Then and Now

I found an old CD of photos of this house from the real estate listing, when Dan bought it nearly seven years ago. 

I thought it would be interesting to do a series of 'then and now' photos showing the transition of the house over the years.

My house will not grace the pages of Real Living anytime soon. Real living does, however, take place here.

So, here's the first up. This is a granny flat area we have downstairs. 

Then...

I remember pulling that carpet out (Dan and I had just started dating when he was in the process of buying this place). We painted the concrete underneath white, and it lasted like that until the house started flooding every time it rained a few years ago.

Now...

We gutted the downstairs of the house a year or so ago and rebuilt it (after fixing the landscaping issues causing it to flood). Dan and I split this room now. On this side of the room dividers is my sewing room and storage. On the other side, only accessible through external doors (to avoid dirty boots trampling carpet), is Dan's hardware storage area.

Here's the front entrance.

Then...

This is not actually from the listing but was taken after we started gutting some of the interior.

Now...

The garden is absolutely thriving out here. I'll post some more photos of it soon.

Stay tuned!

Deals Brokered In The Early Morning

The mood of the last few days has almost passed, but unfortunately my groove for life has not yet completely returned. The fact is it's been a hard week here. One of the hardest in recent memory, actually. And we have had some particularly challenging ones over the last year or so.

Life, you big arsehole. I've had enough of your games.

I won't dwell on the whole situation too much. I think it just serves to say that if you took a lot of my life over the last year (anything Lucinda-related discounted) and threw it in a pile, I'd be there with kerosene, matches and marshmallows before you could even get the wine open.

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One night, late last year, when I was sitting after dinner, my stomach suddenly seized up. The pain came on quickly and the only way to describe it is someone reaching into my stomach, grabbing my intestines and wringing them out like a dishcloth.

Agony.

Within minutes I was rocking back and forward on the carpet groaning. Minutes after that, Dan had called an ambulance. Before it arrived, I vomited on the carpet and the pain subsided. Dan called Triple 0 again and cancelled.

The next day, I went to the GP, who decided I probably had a bad case of indigestion. Even though I knew that wasn't it, I wasn't sure what else to do or say to her. I let it be.

A month or so passed before it happened again, only the next time it was far worse. Luckily, this time, my mother was staying. When the pain still hadn't passed after an hour, Dan and I left Lu at home with Mum and drove into the hospital.

They admitted me to a bed, dosed me up with painkillers. It was 3am, I was exhausted, in agony and desperately fearful of what was happening to me.

Somehow, it seemed to make a sick sense. I have a tiny, new child and everything is wonderful in my life. Now, the universe has come to take something back.

That reasoning went around and around in my head as I lay there, rocking and waiting for a doctor.

As time wore on, I did what many who suddenly fear for their safety do - I begged.

I'd like to say now that I made a pledge with the universe to travel to Africa to treat the blind if it granted me my health, but my pledges seemed to become increasingly humble as the hours wore on.

Let me go home and I'll never ask more of you.

Let me go home to my baby now and I won't make a fuss ever again.

I don't want much. I won't rock the boat. Just let me be. All I want is my baby.

I'm not sure if the universe listened. When the diagnosis arrived, it was gallstones. Devastatingly painful, but not overly serious. The doctors sent me home with a restricted diet to follow until I could have surgery.

Sadly, it didn't work. Within months my condition had escalated and I had developed acute pancreatitis. A few months ago, I was admitted to hospital for five days to have my gallbladder removed as a matter of urgency.

I didn't eat for four days. I didn't see my baby for three of them. My milk almost entirely dried up and I stopped breastfeeding shortly after.

But it was worth it. I got to come home at the end of it and know I was well again. I got to go home to my husband and baby. I got more than a lot of sick people in hospital get.

There's a guilt now. All those deals brokered in the small hours of the morning. Who did I make my deals with? What would they say about my daydreams of a different life?

What will happen now I've dropped my end of the bargain and made a fuss?

This again

Occasionally, typically about once a month, I wake up feeling profoundly dissatisfied with life. I feel agitated and frustrated and restrained by living in the city and working in an office.

Traffic. Neighbours. Noise.

I crave a country existence. Wide open spaces where we could keep a few animals. A big verandah and a creek and a nearby town hall.

Generally, after a day or two, the longing again fades to more of a distant pang. I get on with life, focus on the wonderful things about living where we do. Friends and family nearby.

Jobs.

It's a luxury, I suppose, this longing. In a time when the global economy continues to convulse and jitter and billions of people around the world would, literally, give a limb to have what we have, it seems selfish and ungrateful to want something different.

To consider something beyond options for employment and a lovely home when you have a young child. It's just silly, surely.

And yet, here it is again. Back to taunt me.

I went to a garage sale on Sunday at a small house near ours. The middle aged man I spoke to said his elderly parents had just gone into a nursing home and he was selling off all their possessions.

It got me to thinking. If that's me one day, shuffling off into a nursing home after a life lived raising kids in the 'burbs, will I be happy with what I've done? Will it be enough?

Or will I be profoundly and irreversibly disappointed with myself for not listening to this voice playing in the background, telling me that wanting a different life is not a crime and that maybe, just maybe, now is the time to go after it?

Steiner Baby

Today, I dragged my sickly baby out to the local Steiner school open day. Her father and his friends were home preparing to attack shrubs with a chainsaw, so a warm car trip and wander around the campus sounded like a mercy for her.

Within the first five minutes of arriving at the campus I'd made my mind up to enrol Lucinda there when the time came. It was after that five minutes that I became a little less sure.

The school, about 10 minutes north of our place, is undoubtedly impressive.

The campus is lush with gardens and veggie patches and chicken coops and little classrooms that look like hobbit holes. 

I've read about the Steiner philosophy and I agree with a lot if it. I love the focus  on learning skills like gardening and self-sufficiency, cooking, building and knitting. 

The idea that young children should be kept away from technology? I just bought an iPad and Lu is showing early signs of an amazing Tap Tap Ant talent.

Sunrise in our very un-Steiner suburban hobbit hole

The thing is, on paper I agree with so much of what you might describe as a 'hippy' mindset. But being at that school today suddenly took me back to dozens of meetings with people at fairy-lit parties on bush blocks over the years.

The setting is phenomenal and I've met someone interesting. We're getting along just fine and all of a sudden they start talking about my aura or asking me about what my spirit animal is and I just feel like rolling my eyes.

You're ruining this for me. 

It's the same with Steiner. I would genuinely love for her to be educated in a place with hobbit hole classrooms and amazing gardens. I would love for her to go off to school and to break up her maths and science lessons with tending a veggie patch and looking after chickens. 

Then I overhear a teacher talking about something 'cosmic' and there's that feeling again. 

You're ruining this for me. 

I came home feeling slightly dejected and sat down, still being clung to by a tired and sick baby. We watched Dan and his friends chainsaw up the last of the tree and then all sat down and ate a BBQ steak dinner.

Maybe we're just not Steiner people.

Does anyone have any experience with Steiner they'd care to share? I'd love to hear it.

Sprinkles

It's such a dreary day in Brisbane today. We were stuck inside, so making cupcakes was the order of the day...

We had visitors, so Lucinda got to wear her best cardigan.

Here's a few instagrams from through the week.

We've been inspired by the removal of those palm trees to take out another couple of problematic trees on our block, which should be happening tomorrow if the weather clears up. 

Plus, we've got to start sanding back balustrading in preparation for another coat of oil. Fun fun (!!)

Have you got anything exciting planned?

Op Shopped Life

I was watching Lu play on the deck this morning and suddenly started wondering whether the poor child owned ANYTHING new. 

I love op shopping, as does my mother in law. This car was her latest find, for $2. It's ugly as sin but it plays all sorts of little tunes and Lu thinks it is the bees knees.

My MIL cleaned it up and put felt runners on the wheels and Lu spends great amounts of time riding it up and down the deck now. 

This is her outdoor 'playroom' at the end of the deck. It now features the dollhouse I found at an op shop a while back, still waiting for its renovation. Ahem. 

Other features here include an op shopped table, rocking duck, walker and a rocking reindeer a friend of ours found put out for council clean up. 

The gum boots? Op shop. Lucinda's outfit? Op shop. 

Honestly, I just can't see the point in buying expensive toys brand new just to see them get trashed, or never used.

I do buy mostly new clothes for her, but her grandmother turns up every week with a bag full of washed and pressed size one clothes she's found on her op shop rounds and they come in handy.

It's all the same after it's been washed and disinfected anyway.

In other news, I found this little guy this morning.

Another shot of the veggie garden labelling solution. Iceberg dead ahead!

I also planted some snow peas, but I mixed blood and bone into the potting mix and the dog has already been pulled out of the pot twice, so I'm not sure how they'll go.

 

Household Staff

In a development that has left me digging through my drawers for a cashmere twin-set and a string of pearls, it's looking increasingly possible that I may soon have a household staff.

Well, not a staff, so much. More like an unpaid au pair.

Dan and I looked into a few different childcare options earlier this year before deciding on the family day care set-up we love so much.

During that process, we registered with an au pair agency which has recently come back to us and asked if we'd like to be considered for their part-time program.

Basically, in return for room and board, the au pair undertakes 10-15 hours of child minding and light housework a week.

At this point, we're interested. We have a bedroom and bathroom downstairs that lend themselves rather nicely to guest quarters and we like the details of the potential candidates they've sent us.

We've had plenty of people live with us over the years, both short and long-term, so that's not such an issue for us.

We don't need home help, or childminding help. But it might bring a little something extra to our life for the three months an au pair would be with us and it definitely fits in with my 'village to raise a child' philosophy.

What do you think? Would you like an au pair to live with you for three months?