Country Life: You don’t get this stuff growing wild at my place.

I have had a weekend of fun and funny catch-ups with friends, and has given me pause to think about how different we all are.

I think that I have the best job in the world, and so some days I look around at all of the people, doing all of the different things, and wonder at why they aren’t all chiropractors like me.

I think that I live in the best part of the world, and so some days I look around at all of the people, living in all of the different places, and I wonder at why they don’t all live at my place.

And the list goes on.

Because every day that I consciously choose this life and the things in it, I am expressing my preferences and crafting out a little more of the story of my life. And because I love all of the things that I get to do, and feel so lucky that I have somehow been able to make all of these choices, I find it weird that not one single other person on this planet is choosing that same things as me. Why aren’t you all trying to muscle in on my space?

Could it be that you like your choices?

Seeing my country friends on Saturday, and the things they love, and then seeing my overseas friends on Sunday, and listening to the things they love about their home, made me smile and smile at how much I love the decisions I have made. All of the little choices that I have made over the passing years, that make me, me. I also loved that we are all able to sit around a table together, share a meal and some laughs, find our common ground and relish the things that make us similar, but then also search out the differences, and rejoice in the things that make us so unique.

Vive la difference!

…From The Ashers

Things that ‘normal families’ do on weekends: go for long walks on the beach, play sport, go for bike rides.

Things that families with different kids do on weekends: go and be the test-patient in the doctors’ exams, prepare for transfusions, go and give thank-you talks at the blood bank, get interviewed and photographed for articles in the paper about the need for blood donations.

We have never been for a bush walk.

One of our kids is seven years old, and we have only just taken the pram out of the back of the car, because we never know when we might have to use it, when her little legs will seem to run out of oxygen, and she will need to be helped along for a while. Seven is too old to be in a pram- I know this because a lady once told me when we were at the shopping centre, so I didn’t take the pram so much after that, preferring to use a shopping trolley instead, regardless of whether or not I had any groceries.

This seven year old kid is also a strong-willed little thing, which means she wants to do the things that the other kids do. She wants to walk to the park, walk to the ferry stop, walk along the boardwalk. It’s just that sometimes she can’t. When she was little it wasn’t much of a problem if she couldn’t make it, as I was able to carry her. I did it so often my left arm is much bigger than my right, with bulging biceps and triceps. (Shame it didn’t help the tuckshop arms.)

When we went to Bali, all of the Wayans said that I was like a Balinese mother, carrying my child until she was grown up. I didn’t tell them it wasn’t by choice. I was a baby-wearer by default.

Sometimes in my weaker moments I wondered what would happen once she was too big for me to carry. Would we get a wheelchair, a motorised scooter, or would we just stay home?

This weekend was different.

This weekend we braved a bushwalk to Kondalilla Falls. We thought we would just go down to the rock pools at the little falls and that would be it, but the children wanted to go ‘all the way around’. We looked at each other nervously, and decided to give it a go. There were times when I thought she wouldn’t make it, and times when I thought her wobbly legs would make her trip, and fall over the edge of the path to some unknown.

There were some mishaps…Of course

She surprised me with her stamina and her tenacity, and it gave me an opportunity to talk to the kids about effort and resilience and about staying the course, even if things get tough. Most gratifying of all, I got to use the words of my gorgeous friend Sam Naudin, who embodied the spirit of all we were discussing: Never, never give up.

Beautiful

Sam would have loved this walk, this discussion, this life that we are so lucky to have before us for the grabbing. She loved a bit of “huff and puff” as she called it.

I like to think she whispered in Coco’s ear a couple of times, to help her keep on going.

It would have been just like her.

Coco found a heart rock for you Sam.

RIP Sam.

I think of you often. Coco said she wants to the National Park walk out to “Sam’s Gates” next. 

…From The Ashers xx

So The Ashers are on a secret mini-break in New Farm.  Secret because we are at Mum’s joint (who is currently holidaying herself around bloody Europe on my inheritance), and we haven’t told her.

We have availed ourselves of the house rules:

Please take note of rule #1.

We have already broken that one (we have Evil Geniuses remember).  Plus 2, 3, 7 and 8.  We plan on breaking 4 and 5 shortly.

But I digress.

The real purpose of this blog is that we went to NEW FARM PARK.  The best and most dangerous park in the Southern Hemisphere.  Have you been?  It’s amazing, in that the park is built into the wizened old Moreton Bay Figs.  It’s sweet.  I’ll take some pics tomorrow if I can be bothered.. I didn’t have the foresight to take the camera today.  To up the ante I took a friend who has no children.  So that was fun.  Or something.

Here are the things we saw:

• A man who’s pants were so low we could see in excess of 4cms of flabby white person builders’ crack.  This was highly undesirable.
• Parents paying no attention to their own children what-so-ever, and then asking the other child (who was approximately four) “Where’s your brother?”  Met by blank stares.  Now I don’t wanna dis New Farm, but let’s face it, it has a very ‘mixed’ residency.  So this is not particularly good parenting.  Or safe.
• Tattoos, piercings, small people climbing up extremely high things, children getting kicked in the back, small people falling off very high things, volleyball, a wedding, tightrope walkers, crying children, drunk adults, a throw ball game, a dodgy dude who may or may not have been looking for a kid to steal- or a drink, laughing children, kids drunk on spinning, some mums who may or may not have been drinking screwdrivers, and one little lemony-skinned fairy (mine).

So all in all, a pretty good initiation for my mate into the “other world” that exists that side of a viable uterus.  I think there’s a fair chance her womb is now barren.

Now excuse me, we have this to attend to:

This is what happens when you have mates with no kids. #winning

See you on the other side…

…From The Ashers xx

I may have mentioned once or twice that it was our ten year wedding anniversary on Friday.  When we got married (and were childless) we made a pact that we would go to Santorini for our ten years. We had visions of azure seas, stark white buildings, long days lazing on the beach, slowly merging into evenings of food and wine and timeless indolence.

That was before.

Now?  Well now we have two children. So our plans have become more, let us say, restrained.

Instead we were able to eek out two BLISSFUL BLOODY NIGHTS at The Emporium in Brisbane, which is IN THE SAME STATE as where we live.  Don’t get me wrong, our stay was amazing, and I am grateful to have a Mum who will babysit for us without complaint, or financial recompense.  I documented every last detail in photos, lest it be erased from our memories the second we picked up our little devil spawn cherubs.

I suspect a post on The Emporium will be coming your way soon, but I am too besotted with the idea of drinking this beer with my name on it (My Wife’s Bitter), and listening out for the storm that I hope is brewing, to get one together.  (Oh I do love a storm-beer).

Instead, I shall share with you this clip of Michael McIntyre, sent to me by Lauren (who is childless: if only you knew how funny this actually is Lauren), as I too was childless this weekend.  I walked out doors, I drank and ate and drove and swam and was pampered and swanned about without a care in the world. And now I’m home, and that sensation is fading already, and yet, strangely and funnily enough, I wouldn’t have it any other way*.

Photo by the gorgeous Mazzy Photography

How was your weekend? 

Did you have the kids?

* It is entirely possible that all the swanning about and celebrating has given me some sort of brain injury.

Today I had a day off.

No, I mean I really had a day off.  I slept in a little (for Queensland that is… it was 7am, but that’s a sleep in up here), I had coffee, the husband cooked bacon and eggs on the barbie, we spammed about, read the papers, weeded and cleaned up the garden, did a few loads of washing (it was a shit-hot wash and dry day today), swam in the pool, played in the cubby, sat together on the couch.

I did the food shopping online, cooked tomorrow night’s dinner, baked one batch of biccies, watched some Elementary and read a bit of a novel I’ve been meaning to read for ages. That’s it.

Didn’t even leave the compound.

Looked at the phone twice.  Didn’t tweet at all.  Did one FB post and liked one other.

The days are so long and so languid and just so lovely when you really have a day off.

My brain usually doesn’t work that way.  Even when I’m sitting still I’m planning my next move, or the most efficient way to complete a series of tasks.  Or I’m thinking of a new blog post, a funny tweet, something to do tomorrow, something I should’ve done yesterday.

But today I was still.  My head was empty.

Tomorrow it will be full again.  There will be calls to make, appointments to organise, blood to be given and then received.

It was nice to be still.  I might try it again one day.

What did you do this weekend?