The rattle of the empty nest

Earlier this week the Blue Eyed Boy went on school camp.  Hubby and the Green Eyed Girl were there to wave him off on the bus while I was at work.  I collected the Green Eyed Girl from school at the end of the day and home we went.

On returning home from school there is a flurry of activity, daily chores to be done, afternoon tea to be devoured, homework, screen time.  Apart from the natter of how was your day and newsletter reading, permission form filling in, and some homework checking, I have been made redundant in this. Over the past year there has been quite a shift in our home dynamic.  The kids have done a lot of growing up.  Suddenly the independence and autonomy I had been working towards and sometimes yearning for is here… and as much as I like it, with one child away there was a definite lack of clatter and chat.

The Green Eyed Girl was happily cocooned in head phones and email messaging to a school friend.  Tea was sorted. Hubby was working in the cupboard office.  As I walked through the kitchen, I had a sudden thought… which I could almost hear pinging off the walls in the oh so quiet house.  This is what it’s going to be like when the kids leave home… this rattle and quiet and jobs done…I stopped.  I shoved the thought back.  I wasn’t ready for it to be a real thought.

Oh, I have plenty of days when I mutter away about please for the love of Pete when will they leave home? But when given a taste (and I know it was a very tiny taste) I am just not sure I’ll be as pleased as I joke I will be.  For the first time in eleven years I am aware of a new stage in mothering.  The stage where mother bird doesn’t need to be there… the stage when the baby birds have left the nest.

I know this is the way it’s meant to be.  I have carefully lengthened and loosened the ties.  I know I want independent children who challenge and problem solve and make their own way, even if it is not my way. And I know for sure that the empty nest is still a long, long way off.  But this week I have had a glimmer of what that may be like.  Perhaps when the time comes I will be a little more prepared.

But I’ll tell you one thing… I sure was happy when the house was full again.

Tags: blue eyed boy, children, green eyed girl, parenting, wrapped in love

Hump Day Happiness*

*With a side of shameless self promotion

I’ll be the first to put my hand up and say this week finding the happy is none too easy, and it’s weather induced gloom.  But, as this is a happy space, I’ll just have to build a bridge and get over myself!  The weather here in Melbourne has been unpredictable and on the cold side of super chilly.  But I know it won’t last too much longer… right?

So, on to the main game… namely looking back over the past seven days and remembering some of the things that made me smile.

The Green Eyed Girl bought these lanterns with her hard earned pocket money. Cherry blossom paper lanterns holding fairy lights... what's not to smile about?

I received this gorgeous hand knitted beanie in the mail form the talented Thea. It's ruby redness is as warming as the wool it's made from. Just click on this pic to go to her handmade store.

…and (yes folks here’s the shameless self promotion!) I have been selected as one of Kidspot’s top 50 bloggers.  I am in the company of some of my favourite bloggers, and I have the chance to win a trip to Dunk Island!  So, *ahem* click here and vote for me! Then go and vote for some of the other bloggers on the list.  While you’re there go and check out this list of bloggeriffic bloggers that didn’t make the top 50, but are just as worthy of your reading… and yet more of them are on my daily reading list.

Oh…. and I have finally managed to get myself a followers space on the side bar, as well as a facebook page… yes, I am a technical genius and can copy and paste code! So, what are you waiting for?  Don’t be shy! Here endith the shameless self promotion… because I’m even rolling my eyes at myself now!

So, that’s my happy for the week.

Now over to you… what has made you smile this week?

Happy Hump Day!

N xxx

Tags: green eyed girl, hump day, Shopping

Content – a middle sized word.

As I sit here at my desk, looking out at the cloud rolling in, Washington’s sweet tones coming from the music dock, I realise something.  I am content.  Now, stay with me on this one… I promise it’s not vomit inducing sugar sweetness.

I’ve been on the wellbeing, happy trail for a while now. Knowing full well in order to survive the rocky times I need to be able to deal with things in ways other than ranting meltdowns.  I need to be able to quiet the noise in my head sometimes, and downing whole blocks of chocolate and copious glasses of wine really isn’t the answer. Well, not all the time anyway.

So then, what I mean by content is this -

My life is not perfect (who’s is?) I don’t live in my dream house, I work for the love of it as much as for the money it provides us with.  I have worries, sadness and grief that are too raw and I don’t write about in public.  Somedays Hubby and the kids drive me a little nuts. Most days the washing pile is higher than the mountain we live on.  But I have learnt to live with it – and that was no easy feat.  I have learnt that people come to see me, and if they like me, they will not care that my queen size bed has three weeks of crunched up washing sprawled on it.  And that perhaps if I am brave enough to let people in, washing pile and all, they may be able to let me in to their home in it’s real state too.

I have learnt that sometimes the things you really want out of life are worth waiting for, and working towards.  I have learnt that patience really is a virtue… not that I have much of it.

The Hubby and I took a gamble selling up and moving interstate, and to say it has not all been easy would be an understatement. But, after living in the house that shall not be named, in the suffocating claustrophobia that suburbia felt like for us, we are getting there.

It has taken me until I am fast approaching 40 to realise life can be like pushing the proverbial shit up hill, but man the view at the top is worth it, so I hear, so keep on pushing.  I have learnt that sometimes what you thought you wanted is not all that good for you.  That letting go is a good thing.  That sometimes, the unknown is kind and will, in time show itself to you, and you wont be as scared as you thought you would be.

So, yes, I am content.  I look around my rented home, at my things old and new… at the home we have moulded from items given, bought and found… at photos, and books, and furniture.  At pets and garden and trees and I smile.  Because, in the words of the Rolling Stones, You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.

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Tags: build a bridge, the universe, wellbeing

A moment in time.

As I stood on the escalator going down I looked at the girl in front of me. Tall, thin, confident.  She looked back and smiled, and I fell in love all over again.

How could this person I looked at be the babe I bore? How did she get to be this grown?

Stepping off the escalator we walked side by side towards our store of choice.

“Do you want to hold my hand?” I asked.

“Nope, I’m right,” came the reply, without a hint of regret.

I knew this was one of those moments in time that I needed to remember.  I wanted to freeze frame it as my heart clenched.  I rummaged through my bag to get my iPhone, thinking if I slowed my pace I could take a photo of her from the back… but she slowed to match my speed.  I knew that I couldn’t ask her to walk ahead, the self conscious would take over and the photo would be a lie.  So I put my phone away.

I know this is a fragment in time. I know that the path is not always like this.  I know there is door slamming, and I hate you! Clashing and  worry. Anger, hers and mine.

But this moment is none of that.  She may not want to hold my hand, but she still wants to walk beside me.  For now, that will do.

Tags: green eyed girl, parenting, wrapped in love

Ritual

I have read a few blogs on ritual and comfort this week, like Jane’s and Melissa’s and it got me thinking about my own.

Wellbeing has been playing on my mind lately, as can be seen in my ramblings on roller coasters and the small happy. For me, ritual means a number of things, comfort, familiarity, belonging… a sense that all is right with the world.  It can be hard to find that sense somedays.  Work, family, house hold tasks can all sometimes pile up, in the case of the washing that needs folding, quite literally.

This, then is a good reason to have a few rituals that help make the mundane less so… for me the washing folding takes place after the kids are home from school.  This started before either the Green Eyed Girl or the Blue Eyed Boy were even approaching school age.  When they were both down for an afternoon sleep, I would try to make sure I sat with a cup of tea, a book, a cooking magazine, the tv… just some time out for myself.  Upon their waking, as they shook the last remnants of sleep and began rummaging for food I’d begin to fold the washing. It stuck.  Now days though I am lucky enough to have two people old enough to help with the washing folding, so things go a lot faster.

I have other rituals too, and these are the ones I really want to talk about.  Not the ones that have to be done… but the ones I want to do.

Tea is one such ritual.  Most afternoons as I come in the door I like to dump my work basket and put the kettle on.  While I wait for it to boil I place an earl grey tea bag in my favourite cup, add a spoon of sugar and sit at the kitchen table.  Once the kettle has boiled I pour, stir and let it brew.   There is something almost meditative about  the way I do this.  Every part of the process the same, every day, done with a sense of easing calm.  Once the tea has brewed I add just a dash of milk and give it a final stir before sitting at the table again.  I might browse through a magazine, chat to the kids, read the school newsletter, even tweet on my phone, but it’s still time out, a chance to catch my breath after the day.

Something else I like to do when I’m pottering about the house is light incense.  It fills the house with a wonderfully sweet, earthy smell… one that makes me think of my sisters and my mum.  When we move to a new home, the first thing I do is light nag champa day and night until the home is ours.  I guess it’s my smudging ceremony.  On days that I am home, I light one after the other… and when I go into my sisters or my parents homes, they have that same scent welcoming me back.

Rituals like these are small, and although I said they don’t need to be done, I think perhaps they do.  It’s the little things like this that can make a day, give you a sense of comfort, of happiness, of lightness and wellbeing.  For me, that’s what the ritual is for… so I’m placing mine in the must do pile.

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Tags: house work, ritual, wellbeing, wrapped in love

Whispered words

Something is nagging.  Nagging and gnawing inside my head.  I’m not sure what it is yet… but I know it lurks and wants out… oh it’s not a nasty childhood secret, I don’t have any of those… well unless you count the time I stole a bolt from a hardware store… though I’m not sure what a four year old wanted with a silver bolt secreted away in her purple quilted parka.

Whatever it is has been simmering away for quite some time now.  Years really, in a number of forms and guises.  It is getting closer to the surface, and I am more and more drawn to the laptop to tap, tap away at it.  It is beginning to take form and shape.  It is beginning to take on a life of it’s own.

It is beginning to demand attention in the most inconvenient places… the commute home, the middle of the night, interrupting me as I cook.  It whispers to me, sometimes in tones so soft I only catch a small shred.  I have, for this reason taken to carrying a number of molskines in bags and baskets so I can scribble down the  passing whispers.

It’s the words you see, they write me, not the other way round, and it seems they are demanding more and more of my attention.  It seems I can ignore them no longer.  It appears their time has finally come and the story will out.

So now I take a deep breath and let them have their way. And so, a new journey begins.

I think there’s a story in me…

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Tags: writing

Hump Day Happiness

Ah, Wednesday I wondered where you’d been hiding. So happy to see you!  Now, if you could just give Thursday and Friday a bit of a push and get them to move along quickly I’d be ever so grateful.

After a bit of a hump day hiatus, it’s good to be back in the swing of things.  I’d forgotten how much knowing I had this post coming up made me look for the happy… sometimes the happy is big things, and sometimes, like this week, it’s little things.  To me, it’s often the little things that matter most, because as nice as the big, the momentous, the thrilling are (and believe me I love a big do!) it’s easy to find the happy in them… what is not always so easy is finding the happy in the small and the every day… so that was my challenge this week, to find the happy in the small… and so then, here they are.

As you may know, I have a LOT of black clothes. So, in an attempt to get out of the black rut I wore this red cardi, with a grey top... the only black I wore was boots! I added this vintage fabric button my sister sent me last year... What's not to be happy about with that button on?

On my running leggings there are splashes of mud. Running in the rain and the low cloud, in thermal gear this week was utter, utter bliss.

The Green Eyed Girl's new sequined high tops. Seriously, what's not to smile about?

So, what has made you happy this week? I’d love to know.

Happy Hump Day!

N xxx

Tags: freindship, hump day, running

Here comes the sun…

Little darling, it’s been a long, cold, lonely Winter… Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here…

In the words of the Beatles, the sun has been showing itself a bit these past two days. Towards the end of every Winter Here Comes the Sun starts playing in my head.  Like a musical reminder to keep looking for the light.

Every Winter I start to get the grey sky blues… I start to miss the sunshine, the warmth it brings, the light it brings, the promise of less layers and less foot wear that it brings.

I know it’s only August, I know more grey sky, rain and bitter cold is still on the way.  But I have daffodils in a vase, and two days of blue sky whispering a promise of sun to come.  And for now that’s all I need to keep going.  Because while winter is cozy, a healthy dose of sunshine is coming, and knowing this makes me happy.

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Tags: happiness, music, sunshine

Meditation, roller coasters and teeth that light the night.

Life is long and lingering some days.   It has been for me a lot of late.  Sometimes it’s also full of underlying menace and dull ache. Sometimes I yearn for the blue sky and the kindness of sunshine, however weak and far away it’s warm rays may be. Sometimes the greyness of winter is more than the weather.

Sometimes an offer to accompany a friend on a trip to Luna Park for her daughter’s birthday celebration can surprise us both with the belly aching laughter and joy it unexpectedly brings.  Sometimes being with the carnies, the screamers, the scared, the cold and the fairly floss eating people is better than all the medicine and comfort that can be mustered.

It seems that what I needed to quieten the noise in my head was to be surrounded by the screaming, the laughing and the thrill filled fear that riding on roller coasters and vertical boat rides can bring… along with a hazy trip back into childhood safety on a merry-go-round.

As we walked out of the menacing mouth with it’s teeth all alight, there were smiles, and laughter… and lightness of spirit. Looks can be deceiving, and a wide gaping mouth on an eerie glowing clown can, it seems deliver joy after all.  On the drive home there was talk of meditation classes and the arrangement of pick ups to attend them.  Safety in numbers, and the encouragement of one another seemed like a good thing.

So perhaps this quietening I yearn can be found… and in more places than one.  While I can’t promise a trip to Luna park every week, I can decide to go to meditation… after all, if I can find peace on a roller coaster… I can find it in a chair, in the hills, with a friend by my side…

Tags: freindship, meditation, people watching

Hump Day Happiness

There has been a bit of a break in hump day posts. It’s not that there has been no happiness, more that I have not really been in a place where I wanted to post about it.  I know this is contrary to my very own reasons on why I started this post.  It’s also contrary to the rules I made up for hump day comments!  But there you go, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

But Hump Day is back! So, here goes…

We had a very full, and very satisfying weekend here… more than enough happened to keep me happy.

• I had a whole hour on the train into the city reading.  I had Mumford & Sons on my iPod and a book in my hand… what a lovely start to the day.
• I walked through the city I love seeing the rumblings and promise of the day to come.
• I met up with the gorgeous and oh so lovely Jodie and Megan for brunch.  We chatted away like old friends, not all that surprising as we chat most days on twitter and various blogs… so we could skip all that new friend chit chat about weather, and Hubbies, and where we live and what we like, because we know all that already! It was lovely.
• The football.  Two codes in one day.  What too much? Perhaps, but we did it! Dad got us great seats at the MCG.  So, with Mum, Dad, the Blue Eyed Boy, Green Eyed Girl and Hubby I saw our beloved Pies win.  Then, Hubby, The Kids and I went to the Rugby at Docklands, and surrounded by a sea of All Blacks we watched our beloved Wallabies lose.  But the spark in the kids eyes was worth it.
• Spending an afternoon meal together with family in our lovely hills, in a small restaurant.  Great food, great wine, great family.

So, there are mine.  More than three… but that makes up for missing the last few weeks!

Now over to you.  What made you smile this past week?

Happy Hump Day xxx

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Tags: blue eyed boy, freindship, green eyed girl, hump day, twitter, weekend