Blue boots and bindies

Good evening loved ones (: I hope this December has started out slowly for you. Since we have no Thanksgiving here, people have no qualms about starting Christmas parties in early December, even late November! Today is December 2, my sister’s birthday, and in one day we had three Christmas parties. Don’t get me wrong, our social calendar is not that demanding, we have no other parties on the calendar. Our next engagement is to travel to Canberra to celebrate Christmas with Matt’s sisters. I just find it shocking to have three Christmas parties on one day so early in the season. Playgroup’s party was this morning at the beach and the neighborhood party was down the hill this afternoon. Right now, Matt is at the third party, a bank dinner and has ridden his bike. I hope he brought a head lamp with him!

A neighborhood party is an interesting occasion out here in the semi-bush. I suppose all of the people who came live within a mile of us on our side of the river. But we are all so isolated and hidden behind the trees that we might see each other only once a year, at the Christmas party. Some people you might see in town, like Matt, since he works at the bank or Jenny who works at the art shop. But others may introduce themselves by laughing and saying, “I have no idea who you are, but I’m Bill.” There were probably 25 people there this evening all chatting in little groups and having a great time (with alcohol and food helping the situation for the shyer ones). There are those who are so shy or uninterested in annual small talk that they don’t bother coming. Then there are some who are new to the “neighborhood” and are eager to see the faces behind all of the hidden mysterious houses. After this party at which I spent most of my time swimming with Jess and chatting with the few people I do know, I desperately want to know more of my neighbors’ stories. As each couple left, I found myself saying, “Damn, I never even got to say hello, find out their names or which house they live in!” I hope I don’t have to wait until the next Christmas party.

The season of Christmas also means the return of cricket tests, joy for Matt. There always seems to be some sport to discuss in great detail with anyone who cares and read about in the newspaper. Matt played cricket as a child and teenager so it is even more enticing to follow. At the moment he dislikes the arrogant Australian team and cheers for any other national team they play. Go England! The Christmas season also means heat and humidity. Jess and I gave up on napping for a few days for in the heat, some days it is not worth the effort. Since the spa is broken, we have taken to running through the sprinkler down in the garden using the dam water, the only water which can be wasted in good conscience. This is a new phenomenon for Jacinta, and has been quickly embraced. At first she was hesitant to get her face all wet, but as I passed on some of the fun games my sister and I used to play in the sprinkler, she lost all fear. It is a funny picture though, a little girl in blue rubber boots playing in the sprinkler with her big pregnant mama wearing garden shoes. You may ask, aren’t you supposed to run barefoot through the sprinkler? We have an evil thing growing in the grass here in Australia called bindies. They are tiny little burrs that grow abundantly in the grass and blend right in. To get rid of them you need poison, or thick gloves and a lot of time down on your knees to dig them up. As I won’t do either, we have bindies everywhere and cannot go barefoot in the summer. Bummer. Oh well, Jacinta quite enjoys the sloshing of water in her boots. Every few minutes we tip them out and water the plants.

Speaking of the garden, it has been a lucky harvest week. We had no rain, only a few teaser wind storms so water was an issue. With a sporadic, overgrown garden full of vines obscuring other plants, and limited energy to daily watch each inch grow, there tend to be a lot of surprises. If this dry spell keeps up, the surprises may not always be so lovely, but for now, they are. We found our first cucumber this week and didn’t even know the vines were cucumber plants! We grew lemon cucumbers, little round yellow ones and Jess and I each ate one in the garden to celebrate. A few days later we noticed that our bean vines on the teepee were dripping with six inch long beans, yellow, purple and green. How did I miss them when they were small? Hmmm… That same day we picked a few corn cobs that showed signs of maturity, but they were not. It was a beautiful surprise harvest that day, cucumbers, beans, corn, squash, carrots, zucchini, spinach, lettuce, parsley and a few cherry tomatoes. That evening Jess, Matt and I celebrated with our first all garden salad.

This week’s construction is also a cause for celebration. We had to take a break from floor puttying for lack of putty and moved on to more exciting tasks. I found a few screens that fit out in the “pile” and made the rest, so now we are screened in. Matt refurbished the old church doors and turned them into our front door, put on a door knob and made a screen door. Our only problem is now that we have locked out the bugs, we have also locked quite a few of them in! Matt ordered all of the dry wall we need and worked with Keith and Michelle to put up some of the ceiling in the kitchen/living room. It is a cathedral ceiling and is quite high, so this is no easy task. Other than that, he did quite a few “fiddly” tasks and worked at the bank two days. We are getting closer each week, we are even discussing colors to paint the bedrooms.

Matt, in addition to building us a house, is, as usual getting some good quality time with little Jacinta. She may disagree with the “little” part of that, “I’m a big girl!” We are trying to explain to her that she may be a big girl in some ways but most of the time she is a little girl. Even though he stays up strangely late at night, Matt will wake up with Jacinta on mornings when she gets up too early for my pregnant self to rise. They have breakfast together and then come and wake me. In the evenings he sometimes takes her out to the shop to buy milk and his daily chocolate fix. They attached the baby seat to his bike and went out for their first ride since I have stopped riding my bike. Boohoo, I do miss riding. They go to swimming lessons and the hardware store together too. Sometimes Jess cries if she can’t go to town, it’s pretty funny. On choir night they once again went for a swim at the beach and got chips (french fries) as a treat. “Chips” are a funny thing here, you can buy them at any take out shop, and by the dollar. It’s not small, medium or large, you tell them how much you want to spend and they give you that amount of chips and it’s quite a few chips for the dollar. It’s a good system, but not for your health of course.

On health, we are all well, but had a few issues this week. Our poor little friend Rory was here on Tuesday and vomited quite a bit from something he ate the day before. Sweet Jess, obviously with more vomit tolerance than her pregnant mom, stayed with Rory and Michelle throughout, curious and trying to help, just about got hit with one episode. Two days later she came down with a fever and got through it in less than eight hours. It is strange to see your energetic toddler so disinterested in everything, so tired and helpless. Unable to sleep, she lay on her wooly on the kitchen floor and watched me cook for three hours. Rest, cherries, echinacea, vitamin C, bread, zinc, water, and peppermint, lemon balm, chamomile and licorice tea seemed to help her through the fever quickly. Matt’s elbow is still giving him troubles, but rubbing it with cream helps somewhat. Speaking of Matt, he just made it home safely from dinner on his bike and luckily, the moon was bright enough to light his path. My heel has almost completely healed from the screen door incident, and I can almost wear normal shoes again. My belly, naturally, is bigger and full of life. Sleep is hot and uncomfortable, but the baby moves around quite a bit now. We only have about three months left!

Last Sunday a midwife from the birthing center came over to begin teaching Matt and I “Calm Birthing” classes. Mary and Keith took Jess out for a beach and lunch outing and left us to our business. We spent three hours just chatting about our past birth experience, the facts about what goes on in the body, and what we can do to relax and let the body do what it knows best. We did some meditation exercises and conscious breathing and it was lovely. Spending three hours in our own home with an awesome, humble, experienced midwife on the back veranda with the birds singing and the wind blowing was calming in itself. We talked about the history of birth in different cultures and how fear plays a major role in increasing real pain, not just perceived pain in birthing women in Western cultures. It was a great way to start the week for us by consciously relaxing. It paved the way for a calm week for me. On choir night I went to the river an hour early and sat on a rock knitting, breathing, and watching the storm roll in. In that peace, I happened to finish knitting a pair of socks that I had been knitting for Jacinta for over six months. It’s amazing what you can do and feel given such amazing peace.

So, as usual, we’re all well and content. We think of you often and miss many things about life in the US, but know we’ll get back to visit soon. Wishing you all peace in a season that should be full of peace, but sometimes gets too busy for peace.

Love,

Shana