago - I think that's fairly good milage.

Scrolling through images on pinterest recently, I found the image again. I promptly pinned it on several boards, alternating between smiling and biting my lip as I mulled over all the memories.

And I began pondering how pinterest has taken over the role of those National Geographics in my life.

Rather than leafing through the pages, (often in magazines twenty years old) I scroll down the screen, inspired by so many piercing images. While I could say that a lot of my life has been eaten by pinterest, (and those who follow me probably have an inkling of the embarrassing truth of exactly how much time) in it's favour it's something I can do one handed while holding a feeding babe, and it doesn't require any mental acuity - a good thing, as nursing completely steals my brain away.

I credit pinterest with my return to an idea for a manuscript that I had when I was fifteen, and decided to  try a re-write of the fairy tale the frog prince, but set in medieval Scotland. Beautiful micro photos from forests persuaded me that I'd like to take the idea up again, and try to capture the beauty of the forest-world from a toads eye view - the caught dewdrop on a mushroom, the rich green of moss, the fall of light through woodland trees. While the first draft of The Toad Lord (now set in 1801) is now brewing in a folder on my desktop, I am looking forward to returning to it soon.

Pinterest is also responsible for an upcoming voyage to Iceland for one of my characters. Prior to pinterest it never occurred to me that Iceland is a Very Desirable Place to travel to, with a wild, stark magic to it. It is now firmly on my to-go-list, and my young hero-god Lugh from a manuscript called Fosterling will soon be traveling there - for reasons I've yet to work out…

Turning to the other side of Europe - Santorini's sun drenched, colourfully painted villages swathed in hibiscus have proved inspiration for another novel, although I've transferred the villages to a tropical island and set them amidst coconut plantations rather than olive groves.

On a personal level I might never have discovered the wonder that is the BBC's Sherlock without Pinterest. Presently I am looking forward to watching The Avengers and Thor, as so many pinners I follow have pinned Loki … And then of course there's Outlanders...

Pinterest - although you steal my midnight hours, I thank you!

It would be interesting to know how many other writers and artists owe a debt to pinterest…

Littlest (week four)

Littlest,

Once again, I'm running late with this - as you are now five weeks old. But I'll try to play catch up.
Your fourth week was a blur of you being entirely beautiful and miraculous and the rest of the world being entirely overwhelming.

The sheer relentless rush of looking after all three of you is amazing and I think it must surely be the hardest thing I've ever done. I am beginning to see the words 'school run' as the worst curse words in the world.

But you were beautiful. The way your eyes meet mine, the darling expressions, from quizzical, to red-faced fury, to rapt awe (generally at something I can't quite work out, but on the wall somewhere). The delicate line of your face as you feed and the thoughtful look in your deep eyes, to the rather more jowl-y disdain as you survey the world when you are beginning to think that it's milk time.
The moments when it is just you and I in the world when you wake in the night are my very favourite, and I think the smell of baby (milk and posset I expect) should be sold in a tin, for however bad the day is, it instantly brings joy.

While your Daddy and I were nearly over our sickness, our Poppet was ill all week with a high fever and nasty cough. She stayed home from creche but I still had to bundle her into the car (with her pyjamas, fleece robe and ugg boots on) to drop our Sprocket off at school. She is improving now, but the nasty cough is still there. It seems too big for such a small little girl.

The Big Bad Bold Black Beastie continued to play a major part in our lives. Your brother remained entranced and woke in the dark each morning to let him in to cuddle with him on the couch. I remain less entranced. Of all the cats in all the world, this one had to adopt us? We discovered his owner is a man from across the road who is away a lot of the week, so it is no doubt lonely. But there is lonely and there is seeking world domination, one house at a time. Your brother insisted on feeding it milk, so there was the unfortunate time when I saw it squatting in the kitchen, pounced on it to put it out before there was more mess, it ran, and spread diarrhoea all through the kitchen, the hallway, the living room and up onto the throws and cushions on the couch.

While I was clearing up the mess you started crying and the kids got worried, and took you out of your bassinet to bring you over to me. With my hands full of cat-diarreah-cleaning-stuff, and my thinking processes somewhat slowed, there wasn't a lot I could do but ask them to put you back in your bassinet.

Thankfully, they didn't drop you.

Your Daddy has not got to see you a lot. He leaves in the early hours of the morning in the dark, and returns in the late evening in the dark, often when we're all already in bed. On occasion he changes one of your nappies in the night, but knowing his long commute and long day, I don't like to ask him too much. I feel so sad he's missing your first days, but while he loves you very much, he is looking forward to the time you realise there is a world outside of milk and start interacting with him more. It is interesting how everyone has favourite times.

This was your Daddy's last week at our local hospital. There is something called 'on take' wherein his team deals with admissions. We hates it. Basically it means he doesn't get home till eleven pm. As he leaves the house before eight am, this is a very long day. It is strange to think you won't remember this intensive time of study (he will probably still be studying when he's in a nursing home, and to become a specialist there's at least another seven years of training and exams to go, but this unpaid training). The Sprocket should remember some of it, the Poppet a little less, but you none at all.

I love the little moments of having three of you. When we are all in my bed and I'm reading stories, a little one cuddled to either side and you nursing.  When the kids are in their beds and I sit singing lullabies to them while you nurse (notice a trend here!)  I wonder what will be your favourite lullaby - your brother loves Brahms' Lullaby while your sister loves Mama's Going to Buy you a Mockingbird, although she presently has a strong preference for Frog Went Walking on a Summers Day.

A lovely mother from playgroup gave you a bagful of beautifully knitted little woollens as she'd noticed that you always wear them and her own children are too big. The kindness of it was so uplifting and you look so sweet in them.

You are making noises that signal you are about to wake, and the light is silvering - daylight approaches - I'd better hurry and have a shower before you all wake.

But your fourth week little one - incredibly precious and incredibly hard, and one I never want to forget.

P.S I forgot to say you visited your first university library this week. (Obviously you've already been to a public library - although a small one - your Nana and Grandpa have more books!)  Everyone admired your brilliance properly. I'll be going back to work for a few hours next semester (don't worry, your Daddy will look after you for my weekend shift, and your Nana and Grandpa will train it up from Melbourne for the shift that falls in the week. Expressing is not something I've done before, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it!) 

How Far Would You (Should You) Go? Writing Wednesday

A few years back (okay, quite a number of years back) I found myself driving down a ramp into the sea, in a remote corner of the Irish Coast in Mayo. 

This was not intentional. Nor had I had any alcohol, although it was approaching midnight.

Luckily, I realised my error in time, and reversed before I reached the water. The big sign with a ramp and a car and a line through it was a bit of a clue that perhaps this wasn't the way to my youth hostel. 

I had decided to track down the island where four mythical swans who formed a major plot point in one of my stories, were said to have spent their last three hundred years. Inish Glora. Driving to the island was not my plan, and in the end, the closest I got was a distant view of silver flatness in an un-still sea. The manager of a golf course overlooking it having been kind enough to take me over the dunes in the golf buggy. (It was a place of great kindness, there was also the man at the petrol station who, when I admitted to being hopelessly lost and having driven for eight hours from Shannon, (I swear it looked like two on the map) made me a cup of tea, told me to wait a few minutes until he finished his shift and then follow him back as he lived just down the road from the hostel. 

That was the trip I took to research a book I'm still mulling over, re-writing and playing with. My journey to Inish Glora (almost) was not my longest. After much research and deliberation, I decided that the magical chalice at the heart of the story needed to be found on… St Kilda. St Kilda being suitably remote, majestic and bird-ed. (I had considered Orkney - but they were too flat and not quite as bird-ful). 

Reaching St Kilda (the islands, rather than the seaside suburb of my home town) involved flying across several seas, catching a bus, a ferry, a bus, another ferry, walking two kilometre with a heavy back pack and then traveling eight seasick-y hours by yacht.

After one brief, magical day on the island, scrambling along cliff faces and looking down vast drops, we learnt a gale was heading straight towards us and rather than staying the five days we had intended we needed to leave for safer harbour on the nearby and uninhabited Monarch Islands off Benbecula.

The story?  I'm still ruminating. The plot is there. 

Drafts one two theree up to seven are written, but I think I might need to start from scratch and re-write. I don't think I've caught the wild magic I see in my head, I haven't captured the isle, the sea or the myth the way I wanted, the majesty of the plot, the intensity of the characters.

My biggest regret of the trip? Not leaving my camera charger at my grandparents house, just outside Glasgow, although it was lowering to travel all that way and return with distressingly few photos, but that I didn't swim in the bay we were anchored in all those gale-bound days. I didn't swim in that arctic cold bay with the gale at our back and metres from the curve of sand covered in seals singing with their pups.

I was remembering that time on St Kilda as I came across this video on pinterest recently and was catapulted back. 

Siiga - Michelle (Seashell) from Siiga on Vimeo.

I know I am not the only one to travel far and run seemingly bizarre experiments in the name of research. I'd love to read other people's stories. 

(In other writing news, I am ridiculously behind on my self imposed deadlines, but just as I thought we were free of the grippe my Sprocket started running a high fever - also my Beloved's intern applications are due in and my editing has been focused on cvs and cover letters.) 

Stills

-chrysanthemum. The pot was on sale after mother's day and I was unable to resist. When the rain took one of the flowers from the bush I popped it in a bowl.
-a cup of coffee. Essential in these days of sickness and sleeplessness.
-spiralling greenery on my granny's passionfruit vine.
-an unknown flower in my granny's garden.
-moss on a winter tree.
-the season for gumboots arrives.
- my Littlest one. Four weeks old.

Joining with Em for stills from our week.