House time

  After over seven months of living in a tent, with small stretches gatecrashing other people’s houses, we are in our own (rented) house. It is totally awesome. Lights! Hot running water! Protection from the wind and rain and sun! And we haven’t even got any stuff in here yet-but handwashing inside in a laundry tub is so infinitely easier than outside in a plastic container.

  We saw lots of stuff-some of it was awesome, some a let-down, some surprising. We drove over 35,000kms, well and truly destroying any benefit of our six months of car-free living. We met many people, some of whom have hung around as long-term friends. Two tents were destroyed by overuse, and I don’t think I ever want to camp again. I was well and truly over it before we stopped, and it will take a while to lose that attitude.

  Right now I am being Housewife of the Year-keeping the house spotless, cooking endlessly, and helping the kids adjust to normal life again, and life without their much-adored daddy around full time. Travelling was both good and bad for them, and we’re working on the bad (like table manners, which disappeared somewhere around Alice Springs). I’m also enjoying our own company-travelling means you’re thrown into close proximity with many people all day, every day, and live your life observed by many. As a fairly independent, reclusive person this has been hard to deal with, and i’m revelling in privacy. I imagine my domestic goddess stage will last until our stuff gets here and I unpack my sewing gear, which i’m dying to use. Then the children and house can return to their normal state of benign neglect.

  I am now a South Australian, which i’m lukewarm about. The state itself is fantastic in terms of environmental measures, small farming and education, but the weather is shit. I believe those two are correlated, in that the worse the weather the more the government has to provide incentives to live there (look at Queensland-fantastic weather, shit everything else). The Husband is beginning a new career, here is the best place to do that, so for now i’m wearing my winter woolies in February and wondering exactly how much clothing i’ll need in July………….

  And that’s about as much introspection as you’ll get from me right now-another week of sleep top-up and I should be back to full speed.

Homeless and wandering

  So. We took off for our 'holiday', planning to move back to our property and put a huge effort into selling it, while doing some travelling and searching out a new place to live. Then, it sold. And threw us out completely. Since buying our car less than six weeks ago we've driven over 6000kms-back up to the property, finishing up there, back to Melbourne via northern NSW and everything in between. There's been two deaths in our extended family, a Melbourne job offer we've agonised over and just rejected, and lots more in between. We are tired. And it's looking like we're about to go off and do the travelling without the benefit of a house to go back to and recoup, or half of our camping gear or our roofracks-they're in storage.

But, it's all in the attitude. We have the opportunity to find somewhere where we really fit in, where we're not the oddities of the area. Just being in places where there's been vegetarian take-away and dreadlocks has been exhilarating-look! They're like us! Handmade markets that actually have inventive handmade stuff, gorgeous beaches and bush and creeks to swim in are all out there-time to learn how to holiday and actually enjoy some of it, instead of driving through to the next destination.

If you have any recommendations of beautiful places to go along the east coast, bring them on!

Homeschool snapshot-codes and mysteries

  Cracking the code in Graham Base’s Enigma.

Catapulting ourselves back into impulsiveness

  We used to be cool. Cool as in, waking up on a perfectly normal day and deciding it was time for a holiday. Throwing camping gear, and kids, and clothes into the car and being on our way by 10am. (Deciding to move back to Melbourne from Cairns, and packing the house, putting it on the market and being gone in 36 hours was the pinnacle of impulsiveness. And a major fuck-up-we were back six months later, minus our gorgeous Queenslander, which predictably sold immediately).

  Over the last few years we’ve become boring. More than boring-beige. A combination of an unreliable car, five rather young children and debt on two properties stopped us doing much that could be called exciting. We have been stagnating in a pool of boringness, and it’s showing. Neither of us are much suited for a predictable life, and when the biggest decision of the day is what to have for dinner………well, lets just say I don’t cope very well with that. Obsessive working works well to a point, but I have to snap sometimes.

  Result-notice given to move out, moving truck booked to dump our stuff at the property, bus booked to Brisbane, plane booked to Melbourne. Not bad for an afternoons work. We have less than a fortnight to pack everything we own, get it on and off a hire truck, clean this place and be gone. It’s at least five times longer than we’ve had any other time, so it should be a breeze.

  And I already feel as though I can breathe again.

Homeschool snapshot-embroidery

Thanks to a lovely friend dropping off a stitch book and a whole container of threads!

Bathtub gardens update

As promised, a picture of a bathtub garden actually growing stuff.

This one contains a yacon, also known as a peruvian ground apple, sweet fruit root or jicama (but not to be confused with the yam bean jicama-these foreign crops get so confusing!) Also, it contains five garlics, two Darwin lettuces and a pak choi. All are growing well with complete ignorance from me-thinking of that, i’ll give it a dose of worm wee tomorrow.

  The watering pipes are also proving to be excellent habitat for frogs, we have tree frogs living in each one. We’ve also discovered another bonus-the winter sun on the metal in the early morning ensures the soil is always significantly warmer than the ground. Currently they’re growing much better than the ground beds, probably also related to the fact that our backyard is somewhat boggy and the wetter than usual autumn means it’s just not drying out.

Shorty turns 5

  Ah, our little Peter Pan. The years keep turning but he remains delightfully compact and innocent. He is my romantic, always picking me flowers and telling me how much he adores me and how beautiful I am-the total opposite of the husband so i’ll savour it while I can!

  The husband wins first prize for handmade present this year, with a lawnmower. Now whenever we mow we have two little boys following us around growling with their own implements.

  I decided to finally tackle a shirt-I must say, it was much easier than I expected. I saw this fabric on sale over a year ago and immediately thought it would be perfect for Shorty and bought the rest (about 2m). Excuse the wrinkles, he wore it straightaway and spent the next day pestering me about whether it was dry-this is straight from the line, in the few minutes it had off his back.

 

  It fitted him perfectly, and i’ve enough left for another one in the next size up. I did have full plans to use proper buttons and buttonholes, but as he hasn’t mastered using them yet decided a zip would be better for independence. 

 

  Terribly, i’ve left this post so long i’ve forgotten what the girls made him. Luckily Oods remembered to photograph her pirate ship.

For cake, a lemon meringue pie. The first i’ve made, but definitely not the last-both clones were groaning in ecstasy, savouring every last mouthful. No, I didn’t do the crust properly either, i’m lazy like that.