Easter Break 2015

My camera  - my proper digital SLR camera broke some time ago. I can't even remember when - was it before Christmas?  Actually it didn't break, I dropped it and after that I kept getting an error message.  Google tells me that this is a common problem with this camera and its a relatively easy fix.  I just need to drop it into a camera repair shop but months have passed - maybe even a year - and I haven't done that.  As a result, the only photos I take are on my phone, and I rarely get around to downloading them onto the computer.  So when I do occasionally decide to blog, I use the phone blogger app to put in the photos and then, at some point when I remember, I'll write the content on the actual computer, because I've got to the age where I now have to put my glasses on top of my head to use the keyboard on my phone.

The point of this rather lengthy introduction is to explain why, at the beginning nearly of June, I am writing about Easter.  I actually did put these photos into a post but they didn't upload and next time I visited the blog on the computer, there were no draft posts waiting and it wasn't until I bothered to go back to check the phone that I realised.

Because this blog has become an intermittent sort of journal for me, I feel an obligation to jot down, occasionally, what goes on.  Truthfully, at least part of this is pure guilt that my older girls will have a significant amount of their art work and odds and ends about their interests and lives recorded and, unless I make at least the occasional effort, Lil will have next to none....

So we went to Little Sheoak for Easter - Gracie and Lil wanted to take their old fashioned dresses, and though it was entirely impractical and they were bound to get muddy and dusty I let them, as I knew exactly that they wanted to prance around in the bushes and play orphans and other romantic games wearing them.  I didn't regret it.

We usually see koalas there and I'm always especially keen to show off 'our' koalas to visitng friends It still gives me a thrill to suddenly spy one in the crook of a treee.  Well friends did come and we saw 4 koalas!  It was nearly becoming old - oh there's another one. And another one.  I'm always so happy, though.

The insane kookaburra that dive bombs the windows came back after the first couple of days and this time we had our old dog Winnie with us, who, in her aged confusion, could not figure out how to get back in through the very door she had just exited, and instead would walk round and round the house, whining at the windows.

On Easter sunday we did the Otway Fly zipline.  It was a  considerably longer drive than we had expected, through the very windy Otway roads, with children who tend towards caresickness and some of whom had eaten way too many easter eggs.  Not naming names but let's just say I was very glad to have an old plastic bag handy.

Gracie and Lil spent hours drawing a zoo and then creating animal enclosures out of cushions and blankets and things.

Nina read the Diary of Anne Frank.  I can't even remember what I was reading then, but I just finished A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (oh how I love Anne Tyler) and My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrente which I also loved.

Autumn started slowly, then, just as the leaves turned, we had a hugely windy wet couple of days and they were gone, at least from our vine. It was a bit of a pity, they normally hang round prettily for a few weeks at least.

In other news I moved offices - just to the other side of the floor, but it means I look out west, over the big ferris wheel that is finally up and running in docklands.  Each day the city turns on something new for me  - lots of gorgeous sunsets, sometimes impressive storm fronts, and now that it is getting dark before I leave, the light show on the ferris wheel.  I find myself taking an insane number of photos of the view from my office, most of which look a bit crap.  Also my office window badly needs cleaning. There are these big pylon things in the distance behind the wheel which move about all the time.  I have no idea what they are  - I guess something to do with the docks?  But it's quite a lovely view. I've always been a bit partial to the industrial aesthetic.  For many years Craig and I lived across from the flour mill in North Melbourne that operated 24/7 (except for good Friday - we had so tuned out the constant humming that its absence seemed suddenly eerie).  I liked looking across at the big silos, with the sunset as a backdrop.

I always do lots of things at Christmas, or at least in the month leading up to Christmas. We always have a gingerbread party and I usually make lots of shortbread and often we make some decorations (this year painted gumnuts). We always make Christmas crackers, with fortune cookies and one dollar scratchies.  The kids still make all their presents for each other and their friends, which is pretty time consuming, and I usually make the kids something each, most often a dress. Cherries are always the sign that Christmas is near and this year I splurged on a whole box, which I've never done before. It was so luxurious for everyone to have as many cherries as they felt like and still have some the next day.

So even though Christmas is always busy and I always do lots of things, there has been a different edge this year. One of my sisters is very unwell and so all the activity has an air of keeping oneself busy and distracted, as well as a particular poignance to it. She came to our gingerbread party and we talked whilst keeping up brave faces for the kids - hers and mine - and I expect this is the reason that the door of the gingerbread house is wonky and the whole thing has a rather rushed look to it. We won't find out for a few more weeks exactly how bad things are, and of course we are hoping that the news is better than we fear. It seems a bit farcical to write about the little things I've been doing and making, whilst in the background this massive, life changing event is unfolding, and yet it also seems wrong not to record our Christmas season. And however powerfully something like this puts all our other petty concerns into perspective, still those petty concerns remain and have to be dealt with. This blog is, after all, about small matters, not large matters!

I appear to have misplaced the letters to Santa Claus which were rather delightful. Ruby began hers by hoping that Santa had been a good boss, as the elves need someone responsible - so proud that she's already identified the potential for exploitation in the relationship between capital and labour. Grace is hoping for a parasol and a beret (she really was born in the wrong era), and Nina asked for a briefcase (!). Lily is beguiled by almost anything she sees in a toy shop - a Jemima doll, a Strawberry Shortcake, a real live Minion please! And Ruby just desperately wants an ipod and swears she is about the only (nearly) 12 year old in the whole world not to have one.  I struggle with the whole technology thing. It does seem that most kids her age have something - a pod or pad or phone - that enables them to link in to social media and communicate with each other and by comparison we seem the most ludditish parents on the face of the earth. Lots of schools require an ipad but ours doesn't and so far she has only been able to really engage by using my phone, which obviously I control. I've held the line because I fear that once she has a device of whatever kind, she will disappear into a world of constant texting and surfing.  I don't think she's particularly interested in games, it's Instagram and social connections that fascinate her.  I know that rules around usage can be established, but I suspect that those rules rapidly become a battleground where parents are thrust unwillingly into the role of enforcer. And I'm not even sure what rules are appropriate - how much time is too much? how much privacy is reasonable? where can she take or use the device?

Once she has a device, and I know that it is inevitable eventually, I fear that she will never  again scoot round and round on the deck for hours, making up plays and stories. I worry that she won't write or draw as much - or at all.  I wonder if she'll still play with her sisters (admittedly this only tends to happen now when she is bored, but with a device, perhaps she'll never be bored?). And I am not sure that she will continue to read as much - or at all.  I also wonder whether I am totally overreacting and whether I'll look back on this dilemma in the same way that I look back on worrying about kindergarten and think how ridiculous I was.

The year, to all intents and purposes, is over. Craig and I have finished work, the kids have finished school, the concerts have been performed, the presents bought and wrapped and tomorrow the business of preparing the house and food for Christmas begins. I'm half thinking that if I am super efficient with all of that, I might just have time to quickly rustle up a couple of Christmas dresses afterall.....

The Looooooong Weekend

I don't work Fridays and I took Monday as an annual leave day, so combined with Cup Day I had a 5 day holiday.  Hooray.

We didn't go away. Instead we had Halloween and lunch with my oldest friend and her family.  Bruce came by for some help making kitchen curtains for his new house.  We went out for dumplings and took the kids to 'Kiki's Delivery Service' at the Astor.  I don't suppose there was a share house in Melbourne without the Astor program poster on the back of the toilet door in the 90's.  Nothing like knowing something is closing to make you rush out to go again, filled with waves of nostalgia.  I try not to succumb to 'how great things were back when....' thinking, but I do feel a bit sad about all those old cinemas that were so formative and no longer exist - the Genferrie Hoyts on the corner of Dandenong and Glenferrie Road, with foot warmers in front of the seats, where I saw 'Blade Runner' and 'The Muppet Movie' and 'The Elephant Man'.  The Carlton Moviehouse in Faraday Street, where I saw 'Betty Blue', the Metro where we didn't see 'Storm Boy' because it was sold out and had to go to something else instead - can't remember what.  At the Astor I saw 'Agnes of God' with my Mum one afternoon, and 'Casablanca' and a million other films.  Some are still left - the Rivoli, where I saw 'Children of a Lesser God', the Classic, where I saw the first 'Superman' with Christopher Reeves and the Valhalla - now rebadged the Westgarth and thriving, where I saw 'The God's Must be Crazy' and walked to Camberwell with my oldest friend with whom I had lunch last Saturday.

I got Lily some Hansel pants (I guess they are really some form of imitation lederhosen, but in our house they are Hansel pants) at the fete but the straps were a little short and gave her a wedgie, so I lengthened them with ribbon. 

Our pathetic gardening efforts over the winter were rewarded with one small and very sorry cauliflower.  Look how bug eaten those leaves are! I hope to do better (what I mean by that is that I hope Craig does better) with the tomatoes and basil for summer.

I took the three younger girls to the gallery to see the Romance was Born show - fun for the under 8's - and to ride on the golden carousel in the foyer.  We had afternoon tea in the gardens across the road.  I forget, sometimes, how wonderful Melbourne's public gardens are and how much fun kids can have with a police memorial, a fountain, some assorted fallen seeds from nearby trees and a bit of sunshine.  I dosed off in the sun while the kids pretended to join a circus and ride ponies in the ring.

Cup day I forgot to even watch the race.  Some years I get quite into it and enter the sweep and have  a flutter and a BBQ and give a damn and other years I don't.  This was one of the don't years.  I dragged out all the drunkard's path quilt patches I had made way back here and tried to decide what sort of strapping I should use to join them - dark, patterned, bright, neutral.  Sewing has been in a bit of a hiatus, partly because of the fete, partly because we are revamping our dining room/my sewing room (we've actually got a table that can seat not just our family but some friends now too!) and partly because of Breaking Bad which I am very late to get to but which I find quite riveting.  I need to have some handsewing but I'm nursing a minor crafty injury  - overuse of my left thumb, which interferes with hand work.  

Cup night we went to half moon bay for a swim and fish and chips on the beach.  We never go bayside and, if I didn't have family south of the Yarra I'd probably rarely get there which is just ridiculous. The kids were very impressed that this little picturesque place was just a short drive from home. Must explore Melbourne a bit more and stray from the well beaten paths we tread.

And now Lily's fifth birthday is upon us and we are careening toward the end of the year.  I can't believe it's more than 12 months since we departed for America.  A whole year gone and I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

Halloween - an evolving perspective

Once upon a time I would have agreed wholeheartedly with Susan Brown, of Frankston.  I didn't think Halloween had any place in Melbourne.  It certainly was unknown in my childhood (though familiar from TV and movies) and it did seem to me that participating would somehow dilute our 'Australianess'.

It was my friend, Bridget, who changed my view.  For years she has letter-boxed her neighbourhood prior to Halloween, offering people the option of participating in trick or treating.  In this way she has met most of her street and befriended many of her neighbours and they now have Christmas drinks, and street-wide garage sales and ladies nights out.

So the last few years the kids have dressed up and we've wandered the neighbourhood - finding more and more houses with a pumpkin, or some cobwebs decorating their hedge each year.  The kids have absolutely loved it, and increasingly, so have I.

Though it might be an imported event, let's get real - so is Christmas and Easter, and, for goodness sake, the Queen's birthday!  Our uniquely Australian celebrations - Australia day (culturally divisive at best) has no traditions other than a day off work and Melbourne Cup day is really a celebration of gambling and getting pissed (not that I'm rejecting the public holiday mind you).

I reckon there is room in the calendar for something that focuses on kids, fun, and local neighbourhoods (and fancy dress - who doesn't love fancy dress?).  I'm not rapt in the lollies, and it is a bit rich paying $20 for a pumpkin just to carve it up, but Halloween around our neck of the woods is a delight.  It's getting dressed up and painting faces.  It's figuring out how to incorporate Nina's crutches (soccer injury) into her costume.  It's seeing Ruby transformed into a teenager, albeit of the skeleton dias de los muertos kind.  It's groups of kids, with someone's Mum or Dad or both, dressed as pirates and mummies and vampires and princesses, wandering the streets on a balmy evening, running into school friends.  It's people having a glass of wine on their front porch while handing out lollies or chocolates, their dogs dressed as dragons, with panniers full of loot to hand out.  It's a crowd of adults catching up over a beer at the local pub while their kids plundered the street, in a (mostly) polite and gentle fashion.  And it's all over by 7.30.  

There is a minimum of planning, a minimum of fuss.  It's so good to see kids in the streets, feeling confident, feeling like their neighbourhood is a place they belong and a place they can be safe. And maybe it would be nice if we could come up with uniquely Australian thing that incorporated dressing up with wandering the streets - and there'd have to be lollies or the kids wouldn't go for it - but maybe it is uniquely Australian to appropriate everyone else's traditions and refashion them in our own way.  So   I understand Susan, I really do.  But I don't agree.

Fete Day Again

So our annual fete came and went again.  It's something I craft for pretty much all year, and so it is the culmination of an awful lot of effort, not just from me but from many many people in our school community.

Every year I get a bit more of a glimpse of exactly what is involved in putting on a day like this.  The hundreds and hundreds of hours spent in planning, figuring out how electricity can get across the grass area to the snow cone machine, where the spit roast will be located and whether balls from the 'knock it over' will run into it, how to comply with the new council regulation that all dish washing be done with hot water, when our washing station is only plumbed with cold, how many signs are needed, who will put them up, where will reuseable plastic glasses be sourced from.  All those thousands of small things even before we get to the sewing and knitting and cake baking and planting, the sorting and folding and hanging, the pricing and donating and procuring and face painting and hair styling and fortune telling and nail polishing and on and on.  Truly an amazing effort.  There are so many things I love about it, but one thing that particularly struck me was both the lack of martydom in the hard work put in by so many, and the total lack of power play that events like these sometimes attract. Instead there is simply a sense that people are chipping in and doing what they can with, dare I say it, a sense of joy about the whole thing.

For once we got the perfect fete weather, and it translated into a calm, relaxed kind of day.  I scored a poncho for Grace which she has been wanting so badly all year.  Definitely born in the wrong decade, that girl - she still wears her awesome kilt most weeks, which she can now team with her poncho for added 70's effect.  I bought a few other things, including all the summer vegies to plant, a couple of books and DVDs, some jigsaw puzzles and jam.  But mostly the day was about seeing how much the kids just love 'their' fete, the sense of ownership they have, and the pride they take in their school putting on this enormous effort.  A day like this just ticks all my boxes.

The Harvest Festival

With the run of warm weather we've been having it's hard to believe that winter is nearly here. Our annual harvest festival seems to be getting bigger each year. As well as soup and pumpkins there were also pizzas, preserves, cheeses and wines.  There was lantern making and face painting and drum lessons, story telling and dancing. There was the annual veggie sculpture which is always a great display of creativity. But I didn't really see any of it as I was so busy setting up and running the craft stall. I couldn't properly capture the 'tree' I made out of a branch of our neighbour's fejoia tree, for displaying handmade (& knitted!) necklaces. Despite what I considered the aesthetic success of the tree-as-display-stand, it didn't work very well as an actual showcase. The necklaces only sold once I took them off and put them front and centre on the table. As always it was interesting to see what did and didn't sell.  Elizabeth made a bundle of poi in great fabrics and they walked out the door.  Wooden Mine Craft figures that hadn't sold at the fete were incredibly popular today. Scarves and beanies did well, as always, but hand knitted jumpers didn't do much business, even at the absolutely bargain basement price of $12. Admittedly many were in small sizes that wouldn't fit school age kids and all had been donated by various grandmas. We rely on the kindness and productivity of these women, many of whom are only peripherally linked with our school. They make the bulk of the beanies and scarves and countless bags, knitted teddies and other goodies that form the backbone of our stall. 

I had the heartbreaking task of telling a little girl that the 10c she proffered wouldn't cover the $10 price tag on her chosen item. She looked in confusion at the number 10 on the coin and back at me as I tried to explain the difference. 

Martina made beautiful patchwork scarves out of old jumpers and did an equally beautiful job selling them off. Sarah bought up big and then dropped her bag and smashed a jar of beet root preserves that was also in it. Why did it have to be beet root? Clear popular winner of the day was the $1 lucky dip which we used to move some items that have been lingering round the stall for a few fetes and festivals now - mostly badges and brooches and other little things. 

Poor Lily found the day a bit exhausting. By late afternoon she'd had enough and the uncomfortable plastic chair was as good as it was going to get for a nap. Next year no doubt she'll be racing around as a little preppie herself but today she didn't leave my side. It was nice to have her there.