The Unbearable Heaviness Of Being…
I have been most busy of late having recently returned from Adelaide from my WOMAD pilgrimage and following that with Hamish’s birthday party which I was crazy enough to conduct at home!..
Of course I stayed with the wonderful hatter_anon and enjoyed the chance to hang out with her; although unlike the last time I was there with Hamish, we were the full tribe this time. It puts a whole different spin on traveling and accepting hospitality! Love me, love my kids! Lucky for me that we all got along like a house on fire so I can honestly appreciate her hospitality 4 ½ times as much - especially the bit when she froze bottles of water for us for the 37C day at WOMAD! Also the bit where she directed us to the Adelaide Writer’s Week also held outside in the gardens. To say nothing of appreciating her conversation, taste in coffee, quilting collection, book collection and museum tour. So all of you who are hosting hatter_anon on her OS odyssey need to pay it forward for me! ;o)
We flew there taking advantage of the fact that this is the last time Hamish will travel as an infant; next time he will have his own chair and I will have someone else to cuddle on my lap and make reading/eating a serious challenge. I was thinking about the wisdom of flying again though when all the miscellaneous kids accessories are required; car seats, prams, nappy bags, toys, etc.. Eight hours of driving aside, it’s handy to have it all stashed in the boot. Depends on how the new baby travels perhaps? I thought I had it tough as a backpacker with a 17 kilo pack!
WOMAD and the tail end of Writers Week were both utterly fantastic. I heard a lot of interesting authors but in the end I walked away with The Service Of Clouds by Delia Falconer (Sydney writer) bought more for the way she writes than the subject matter (also interesting) cos she’s so poetic and B got me Robert Fisk’s enormous tome, The Great War For Civilization which tackles the Middle Eastern situation. I look forward to sleeping/breastfeeding opportunities to come… to say nothing of the pregnant pauses which are currently devoted to Zadie Smith’s White Teeth!
WOMAD was problematic only in that I didn’t have enough opportunity to see all the acts that I wanted to and my favourite French/Canadian La Bottine Souriene was sold out wherever I went so I missed out on a signed copy. Bugger! Also of note were the Musafir Gypsies of Rajasthan, Chico Cesar and Dhol Foundation whose CDs I did manage to acquire. vasco_pyjama and kafechick have lots to look forward to when I start burning! The Kids Zone was quite impressive this year with many more activities on offer with the Carousel and the Sri Lankan puppet play being our favourites. Kahlil also loved the marauding dinosaurs that rampaged through the crowds. I loved the celebrity spotting; Indira Naidoo, Margo Kingston and I swear I saw a middle aged Dafydd the only gay in the village!!! It was also kewl to catch up, albeit briefly, with the elusive binibini who stayed at the front of the stage while we skulked around on a malong in the shady corners at the back. She tells me she is starting a Phd in comparative indigenous education so we shall all expect her to be online a bit more what with all that required procrastination time in front of the computer!!! And yes vasco_pyjama she is still with her chap who will study in Adelaide this year.
I was able to enjoy Womad 4 ½ times as much since the kids loved it too and no one got sick despite the extreme weather and the late nights that stuffed up the sleeping early for kinder routine.
When we returned to Melbourne, I was immediately thrust into the quest to get our house/backyard in shape for Hamish’s 2nd birthday party. I know I should be wise enough to avoid the kid’s party at home like the plague but with newborns and adult conversation requiring a bit of quiet that is non existent at an indoor playground, I decided to live life dangerously and go the extra mile. And so approximately 500 litres of weeds purged from the garden (we do have a big yard!), a jumping castle organized at the 11th hour and a late night cooking session/constructing the lolly bags… we slept in on the morning! I only returned home with the shopping with an hour to spare before the party. Needless to say what I thought was a simple menu still had me too busy to decorate the cake until midway into the party. It was quite funny as I was in charge of the food for a change and B in charge of cleaning which was quite the role reversal for both of us - each arguing for the opposite priority actions.
All the hard work did pay off in the end and a great time was had by all. Hamish loved his Elmo cake and all his toys which litter the floor even now. The backyard looks fantastic even though it took a few sweeps to purge the floors of sandpit grit, 100s and 1000s and deconstructed cake (courtesy of the birthday boy himself). I couldn’t help but feel eminently satisfied with myself despite the fact that I don’t believe that the kids need more toys and it left me so thoroughly knackered. Not much beats the childhood magic of a party so it is obviously worth even the post party hangover.
Melbourne has been awash with the Commonwealth Games and I have been too tired to experience any of it, save the opening and closing ceremonies on TV. That huge outdoor party and all those free events just seemed like too much hard work with 2 kids in tow in 30C+ weather no matter how tempting. My return to the gym has only highlighted my fatigue and signalled the time for scaleback as I implode further and further into my own heaviness. It won’t be long now before I have officially and totally let myself go.
Of course I stayed with the wonderful hatter_anon and enjoyed the chance to hang out with her; although unlike the last time I was there with Hamish, we were the full tribe this time. It puts a whole different spin on traveling and accepting hospitality! Love me, love my kids! Lucky for me that we all got along like a house on fire so I can honestly appreciate her hospitality 4 ½ times as much - especially the bit when she froze bottles of water for us for the 37C day at WOMAD! Also the bit where she directed us to the Adelaide Writer’s Week also held outside in the gardens. To say nothing of appreciating her conversation, taste in coffee, quilting collection, book collection and museum tour. So all of you who are hosting hatter_anon on her OS odyssey need to pay it forward for me! ;o)
We flew there taking advantage of the fact that this is the last time Hamish will travel as an infant; next time he will have his own chair and I will have someone else to cuddle on my lap and make reading/eating a serious challenge. I was thinking about the wisdom of flying again though when all the miscellaneous kids accessories are required; car seats, prams, nappy bags, toys, etc.. Eight hours of driving aside, it’s handy to have it all stashed in the boot. Depends on how the new baby travels perhaps? I thought I had it tough as a backpacker with a 17 kilo pack!
WOMAD and the tail end of Writers Week were both utterly fantastic. I heard a lot of interesting authors but in the end I walked away with The Service Of Clouds by Delia Falconer (Sydney writer) bought more for the way she writes than the subject matter (also interesting) cos she’s so poetic and B got me Robert Fisk’s enormous tome, The Great War For Civilization which tackles the Middle Eastern situation. I look forward to sleeping/breastfeeding opportunities to come… to say nothing of the pregnant pauses which are currently devoted to Zadie Smith’s White Teeth!
WOMAD was problematic only in that I didn’t have enough opportunity to see all the acts that I wanted to and my favourite French/Canadian La Bottine Souriene was sold out wherever I went so I missed out on a signed copy. Bugger! Also of note were the Musafir Gypsies of Rajasthan, Chico Cesar and Dhol Foundation whose CDs I did manage to acquire. vasco_pyjama and kafechick have lots to look forward to when I start burning! The Kids Zone was quite impressive this year with many more activities on offer with the Carousel and the Sri Lankan puppet play being our favourites. Kahlil also loved the marauding dinosaurs that rampaged through the crowds. I loved the celebrity spotting; Indira Naidoo, Margo Kingston and I swear I saw a middle aged Dafydd the only gay in the village!!! It was also kewl to catch up, albeit briefly, with the elusive binibini who stayed at the front of the stage while we skulked around on a malong in the shady corners at the back. She tells me she is starting a Phd in comparative indigenous education so we shall all expect her to be online a bit more what with all that required procrastination time in front of the computer!!! And yes vasco_pyjama she is still with her chap who will study in Adelaide this year.
I was able to enjoy Womad 4 ½ times as much since the kids loved it too and no one got sick despite the extreme weather and the late nights that stuffed up the sleeping early for kinder routine.
When we returned to Melbourne, I was immediately thrust into the quest to get our house/backyard in shape for Hamish’s 2nd birthday party. I know I should be wise enough to avoid the kid’s party at home like the plague but with newborns and adult conversation requiring a bit of quiet that is non existent at an indoor playground, I decided to live life dangerously and go the extra mile. And so approximately 500 litres of weeds purged from the garden (we do have a big yard!), a jumping castle organized at the 11th hour and a late night cooking session/constructing the lolly bags… we slept in on the morning! I only returned home with the shopping with an hour to spare before the party. Needless to say what I thought was a simple menu still had me too busy to decorate the cake until midway into the party. It was quite funny as I was in charge of the food for a change and B in charge of cleaning which was quite the role reversal for both of us - each arguing for the opposite priority actions.
All the hard work did pay off in the end and a great time was had by all. Hamish loved his Elmo cake and all his toys which litter the floor even now. The backyard looks fantastic even though it took a few sweeps to purge the floors of sandpit grit, 100s and 1000s and deconstructed cake (courtesy of the birthday boy himself). I couldn’t help but feel eminently satisfied with myself despite the fact that I don’t believe that the kids need more toys and it left me so thoroughly knackered. Not much beats the childhood magic of a party so it is obviously worth even the post party hangover.
Melbourne has been awash with the Commonwealth Games and I have been too tired to experience any of it, save the opening and closing ceremonies on TV. That huge outdoor party and all those free events just seemed like too much hard work with 2 kids in tow in 30C+ weather no matter how tempting. My return to the gym has only highlighted my fatigue and signalled the time for scaleback as I implode further and further into my own heaviness. It won’t be long now before I have officially and totally let myself go.