in the last week and a half we have received bunches and bunches of pink flowers, three chocolate cakes and a card made out to “little mauve“.
this is not a bad thing.
Monthly Archives: October 2004
early on, maybe on day two, i bent over a meconium-filled nappy, and marvelled at the similarity between the sludgy brown excrement and the gravy that a merimbula chip shop smeared over my order of chips two christmases ago. oh the stunned silence that greeted me and my packet of hot chips and gravy when we made our entrance at the boxing day screening of “the lord of the rings: the two towers”.
i thought maybe i could call her “maevy gravy”. i’m sorry to say that a song ensued.
and then there was…
…maeve.
born 3.15am, monday 18 october,
49 hours after the first faint contraction.
woohoo!
sweet mercy, the cool change is here.
yesterday’s 38° and today’s not-much-better was taking its sweaty, stinky toll. my feet were red and swollen like large warm steaks. it seemed like the best place to find lunch was in the freezer. it came so close to being ice cream, but ended up being a mound of peas and a lemon-crumbed fish fillet. this neccesitated both the oven and stovetop going full blast for a while at noon, but it was all worthwhile.
beneath the sombre pall that descended after the lavish turkish feast that was last night’s dinner…
[ lavish turkish feast interlude ]
it was the first birthday party of the boy’s sister’s kid, a smiley half australian-half turkish boy who grabs at my glasses whenever we meet. there was a kid’s party in the park with rolled-up jam and vegemite pinwheel sandwiches (not in the same pinwheel) and avocado and shredded carrot finger sandwiches, and pass-the-parcel with a jackson five live tape soundtrack, and bubbles, oh — and kids. so many kids. and then there was a grownup party back at the house with dolmades and olives, pide with a mean beetroot dip, four kinds of shish kebab: beef; chicken; veggie, with mushroom, green capsicum, asparagus and haloumi; and seafood, with scallops with the roe on, and green capsicum. and salads, including one with green beans and broad beans in yoghurt. and a great dome-shaped pavlova sandwiched with yoghurty cream and raspberries and rose syrup and covered in sugared rose petals. yes there was.
…we awoke this morning, confused. the words, “very depressed”, were put forth by a member of this household, in a tone of voice that could not have been flatter or sadder. but the confusion was because, despite the fact that everyone i know and most people in this country whose blogs i read appear to vote for not john howard (and also not any of those loopy christian / family values / otherwise insane parties), and despite the awful campaign ads and the shouting and pointing and jutting-out lower lip and overall less-niceness of the man, and um, the stuff that’s been done in the last few years… going to war, locking up children behind barbed wire, that sort of thing… it is john howard who’ll be putting on his tracksuit and power-morning-walking his victory lap for [undisclosed period of time] to come.
how can it be?
so i looked over at the still-unwrapped chocolate bar on my bookshelf, and along the spine of it, next to “extra creamy milk chocolate” in gold print, were the instructions “open here”.
ok, mr chocolate bar.
my bookshelf is now much closer to my desk — which explains why i managed to read the tiny type on the side of a chocolate bar despite near-legal blindness — since i moved it over from the opposite side of of the room, to make space for the crib and change table for the new person who will soon be upon us, holy fucken crap.
aside from moving furniture around, the mammoth magazine cull continues… the last couple of days i finally made it to my pile of “juice” magazines. if you read the previous post about cutting down the swathe of “spin”s and detected a faint poignancy about the exercise, this new challenge has been a few notches more melancholy. because these, i actually worked on.
i have issue one, and two, and three (you get the idea), from when i had to buy them at the newsagent… through to a couple from around issue ten when i did a spell of work experience there in third year uni, and then a bunch more, and then every issue from march 1995 when i was deputy art director for a couple of years, and then the year’s worth from november 1997 (issue 57) when i became art director, to october 1998, when i went postal and had to leave the company, and then a random few from after. yeah, i have a lot of issues.
now there’s a pile, facedown, at the top of the stairs, awaiting transfer to the recycling bin downstairs. it feels like i’m throwing out a chunk of australian publishing history, and every time i walk past i wonder if i’ve been too brutal. of course, i did keep all mine, and took clippings of choice layouts from the rest, where “choice” includes both the aesthetically pleasing and the “what the?” ludicrousness of that heady mid-nineties period of cutting edge magazine design. but aside from a very select few from the very early days (issue three, with evan dando in love beads and nothing else on the cover; issue eight: nirvana; issue 18: eddie vedder “on kurt’s death”), there they are, facedown, top of stairs.
sigh. there’s a feeling not so far back in my head that if my entire stash had not been so dotted with cockroach shit (just the outside covers, but still a misadventure in storage if there ever was one), i would have blogged instead about the extremely delicious watermelon i procured this week from the supermarket at a bargain 95c/kg.
