Holidays

Coastal walk

Princess Sleepyhead swimming

How slowly they come up on us and how quickly they go! And after they've gone I always wonder whether it was all real. It's that old psychological maybe-I'm-the-only-real-person-and-all-the-rest-is-a-figment-of-my-imagination thing. Hard to imagine that those other worlds I've experienced are real, and that right now people are enjoying them just as I was a week ago. Much easier to imagine the relentless heat I'm now mired in!

Princess Sleepyhead enjoys a boat trip

How people spend their holidays is interesting. Some like to laze around and do nothing. Others are constantly on the go. I was surprised when Princess Sleepyhead came back from Vietnam and said that she'd wanted to go to the Vietcong caves but was outvoted because most of the others wanted to go shopping. In between treks and their community project, they shopped, shopped, shopped. I can't imagine anything worse. I have an aversion to shopping, but especially when I can be out and about with my camera!

Sir Talkalot rockclimbing

The Gadget Man is an on-the-go man and champs at the bit if everyone is not up super-early and ready to go. As none of the rest of us are morning people, this can present problems. I can be ready at 9, even 8 if I have to, but the kids are another matter. PS decided this year that she was going to stay in her favourite spot -- bed -- for as long as possible, and whenever this made TGM frustrated and, at times, furious I told him to chill out -- that it was her holiday too, and that if she wanted to spend it lazing around, reading, she was entitled to. That didn't mean we all had to waste time waiting for her, but that she had a choice: to come or to stay. Often she chose to stay. In the evenings, she would talk about how much she'd enjoyed treks in Vietnam, and how we should do more family hiking, but while we were out hiking she was home with her book. (Now, I would've been happy if this were one of her novels she has to read for school, but of course it wasn't.)

Boogie boarding

I love sightseeing, The Gadget Man loves hiking, and the kids love any sort of adventurous activities. So as well as having fun on their boogie boards, this time they got to have a surfing lesson. They wanted more, but the lessons were booked out, so after that we hired boards and wetsuits. (PS had ripped all the skin of her hands trying to get the wetsuit on during her lesson, and in the end had to forego a suit that was too small.)

Heading out to try surfing

Sir Talkalot about to stand up!

Of course, this blog wouldn't be called Chaotic Life if we didn't have the type of holidays where something at least goes wrong. (And the kids are still talking about the Christmas Day day out a few years ago where I had my leg injected with two sorts of acid (from a tree), and one kid fell off an embankment and the other got smashed by the sea into the same embankment, leading me to spend two hours picking shell grit out from under their skins.) This year it was Sir Talkalot's turn: seems he lost his joust with coral!

The results of Sir Talkalot's swimming adventures

Signs of drought 2

However hard we might think the drought is for those of us in suburbia, it is of course so much worse for our rural cousins, their livestock and wildlife.

Last week we were investigating the Bournda National Park (just north of Merimbula), and went looking for Lake Bondi, the smaller of the park's two main lakes and the one where my husband said they did kayaking. We had a little trouble locating this lake, but eventually found a minor track leading off a larger one that led to a grassy plain, which we realised was in fact the lake, or what remained of it. Now, it's quite possible that this dries up every summer and fills in winter and so it's dryness has nothing to do with drought, but it was still sad to see the dead tortoise splayed in the middle of the field. Still, it wasn't a loss for everyone: the kangaroos seem to be enjoying it!

Signs of drought

I used to have a lawn: a lush, verdant, thick lawn. These days, with our stage 3A water restrictions, we're not allowed to water lawns anymore. We can water the rest of the garden between 6 am and 8 am on two designated days per week. There are ways around this: water tanks and using grey water. I do use some grey water, but on plants in the garden. This is my "lawn" today -- and each day the wind blows we have less and less topsoil. Of course having two dogs doesn't help. They frolic up and down and disturb the dirt, so that we have great clouds of dust that drift around the backyard, and growing piles of dirt on the paths.

I contemplate building a swale -- the ground seems to have sculptured itself into that shape -- but again I need the ability to water any grass I plant in the first place. I suppose the time is coming where we're all going to move away from lawns as they have in some of the more arid cities in the US and elsewhere. Scoria was big in my old street; I hate scoria.

I think, though, that the biggest sign of drought is our change in attitudes. We used to talk about "when the drought breaks" -- these days we're less hopeful, more resigned to the lack of rain as a permanent symptom of global warming. These days we have to think about more inventive ways with our gardens.

Chilling Out

Well, the prodigal daughter is back from Vietnam and is she ever the slumberchick (reminds me of why I called her Princess Sleepyhead in the first place). She's been toddling off to bed around 11ish, and getting up at 3.30 pm. Now, of the remaining 7 1/2 hours of the day, approx two of these will be spend in ablutions. I love chilling out as much as the next person, but I need some kind of life as well, some kind of activity. I think as a teenager, I liked to sleep in too -- till around 1, but then I was up till after midnight, establishing bad sleeping patterns early.

I was the kid who started the big assignment at 11 pm the night before it was due, and pulled not quite an all-nighter, but close. I always got it done on time though. She's the kid who misses deadlines. I get stressed about this. She doesn't. (I used to get stressed about having left the assignment till the last minute as well, but obviously not enough to reform my ways.) I point out that her grades would be higher if she didn't lose marks for lateness; she's circumspect. At least she's trying in class. I have that.

Soon, the school hols will be over, and we'll be struggling to re-establish some sort of normalcy in her routine, but in the meantime I'm just going with the flow. Her sleeping time gives me writing time. It's less time she's fighting with her brother -- though this often means more time when he's claiming my attention. I suppose you can't win them all, but then when they're both fighting, and I end up feeling like I can't win any of them. My husband says I should be fighting to get her out of bed earlier, but then I'm stressed (because she's not very cooperative), and she's grouchy. Actually, "grouchy" is putting it politely. So, I'm content to just chill out, even if it's frustrating at times and means we don't get to do some of the things I've planned to do. Still, that means it's cheaper too! Sometimes you can win them all.

New Year

I'm not really one for making New Year's Resolutions -- I do it sometimes because I feel it's expected, but I don't really go into it with any great fervour. It's not the way I work. I suppose I know what I should be doing -- I carry those things with me in my head and mull over them, but committing them to paper doesn't make me take them any more seriously.

The things that preoccupy me at the moment are all to do with getting my life under more control. I had a busy year at work last year -- a too-busy year, and in many ways a difficult year (and in some a rewarding year, so it wasn't all negative -- most of it, in fact, wasn't negative). Consequently, I let the reins of control slip, and did that horse ever get the bit between its teeth and bolt. So this year I have to focus on getting more balance. On having more fun -- because isn't that what it's all about. (Mind you, I do have fun in most of the things I do. Fun, I think, is a matter of attitude, a matter of having a smile upon your face and making do with whatever you have.)

My sleep patterns continue to get more and more out of whack, and that's perhaps the most pressing problem. It's so easy to stay up and enjoy the few hours of peace when everyone else is asleep -- if I'm lucky enough to get a few. Perhaps that's the problem -- the kids, jealous of my time, stay up later and later, and I struggle to find time away from them. And I am categorically not a morning person. I do not, under any circumstances, function well then. Anytime before 7, I cannot drive. Not safely. Well, unless I stay up all night and don't go to bed, but even that I'm wary of. (If I fell into that pattern, I'd probably dispense with sleep altogether, and what a disaster that would be.) Before 7, the brain is clogged, and the eyes sting. My body aches and longs to be horizontal. Before 7, I am best in bed, snoozing if not actually sleeping. Dreaming/day-dreaming a writer's dreams. It's important to allow time for that too.

There are other aspects that have also slipped and that I'm feeling keenly -- the state of disarray around me, exercise habits, writing habits, but these are all things I hope to address -- no, mean to address. And there's no time like the present. Today, I've taken control of my blogging, which I've been lackadaisical about lately at best. Gradually, I'll pull this control-beast in, and get myself to a better place.