Dear colleagues and workplace in general

Please note that although I have only been in for an hour and a half, and although I had the day off yesterday to deal with the aftermath of having my bag stolen on the weekend, I feel completely satisfied with what I have done so far and would be content to call it a week. You see I have not entered anything into my blog for days, and there are lovely comments I wish to reply to, not to mention other people’s I wish to read. ON another note, I have several half-finished art projects scattered across my lounge room and study – so in the interests of health and safety (these could pose trip hazards you see) and my own well being, I think it best that I return home shortly after lunch and resume my printmaking exploits. Oh, and I have mail to post – and would really like to organize a composting workshop for the residents of my apartment block in readiness for the new compost bin which will be delivered sometime in the next week.



If you have anything you want fresh ideas on feel free to email me at home, I will get back to you at my leisure, over a piece of toast and cup of tea, and probably over my cat, who is a lap opportunist and will likely be perched there seeking pats as I type. If you want drudge work done I suggest you give that to someone else as I’m not very good at staying focused on admin tasks. If you need any truly exciting interdisciplinary thinking done or perhaps a new mural for the tea room, I am your girl. Ditto if you need costumes designed for a workplace musical or perhaps a new herb garden designed for the roof, or a great meal planned for the innaugral workplace feast, just drop me a line. If you want little tables filled out with numbers please note that this request will not get past my email filter. You will note also that I have taken the liberty of filling in the boxes of my time sheet this week with small haiku about the nature of existence. Feel free to read them out at the next team meeting as my contribution to the dialogue. Oh and be a dear and save me a monte carlo for the next time I pop by to visit.


Many thanks, kind best fond regards etc.

Romper room and my possible new room?

At the risk of turning my blog into an episode of Romper Room* (the worst tv kids show ever?) where they used to say hello to special friends in the magic mirror (ahuh, as you do), I want to wish Little Mister a belated happy b-day, and Angel a great three oh for today, and welcome back Aunty B and Biz to the land of Oz.

And speaking of rooms - the quickest of updates on the commute saga. Checked out room plus *study* in very inner city suburb in a friends share house last week. Ooh was that baby small! think double bed taking up the vast majority of floor space in the bedroom and the *study* also being a *walkway* into the outside clothes hanging space. Do i want to live in a shoebox where I will have to garage sale half my stuff and cleverly package the rest of it in stackable plastic boxes ("welcome to our lives!" I hear the inner city set cry). Do I want to live amongst urban squalor and the great chook raffling of experience from sublime to seedy to vaguely dangerous? Do I want to only see verticle lines and be surroundd by concrete? Weighed up against - do I want to get a stiff neck from sleeping upright on train for many hours a day? Do I want to invest 5 hours a day of my life just getting to and from other places I need to be? Do I want to have absolutely no time foranything else other than wporking and sleeping and traveling btwn Mon - Fri. Golly gee.

On the up side this particular home in this particular inner city suburb does have a good size 'living area' (as opposed to the bits of the house you flop around dead in?), a postage stamp side yard that I could plant a sunflower in andthat catty could sun himself in, and is a shortish walk to a community arts centre, a framing shop, an Irish restaurant (mm, just what I needed?) and lots of interesting brightly painted flakey terrace walls which I am itching to photograph. Probably also shortish walk to needle exchange, traffic jams, student squats and crime scenes - but hey, yin and yang right?

So kids, whaddya think? Should this green sea wash up on the streets of the big smoke? Can I handle the never ending proximity to people and miniaturised bonsai-like private space? Will I feel sad and mourn for my spacious book-lined study and handy built in linen presses (F it - where on earth will linen go in the potential new place??). Will moving to the city clinch once and for all that I am now returning to a sensible life of full time work and inner city single girl cliches without any of hope of a more multifaceted approach to filling ones days (bloody hope not). OR am I just a melodramatic spoilt dill who should get some perspective and be grateful for actually having a job and a home and the option of a new home? Yeah very likely.

Big hugs to everyone going through more difficult times than mine right now; anyone lonely, missing someone, not being treated nicely, worrying or wondering. I keep hearing stories that make me remember that I have very good fortune. Mermaidgrrl & Little Mister, especially thinking of you and sending you lots of happy fertile good luck vibes.

Speaking of fertility (Ed: argh- stop writing and get to bed!!), did have funny chat with (kinda cute arty buddhist) mountains fellow in the supermarket tonight (my shopping = deoderant..'which of these smells sums up exactly how I wish my armpit to be perceived and express itself in the world?', kitty litter and flat bread..live alone - who me??!)about lack of life plans. He excused me because I am a pisces - nice one! Very handy, like that. But also when I was bemoaning that I can't even figure out if I want to have babies, and that surely I should know that, so how on earth can I decide where to live, he laughed and told me that there was a little thing called the birds and the bees and that he might have to give me a little lesson on that at a later date, but probably best not in the supermarket. I laughed, firstly because I realised that it did seem like I was suggesting that I didn't actually know how to go about the process of making a baby, but also because being offered a lesson on the facts of life under the fluoro lights of Coles at 10.45 on a Tuesday night just about qualifies as a hot date these days! Of course I didn't say anything worthwhile back, because I was too tired and busy laughing at the idea that I just made an idiot of myself, although did amuse myself with several witty and even flirty imagined responses on the walk home.

* Possibly a South Australian thing? Like girls who wear lip gloss and pie floters. Should there have been a comma there - nasty image of wearing a pie floater..

Words to inspire for a Monday morn.

"Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days...What you can do or think you can do, begin it. For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it."
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you
into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression
is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium
and will be lost. The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how
valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open."
-- Martha Graham


"The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude" - Nietzsche

(Mind you I'm convinced Nietzsche was bonkers, but that's just me...completely unsubstantiated opinion that one..)

Now that's handy

A map of...

PS

A few new reviews on Booklub.

Tidying and making mess

Oh weekends - you are too short! I am busy tidying up my nest this weekend - trying to get that mound of clothes back in the cupboard where it belongs (it is the 'oops, not that one, couldn't possibly wear that colour today' and the 'oh shit the hem is down' pile), trying to get rid of the pile of dishes that built up through the week based on my general laziness and also the unfortunate incident where my dishwashing detergent fell out of the open window (I am on the 1st floor...) never to be found again. Seriously - where did it go? Probably didn't help that I didn't go looking for it for a day or two... Other top of the list housework tasks include taming the fridge, washing, and ironing clothes ready for the week (I succumbed a few months back and bought an iron). Thinking nice, tidy, efficient little house to make everything that little bit easier and more streamlined. Lunchboxes for work, and outfit planning in advance and all that jazz.

BUT... housework always has to vie with all my mess making activities for my time - bouts of half done letter writing all over the dining room table, some kind of painting /drawing / inky fun, cake baking, or all my non-housework activities such as just vaguing off out the window, or reading, or resting on the couch with my cat asleep in my lap, or bath having, or wafting off to bookshops to browse and drink coffee. I have to reconcile myself to the fact that actually, I don't mind mess, I rather like it. I feel like when my house is messy there is an expansiveness to it, an openness, and invitation and permission to spreadout and do things, rather than an unspoken request to keep things neat and inward and contained. Train chat this week with fellow commuter turned to this subject, and I had to laugh when she confessed she'd always been messy from a very early age and her mother had despaired (me too! me too!). I had a happy childhood and was always messy, had no interest at all in tidying my room (yeah I know, who did?!). Some of my happiest memories were the grubbiest - painting a dog kennel bright green with a friend and deciding it would be much more fun to paint each other green too, helping mum dig a fishpond out of the muddy puddle we had made by soaking with the hose, stripping off and with a gaggle of other kids using the mud to become mud monsters - sticking lawn clippings onto the mud and trying to see whether it worked as camouflage by hiding in the garden from our parents. And surely when we were very very little we enjoyed our food smeared everywhere because we had no concept of dirtiness, no aversion to messiness, we were just a bundle of sensation?

Surely there are worse things? (eg. a cousin of mine who throughout her childhood was so scared of her father's military precision that she would cry when she got her hands dirty or clothes dirty because she knew she'd be severely told off...)

Train friend said that she's come to realise that what she likes about a 'lived in' house is the layers, the trails of everyday life that are visible. Whether that is a book half-read put by the side of the chair, or a wine glass, or a half-done project, or even a pair of knickers on the floor. She said that she now understands it and doesn't try to sterilise her living environment of these traces of daily life. (Although occasionally finds herself cleaning the bath late at night if she's stressed about other things).

Mid day rhapsody

8 hours sleep - 10 even - oh what joy!
So many lovely things this week to wax lyrical about.

At work...
Being made coffee in little cups with saucers by proud colleague(yes, good crema, yes very nice); being offered snacks by different colleague like this: "treat?" which makes me laugh every timen because I feel like I am being puppy schooled; laughing together at weaselly words such as 'quantum' (what is the quantum of that? - ie how much) and 'material'(yes but is it material - as in is it significant, worth worrying about) and at our funny typos.. mine writing 'Contents (daft)' and another boy's of writing 'Intuitional arrangements' rather than institutional. Sneaky coffee breaks downstairs, and lovely chat at lunch and in betweeb the gaps of working and thinking. Little snippets of personal revelation (revealing) as we dance around the boundaries of professional iterraction and divulge, share, build friendships.

At home...
Phone messages! Old friend from school who I rarely see and haven't spoken to for a year or so ringing me and singing happy birthday on the answering machine; mum ringing to let bub say hello to be on the answering machine and to tell me amazedly that last week he said 'zebra' at a picture in a book; people ringing who have seen the info about a wkshop I'm running and offerring to help promote it (yes! yes! all the help I can get - thankyou). A little handful of emails from all around the country from people wanting to come to the wkshop, and wanting more info, and having lovely email sign offs like 'in peace' and 'blessings' and 'for the earth' - so nice to have interractions with strangers who nonetheless seem warm and engaged. Amazing as welll to see trust in action - people trust some humble little community organised event to be worth going to - I trust them all not to be stalkers and hence bravely put my email and even phone number on things.

In the letterbox:
Lovely bday postcard of la luna all the way from Brazil- look forward to seeing you back soon miss B; and, delightfully a CD package from Betty Sue with the damned spunkiest cover arrangement made from tracing paper and funky mattt sheer stickers (including the thinking girls crumpet in his role as a pirate)and all. Why do cd's come in anything different?? I think you have a career in cover art my dear..

And yesterday a lovely dinner in the city with a view of the whole world almost from friends balcony. And story telling, lovely stories.

More websites

Shopping and more shopping

and yes, thankyou commenter, local freecycle!

Mish Mash

"Keywords:
Interesting. Exciting. Initiative. Sustainable."

Thanks to Mister MiCool for these 2 spunky Uk sites. Loving the transatlantic dialogues with all you away folk.

Swap Exchange Islington

Transgressive architecture

Speaking of which Aunty B is back very soon. Check out the funky travel blog here and send them lots of aussie lovin of the electronic kind before they bring their weary bones home and catch up on chat in the flesh.

Speaking of flesh, I have ample after scoffing pav at a baby shower (baby tea? whatevs) this afternoon. Glorious weather and fun games (thanks MeriRisa I took your suggestion and goggled for games ideas - ah the internet what does it not have??) and nice girly chit chat. Some mild birthing horror stories but funniest was our friend who recently had gallbladdder out (and said gall stone attack pain was worse than either of her two natural non-drugged childbirths) waxing lyrical about the joys of morphine.

Lovely yesterday to see the inner westie folk who came up for a lunchy visit and brought cake from my fave bakery in the world. Good lazy lingering chat and gallery browsing, thanks guys.

My blogging is v. bare bones at the mo - squeezing blogging in the cracks in the footpath of my life. Blogging time = possible sleep time... a tricky trade off.

Only one night of wkshop action this week, will be a relief. Actual work to do too - exciting, scary, exciting again. Scary as in 'will I get my act together and do it?'... topic of my first project a little obscure and possibly boring. But then again everything's interesting if you look at it right huh? A friend suggested a spend some time drawing the very humble objects (lets say, just hypothetically that said items were water meters) that are at the heart of my project - get to know it as it were. I like the idea and while it may amuse me for a while is unlikely to make me hand report in any more on time.

Other thrilling work news: suspect I may have been the co-target of very general team meeting comment about office noise levels, and taking conversations into meeting rooms to keep noise down. What are you saying, I thought, you don't like our outrageously funny tea parties in pod 5? Our weekend catch up stories not quite your cup of tea? Apparently not. Oops. Funny to note my indignant defensive internal response ('well, anyway, like it adds life and ... you know, um, well, so and so was chatting too..., and anyway, like you know - don't give me greasies!!'). Very primary school really when in fact it was a completely fair observation and I have just been busted as being a rowdy blabbermouth showoff. Which I am whenever I'm not being a bookish introvert drawing water meters for fun.

And on that night - bring on Monday!!