the list review: part two

18. Do more creative work. Oh dreary desk, thief of time and inspiration. Thus begins a concerted effort to lessen web trawling and beef up creative play.

19. Do something eco-preneurial / creative with R. Lots daydreaming. See above. Gah!

20. Make and give away recycled notebooks. Ibid. *shudders*

21. Redevelop Pelican’s website. Some advice dispatched... the guts of it outstanding.

22. Start giving blood again. Started going again but got dizzy and was advised not to return til my constitution was a bit more robust.

23. Learn the violin. And pick up my guitar more often. The former is BIG on my 35 list (if there will be a 35 list, I'm undecided given my inability to get through the 34 list). Recently unleashed the dusty axe for the first time for K, to his complete astonishment. :)

24. Visit the Bunya Mountains. Hmph. Feel somewhat OK about not getting there yet since I have instead discovered the southern (and very un-Gold-y) end of the Gold Coast. Who would've thunk?

25. Go for bushwalks. Yep.

26. Get a bike and ride it (and this time, don’t give it away!) Bike, check. Must apply self to riding it more... as soon as this inflamed disc in my lower back settles. Hmm. The relics were right, getting older sucks.

27. Do more for others. Took photos at R’s art auction and helped organise S’s 50th... and did photos there too. Have burnt CDs, provided references and generally I think been good to others. And in poetic karma harking back to my recalcitrant kid-hood, I seem to do a lot of washing up these days for other peeps. I even put the dishwasher on today at work!

28. Get an address book and keep track of friends/family contact details and birthdays. Adult-hood hath started!

29. Apply to become a foster carer. Geez, I can't even commit to getting a cat.

30. Find out about rent-a-chook and herdshare. Researched both. Some pet-commitment type issues prevail (see #29). And what the @#$%! would I do with all that milk!?

31. Go to Sunday comedy and jazz @ the Powerhouse again. Yep.

32. Try to be more open to the possibility of meeting a single/available/adjusted boy with similar interests/values/goals. By far, the best thing I have done in a very long while :) aw!

33. Accept the journey, where ever it goes, and trust myself more. ‘Tis all you can do, right? The best things in life are a leap of faith...

34. Do one thing that's not on this list that I would normally say ‘no’ to! Short-term cohabitation upon return to Bris-vegas. Spent Christmas on my own watching the whole two series of Love My Way. Signed a lease on the spot for a place with a dodgy kitchen. Tried online dating. Tried offline dating. Declared both to the cyber-verse. Took a very big punt. And finally understood how to live in the greys instead of the blacks/whites.

creativity angst

Have found myself mired in extreme creativity angst of late. Weekends seem to expire with the list of boring chores mostly knocked over, while the (wish)list of arts, crafts and higher pursuits remains untouched. I simply cannot work out how other desk-hounds tweak their schedules to maintain creative dabblings.

I have been wondering whether it is just a time thing, whether I just have too many interests to maintain, or whether something more sinister might also be going on.

Was recently beavering away on a piece for dumbo feather (and have two pieces in the Spring issue – saving me from complete creative woe), for which I was leafing through blog posts from about mid-last year, retracing some of the anarchic thoughts I was having back in drop-outsville. And was sort of astounded at the writerly zest I (me?) seemed to wield back then. And appalled that said zest seems to have leaked from my brain. Though sadly, not onto the page. Or into anything remotely creative.

Back in the Life After Desk days I seemed to have some sort of vague insight into Stuff. And seemed to be able to relay it with some sort of mild humour and zing. Now, I aim words at a target with functional intent. Unpretty, linear information widgets…

Just like a…

Ministerial brief...

Gah! GAH!

The desk. Desk, desk, desk. Sounds like a reprimand. Thief of creative expression, abstract thinking and sweet unproductive time. I have found this year much harder than any other stint in my working life. My current mission: to make more room for creative play. Hmmm.

the list review: part one

About this time last year I made a list of 34 things to do before I turned 34. Since I'm now being reminded that another year is almost done, I wanted to see where I got to with my (mostly) small aspirations. Keeping in mind my nerdy proclivity for personal 'to do' lists and seething resentment of 'lists of things to do before I die', here's part one. (It was a hefty list!)

1. Find a job in policy (and change blog subtitle to Life And Desk). Check. Blog subtitle may have been more accurate as Life and Dull Stuff Which Pays. Who could have predicted a hulking re-engineering of the entire machinery of government would make ANY job in the Army suck. I'm sure it's not at all Buddhist, but I'm consoled by the knowledge that those around me are suffering too.

2. Save save save and buy some land. First part of mantra complete. Part two awaiteth...

3. Research and design my little sustainable house. Lots of idle daydreaming, ordering journal articles from the library at work, and general collection of thoughts to expand draft design brief.

4. Persevere with a potted herb garden. Holy basil, purple basil, thyme, rosemary, parsley and chilli still going, tomatoes came and went, and now have warrigal greens coming on (thank you Relics), despite the scrabblings of the resident moggie who keeps digging them up and crapping on them. Much angst about vegie seeds not yet planted halfway through spring.

5. Sell my photos. Next!

6. Sell my cards (or at least give them to family and friends on card-type occasions). Aren’t parentheses a wonderful thing?

7. Eat more ethically. Tick, with forgiveness for recent slippage with occasional purchases of sushi and farmed salmon. Am now a certified no-packaging / re-use freak.

8. Buy goods in bulk in own containers. Love Mick’s Nuts and Flannerys. For my next trick I shall implement own lunch-box regime for take-away food purchases (see no. 7).

9. Continue making all my own bread. Sourdough baking was a monthly event at the ‘Hill until recent discovery of artisan-inspired Flour Power up the road, which most people would have discovered within a week of moving in. I credit my tardiness to my tenacity to goals!!

10. Stick to pilates and walking 3 times/week each. Walk to and from work but have completely fallen off the yoga/pilates wagon. Am now self-diagnosing possible sciatica after extended rock-sitting episodes the other week. Of all the list things I should have clung to like a woman falling off a cliff...

11. Do a first aid, safety at sea and sail training course. Basic dinghy sailing 1 and 2. Aced! First aid is up next.

12. Investigate Indigenous kitchen garden idea. Well, um, I met Mark Olive at the Dreaming Festival...

13. Read about transition culture. Ooh... does blog trawling count?

14. Knit R a beanie in time for Japan. Knit one, pearl one, done. Though she ended up going to Thailand instead and not needing the beanie!

15. Send a krama to N. Hey N, what’s your address? Do you check the Peli box?

16. Blog more regularly. Post more for streeteditors. Keep writing for Dumbo Feather. Nup. Nup. Yep. How my cousin who is in charge of a toddler and a working week can manage to blog every day for a month is beyond me. I am weak.

17. Get my typewriter fixed. Ye old specimen of smudgy typefaces has been lovingly restored and now nestles on the treadle of my Singer sewing machine. Which I should probably learn how to use. Does this mean I need to make a list of 35 things?

... to be continued!

glee. a weekend retreat

Life has been a bit of a slog lately, largely due to a full-blown case of work irks. I can handle just about anything the desk throws at me. It’s when they stop throwing it that I start losing it. Thanks to Queensland school holidays and a progressive female Premier, the past few weeks in the Army have been so DULL I’ve wanted to bore my eyes out with a rusty drillbit. Dwelling on the dismal imbalance of it (time is short, there are so very many things I want to do, and there is so very much to be done) has been doing my head in. That and doing the shuffle between the 'Hill and the bus (which is now in Brisbane after K relocated from the coast), which is driving us both a little nutty.

So it was perfect glee to spend three whole days (and one of them a Monday!) in Cougal, New South Wales beside the Border Ranges National Park with friends of K’s who moved from 'the Rock' earlier this year to run a guesthouse on 200 acres. This weekend they hosted a bunch of women on a dance retreat. With a baby due any day, K's mates invited us to hang out as back-up hosts in case baby decided to show up, which, thankfully (not being acquainted with home births) he didn’t. So we hung out, washed a few dishes, pulled a few weeds and made daily trips down to the creek to swim and sprawl on sunny rocks with books. Aah! We awoke after slumber-licious nights to the sound of bellbirds and whipbirds (not at all like the crazy alarm-birds at the ‘Hill which have learnt to mimmick every alarm clock in the south Brisbane neighbourhood). We played with a dreamy-eyed toddler and an old dog from the desert. And chatted to I and T about their life running a guesthouse in the bush. And daydreamed (well, I did) about the many possibilities in their extremely large commercial kitchen...

Photos to come, since my camera inadvertently went home with K in Barry, in the continuing saga of 'where's my stuff?' that accompanies the dance between two homes.

spring time, sydney town

First weekend of spring.

Time stops in a musk-scented garden.

And begins again on dusk.

Farm Cove. Mrs Macquarie's Chair. Sounds like a big colonial doll's house.

And like dolls we sit on the grass and watch

as the moonrise trumps the bridge in a silent argument about the bigger spectacle.

We ride old-school ferries to Manly and rewrite the great Aussie pie.

Pumpkin and fetta? Pies at the beach?

And we walk. And sit by seaside pools of molten gold.

Cabbage Tree Bay. Bare fingers of frangipani point to blue skies.

Late afternoon chill and bruschetta in Bronte. The woman in the cafe gives us blankets.
A yellow balloon rides the breeze above the Waverley Cemetery.

Celluloid unreality.

Saltblown. Somehow closer.

Then a bus, a train and a mad dash to scrub up.

Ben Folds. Second row seats at the Opera House.

Request bowl, piano stool, melancholy.

Warm hands.

In a wink everything unclenches.

Except hope, held tight.

party days

A rather gargantuan party-ish weekend has caught up with me and I am slicing into my rather massive haystack of sick leave. Last week was busy to the hilt preparing for S’s 50th, amongst all the usual stuff. Since I felt responsible for convincing her of the absolute necessity of celebrating such a hefty milestone – how could the person who, in her fabulous youth, started the Eumundi markets and sailed to India with an international fugitive, let her 50th pass without a bit of a knees-up? – I offered to help out with the food. Thus ensued wads of shopping, cooking, dishwashing and organising by both K and I. Buckets of sand were brought from Tallebudgera to bed tealight candles in brown paper bags. Chairs were carted and fairy lights strung. I made a mega pesto pasta salad from scratch. Plus my first ever quiche and samosas. (Thanks to my long-standing recipe recalcitrance – and the freezer gods – visitors to the 'Hill will be plied with samosa filling for months to come...)

The day before the party, R and J (who I hadn’t properly caught up with for AGES) came over for dinner on the deck. Mainly so they could finally meet K… and both parties be satisfied that my besties/squeeze were not just a psychological dependency I dreamed up. The girls drank a yummy red and talked about the boys. The boys drank German beer. And talked about beer. There was chicken, salad, cous cous. And sticky date pudding. Mmm. Oh. And the day before that was S's actual birthday, so we went to Sakura, the local Japanese, for amazing sushi, tempura and sake. Parteeee!

Since she had friends coming from both ends of the east coast and every hippy haven in between, I thought it would be lovely if S had photos from the evening as a keepsake. Here are some of the more experimental results… and a rather cute look at what happens when two alco-mo-hol-happy dreamers play with a camera :)

brunswick by bus

On the weekend K and I took Alice the bus for a slow spin down the coast. After some months parked by the Tallebudgera Creek, she needed a run. K found a place on Google Maps called Wooyung which begged the question: a seemingly undeveloped stretch of coast between Pottsville and Brunswick Heads. It was my first time travelling in Alice... and I discovered it is akin to being crowned parade royalty - people look, wave and cheer at you, so naturally it's polite to wave back. (All my secret Moomba fantasies now realised!) We discovered why Wooyung is undeveloped: stagnant creek, mosquitoes and pallid drenchings of end-of-the-worldness. There were no powered sites for us in Wooyung, making the short run to Brunswick a no-brainer. There we found a lovely little nook at the end of the caravan park, right by the Cruising Yacht Association, where honeydew smells filled the air. After executing our entry strategy (parking a bus is kind of like mooring a boat, though thankfully a lot less stressful), we went for a walk to ogle boats. I then proceeded to sate my crazy summer food and beverage cravings (Coopers Greens and potato chips followed by lamb and rosemary sausages and salad… mmm!)

In the morning we discovered Alice had not quite enough grunt left in her batteries to get us away by check-out. So we dutily informed the 12-yo at the desk that we unfortunately couldn’t go anywhere for a few hours, put Alice on charge and took coffees and breakfast-bowls to some rocks by the river and read the paper in the sun. Bliss! Then it was off to the beach for a spell of lolling and swimming.

Accompanied (as has been increasingly the case over recent beachy weekends) by a small boy-pack kicking a footy. This strange phenomenon has seen small groups of not-quite-teenage boys assemble beside us on the beach and engage in a bit of biff - kicking footies, wrestling, etc. K thinks it’s me. Pffff! I reckon they have a sixth dog-like sense and can smell the crazy love gremlins.

We headed back to Alice for a late alfresco lunch of cold sausages and sourdough with leftover tomato-capsicum salsa. Yum! And in a move sure to please the elder Relic, I took out a fully-paid, life-time membership of the Cold Sausage Fan Club.

Bellies full, K gave Alice a turn and she was back in action, putting paid to fantasies of calling work Monday morning to report ourselves "stuck at the beach". Back at Tallebudgera (after people at bus stops on the Gold Coast Highway tried to hail us - apparently this is usual), we did a sweep of Australia on Google Maps, pegging out regions on a big old road-tripping dream across the country. Which was fortuitously followed by the happy Monday discovery that by next March, I will have racked up about six months leave at half pay.

How many ways can a desk-hound say ‘Wooooo!’?