Break

Not long after my class finished earlier this month I found myself in my typical end-of-year funk, which seems to arrive at the exact moment I realise that my break from study will involve almost no leisurely-lying-in-bed-reading-novels-and-forgetting-to-eat, and instead lots and lots and lots of child-wrangling. I love my children infinity (as Mo and Hazel like to say), but I miss the days when sleeping in was a thing and I didn’t have to spend quite so much time, guilt, and brainpower figuring out how best to keep two little people healthy, happy, and engaged.

It was around this funky time that Moses complained to Alan and me: “It’s not fair that Mummy gets to go away for sleepovers, and Daddy gets to go away for sleepovers, but we don’t get to go away for sleepovers.” Alan was on the phone to his parents that very evening, and the plan we’d been vaguely daydreaming about for months finally fell into place: Mo and Hazel would spend a few nights with Nanna and Poppa after Christmas, and Alan and I would spend a few nights somewhere else, relishing our freedom, reacquainting ourselves with uninterrupted sleep (no one slept well while we were in Queensland), and watching episodes of Parks and Recreation whenever we felt like it. (Although we’d leaned heavily on the “You guys are going to have so much fun with your grandparents!” line, the night before we left Moses said to us, “You won’t have to worry about Hazel or me doing anything dangerous, or about getting us food! You’ll be able to do anything you want!” Obviously our efforts to mute our dizzying excitement had been unsuccessful, arousing Mo’s suspicion that possibly he and Hazel weren’t the only two benefitting from the arrangement…)

It was the first time in the five-and-a-bit years that we’ve been parents that Alan and I had spent more than a night away from our children together; as we ate dinner on the first evening we marvelled over the fact that we didn’t have to rush home to pay a babysitter! We could get home any time we wanted! (We got home at 8:30pm.) We stayed in a gorgeous mud-brick cottage in a valley near Blackheath, and filled our days fauna-spotting, bath-taking, cheese-eating, DVD-watching, lovemaking, book-reading, talk-having, wine-sipping, blog-writing, bushwalking, podcast-listening, in-colouring, and sleeping. It was exactly as glorious as it sounds.

Even more glorious was the happy reunion with my babies, and the precious, complete feeling that came with having them close again. 

I reckon it’ll last until... Monday? Maybe? Then I’d like to do the break thing again.

Keyboard

from here

I used to believe that laptop keyboards were singularly conducive to brilliant writing, and that if I ever found myself the proud owner of a laptop, the flatness and silence of the keys would compel me to sit down immediately and type the world’s greatest novel. Sadly, this never happened; as much as I loved the feeling of my new laptop's keys, I soon discovered that it takes more than a beautiful-feeling keyboard to be able to write books (I WAS AS SHOCKED AS YOU ARE).

My beloved laptop’s now four years old and starting to experience the kind of health problems which inspire hyper-vigilance about backing up assignments, so we bought a desktop computer just in case there was ever a morning when my laptop could not be roused and it was clear the end had finally arrived. I put off setting up said desktop computer for months because I could think of approximately 1700 ways I’d rather spend my time than downloading the various programs I use every week and trying to guess all of the passwords my laptop’s been kindly remembering for me for all these years, but when my class finished for the year I ran out of excuses and bit the proverbial bullet. (It tasted like proverbial metal.) (I don’t even know what that means.) (I’m so tired, you guys.)

I didn’t write a novel on my laptop, but I did start writing my blog soon after I bought it, and now that I’m having to use my new desktop keyboard for typing I’m suddenly dealing with all sorts of mental stumbling blocks stemming from my new keyboard’s non-laptopness. I don’t know if I’m able to be creative using this keyboard! It’s not a novel-writing keyboard! It’s so noisy! The soundtrack to my thoughts spilling out is now the click-click-thunk of keys-keys-space bar. It feels wrong. It sounds wrong. I don’t know what to do.

Christmas 2015

We spent this Christmas at the Gold Coast. Earlier this year when my brother told me his holiday dates, I explained that our plan was to arrive just before Christmas and then stay for a few nights afterwards to make the most of his time off. That was our plan before looking at the prices of flights. My motto before checking flights was, “Family is far more important than money! We’ll pay whatever it takes in order to spend the most time possible with our loved ones!” My motto after checking flights was, “I don’t care if everyone’s still working for almost all the time we’re there, I ain’t paying more than $1000 on airfares if I ain’t even leavin’ the country.” (I turn into a Texan when feeling shocked.)

On Christmas Eve, in Ballina, Moses and Hazel put up and decorated my aunty and uncle’s bare tree, and seeing their tinselly creation made me realise for the first time that it was actually Christmas. I’d been so caught up in the end-of-year dinners and the writing of Things-We-Absolutely-Cannot-Forget-When-We-Go-To-The-Gold-Coast lists and the packing of bags that this fact had managed to slip me by. Alan and I gave Mo and Hazel a present each on the Sunday before we left to go away, and told them they could also spend some of the Christmas money they’d been given by (my incredibly generous) grandparents on a toy after we returned from holidays. We explained to Moses (for another year) that Christmas is a celebration of Jesus’ birthday, and that to honour Jesus’ love for others we’d be spending our money on people who needed it, rather than on showering Mo and Hazel (or anyone else – we’re sucky friends/relatives) with stuff. Mo seemed okay with this. It was the first year in a while that our approach to Christmas has made sense to me and seems satisfactory for the kids too. Christmas may not be so confusing after all! *sighs contentedly*

In the four-and-a-half days we were up north we squeezed in catch-ups with eight sets of relatives in five different locations (two of which were in Ballina), and asked “Do you mean Queensland or New South Wales time?” roughly fourteen times. Per day. It was an exhausting whirlwind of a trip, which left Moses so ridiculously tired he slept until 10:30am (New South Wales time) on our final day there, and Hazel so ridiculously tired she woke up at her normal time of 5am (Queensland time) but then whinged until she found the opportunity to sleep again (in the car on the way to the airport, and then on me, and then on Alan). 

It was sad cutting so many of our visits short in order to move on to the next  group of people we had to see, when we hadn’t covered all of the things we wanted to ask/say and probably wouldn’t even if we talked nonstop for another few hours/days. The kids spent more time with my brother’s pool than with my brother himself, which made me wish desperately that we lived far closer to him, his wife, and his three cute but smelly children/dogs (they’re dogs, but it’s uncanny how similar they are to children when you start sharing stories about discipline and personality). His pool was pretty awesome, though.

Home’s pretty awesome too.