Meanwhile, back at the Ranch....

This post has a point. A really important one. It's not lost on me that if I have come to the point of putting a disclaimer at the top because it's a really, really long wordy post, I ought to just shorten it instead of... writing more words in a pre-cursory warning-request note.


But then that wouldn't be me. I am Wordy. Kirrily Wordy Whatman. Deal.  And please read to the end, at least, of this post. It does have an important point. Not all about me this time....


When I was in Year 12, my best-best-best-of-the-best-bestie and I took Psychology together. Our teacher was the inimitable (well... that's not quite true, I used to do a cracking impersonation of her back in the day) Mrs McPherson. She would try and be all hip to the kids' jive and believe she was grabbing our attention. How did she do this? By attempting a good ol' bit of stereotypical reverse psychology - ironic, really.

If there was too much chatter amongst ourselves, she tried to regain our focus with a loudly interjected, "Meanwhile, back at the ranch...." from her position at the front of the classroom. She got our attention alright. We would smirk in her direction at the attempt as all lofty teens do. But damnit. It worked. Because it always stopped us in our tracks. Made us listen to what she had to say next, even if we were laughing at her only moments before.

I think about that teacher now and realise that the Mrs McPherson's of the world are the ones who stick their necks out to make change. Whether that change is on a world scale, or closer to home, or hey.... in a classroom of teenagers who just need to pull their heads in for two minutes so their teacher can hand out the course homework before the blessed bell goes.

So, without further ado, I want to direct you, dear reader, to focus your attention "back at the ranch" please.

Today, I have spent the most frustrating hours trying to make my new Wordpress site go live. Without complete control at the server side, at best this has been a stop-start affair. I am very keen to get it going, for several reasons.

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. At the recent Digital Parents conference (DPCON12) I committed myself to a long-held personal project. The stirrings of this began about twelve months ago, when I decided "I really need to make this happen."

And then I did that thing I do so well. I procrastinated the crap out of that idea and talked myself into all the reasons why it was a stupid dream.

But that all changed the moment Brenda Gaddi told me that for services rendered (ie. stacking piles of freebies into swag bags), I could slip my card in to the mix - effectively reaching approximately two hundred conference delegates and sponsor representatives. I gulped down hard on my nerves and dived in head-first. As each bag was handed out, my heart flipped. What were they going to do with that card? Bin it? Bother reading it first? Hand it on to someone who might want it? Store it away for future reference???

Here's the card they received:

2. It seems Sunny Side Up has received a few nominations for the latest big-deal Aussie Best Blogs competition. This is probably a good juncture to introduce you to the button I might plug a couple of times between now and May 9th (there are two streams to this competition if I understand correctly - the People's Choice vote and a panel-judged award).

You only get one chance to vote but can give the voting love to more than one blog. SO.... Look, it'd be great if you could use your voting power to check the box next to my little ol' blog title while you're in there. But I'm not expecting any great movement. Over 1,000 blogs have entered this year. I'm gasping in a sea of spectacular writing.

However, there is nothing that can take away the feeling of honour at receiving the recognition of nominations in the first place.

As an aside, I have never loved the word "multiple" more than when Rose from Sydney Writers' Centre used it to encourage me not to let a dicky website glitch turn me off completing the process. What's not to love about that, as a writer?!


Now.... this is where we come to the big stumbling block.

3. Deciding to ride the wave of this encouragement to make my blog the best it can possibly be, I worded Steve up and began to take the plunge into the world of WordPress.

Never before have I been so serious to move across. I have even bought the hosting this time. I have big plans. The biggest being, a dedicated stream to the stories of the babies in our families' past who never made it. There are SO MANY stories out there, layered by generations now. Women who still grieve, believing they have no right, no place to bring up their lost little loves.

Oh how I yearn to give them a place to have a mainstream voice.

WordPress is my go-to for that. I have it all set up. The pages are created! The categories are good to go. The import of this blog's posts is complete. It is all ready to be seen. But..... the server my new hosting is stored on has gone down over this weekend. Cue a slow-motion long-winded "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" escaping from me as I lunge forward at my computer.

Still no new WordPress version of Sunny Side Up. Will it affect the voting? Meh. It's out of my hands now and in the laps of the Internet Gods.



Never choosing to see obstacles in life as mere coincidences, this is where you guys come in. It's obvious to me that this is appropriate biding time. These stories, the ones buried by years of life, they are not easily extracted from the depths of minds and hearts. The soul searching and contemplation about whether or not the sharing of their family's (or baby/ies') story is a process that I realise will take some time.

In my contact with the few over-60's parents so far who have come forward from these older generations, the very idea that anyone would want to hear about their experience has been a surprise to these mothers whose children did not live. Just pause for a moment and contemplate that.... If you had a child about whom you were so pressed to tell someone, anyone, but you couldn't because you weren't allowed to for decades.... Sad doesn't begin to cover it.

While I'm stuck in this Blogger-WordPress-hosting hell, will you spread the word out there with me? That I am working hard to create the space for their stories to be told, shared, responded to in a supportive and uplifting online environment? That they can be shared anonymously if they wish?

I am starting to see that if it's just me on my own working one-on-one with those I contact - or who find the conference card and respond to me - this will be a very slow project. One I am prepared to stay with. But if any of you carry a similar passion to hear in the words of those women (and men) who have gone before us, I urge you to help me spread the word that they can submit their stories to Sunny Side Up - before these stories are lost back to the earth too, like my grandmother and so many others' grandmothers who have now passed on, leaving their younger generation relatives desperate to hear in their own words their feelings of the grief of losing their children.

It makes a difference. Believe me. It makes such a huge difference to hear it in the words of our forebears before it's too late. It causes me such distress to know that there are so many who think nobody cares or wants to listen because it happened so long ago.

If you can help, I am willing to post out some of the cards, anywhere in the world. Feel free to share this post, or retell in your own words and direct people to email or contact me via my blog, Twitter or Facebook. Everyone is different - I am happy to work in any way they are comfortable: interview style, written short story (maximum 1,000 words or spread over more than one post, etc., if it is longer), whatever they need.

If they have a compulsion from inside them, these mothers and fathers, then they deserve the space to say it.

So here it is. 

An open invitation to all older generation pregnancy, infertility, infant loss survivors: please feel free and safe to come forward.

Now, I have a ranch to get back to..... She's requesting dinner.

What's that swag in your bag? #DPCON12 is this Friday!

We're cooking with gas and ready to head to the Sebel on Friday!

In one of my roles as a member of Team Awesome (hey, if we get to give ourselves a name we're gonna make it a good one!), the planning team for our upcoming Digital Parents conference, I was entrusted with accepting delivery of the many goodies and delights that await our delegates via their swag bags. "Sure!" I said. "Send 'em my way, I'll take care of it!"

Since January, we have been receiving courier deliveries regularly. Boxes and boxes from participating companies have been safely stacked four deep, as many across and right up to the ceiling in our spare room. Lucky we completed that house extension otherwise we seriously would have run out of room about a month ago!

Two weekends ago, Steve and the LGBB kindly helped me begin unpacking these boxes. We opened them excitedly and found inside....... more boxes! A real life "nested dolls" bit o' fun. Fun, fun, fun. Cardboard Explosion barely begins to cover it for a description of what then ensued.

This was our couch, barely an hour in....

By Sunday night (of the Grand Prix weekend), I was working hard at not having a panic attack complete with hyperventilating episode. I never realised I was such an orderly beast. Neat freak, some might call it. WHO KNEW??

The two hundred swag bags having been mostly finished this past week, I was then horrified when two things happened in the house. As if they were just waiting for the bags to be made vulnerable. And here *deep breath in* are my two confessions:

1. Someone may get an extra surprise in their swag bag. A mouse!
A dirty great not-so-stealthy mouse came sauntering through our bedroom at 3am.
I awoke with that hair-raising sense that something hairy and scary was in the room - something beyond my dearly betrothed, I mean, who lay blissfully unaware and asleep beside me - and my first thought was to turn the light on, at which point said rodent alighted from my bedside table (oh yeah.... it was there *SHUDDER*), and go and get the cat.
I went and got the cat - our brave hunter, who is usually so good with bringing kill back to the doorstep whenever she pleases - but apparently she enjoys her sleep more than a good old pat and serving of mouse on a platter. I had to shut the door to the bedroom to make her stay in, encouraging her to sniff around the corners of the room where I'd seen the mouse do its best Hamburglar-tip-toeing impression back from whence it came. She looked at me, bemused, and gave a maow that wasn't so much a meow as it was a yawn. Fine. Perfect.
I took the useless lump back to her bed.
So it was left to me to sit up in bed with the light on, unable to get back to sleep. And all I could think was, "Great. What if it climbs into a swag bag down the hallway and decides not to come out and we pack him up and take him in to the Sebel? Sure, it'd make for someone's awesome vlog fodder but I don't want to be known as The Mouse House Blogger. The internet is forever. Noooo! Arooooooo!" (that was an impression of me howling to my ceiling that "the bloody cat" didn't do her job keeping mice away and she's obviously been fooling us these past two years.... She is officially the feline equivalent of the woman who used to work in my old workplace who seemed to be doing such a good job.... Until she resigned and left and they found a pile, months' worth, of important paperwork in her bottom drawer that she'd never actioned but should have and it left the company in a bit of a quandry - so that's it, then: our entire house is effectively Tabitha's bottom drawer.)

2. Someone may get an extra, extra surprise in their swag bag. A slimey dog ball!
I have had the swag bags under lock and key the past few days, diligently fending off mice and other bits of bother. Except, this one time, I came back from the kitchen with a cuppa to find Jazz had discovered them. She's been carrying her ball around in her mouth permanently, she even sleeps with the ruddy thing in her mouth - it's like her dummy - and she was trying to sniff in one. When I saw her she had the ball in her mouth. When I told her off for gingerly quality inspecting the bags with her nose, she didn't have the ball any more.
She has three "inside balls". To date, only one has surfaced. Two are missing. I hope not in the swag bags.
Dear God, please don't let any of my fellow Digital Parents blogging friends find an inside ball dropped inside their swag bag. And.... just a note from Jazz: if they do, could they kindly return it post haste.


*breathing out* It feels good to confess.

~-~-~

On Friday night, the kind and energetic Naomi (of Under The Yardarm fame) brought her own swag - in a brown paper bag - and knuckled down to help us add in the final few deliveries.

They are now all packed into these neat stackable plastic crates from Eco Move (awesome initiative, so much better than cardboard boxes! NO MORE CARDBOARD BOXES! EVER! I never want to see another one as long as I live) where neither mouse nor dog nose can potentially meddle with them.

The LGBB has been an enthusiastic helper this past month, it should be noted. She worked so hard and fast it was almost difficult to keep up with her! She was promoted from simply opening product boxes to make them ready, to carrying filled bags into the waiting plastic transport boxes on Friday night.

Last night, she made posters for the boxes containing the door prizes:

Bloggers will come in droves!
Winner will be so happy s/he'll.... go to a skate park....

Note: If you win the door prize - any of them - I'll be your new best friend? Ohhhhh they are good. Let's just say, a courier had to step inside the house to drop off a delivery on Friday morning - the day after the Lindt boxes arrived - and he said he could smell the chocolate in the house.

NOW do you feel my pain?!?

Once a photobomber, always a photobomber...
As Laney put it, "so she's THAT kind of chocolate Lab??"
This is comedy Gold, people!

See you Friday! Unless you're not coming and then I guess.... I won't.

As you were *anti-climactic cough*

Change and growth together

Hello and welcome to post #1199! Add that to the 500 posts I published on my old blog and.... my goodness, you'd think I'd have ironed out the bumps by now, wouldn't you? But no. That's just the kinda fly-by-the-seat-o'-my-pants, unstructured writer I am. It's a curse, not a skill.

I thought I would use this post to make a couple of announcements.

1.  I am seriously investigating - those other times were just dalliances, forays into what was involved (read: all too hard to change platforms and for no real gain) - moving to a self-hosted Wordpress blog. *GAG-FACE* I KNOW! It's just that I have direction now, I have things I want to do, ways to make this a more useful place rather than me just spewing forth my words. That, and, they have the most amazing plug-ins and ways to make your blog look pretty that I can no longer pretend it doesn't make my designer/visual-eye's heart flutter to think of the possibilities....

This will be a very positive step forward, I think, for my blog's direction. But I want to give you ample time to fling yourself at my feet and weep "NOOOOO! Not Wordpress, no!" if you must. Are you pleased with this move? Or does it strike fear in the heart? Essentially, nothing should change - however, any of you out there reading this in a Blogger-connected reader (I really should be more knowledgeable about all this, but meh) who are concerned you'll lose track of me, please wave your hand at me and make yourself (and your concerns) known and I'll try and find a way to appease you too!

2.  I am very excited to be working on a project in conjunction with Sands Victoria which involves the use of my blog space. It will take a little while yet, but there's something in the works and it makes my heart feel full. In the meantime, here is my first call-out to any readers who have a parent (mum or dad) who has lost a newborn or suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth and who would like to share their story here (can be anonymous).  Contact me via email (details are in my profile or feel free to drop me a line on my Facebook page). Spread the word too! I believe stories are meant to be shared and love to hear about people, their interesting lives, how they survived, how they thrived... in any number of circumstances.

I, for one, would have dearly loved to learn first-hand from the older generation how they stepped through the loss of their baby. So if you know anyone who might like to add their voice, please do invite them to contact me.  I will be making a proper stand-alone post about it soon, but here's a precursory, toe-dipping call-out!

3.  Things are heating up heading towards the Digital Parents Conference. It's all systems GO here and we are receiving, surely, more boxes than a matchstick factory. They contain the incredible amount of swag on offer from companies who are all too happy to throw freebies at bloggers - there are 200 delegates, to be exact, and I am getting up close and personal with each of their swag bags as Steve and I are filling them.... in the sort of methodological, "boy" way you can imagine. I went my own way for a while there, just piffing stuff in - "The bag's huuuuge, there's plenty of room", said I, but Steve was right; proper stacking made for even more much-needed room, so you'll know if you get one of the bags I packed because it'll look like someone just took a rampage through a garage sale, dumping stuff in a cotton bag. Hmmm. Sorry 'bout that.

Anyway, big thanks already to Naomi for flat-packing a stack almost as high as my ceiling with me this week. Go and check out her pretty new blog look. She's fixed the stupid hacks now! It no longer takes you to websites that shall remain nameless....... (don't ya hate it when meddlesome computer geeks crack your firewall?)

And to finish off, a post from me this past month wouldn't be complete without mentioning.... Pepper. See what I did here? It's a brief little photo gallery, come and see me (and her) in our glossy-coated youth - we both had shinier manes back in the day. Sigh. Ah, Pep  :-) I know somewhere she's still smiling her teddy-dog smile.

Humour me, folks. That is all. And have a lovely weekend!  Chat next week.

"Love" - by Nancy Adams, from the movie "Robin Hood" (1973)

p.s. Did you spy Jazz as a pup??!?! Awwwwwwww!  And I should've warned you about the IVF needle shot, sorry...

Charities - what do you do when they come to you?

Not that the poor, unsuspecting young man at my front door knew any of it, but I had had a crappy kind of day. The sort of first-world crappy that doesn't win me any bleeding heart medals but they were my focus in the moment. The sort that didn't put me in the most ideal frame of mind to humour an uninvited stranger.

So when I was attending to - ahem - the other kind of (monthly) visitor that isn't exactly the most welcome because of its uncanny knack of turning up at unpleasant, unplanned times (one week early this time and paaaainful.... SURPRISE!), I did not expect to have to handle any other unwanted surprise guests.

But sure enough, I heard a rap at the front door at the worst possible moment. Followed closely by "MUUUUUUM, someone's heeeeere" from the LGBB.

I got to the door as quickly as I could - no way is a door-to-door .... what are telemarketers who go door-to-door actually called? (be nice) .... seller going to go anywhere if they know someone is home! - and I was greeted by a very cocky young man standing with his hand placed high on my door jamb. Not a euphemism, thanks for wondering. It was not the most endearing pose, put it that way, and while it may work on a Saturday at the nightclub it's not the best stance to have when you're trying to talk to home owners about the plight of the Ugandan people.

Furthermore, aren't they supposed to wear some sort of badge identifying who they work for? Well... there was none of that. In fact, there was no introduction of any kind. The young man simply launched into a spiel that, while well rehearsed and certainly speaking of dismal circumstances for an entire race, was unsolicited, seemed to be going nowhere and left no gap in it for me to explain as I stood there as patiently as I could that he had not even wished me a happy International Women's Day yet, despite the fact that:

• I was harbouring worse stomach cramps than he'd likely ever have in his entire life
• I had sprinted out of the hairdressers so fast earlier that afternoon, when I realised they had overshot their timing of how long it would take, and now had a half-cut head of hair that would not be corrected until next Tuesday!!! (anyone got a hat they can loan me? Urgh)
• I had been so upset about being, therefore, almost half an hour late to collect my daughter from school that I was still, now an hour later, feeling the after-effects of the sudden adrenaline fight-flight rush
• I now had about 2.3396 seconds to get myself and my kid out the door - her in her swimming cozzie - in time for her class because I had been so late picking her up
• I hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast (it was 5pm)
• It was 5pm! What was he doing here at such a busy time of day!?
• perhaps most alarmingly, there was no chocolate or marshmallows in the house to reverse the effects of the first five points.

Now, I realise their job is to pluck at the heart strings to try and raise funds for whatever cause they are pushing. I will not deny that if I let it, my heart would bleed dry for my fellow man - anywhere in the world, whatever the dire circumstances - but the thing is, how does a person fronting up to my door or calling on the phone know how many (and what) charities are my choice to donate to?

Truth is, while I live a very comfortable life, I am far from a position where I can willingly donate to every single cause that presents itself. I just can't. Factor in the apparently endless stream of school fundraising (that begins in kindergarten!) that we have to pick and choose and tactfully negotiate our way around so we appear to be giving "enough" as a family without giving blindly to everything - I mean, come ON! $6.50 for 6 hot cross buns???? I LOVE hot cross buns but there is a line that has to be drawn! - and you've got one heck of a funds-bleed that threatens to push us into overdraft very soon.

I cannot deny my flush-faced frustration at this kid who was on my doorstep. The sheer arrogance of him - as if his fancy French-accented demeanour was supposed to make me stand there as a captive audience even after I told him not once but twice that I was late to get out the door - made me want to slam the door in his face. But he was talking about clean drinking water. Death and destruction. Women and children. War.

I tried to cut him short with, "Do you want money?" and he said no, he had not asked me for money (I assumed the unspoken "yet" was implied). I asked him if he could leave me the information and he said by law he wasn't allowed to - whaaaat???! - and then proceeded to continue with his torrent.

This kind of apparently endless one-sided regurgitation of recited information makes me seethe. I admit it. It has long since brought me to the decision that I will no longer donate more than a couple of gold coins to anyone who is coming around door-knocking. And if they're on the phone, I bid them good luck and a good day but firmly hang up the phone. Some of our hard earned, scarce money does go to charities but they are ones of our choosing - those causes we are passionate about, everyone has their preferences - and we cannot give to all. Nor should we be expected to give just because they send someone directly to our door.

So.... how do you succesfully remove a person off your front porch? Hanging up on the phone is one thing, but they're wise to that tactic (obviously). I find it the height of invading my space when it's a physical person I'm then forced to be firm with in order to remove them from my property.



What do you do with door-to-door donation seeking types? The ones who have a spiel longer than your arm and don't want to get to the point - you giving money - no matter if you try and round them up to get to that part so you can just work out the money bit already??

Click that arrow

We interrupt this mourning series of posts with a brief community service announcement....

I added a tiny, almost insignificant piece of javascript to my blog, oh, about 14 new moons ago. And then I promptly forgot to bring it to anyone's attention. I'm handy like that.

If you diligently read every word of every new post when you visit my blog, firstly... thank you [sucker], and secondly... have you ever noticed that as soon as you scroll down, a little up-arrow appears in the bottom right corner of your screen? I put that there! For you! So you don't have to scroll up. I get so sick of scrolling around websites/blogs.

So there you have it. Click on that arrow and you'll get jumped straight back up to the top.

You're welcome!

(mobile users: can you tell me how it goes for you or if it even appears? Thanks ever so)

Make it genuine

I was running this morning. Literally, not figuratively. The dog was keeping her working pace at my side - I always feel so much more serious when I glance down at Jazz, she really hits her stride next to me when I jog and looks like she's ... well, working so I feel obliged to put a decent effort in because she is - when I noticed an elderly woman up ahead.

She looked quite frail and was wearing sensible slacks, court shoes and a cable knit jumper that stopped at her waist. She was walking a little white dog. I've just described pretty much every elderly woman going for a walk, haven't I? But I digress.

When the woman looked up and saw us coming, she crossed the street hurriedly. I had already decided I would run down one of the driveway cross-sections and onto the street to go around her. So I felt kind of bad for being the cause of her struggling her dog across the road. As I got closer, I looked over to her where she was now pacing up the opposite footpath. The look on her face was dark. A scowl at "the youth of today" if ever I saw one. Granted, without makeup I do still look like I haven't even hit my mid-twenties or had a hard day in my life. HAR! Har-dee-har...har.... ahem. Little do they know when they see what they think is a fresh-faced girl. Sometimes, just to digress again, I honestly wish some of the experiences of my life would show up on my face. They just. Don't. You can't help genes, I guess.

Anyway, she was still looking at me and I was looking at her. I was concentrating on not tripping, not wavering and bumping the dog - we've done that before and, oh boy, it isn't pleasant for either Jazz or me (her poor toes) - so it took me a moment for the thought in my head "Smile a greeting" to reach my lips and work the muscles of my face. I'm old enough now to not take on whatever the response is going to be to my smile. Sometimes it's returned, other times it's not. That's all cool. Especially in the solitary quiet of a lovely early morning where people get out on their own and usually want to be on their own without some fitness goon grinning their chops off at them.

I kept my smile on. I wanted to call out to her an apology for making her cross the road. It had obviously put her out. I really hadn't wanted to disrupt her path but didn't want to go out on the road too early to round her. But because I was running I was passing her quicker than I would've been able to say the words. I thought she wouldn't respond at all.

But then, there it was. A smile. Parting the dark shadows on her face so briefly. There it was. The person behind the veil. It was a really interesting moment. One in which I realised that her closed expression was probably less about having to cross the road to avoid a jogger and their dog and more about.... well, who knows? Whatever was pressing in her life today.

I jogged on and couldn't stop thinking, rhythmically, like a mantra (jogging can have such a meditative effect on me, which is weird, considering I'm working so hard!)....

Be the first to smile. Make it genuine. 

You could change the course of someone's day.

Even a dog can smile.

A dying art. As opposed to dying for your art.

I doubt it'll ever kill me, but writing anything longer than a page by hand these days hurts!

And that hurts here *close-fisted heart tap to my homies... mummies... blogger...ies*

Eden is hosting a weekly meme - about horses who are not on the nose? - and this weekend it was about handwriting - horses that can write? I don't know, I'm very confused (just generally) - and I was very happy to see so many samples of handwriting. On Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram. By the time I got around to joining in, I realised (as with so many things in my life) I was beyond fashionably late and it had closed.

Somehow, Eden saw fit to open the Linky back up. So I quickly scrawled the note below - the musings of which I shall endeavour to expand on in a post in the near future - and found myself rather happy to be writing. Actual pen-to-paper writing! I love writing. I love forming the letters, I love watching my hand as it seems to bounce and flow almost with a mind of its own as it shapes the letters. I love the pace of writing - note to self: when brain is overworking..... Stop. Write. Let it slow back down to the limited speed of hand to self-regulate.

I mean, take a look at those k's. I can make the tail of an S go from here to the kitchen. And my w's? My w's are almost out of control. I was quite tame today, really, but I do adore letting loose on a piece of foolscap with a pen. The more felt-tipped the better, for mine.

One thing I've always wanted to do is make a font out of my own writing. That would be awesome. But so lazy. In a world where the shopping list is the only thing I write with any great regularity, even this is becoming obsolete in our house - thanks a LOT, Siri.

Thanks for reopening your Linky, Mrs Land! Looks like several of us just missed out. I am impressed by how keen we are to put pen to paper. I truly hope it doesn't die out as much as "they" say it will.....

Time will tell.

Do you enjoy writing?

Friends of Science in Medicine know best? Alternative therapies under fire

I appear to be uncharacteristically on my soap box about public issues this week. Forgive me. And bear with me. Please also remember this is a post written from my perspective and experience - I don't intentionally mean to denounce anyone else's experience.

There is no denying that western medicine and science is crucial. I won't even begin to count the ways. In saying that, for treatment of minor (and medium, bordering on serious) conditions, I try to avoid it as much as possible.

So today, when I read this article that is reporting an apparent global uprising of doctors and scientists to prevent universities and health funds from recognising alternative medicine, I felt a sense of dread. The article states:

Almost one in three Australian universities now offer courses in some form of alternative therapy or complementary medicine, including traditional Chinese herbal medicine, chiropractics, homeopathy, naturopathy, reflexology and aromatherapy.

But the new group, Friends of Science in Medicine, wrote to vice-chancellors this week, warning that by giving "undeserved credibility to what in many cases would be better described as quackery" and by "failing to champion evidence-based science and medicine", the universities are trashing their reputation as bastions of scientific rigour.  

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/tertiary-education/scientists-urge-unis-to-axe-alternative-medicine-courses-20120125-1qhtm.html#ixzz1kVvHpGFQ

Okay. Now, I am all for everyone finding their own method of wellbeing. I also realise there are "quacks" out there - but you can find those sitting in GP's offices in proper, accredited clinics anywhere in the country just as easily as the oft-joked-about "slapping fish", "hocus-pocus" (etc. etc. etc.) alternative practitioner. Obviously, any healthcare provider needs to be good at what they do. I just take deep offense at my choices being limited by this ruling. What about all the families out there who rely on these sorts of treatments for their children? How will they afford it if they whip out the health cover rug from under them? They want to take away my right to choose - I mean, sure, the treatments will still be around, but I won't be able to receive a rebate because of my choice and what works for me and my family. And damnit, they're going to win, aren't they?

My experience with doctors has pretty much been along these lines:

Scenario 1 (which actually happened)--
"How can I help you today?"
"My daughter is pulling at her ears and crying. She's too young to tell me what's wrong, but I'm sure there's something happening with her ears."
"Any other symptoms?"
"No, none apart from the crying and irritability... oh wait, sometimes she pulls at her cheeks lately."
"Well... I've checked her ears and they're clear." *shrug* "My best guess is that she had a cold or something like that and her ears were blocked for a while."
I left the office with no treatment or solution being prescribed or suggested.

After several days pass, I take her to my Homoeopath, desperate for some relief for her and sure something is happening but she just can't tell me. My Homoeopath takes one look at my ruddy-faced grizzly baby and says "She's getting more teeth! It can affect the ears..." and goes on to describe the mechanics of the sinus region and why this would be impacted by Lolly's teeth coming through. He prescribes a remedy, I diligently give it to her every four hours. The change is remarkable within the first day. I am relieved, she is relieved.

Scenario 2 (which actually happened) --
"How can I help you today?"
"My child is very sick but I don't know what it can be. She has some spots but they're fairly insignificant at this stage and only around her nappy area. She won't eat or drink and keeps crying and thrashing about." (Of course the crying and thrashing stop when we're in the office...... don't they always?)
"Well... I've checked her over, she has no temperature and looks fine. Keep an eye on those spots and watch for any new symptoms. If anything changes or if you feel she is getting worse, bring her straight back."
"Ummm.... o...kay? I guess?"

Dumbfounded, I head to my Homoeopath for help again. This time, I think my child is far too unwell to be helped by the "quackery" (as so belligerently described in this article today) of something so, frankly, mysterious as homoeopathy. I've heard the opinion that the pillules they give out are no more than placebo tablets. I also know that, either way, I don't care if they are if they relieve me - but I'm not so certain I want to risk testing the theory with my child on something that appears to be quite serious this time. More over, I don't want to risk looking to others like I am doing nothing for her but giving her sugar-placebo tablets!
But with little else to do, I turn again to my trusty Homoeopath.
This time, the result convinces me without doubt that I would turn to him before a GP any day of the week for almost anything except broken bones!

As it turned out, Lolly had hand, foot and mouth disease. She passed it on to both Steve and me. I didn't shake the horrible disease for five months (largely because I was stupid and was so concerned about getting her back to health that I ignored the pain and literally swallowed it down every day without focusing on my own wellbeing and getting myself treated... in hindsight, that was the end of my phase of subconsciously inflicting pain on myself). It was a horrendous time. But we got through it with little more than a bit of Pain Stop and the homoeopathics to treat the symptoms. I did take her back to the doctor to discuss it and was there for little more than five minutes, being shown the door and told that it couldn't be treated by them. What the....?

I could go on and on, listing examples of more minor ailments I or Lolly have had over the past six years. I now naturally call on my Homoeopath for things that I am initially sure cannot possibly be treated or eased but will contact him "just in case" they can. One memorable time, I just happened to mention a grotesque little-fingernail-sized cauliflower wart (oh, yes... ewww) that had grown on the side of my chin while I was pregnant. The thing was there to stay. It grew so large that Steve started asking it how the heck that thing grew on the side of its face ("that thing" being, my head... oh he is soooooo funny, no? sigh).

With barely more than a week's worth of aggressive treatment with the correctly prescribed homoeopathic remedy, the bloody thing fell off! And just two months ago, Lolly and I worked together with our Homoeopath to get rid of a painful papilloma (one of those warts that grow inwards in a conical shape usually on the underside of the heel). They're yuck and in my teenage years, I had one removed with quite a bit of discomfort, local anaesthetic, freezing it out and bandaging. I thought I'd try to avoid that for her and see if we couldn't give homoeopathics a go. She was over the moon when it shrivelled up and died and painlessly fell off in her sock one day, about a month after we started treating it with a 3-times daily remedy. I was pleased she was able to see how the treatment had worked for her, as it had been troubling her and making walking uncomfortable - I offered her the choice and explained what the doctor would do. The word "needle" (even though I reassured her it would only sting for a moment) was enough to make her try the (in my opinion, better) alternative.

Placebo? Quackery?  I don't believe either of those ill-advised descriptions for ONE second.

And finally, I just want to say: please note that my Homoeopath was not the one who didn't do anything for you... if you have been given poor or ineffective treatment by one - as with doctors, there are good ones and crap ones. I have the great fortune of having found a damn fine Homoeopath, whom we actually call "Dr K" because he's just as good, if not better, than any I've seen in my entire life and certainly treats me and my family more effectively and more often.

What have been your experiences with doctors, alternative therapists, or otherwise?

When cyclists attack: Dog vs Man

"If you don't know how to do it, I'll show you how to walk the dawg."

The other morning, the LGBB and I took Jazz for a walk to her school. It took us around an hour. There is a bike track that goes all the way there. It's a really lovely gently downhill walk all the way, and there are many spots where you could almost imagine you're walking on a path through the bush, not through the back of suburbia.

On this deserted path, I decided to allow Jazz some free roaming time. She is harmless. I know this. Despite knowing this, I have the eagle eye of an experienced dog owner. Some, granted, would say that an "experienced dog owner" would not have let the dog off its lead on council land where it is common knowledge that dogs should be walked on lead only. Weighing up the risks compared with the short bit of off-lead time I was giving her, I made the measured decision to keep a watchful eye on my dog and let her run in the grass verge to the side of the track. Many groups and individuals passed us over a ten minute period, mostly on bike but a few on foot. They passed us without fuss or fret. Jazz gave them barely a glance, if that, and continued her foraging in the lush grass - she loves to scratch her back and snout in grass for some reason, I've heard other Kelpie owners say their dogs love to do this too, perhaps it's a trait of the breed.

Lolly and I were making good time. Steve was going to meet us at the school with the car to give us a lift back, a wisely pre-arranged plan we made before we left home, sans phone.

Along came a man of quite decent, solid build. He looked to be roughly in his forties and in very good shape. He was riding a bike and coming towards us. I checked where Jazz was as he headed our way; she was sniffing the base of a gum tree at the edge of the path. I saw by the way the rider's face was set determinedly that he was in some sort of deep concentration and deduced he would not be an individual who would share a nod, a smile or any grunt in recognition of sharing the path and early morning with us. That's cool. I've been in the zone before while exercising. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't acknowledge a passer-by.

When he rode past us, I was only mildly alarmed that he came quite close to the LGBB - thankfully, she kept her gait steady and didn't wobble into his path or he would have clipped her. Perhaps he felt we should get off the path completely, for we had already moved out of his way over to our side of the shared walkway. It was a fleeting glance, but I saw him jerk his head sharply in the direction of Jazz as he rounded the tree under which she was gaily sniffing. In a moment, he was gone - mere seconds and he had passed us by - and we continued on.

Not more than two minutes passed and, just as Lolly was launching into some new endless sentence without a break about some desperately important bit of information she needed to impart in one continuous breath, I heard someone shout something from behind her down the track a ways. It took me a few moments to register the words in my brain... something about "dog on the fucking lead"...

The man on the bike was making his way back, obviously reaching some turning point in his ride and coming back the way he came. Lolly was oblivious and thought I had stopped ahead of her to turn back and wait for her to catch up - it's hard to concentrate on your single minutes-long sentence and keep a good walking pace, didn't you know? - but I was mostly watching the situation with my dog and this fast-approaching bike rider who by now I realised had the shits up about Jazz being off lead.

"She's fine," I assured him as he cycled past Lolly making his way past me next. The dog hadn't even lifted her head and was at this point a few metres from the path to my right, still under my control and posing absolutely no obstacle or danger to anyone, least of all the big burly man.

"Get FUCKED," he shrieked like a madman. "Should be on a lead." He rapidly rode into the distance past me. The whole exchange took less than five seconds.

The moment got the better of me and I was instantly riled, as if something had leapt off the rider and onto me. I was baited, hook, line and sinker. I took it. Without hesitating (or thinking), I fired back, "Calm down, sir." I have absolutely no idea why I added "sir" the way I did. Perhaps I thought it'd soften it. I immediately wanted to gulp my words back in. It was wrong to shout anything after him. I had visions of him dismounting and coming back and punching me in the face. I felt like I had been hit in the stomach as it was. He was just so angry!

The LGBB was concerned. She caught up to me, asking questions about "the man" and wanting to know - word for word - what he said and what I had called after him. I tried to wave it off but she persisted. I had to feed my words back to her, regurgitating them as if she was trying to make me be more accountable for my part in the exchange. Mostly, I was mortified that having the dog off lead, despite her perfect behaviour and temperament, had been so gruffly pointed out to me.

"What did he say to you?" Lolly probed.

"He said Jazz should be on her lead... and he's right," I replied truthfully.

"But why was he mad? And what did you say to him?" she asked, a most concerned look on her face. She's at an age where such juicy social exchanges are referenced and filed for use in her next dollhouse or Barbie game - there's always an antagonist these days if I listen in long enough.

"He was telling me Jazz should be walking next to us because maybe he thought she would trip him over," I said. It was the first logical thing that came into my head, probably not far from the truth either. I'd like to think he was an upstanding citizen who was concerned for the safety of others.... something tells me that wasn't the reason for his policing attitude, but still. I'll never know. "And I asked him to calm down because he seemed angry."

I felt a fool, spelling it out to her. I shouldn't have yelled after him. It was idiotic and made me feel worse because I was contributing to the exchange and buying in to whatever he was already carrying. That kind of venom isn't spat out at a stranger without it having brewed to that point long before the situation even arises. He was just seizing the opportunity to let some steam out of his inner pressure cooker. I get that.

"But why was he so angry about Jazz?"  See? Even a five year-old knows Jazz is nothing to be concerned about. That dog is the definition of "nice".

"Because..." getting a little frustrated now, just drop it already, sheeezus! "...some people are just so angry in their hearts that they yell at other people, even sometimes people they don't even know. It's a shame, isn't it?"

It was the closest to a full explanation as I wanted to get that day. Lol seemed satisfied after that. Her face relaxed back to neutral and she changed the subject to something completely unrelated. I love the way kids do that! I wish more adults could do it. But that's an entirely different blog post......

Look, I knew it was essentially wrong of me to have Jazz off her lead. But I'd love to take a poll of dog owners and ask them if they haven't given their dog a few minutes off the lead here and there over the life of the dog. Come on. I'd like to think I am a sensible, responsible person (some would say I am often painfully too responsible and morally upright!)  - I know my dog and I know she would no sooner rush at someone than take down a wildebeast.

Other dogs are a different matter: as soon as another dog comes along, mostly for the safety of my own dog I will restrain her if she is at that point having a sniff off the lead. It's just not worth the potential for a dog-barney in the road. A brief exchange with the other dog owner will determine whether we let them have a run together. It seems the unwritten rule of engagement out there and most, if not all, dog owners I have ever met have been very reasonable and more than keen to let Fido have a run and tumble with my dog too - we know the joy these social creatures get from connecting with their own kind. In fact, it's a big part of the joy of owning a dog.

It's a can of worms, I know, asking where you stand on the issue of dogs off lead. I myself would not like to be anywhere in a shared public place with a dog off its lead - heck, some people seem to have a hard time stopping/controlling their dog even when they are on lead! If I see kids - on foot or on bikes - she goes back on straight away. If I see other dogs in the distance, same thing - back on straight away. If there is nowhere for her to roam or get off the path and it's being shared with walkers and cyclists, she also doesn't get off the lead. If there is anything unpredictable (a windy day, poor visibility, anything that just doesn't feel right), she stays by my side and doesn't go off lead. You can see that there isn't much opportunity for time where she is let off! An rightfully so. Dogs should come last in the chain in public spaces, always. BUT... if it is mostly deserted and there's plenty of space and a decent stretch of path where I can see people coming in either direction from a fair distance away, then yes. I let her off.

What are your habits walking your own dog? What are your thoughts? And ummm... what's better or worse: having a harmless dog off its lead or shouting expletives in a threatening manner in front of a small child in an essentially deserted area? I have to tell you (now I'm safe at home) it was one of those hair-raising moments where I saw in a flash what can happen - and how easily these road rage (bike path rage?) bashing stories end up on the news.




Update: Wed. 25/1, 11am - I am closing comments on this post now. If you feel moved to add something that hasn't already been discussed, please feel free to visit my Facebook page instead. 
I would like to point out that the second last paragraph in this post clearly describes the conditions in which I give my dog a rare chance to walk off-lead - in a safe and controlled environment, not in parks full of people, at shopping centres (heaven forbid!) or anywhere where there are children. 
I would also remind, respectfully, that I am not representative of (or advocating for) irresponsible and inconsiderate owners who seem not to respect shared public places with their out of control dogs. They give all dog owners (and dogs!) an unfair bad name. 
Thank you to all who contributed to the discussion.

2012: The Year of.... Contentment

We're reaching the pointy end of the holiday stick here in Australia, folks. I am getting to the stage where that blissfully still week between Christmas and New Year is going to be all but a distant memory soon. The past two years, I worked over that time. I've done it before. Doubtless, in my future years, I will do it again for various reasons/projects.

Not this year, though. This year I relaxed so much I almost became a liquid substance version of myself.

I am interested to see how long I can remain connected to the feeling and stretch it into this exciting new year.

When I think of the feelings and concepts that come up for me in this prayerful time, I have a pretty sublime looking list that I hope to carry with me into my Year of Contentment:

...anticipation. Despite (or because of) all its hardships, life will be good to me and my family.
...goodwill. Quiet, without fanfare or accolade or advertisement. The real kind. True service.
...frugal. Waste not, want not. This is the year to clean out.
...purge. As above, so below.
...be mindful of my mind. Where it goes, what it thinks, who it thinks about, why it believes it even has any business thinking about who it does. Further note to self: turn thinking "about" into pure... thought.

And just on that note, I am reminded to take with me this pearler that I picked up during my studies in 2011:

What others think about me is none of my business

For want of a more freeing statement, this has held true for me and has really helped me keep the "nah-nah-nah's" of my mind at bay more than once. Try it (if you need it too). It works.

Now, although I am not necessarily the one praying, there are others in the world in very zen states at this time of year (granted, you may not be/feel like one of them and fair enough!) - I am a great believer that (us being connected on some cellular/animal/vegetable/mineral level to the All) this group-conscious collective state filters through on some energetic level. How I react to that is varied. Sometimes it feels repellant to me and I resist, wanting to lash out, wanting to be pained... Not necessarily consciously realising that this is what I'm doing. Other times, I allow myself to align with the Zen State! I know it's the preferable way for me to be. But I don't beat myself up about not being there these days. Instead, I observe my behaviour and reactions with hindsight and move forward, better educated about what triggers me (and how I, in turn, affect others around me energetically with those triggered reactions).

If there are enough beings focusing their inner strength on being in a prayerful state, then surely it follows:

As within... so without.

Yes?

Are you in your prayerful state? Have you found it over the festive period? Or have you filled every single space in your time and mind so they are cluttered once more, before a new year has fully begun?

Defrag yourself! Hit that Reboot button in your psyche and refresh/clear the old patterns now so the new coding can be laid down afresh and set you on your true course for 2012.

2012: The Year of.... The garden

Ummmm.... yeah, so weeding isn't our forté

There are a number of projects still tying up here post-renovation/extension. Just the words "extension" and "renovation" still make me shudder. Sure, the result is fantastic! In the end. That bit towards the end, though? When you see money draining out of your account like there's no tomorrow and EVERY single purchase is in the $thousands, you don't feel so much excited and sure of what you've set out to do, but more terrified you've made a huge mistake.

As the dust continues to settle - literally - and we patch up various natural disaster events and nail marks on architraves and skirting board sections that are still missing, the outdoor part of our humble compound abode is going along swimmingly.

A couple of years back, I joined Gardens For Wildlife. It's a council initiative that I have so far managed to convince two of our adjoining neighbours to try out. For the sake of their lawns/soil quality, the bird and other native wildlife, the insects, and their water bills (the neighbours' water bills, that is, not the fauna's...). What's not to love about contributing to the green belt we actually live in by regenerating our small areas of back and front yards with the types of plants that occurred naturally here until it was cleared 100 years ago??

In 2011, we made small changes to the garden. I have planted a hedge of indigenous natives along our front side fence line. Already, in just three months, the little single-stemmed 20cm tube stock plants have bushed out into beautiful, healthy knee-height specimens.

<------ Look at that! I have clipped this back three times.

And get this: I didn't even water the things in! This is where they grow best. I just bung them in, they will do the rest. This particular plant can be sculpted into any shape you can imagine. An elderly neighbour across the way has three of them. He has his shaped like a sphere, a box and an oblong sort of thing. They are works of art, to be sure (oh to have the spare time! One day...). Now, while I'm not going to go pruning mine into chess pieces anytime soon, it is wondrous to see a native looking every bit like the kind of expensive landscaping plant you'd find in the back yards of my website client's clients (just check these out for incredible!)

One of our random grevilleas, with its crazy-beautiful strange flowers

Lolly's frog pond

So, 2012. The year of the garden here. Over the year, I plan to...

...finish downsizing the roses that are struggling in the front yard.
...reintroduce indigenous native grasses to the front garden beds.
...reclaim some of our beautiful front yard lawn to accommodate a butterfly garden.
...help Steve create a small paved area off the front porch next to the frog pond the LGBB and I made out of her old baby bath in '10 and screen it with fast-growing, bushy feature natives.
...clear a decommissioned vegie patch in the back yard and turn it into a screened "fairy garden" area - the request has been taken from the LGBB to plant "tall grasses that you can't see over so I can hide behind them." Point: taken.
...plant a small (ha! are they ever truly small?!) flowering eucalypt in a bare back corner, away from the house.




How does your garden grow? Have you ever considered investigating local native species?

I would highly recommend you research what grows naturally in your area. For instance, a native in Gippsland could be a noxious weed here where I live, just four hours away. Not all natives are the same! Still Australian native, yes, but not necessarily ideal for your area. Talk to the experts, if you have any at your council or other such body - if nothing else, they might be able to advise what is best *not* to plant. You may be surprised what they recommend!

No one is to blame

I saw a mother get verbally abused by her son today. Absolutely slammed. Loud, unedited, out in the street down by the hospital.

I was with my daughter. We had just been on a phenomenal walk together. So enjoyable was it that she had just finished hugging me tight when I squatted down next to her to see if she was ready to keep going (she wasn't. Daddy played Knight In Silver Shining Armour and collected us fifteen minutes later...)

Awesome view from the top

That fifteen minutes was spent waiting for our steed as an unwitting audience to this pained family's airing of demon laundry.

He was a nice looking man of at least late twenties. Bare footed, angry, hoarse voice. He laid into his mother and young adult sister as they walked back to her car. Unfortunately for us, they followed our trajectory to the park where we were going to meet Dad.

The LGBB was largely unperturbed but this was angry, angry stuff being shrieked and it seemed the further away we tried to walk, the more it followed us. I wasn't upset at them for doing this so publicly. I wasn't frustrated or felt any opinion forming in me. But I was simply gutted for all of them as individuals and a tiny part of me wanted to go and ask quietly if they were all okay (they clearly weren't and it would have been grossly out of line of me). So I did all I could do. I spoke to my child simply but frankly and honestly about it when she started asking me what was going on.

I told her, "Lol, sometimes people who are really hurting inside yell at people they really love. I think sometimes they don't even mean it but they just can't stop even if they want to."

"Why?" she asked me.

"I don't know. Maybe because they feel like nobody's listening..." I pulled myself up from saying anything further. It's one thing to be compassionate and feel empathy for others but I know it's not anyone's business to carry forward any assumptions about any situation. Not even the other side of their own sometimes!

I've been the yeller in my recent adult years. I've more often in my life been the one being yelled at venomously, though. It was par for the course in my childhood home. I know yelling is always masking something else. Sometimes it's so hard to get to that you yourself can't even identify with it. Verbal abuse can leave scars that cannot be seen. But it is possible to recover from it, whether the yeller or the recipient.

The anger continued. The son began using the most painful, horrible language. Lolly was safely in her own world by this stage, upwind of the situation, singing and swinging in the playground and recovering from her mammoth walk. I was upset and humbled by the events going on behind me on the other side of the football oval we were adjacent to. I felt so sad for all three of them. It seems he'd been ordered to go to Rehab. His sister was hurting deeply and saying "What about me?" The mum was at a loss. It was awful, simply awful.

Here I had just spent a great afternoon with my child, who I now wanted to hold so tightly..... I stood staring down at her soft toys that I had been ordered to bounce on a bouncy-animal and I wondered if the mother in my line of sight with the two adult children had ever imagined in her wildest dreams that the son who had a favourite toy he took everywhere - even on long walks and to the park - would ever wish her so much ill. Whether she ever imagined a day where he would be so pained and gripped by some drug that perhaps used to be a drug of choice but was now creating such a sucking black hole in his life that he would wish himself dead. Scream things at her that I could hear he didn't want to say but did want to say, all at the same time.

The unspoken cries for help transcended what these three were actually saying (shrieking) at each other. Each of them was like a wounded animal and it had gone beyond the point of any of them being able to hold it in. Doesn't only love really get us to that point? It was a real shame to hear what they couldn't. Something had broken down so much that this family was at a crisis point.

What I came away with, for I haven't stopped thinking about them since, was the wish for them that they continue - if nothing else - to hope. I really struggle with the generalisations and judgements that get brought out by observers when violence is brought up. Violence comes in so many forms and disguises. I'm not about to excuse anything. I have seen violence, heard violence, felt violence (all directed towards me and most often by beloved blood ties). But I do feel the need to resist the temptation to draw parallels just because what it looks like on the surface is a case of a user abusing his long-suffering family. And perhaps you will do that or go even further, just with the brief picture I've painted here.

Now, I hesitate here because I know I have absolutely NO experience with this kind of human condition - addiction. However, I do have experience with loss of all - and I mean ALL - hope, faith and trust. I do know what it's like to give up. Give over to the blackness that creeps up and chokes.  I don't know what ultimately prevented me from allowing myself to completely surrender to it and succumb. But I also know that at my turning point, when I found myself still alive, I was left with a glimpse of the flipside of that lowest ever point. And all I saw there was hope. Well, me and hope. Like never before, I got the analogy of having had the power the whole time to get myself out of it.... but I had to go through an entire journey to realise it.

Sound familiar?

This man and his mother and sister - and who knows how many others - were all caught up in the tacky tangled mess of relationship to each other. The thing had taken on a life of its own, you could almost see the "other" thing that was central to them all. It wasn't the man. It wasn't even his addiction. It was something other.... I don't know what to call it because I didn't properly look in. I already felt intrusive enough. But it was a really big illustration to me that we (humans, I mean, generally speaking) so often are so quick to make claims and definitive statements and lines in the sand. 

What if there was just the hope for change? And each time the scenarios played out in our heads, whatever they may be (he'll just lapse again, she'll just hurt me again, I'll just lose the only thing I ever truly loved again), they were instead replaced with the hope that something was going to be different this time?

Okay. Shoot me down, tell me all the ways you don't want this to work and that I am naive. And I'll send you some more hope. For the next millennia worth of "next times" if I have to. Because I need hope.

The opposite is what'll eventually erode and eat at you from the inside out.

On the importance of walking in your neighbourhood

When it comes to communities, I've only lived in a few in my life. Steve and I tend not to move around very much. As it is, the home we built just before we were married, we thought, would be the place we grew old in. It didn't happen that way.

Good thing too. For if we hadn't moved here, we would never have discovered the way one can truly be happy where they live.

There is no better way to learn about your community than walking or riding or jogging amongst it. I have come to realise that part of my lack of movement and desire to get out of the house and exercise was that I wanted to avoid people. You can see people who don't want to be disturbed or nodded to or "Good morning"-ed at as you pass each other and it is something I respect. It doesn't mean they're rude, it doesn't mean they're unfriendly. It could mean a number of other things, though.

But those who are up for a chat, well.... what a treat. In the past week, here are some new residents I have met on my pavement-pounding with Jazz:

•  Frank. I put out a tweet about him on Saturday because I was so taken by his crack-up line. Picture an elderly, barely shuffling gentleman, baggy walking clothes hanging on narrow, frail frame. Cap on head. Surprisingly unlined rough-shaven face and bright blue, sharp eyes. His lovely-natured Doberman is also elderly, but still has plenty of life in her - like dog, like owner. Frank tells me he's been coming to this particular park for twenty-five years. He and his wife retired here to Australia from England when he was in his sixties. That's some life, I think to myself. Frank takes a daily walk with a woman who specifically comes to this park to walk with them and her dog. They have met like this for over six years. When I meet her, I realise why it is either of them would take the time to walk with the other. They are both such wonderful, warm, friendly people and I can tell it is natural for them to just... be as I find them. Refreshing. I feel very blessed, as we walk, that they have allowed me, the interloping stranger with the dog who is barking shrilly because she's not getting a "turn" of the ball - oh, Jazz *sigh* - to join them on their daily ritual and I give quiet thanks that I have been given this opportunity to meet two people in my community whom I previously never knew existed.

"I'm 98," Frank tells me, half-proud and half-disbelieving tone... and then he corrects himself out loud, "Oh no, I'm not. Wait a minute, I'm 89. Oh, what's another decade."

Loved meeting him. I hope there will be other times. It's funny, isn't it, the instant care and concern one can feel towards another. I think this might be the essence of pure love - the detached care for another. Imagine if more of us felt this for more people (indeed, for all living things) without agendas, conditions, judgement or hierarchy. The world would be a far more evolved place, I can bet safely, I'm sure.

•  This morning, I took a 6-kilometre tough round trip that took me over an hour. Steep hills, blissful scenery and bush. I finally wound my way back down into "civilisation" and paved pathways. Jazz and I turned onto a street where there was a bloke in his forties, turning down the same street but on the opposite path. He was in a suit and carried a small terrier under his arm.

"That's a funny handbag," I nodded to him. He grinned (thank God... as soon as I opened my mouth to let out the first thing that hit my brain before I could censor myself, I thought this could end very embarrassingly).

"I couldn't find his lead this morning," the man replied. "And I have to take him for his walk."

I nearly bent over double laughing at the gorgeousness of this. Here's this guy, taking his dog for his morning "walk" because the dog can't do without it. I am still wiping tears. For some reason, this has struck me as so charming. Perhaps it was his suit. Or the fact that it was such a regal-looking little dog, up there in its chariot. Or maybe it's simply because I am recalling the rest of the encounter was one of those rather awkward moments where you don't know if the stranger is still talking to you.... you hear them talking but you're not expecting any more conversation so you've moved on, moved away. And then you hear them say something else. But are they talking to you? There was no one else, he was talking in a loud enough volume that I think I was supposed to hear. But I couldn't hear him. And he wasn't looking at me. But he was doing that loud-talking thing. Aaagh! So I did what any self-respecting stranger would do: I plastered a smile on my face and pretended I wasn't looking over at him to try and catch what he said and I looked off into the middle distance instead. Still with my smile on.

I think we both came away thinking the other was a little strange/crazy. Him for talking to himself and me for grinning at nothing like a loon.

Who's the crazy one? I ask you.

Do you enjoy your neighbourhood?

Wishful thinking: Never give up

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tabitha enthusiastically greeting a new "friend"

So if at first you don't succeed...

A little bit of give

I sat with the LGBB on the couch this morning while she watched one of her latest favourite movies...

Her secret love's no secret....
an-y-moooore

Opposite the couch is a wall where Ella's picture hangs. This one:

I sat gazing at it while the movie played.

Oh the Deadwood Stage is a-rollin' on over the plains

With the curtains flappin' and the driver slappin' the reins

Beautiful sky, a wonderful day

Whip crack-away, Whip crack-away, Whip crack-away!

I got lost in the photos and everything else in the room slipped into the shadows. Even Doris Day. It was just me and my girl. My first girl.

Before the movie was over, the LGBB came back into view. I shelved my precious stolen thoughts out to Ellanor and got back to chores at hand. Lunch was made, chortles were shared (Lolly loves the part where poor old Francis has to dress up like a girl because the hick townsmen were expecting a "real live woman".... if you don't understand, then you've missed out.... it's an old Hollywood musical thing).

Then she laid down again. "I'm tired," she said. She's been saying that all weekend. And just laying down wherever she is. This morning, she woke with a headache and it didn't leave all day. The trooper that she is, though, the LGBB didn't make much of it and didn't complain of it being sore. If I hadn't known any differently, she was just a tiny bit darker around the eyes (something that comes out in her naturally pale complexion whenever she's a bit under the weather) but that was about it.

I held true to my word on the promise of a craft session after lunch. What was going to be a rocket ship turned into the Love Boat. She decided it was a ship and I was commissioned to fit-out the peg passengers.

He's king of the world. He's also largely ignored by the other passengers.

The Party Ship. With the playboy, Cleopatra, a washed-up woman in red and
a ballerina attempting valiantly to keep her remaining thinning locks....

Not sure he should be looking at her like that,
especially when only in his Y-fronts.

But she only just made it to the playing part (she was itching to play with it while we were making it all together). No sooner had I lowered the boat to the floor for her maiden voyage than my girl grabbed a cushion and also lowered herself to the floor.

"I'm too tired, mummy," she said again. It was the first time my brow furrowed and I decided I didn't like something about all this. You know when you just have that moment? She still had her headache and I commanded her to our bed for a rest, where she slept for two hours.

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In the midst of the sleep designed to relax and re-charge her, the LGBB woke screaming, terrified. I raced in, wondering if the pain had gotten worse. "What is it?" I asked calmly, rocking her. She was trembling. And hot. And scream-crying. Staring at the wall behind my head.

I got her out of the room and changed the scenery a bit. In the kitchen, rocking together in a chair, she managed to get out that "a man was dancing me too fast." What the? Her description made it sound like one of those awful dream sequence scenes in the movies where the fish-eye lens camera is being stared into by the maniacally laughing crazy-character as we, the audience/camera, gets spun around. I agreed with my sweaty little poppet that that would be a bit scary. "But it's all over now and it wasn't really real, was it?" No reply from her.

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While all this was happening, I fielded a phone call on my mobile. A number I have seen as a missed call about half a dozen times in as many days. They never leave a message. This time, phone in hand, I was able to answer and solve the mystery.

"Hello there, it's Lou here from Heart Kids..." and Lou proceeded to launch into a typical telemarketing "we need you and your dosh" speech.

Now, this is where I normally huff and puff and wait to say loudly but firmly, "No thank you, we give to our chosen charities already but best of luck... *click*"  But Heart Kids is something close to my heart. Today, especially, when I was already feeling so drawn to Ellanor and with my heightened mama-care reflexes towards Lolly, it seemed fitting that I should receive the call.

Lou - well, Heart Kids - did well for himself. I came away $50 lighter and have a jumbo-sized beach towel coming my way within "seven working days". I find it no strange coincidence that on the preschool fundraiser shopping tour I went to last weekend, I carried around a beach towel for the LGBB (she doesn't have one and we're taking a beach holiday soon) and ended up putting it back on the shelf, not making the purchase. Just this morning, I cursed myself for my decision not to buy the towel. I sighed that I'd have to go to a shop and probably buy one at full price.

Now I know why I didn't buy it. Tricky, clever Universe.

I gave today. It was such a small thing, really. Ultimately, I know that no money in the world is going to help some causes if it is ordained to go "that way" - look at our girl, in the best medical care - but I will always extend my circle of thoughtful care and consideration to those families going through the toughest trial of their lives with precious children with sick hearts. Every time I look at my girl's beach towel.

Do you give to charity? Do you have a blanket "sorry, no" rule for telemarketers? Or does it depend on the day?

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Update: Tonight, the LGBB is much better. After a bath,  a sausage in bread with a good serve of fresh steamed vegies for dinner and a play with her cherished Love Boat with Daddy, she is tucked up happily in bed. But not before storytime. Steve came back and reported that he decided to himself that he would read her something they had not read for a long while. He started looking on the shelves for the book silently and then heard the LGBB in the background say, "Oh, Dad, it's in here." He turned around and Lolly opened up a bedside table drawer and pulled out the very book he had been looking for.

He blames me for passing it on. I say to him once again... no harm, no foul. But it's going to make teenage years interesting I think.