and later, after a little lateral thinking . . .

including shameless consumerism (hot jeans)
some loud music
and time-shape wrangling with dear friend

I have solutions, a better feeling stomach
AND a hot pair of jeans.

I shall work less hours, leave town earlier and switch!
around the thumb tacks that I had driven far too deeply into the proverbial map on the wall . . .

It hopefully means no more childcare and a chance to knuckle down with my boy
on a happier medium of Life. You know, that old rag.

Fury on the rocks

This afternoon I agreed to an 8 week extension of my current contract
and ever since I have been
irrationally, steamingly angry.

Which is pretty funny

and perhaps, just a little revealing.

I am so angry that my belly feels as if I have swallowed hot rocks.

Stuffed

I LOVE anchovie-stuffed green olives.
(They are like a mouthwater (sic) of summer: sea water gulp)
I am eating them right now.
They taste damn great.
They make me stink.

I spent a day at my friend's house.
It was nice. Super relaxed and drifty and conversations
are easier when time is allowed to just be that system
we don't have to pay as much attention to as we do (I do)
Three kids doing laps around the house
lego, swords, maiming,
morning tea blends into lunch
blends into post-school
rush of snacks and tears and loud crazed excited voices.
Left-overs for tea and then four children slicking around
the spa
diving and snorkeling and loud loud screaming

Do you remember childhood baths with friends and cousins?
I was watching these kids and laughing and physically remembering
skin and skin and warm water and the laughter of it all.

Vessel:

pod on the sea(ds)

Slow Cooking Here

Yo Yo Ma Baching away
Heater doing its best
Osso bucco lingering
Hair is big: teased, and dreaded


and I'm having a Bloody Mary party
Everyone invited.

Attending the Details

The last few days have been . . . interesting

I call it The Fear.
Dis-ease.
Translates into inertia ie. scared stiff.
I hate it!
Partly, mostly, because I cannot find the seed (kind of like extracting oxalis from your vegie patch, all those horrid, brown pellets to sift out) of this perturbation.

So, although I couldn't find the seed, I did find a kind of sieve for extracting the worst of the heavy brown pellets. This phrase that began to hum around my head: attend the details.

And so I turned to housework. The fine detail stuff. Tended the altars, lured cobwebs from the corners, blah blah.

Achieved simple things, widened the goal posts. God . . . tedious.

But I did have this very unexpected moment of realising that my work keeps me ticking: this bizarre work ethic thing. I was a little . . . exhilarated . . . (almost embarrassing!) to get dressed and to walk into town and the panic room therein. But how to turn this ethic onto my own, self-designated work?

And afterwards I got to play a newly completed violoncelle which is more than a little amazing in the scheme of creating things your own way.

Plunge

Dead

(The title was the word of my most recent 'dictionary reading'. Interestingly, prior to the reading I was about to title this entry Hibernation . . .)

Am coiling up a little these days. Taking thoughts and ideas very slowly,
walking a little slower around the house, writing lists and completing a task a day.

An energy saving spell before imminent upheavals that are BIGGER UP, literally into a different hemisphere.

Sometimes it seems that Things happen and with only the
slightest, most gentlest of nurturing touch.

Touch that neither shoves Things into place, nor becomes oily and complacent.

An I-Ching reading:

Hsien (wooing) . . . the influence shows itself in the big toe.

"A movement, before it is actually carried out, shows itself first in the toes."

My big toe twitched, arched and prepared so long ago it is hard to believe that this motion is nearing the movement of leg and arm. This journey, that begins in September or thereabouts, is like many journeys, and actually began long before departure.