NIce goats and nasty mosquitoes

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you’ve all had a lovely break from normal life this long weekend filled with great food and good company. I had some nice chats with my family over in the Midwest after they had feasted on the normal Thanksgiving fare. Of course I wished I was there but just hearing about it all, I felt somehow included. Aussies don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but Jacinta and I made a pumpkin pie, and some pumpkin stew on Thursday afternoon. Matt, Jess, Keith and I sat down for dinner in the heat out on the veranda and just said “Happy Thanksgiving!” No lead up, no big family gathering, no question of whether there would be snow, no prayer of Thanksgiving, but I said one inside. I have so much to give thanks for: family, baby on the way, friends, food, health, shelter, even the U.S. political scene is looking better since the elections. We’ll be able to establish some more family traditions once we are in our own little house, but for now, pumpkin was enough. I contemplated killing a bush turkey, but Matt said he wouldn’t eat it anyway. Keith was offended by the thought of hurting any of his wild animals, and I was more interested in reducing the mess they make of my garden, and mostly kidding. After all, the men just ate sausages for meat, their favorite food and Jess and I stayed vegetarian :)

Speaking of vegetables, the garden is withstanding the heat and has provided us with our first zucchinis, lettuce and button squash. We are now using our own garlic too, this is more gratifying than anything. The slugs keep stealing the strawberries, and make a small dent into all of the greens. I had some help in the garden this week, which is currently the only way anything major can be done. Keith helped me stake a few leaning fruit trees one day. Matt helped me water a few times and Jess helped to plant carrots and corn. Michelle came for a few hours of hard labor pushing wheelbarrows of mulch and compost up and down the hill to various gardens while I did the easy tasks. We transplanted a box of cantaloupe plants in two different gardens which will hopefully survive the stifling heat. Ideally transplanting should take place in wet weather, but it doesn’t seem to be coming any time soon.

Watching the garden change from week to week is great fun, although most of the time I have spent down there has been in the dark, watering. Most of the corn plants have pink tassels on them and some are almost taller than me. They are strangely short corn plants though, nothing like those you see in the beautiful expansive corn fields on the U.S. Mine have cucumber plants climbing all around the base of them. Jess and I spotted the first cucumber baby this morning, though it could be a melon. I can never remember what exactly I planted in each spot. Beans are climbing the teepee and an apple tree and are in flower, which means beans are coming soon. Of course I wish I had more energy to garden, but mostly I am thankful for the few times I can get up and down the hill for a little work, for the friends and family who help me, and the good earth who does most of the work without any assistance.

Now if the earth would somehow figure out how to build our house for us, that would be even more amazing! Spreading wood putty on the floor has been the task of the week. Each nail hole and crack between the floor boards (about every 3 inches) must be filled in. First we must scrape out the built up dirt from the cracks, vacuum the cracks, and then pull out any staples left over from the last use of the wood. Other than the vacuuming, this is a quiet job and can be done day and night and must be accompanied by good music. I was so excited to join in on this job, because it is something I can do, and thought it would be quick. I was wrong, and it will go on for a while longer. Matt was actually thrilled to go work at the bank on Friday, to break the monotony. He came home with his head spray-painted blue, it was apparently some sort of dress up like a clown day that he didn’t know about beforehand. I guess we all have to break the monotony in our own way! Right now Matt’s multi-tasking: watching cricket for a while, then going out in the heat and working on our front door, cricket for a while, then working on screens. Screens are my new job, while we await more putty from the local hardware store. I’m making screens for our windows, I feel very important. This is a good job for a slightly whiny woman who has just hit the third trimester, there is no hurry and it can be done standing up. As we approach some form of livability in our new house, we realize how many little things need to be done all at once. Matt does the realizing, wears it all, and sometimes needs to just stop for a while and make priority lists. I help when I can, Keith helps when he is called, and Michelle comes once a week to help build also, every little bit helps.

Jacinta has been very helpful on the “building site,” (she’ll correct you if you call it anything else), in that her imagination keeps her busy for long periods if she has been well fed. Otherwise she’ll just whine like she does in the garden because it is too hot, “I need to eat somethin...Mommy….I need to eat somethin,” over and over. Although she did get to putty one day with Matt, mostly her help was needed elsewhere, sweeping, vacuuming, and playing in a different spot. She rolls balls, marbles, and trucks down wooden ramps and cardboard tubes. She feeds farm animals foam, makes cakes and cookies, and rows “boats” around. Sometimes she even cooks on the boats, while covering up her babies from the cold sea air. She loves to blow bubbles too. Who doesn’t? My mom and George gave her a “Sewing kit” last Easter with plastic ducks, cats and bears full of big holes in which you weave shoelaces in and out. She loves doing this in her free time also, but will again, correct you if you happen to pull the string through with your fingers, “You use your teeth!” She finds interesting ways to do difficult tasks, it’s her correcting of adult behavior that will have to stop soon. Her newest phrase, said very seriously, is “That’s a problem,” and yes dear, it is.

As all children do, she composes new phrases given her little vocabulary and shocks us. A few days ago as we were preparing to go outside and spreading on some bug oil, she saw a mosquito. I smashed him and called him a “naughty mosquito.” She then replied loudly and viciously, “I’ll kill them all!” Matt heard it from two rooms away, and we both just stood there shocked by the words. There are some things that we just kill here: mice, flies and mosquitoes, because they make life inside our dwelling miserable. I used to be so peaceful that I honestly would not kill a fly and never a mouse, but mosquitoes, yes. Oh well, times have changed. We hope not to hear those words all together too often, but I guess we do kill mosquitoes here.

Jess had a few firsts this week. Matt took her to her first swimming lesson at the Macksville public pool. She has private lessons with a nice woman. Although she’ll tell you, “I put my eyes under water and it was scary,” she seems to like the idea of learning to swim. Matt said she whimpered and whined for about half of the fifteen minute lesson, but smiled the rest of it. The most exciting part of the excursion was buying her first pair of goggles. Another less exciting first was a belly ache, poor baby, she had the runs. It was quite impressive how long she could hold it having just been potty trained. I finally figured out just how close to the toilet we needed to cling. It may have been the introduction of goat’s milk to her diet, but she’s over it and is happy again. She still asks for a cup of milk in the morning, “half goat’s milk and half cow’s milk, we can mix it.”

On the subject of goats, I’ll close with a story about our visit to the mohair goat farm. After buying wool from a kind woman at the markets so many times, I decided to go out with my knitting group and visit her farm. It was over an hour north, but well worth the trip. She has 65 small gentle fuzzy white goats from which she gets some of the wool she shears, cleans, spins, dyes and sells. A baby goat was born 7 days before our visit, so this was the highlight of Jacinta’s trip. She was given the job of naming the baby. What an honor! The baby goat was so tiny that Jess could pick her up, “Kiddy.” She caught her a few times and then followed her in hot pursuit for the remainder of our stay. She was nothing like our obnoxious goat. We stayed a few hours, had tea and cake, learned a bit about wool felting, and agonized over what to buy given so much choice and beautiful wool. Perhaps the highlight of my trip was watching Kerry dye the wool I chose for the new baby’s blanket. Matt later helped me roll it into a ball and it is quite a sight, almost as big as a soccer ball, but much prettier!

So I have a long hot summer to finish the blanket, and also try and finish Jess’s socks and sweater for next winter before the baby comes. I assume I won’t be knitting much after the birth. We also have this summer to try and finish the house before baby comes. So I best close before the mosquitoes eat me alive, I’m off to make some more screens. The one negative about my lovely smelling homemade bug oil is that it only lasts about 90 minutes, I must reapply!

Missing you all and hoping we can sit down and feast with you some day soon.

Peace,

Shana

…some new pictures & movie @ www.paintedguitar.com

It's not real, it's plastic

Hello there! It’s almost Thanksgiving in the US, and here, it is “almost” Christmas, strange. I’ve just smashed four mosquitoes in the last 5 minutes, ooh, five, and am feeling vulnerable without bug spray. It has been a very long, lovely, busy day and I am thrilled to be sitting here in silence writing to you all, so I shalln’t get up and look for some, I’ll just keep on smashing.

Jacinta and I went to another birthday party this morning for a five year old boy in playgroup. It was a pirate party and she went as a pirate princess. Did she know what a pirate was? Of course not! But she does now, as she left wearing a patch, one big fake gold hoop ear ring, a sword, a hat and has been talking about treasure (pronounced “treasa”) ever since. Just before bed she picked up a broken off sunglass ear piece and said secretively, “this is a treasure!” The children ran to and fro playing games like pin the patch on the pirate, decorate your own telescope, find the treasure map, throw the cannonball into the ship, and drinking games (just kidding). She’s come home saying “Ahoy!” Oh my.

We drove out to the Bellingen markets after the party. This sounds easy, but if you’re a city girl used to flat lands and grid-like roads, driving from one hilly town to another hilly town without good directions or logic, it is challenging. Most of the roads are unnamed. You’ll see signs pointing in one direction saying which town the road leads to, but if the town you want isn’t one of the choices, then you’re left to guess. So after wasting twenty minutes driving around thinking I was heading in the right direction and Jess losing a balloon out the window and wailing for a while, I ended up back in Macksville, my home town. Forty-five minutes later we arrive at the markets and race around Christmas, toiletry and fruit shopping trying to make our purchases as the stall holders are packing up for the day. The market happens once a month, so this was the big Christmas gift buying market and all the sellers were out, perhaps over 150 stalls. It was a big market, a big day, and meant tired feet for a pregnant mama pushing a “pram, but amazingly enough, Jacinta stayed happy the whole time. Perhaps she was delirious, for in the last few shops we visited she tried blowing her party horn (you know, those cardboard tubes you blow on and the tube of paper unrolls and extends with each breath?) at each item in the shop. These no nap days mean early bed time, but she gets so loopy by the end that she is a totally different little girl.

Friday was another no nap day as it was our big family day out to Kempsey to tour the hospital where we will welcome our new baby in a few months. We also had our first appointment with the obstetrician. We found him to be very kind and not at all hurried. It was strange though because I almost fainted in his office just sitting down answering the same old questions I have been asked by the other doctor, the naturopath, and the hospital. Great first impression, “Yes, I’m very healthy doctor and will be in good shape for a natural birth but…..hang on, I need to lie down…right now.” Matt admitted later that he too felt faint in his office, I wonder what it was. The doctor was such a cool guy though, it didn’t freak him out. He just laughed and said it was probably the medicalization of the whole thing and that he’d try my blood pressure again in a few minutes. We found a huge park with a gorgeous river close by that we’d be able to pass some time at in the early stages of labor. Jess had been looking forward to “going to Kempsey” for a few days and was very patient in all of these visits and some shopping. After a few stops she needed to pee and so we visited the park and its restroom. She was very sad after she came out, having peed on the big potty. “I wanted to wee in Kemspey,” she cried. We don’t know what she thought “Kempsey” was, but we told her that this was Kempsey and eventually she believed us. At the hospital we met a really cool midwife who will start teaching us “Calm Birthing” classes soon, in our own home. We’re really excited for this opportunity to focus on the new baby.

Jess is still preparing in her own way for the arrival of her new brother or sister. She practices burping her babies, feeding them carrots and changing their nappies. Anytime she sees an extra chair at a table she asks, “Who is that chair for?” We usually reply, “It’s just extra, just in case someone else wants to sit down.” She then informs us that it is the chair for the new baby. This week I made up my own “belly balm,” and now Jess enjoys smearing it all over my huge belly. Matt has been explaining and showing her pictures from her birth so she understands how it happens. She will be present at this birth as much as she wants (with a friend of ours) and so we are trying to prepare her for the normality of what she will see and hear. In the past she thought the baby would come straight out of my belly but now she bluntly states where the baby will come out. She sees me growing bigger and bigger and sometimes decides that it is time for the baby to come. “Mommy, can you push the baby out now?” I would if I could!

But I can’t! The house is not yet finished and we want to christen it with this new baby. Although, it is getting closer and closer, so close that Matt called the electrician to come! All within two days, he visited and gave us a quote, came out the next day with his son and installed all of the wiring we need. Now we “just” have to put up all of the insulation and interior walls and finish the floors. Then Matt has to build most of the furniture, which he is truly excited about. Besides his heavy theological reading, he reads “Cabinetry” and “Woodworking.” I finished my nail punching and completed the bedrooms and hallway, and now Matt is working on the kitchen/living room. He is also installing interior rafters from which he will hang the ceiling. No major injuries for Matt this week, it was me this time and not building, just walking. About a year ago Matt ripped open his heel on the screen door. Well, I did the same exact thing, but luckily it did not go as deep as Matt’s incision. It is disgusting, and hurt almost as much as breaking a bone. It happened a few days ago and is healing, but still throbs from time to time. I can not wear real shoes and am having to break in flip-flops which hurt the front of my foot. Bandages, stinging disinfectant, and cream, it’s just another discomfort and keeps me from doing much in the garden. Complain, complain, poor me.

One great start to the week was hanging the garlic. What a pleasure to divvy up the garlic between Michelle and I and hang it in beautiful bunches down in the shed. Jess made soup out of the garlic “babies” and dirt, of course. We also cleaned up the chamomile patch and hung a bit to dry for tea. The turkeys are still making a mess of the teepee garden, but there’s not much I can do. Matt, Jess and I did spend one evening hanging out in the shed and that deterred them from coming in the garden. Jess played in the dirt and in the hammock while Matt and I looked at kitchen and bathroom magazines for ideas and watched the sun set. It was a great way to spend an evening, we’ll have to do it more often. The winds came though, it got very cold all of the sudden and there was actually snow in towns only a few hours away. After I mentioned the progress of my corn to you last week, well, this week, half of it blew down in the heavy wind. Maybe it will come back, or so I can naively hope. We harvested a few button squash, and the lettuce is finally big enough to eat. We’re still harvesting carrots, which is particularly good because Jess will not eat carrots in the house, raw or cooked, only in the garden. The vines are vigorously climbing and crawling, and love this great combination of rain one day and very hot sun the next.

I suppose this weather makes me happy also. The cold and wet sometimes make me stay inside and rest and give thanks for the rain. The hot days make me active in the morning before the heat is too strong and then stop me in the afternoons and force me to rest. One afternoon this week Jacinta and I made tortillas. I fed her well before we began so she would not eat all of the dough. There are certain tasks in the kitchen which she would rather watch me than join in, like cracking eggs. It’s as if she knows the difficulty of the task and wants to watch just a few more times. Rolling dough is often tough, but this day she decided that she was ready. Her arm muscles weren’t strong enough to make a nice thin tortilla so as I looked away for one second, she got on top of the rolling pin and tried rolling with her belly. It was at this point that I decided to find a small wooden rolling pin for Christmas.

Matt will probably look for a nice little tool set for her. How funny that we fit so well into the gender roles that we sometimes deny. At least our daughter can be both a cook and a builder. Today she said that she was going to come home and help daddy build with both her sword and her party horn, her new tools. As usual, Matt worked at the bank and at Macnuts, worked on the house, and had a few nights with Jacinta. One night I sat on the couch with my injured heel and the other was my choir night. Matt often takes Jacinta out when they have time together, maybe to the beach, the river, or the supermarket. Since our supermarket is part of the town co-op, we are shareholders with share numbers. Each time the cashier rings you up they ask you your number. Matt says that recently when he is asked for his number Jess will spit out a random chain of numbers, just to be helpful.

So the title, where’s the explanation? Well, this can just be an example of all of the funny things that happen throughout the week that Matt or I will say, “We need to remember that for the journal.” All we can remember is that we were all out on the veranda and that in response to some forgotten question about some forgotten object, Jess replied in her “how could you ask such a dumb question” voice, “It’s not real, it’s plastic!” Children are perceptive and pick up on our judgments, whether we want them to or not. She has picked up on my disdain for plastic toys, furniture and utensils and is now mimicking it. I fear the day she walks into pre-school and thinks that nothing in the room is real because it is all made of plastic. Perhaps by then I can teach her that I prefer natural materials such as wood, glass, cotton, wool and metal because they are not as difficult for the earth to process while they are being made and once they go to the dump. I’ll have to teach her that plastic is real, but just made from petroleum, a product that will soon be extinct. She will be about four years old, hmmmm….maybe I’ll just tell her that I think natural materials are prettier and that I like how they feel.

Well, it has been another eventful, humorous and productive week. We are another week closer to the birth, and another week further on the house. We’ve missed you for yet another week and are inevitably one week closer to a visit to the States. Yet, we’ve spent another week learning to love our new home. Here’s wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving next week, and wishing we could have a feast with you too!

Peace,

Shana

Dripping sweat

Good day everyone (: November is truly here and although I thought spring would last longer, it is gone and summer has arrived. It did rain for a few days and gave the garden a lovely boost, but now it is scorching hot, the kind of hot that makes you relax, and have a lazy Sunday. But alas, it is Sunday, and this morning no one was resting. Matt hammered in weatherboards, Jess and I punched nails, Mary did laundry, and Keith packed up a whole bunch of rubbish and drove it to the dump. When Keith returned, we all sat down and had a drink. Jess commented, “You’re dripping Pop, wipe it off with this rag.” To ease the heat, Jess and Keith just cleaned out the spa and it is now filled! We use this as our swimming pool and it is well-loved. Tiny lizards sneaking into the house are finally taking the place of the mice, but not entirely. Flies and mosquitoes have come back to celebrate the season, which forces us to take notice of all of the holes in the screens and windows. The flowers on the trees have grown into big luscious leaves, and those that flower all summer long are coming into flower, like the frangipani tree. A new lot of birds have come to forage through the trees so there are new songs to hear and old songs to be missed.

Having been here as a family for over a year now, events are starting to become commonplace. The Melbourne Cup, a big horse race that most people actually care about and bet on, took place this past week. At Mary’s Aged Care Center they all dress up in extravagant hats and have sweets to celebrate the race. There are “sweeps” that everyone puts a few dollars in on a horse they think may win, and the winners win a bit of money. Mary entered Matt, Keith and I in hers and lo and behold, Matt won $12! Matt’s bank had “sweeps,” also, having entered himself, Jess and I, won $4 in my name. Perhaps this is the excitement of the Melbourne Cup, winning more than you spent to enter the sweep. The “Macksville Gift,” a running race for humans happened this weekend. Matt and I, having stopped in last year, laughed hearing that it was going on, and remembered how new everything was last year at this time and how little we had to do then.

This week was pretty standard, Matt worked at the bank and Macnuts, worked on our own website and a website for Creation Spirituality and worked on the house. Jess and I went to town for playgroup, choir and to run errands, gardened, cooked, napped, and visited with friends. In town we usually try and park by the river so Jess can chase seagulls and look for pelicans, and so I can gaze at the water. This week she discovered the dock, and that you can see fish under the water if you look really hard. Jess had her first little play date without me at the neighbor’s house playing with a five year old girl from playgroup. We had knitting down in the garden shed, but after over an hour of sitting on a slope knitting, eating and playing with three children, my pregnant friend and I gave up on that idea and came up to the house. Jess always has a blast playing with Lily and Aidan, but especially eating the treats that come with “knitting” each week. I am working on my first “nesting” project, turning one of Jacinta’s baby quilts into a blanket for a big girl bed, so she too has started “sewing.” She plays with spools of thread, builds towers, and wraps the leftover cloth around her baby dolls.

In the evenings, Matt usually takes Jess on walks to visit the cows, but one evening this week she convinced me to take her after dinner. It had been a rainy day, so she hadn’t been out much. I said, “only a short walk,” but watching her run from puddle to puddle softened me up and made me go on, even after a long day. Matt and I marveled at the change in these trips since last year when she used to ride in the wagon and whine to be carried. Instead of lingering in each puddle, she now runs straight through to get the next puddle even faster. She’s such a “big girl” that she’s about to start swimming lessons. Matt will take her on Wednesday mornings before he digs into house building for the day. What will I do all alone???

It is not such a rare thing that I have time to myself, I am extremely lucky to have Matt and Keith around on most days, and Mary on the weekends. Jacinta knows what each of us do for “entertainment” and she has come to know which of these activities she enjoys. She cooks, gardens, uses the toilet, sews, dances, sings and plays in the bedroom and on the “building site” with me. She goes on walks, gets carried and tickled, jumps on the bed, looks at pictures, goes to town, and reads with Matt. She feeds the animals, goes on rides in the truck, draws, romps around and goes on shoulder rides with Keith. She watches computer movies of cats, makes cakes, and goes to morning tea with Mary. Jacinta has a rough life, yes. We run into difficulties when she thinks she can always participate in her activity of choice, but otherwise it is splendid. She learns what we all have to offer and does not know the meaning of “bored.” We all have our own level of freedom, with the added bonus of sharing time with our bright little light of a girl.

Wednesday Matt took Jess on a car trip to pick up some items from the Tender Center, the silent auction warehouse, and to the big hardware store, of course. I spent my free time in the garden, doing all of the things that needed doing. It was overcast, cool and lovely. I staked tomatoes, planted corn where carrots had been harvested, I pulled out old broccoli plants and planted beets in their place, thinned lettuces, and filled the house garden with seeds. In the garden requiring the shortest walk from the house, I now have new lettuce seeds, beets, beans, carrots, corn, and spinach to add to the peppers, tomatoes, basil, coriander, borage and passionfruit vine. Keith helped me mulch a few fruit trees which I have been meaning to do for months. By the time I finish them all, the earlier trees will have eaten up all of the mulch I just gave them.

It looks like the first new season crop we’ll be eating is lettuce. Next will be the little patty pan squash, and then perhaps a few tomatoes. Everything is zooming along after all that rain and sun, especially the climbers like cucumbers, zucchini, melons, and squash. My successive corn planting is working out in that I have corn plants of all different sizes in different parts of the garden. Michelle and I have done well in that area with our carrots. By the time we finish eating one patch of carrots, the next terrace seems to be ready to eat. We could easily eat twice as many carrots though. Today Jess and I harvested garlic which was planted last autumn while we were in the U.S. It was almost time anyway, but there has been too much rain which made the plants weak and then aphid infested. Luckily the roots were unaffected, so we harvested almost a bushel of garlic. It must now be hung and dried. I am thrilled to be producing our own garlic! Being a new gardener in a place like this is very exciting.

Another exciting part of life is the progress we are making on the house. Just today Matt finished cutting and nailing on all of the weatherboards, the house is now roofed and sided. With my trusty two year old partner, I have nearly finished punching all of the nails in the bedrooms and hallway. Jacinta even tried nail punching herself! She swung the hammer with two hands and hit the nail punch while I stabilized the punch on top of the nail and winced at the stupidity of the endeavor. Luckily she grew tired of it after thirty seconds. Mostly though, she entertained herself building a “farmyard” out of foot-long off-cuts from the hardwood rafters and playing with her train. Today we brought out her wooden barn with even more animals and made the farm even better. Back to the house, the next step will be finishing the floor and sanding it, then hiring an electrician to wire us up. We are getting closer!

As time rolls on, we are knitting ourselves into this place. Although Matt’s job at the bank is boring, he now knows a lot of people in town and says hello to them as they pass by. He actually knows their names. This always shocks me. As we drove by an older woman walking on the road the other day, Jess asked, “Who’s that?” Matt promptly answered, “Betty ……” I thought he was joking, but it was really someone he knew. He has learned all of the streets and corners of Macksville from his census job. Matt knows the baker, the newsagent and the hardware store workers quite well, whereas I know the natural food shop owner, the Medicare workers and the fabric shop ladies. This week I took on an “official role” at playgroup, yes, you may snicker. I am the treasurer. I have to collect $2 from each mom every week, make deposits and write checks. It’s a very serious job, hee hee.

Jess is making friends though playgroup and in the neighborhood. She is pretty good at sharing for being at home and an only child for so long. She is learning how brothers and sisters act together by watching her friends Lily and Aidan. Her friends are also learning that she will eat most things and how they can make her happy. Although Jess turns her nose up at zucchini and broccoli, she will eat apple peels and bread crusts. She will sometimes finish up her friends’ plates when they leave anything good. On Saturday night, Matt and I took Jess to her little friends’ parents’ house for dinner and had an awesome meal. To finish it all off, they had made ice cream and I had made carrot cake. So the children sat down at their little table and indulged while we chatted. Jess gobbled up her ice cream and began eating her cake. Aidan had finished his cake by this point and asked for more. I told him he had to finish his ice cream first. So he began feeding Jacinta his ice-cream spoon by spoon. Little Lily who doesn’t care to eat much at all joined in the fun of feeding Jacinta. I pretended not to notice, but just sat back and smiled at their fun and creative ways of getting what they want. Jess had the biggest smile of all on her face, yum…ice cream.

The sounds of the night are lively this evening and most certainly bring a smile to my face. Even through the hum of the fan, the frogs and the crickets are making themselves heard. There are no hammers banging, no drills or saws screaming and no one talking. Sweet Jess has gone to sleep, after requesting numerous songs from her crib and repeatedly asking, “Daddy, what are you doing?” “Mommy, who are you writing to?” It is peaceful. The baby is gently kicking me, reminding me that although it may be quiet, I am not alone. We surely are not alone, this I know.

Thank you all for being with us from so far away. If you have time, check out our website www.paintedguitar.com and click on the “pictures” link. Matt updated the site and it looks pretty good! Rather than pasting photos on these letters, Matt is putting little photo albums on the website. There are also a few movies, and a few more songs to hear. He is quite proud of the little ipod connected on a of few of his songs pages…

Take care,

Shana

Goat, free to a good home

Good evening y’all. Happy belated Halloween! I didn’t realize it was Halloween until the afternoon of October 31. This is a holiday that I never realized I loved until now, being in a country that doesn’t really celebrate it. Perhaps I appreciate the season and the smells of October 31 in the Midwest more than pillow cases full of junk food and shaving cream on your front lawn. I love picking a pumpkin, carving it and especially looking at a jack-o-lantern lit up by candlelight. I love having a reason to dress up or run through a corn maze. I used to love passing out strange non-edible Halloween gifts like hemp necklaces or baking clay to the neighbors. I hope you all either enjoyed seeing trick-or-treaters at your front door and/or just made it through with no vandalism done to your house.

We just happened to have a few pumpkins from last year’s garden sitting around since I don’t really like eating them as much as they like growing here. So Jess directed while I carved a face into a thick green pumpkin. She pulled out the “gook,” and for some reason decided to eat raw pumpkin as if it were watermelon. She doesn’t like cooked pumpkin, but got a kick out of chomping on the hard stuff. We then made pumpkin raisin oatmeal cookies to take to choir and she got dressed up like a fairy, again. She charmed the choir with her sweet costume and handed out cookies to everyone, it was a multi-cultural experience for them. As most of the world knows more about America than any other country, they all knew what Halloween was but dreaded its importation to Australia. They say it is slowly coming, but don’t think it’s pertinent to Australia and that it will mean they have to buy more junk. Some of my European friends have described the same situation in their countries. In any case, my kind friend Trish brought Jess a treat and a shell necklace. When we returned home, Matt had lit the jack-o-lantern and Jess trick or treated on our door. She scored a tiny piece of chocolate and finished off the night with a big smile. She looks forward to doing the same thing again next year for Halloween. Sadly, I’ve had to explain to her that Halloween won’t often happen on a choir night. One neat thing about Halloween in the US is the chance to visit all of your neighbors, especially those that don’t come out of the house very often. For all I complained about our rowdy neighbors in Ferndale, Michigan, I loved watching the adults gather at one house in the front yard, albeit for drinking beer, while they took turns walking the kids around for trick-or-treating.

Speaking of beer, Matt brewed a good batch of ginger beer, non-alcoholic. His first beer attempt failed, but this one worked out. He enjoys drinking something he made, plus, it’s cheaper than buying bottles. He will soon try another batch of plain old beer. It seems to be a fun hobby, with a potential for good drinks. I wouldn’t want you thinking that Matt just works all the time and has no time for play. He does typically work three days a week at the bank now, which gives his joints a rest from building. We enjoyed having our evenings to ourselves these past few weeks and spent some time painting together. Matt found a Matisse painting called Vegetables that we liked. We painted it onto a huge pane of glass which will serve as part of a wall in our new kitchen while listening to Pat Donahue play guitar and sing the blues. We miss listening to Prairie Home Companion on the radio, and haven’t yet found a way to hear it across the ocean. Any ideas???

Matt finally bought a router table this week. He usually agonizes over large purchases for months and then finally takes the plunge, and this week was the plunge. He now has a great work table with a built in circular saw which will help him build nice furniture. We’re not ready to build furniture yet, we still need interior walls and some more siding on the outside, but Matt hurt his wrist/forearm. What better reason to go shopping? In fact, it has been raining for a few days so we went shopping again today, Saturday. We didn’t buy much, but we bid on a few items at the silent auction warehouse and I bought a maternity bathing suit. I must complain a bit though, about how difficult this was! Other than the fact that I’m losing my tolerance for busy places like malls, the choice was dismal. It’s not that I think I should look good in a bathing suit at this point in the pregnancy. It’s that I am so out of touch with fashion that I am shocked at how hideous bathing suits are right now. Huge flowers or paisley, all in pale blue, brown or orange, adorned with square or circular metal buckles on the straps, but nothing plain! Nothing made for boring, simple me. Finally today, after three days, I found a plain black swimming suit, (there are no maternity suits around), so it’s just a few sizes bigger than my normal size.

While shopping we also looked at refrigerators once again, perhaps for the fifth time. I only mention this because Jacinta LOVES looking at them. As we entered our last big store today, she asked, “What’s this shop for?” I told her that it had refrigerators and she lit up. “Fridges? Oooh, let’s open them all up.” It is always a challenge keeping her calm in stores like this, she heads straight for the fridges and starts opening and closing the doors, and then the drawers within them. Last time Matt took her alone, he said she got busted by a shopkeeper who kindly told her to “please be gentle.” Matt, embarrassed, promptly swept her up and moved on to another section. Today after being corrected by both Matt and I, she moved on to the dryer section and regretfully explained to me that, “I was naughty.” She is amazing though, she lasted quite a while shopping. By the end we all needed a nap.

Progress on the house this week was not as massive as last week, but Matt has started building storage into the new section. Keith and Mary came back from a three week vacation and were shocked at how much had been done since they left. Matt moved his tools out of the bedroom so we can now try and finish up the floors and build the closets. He installed a sky light in the bathroom and a few whirly birds for ventilation since it will have no windows. He also finished the bathroom wall with wood paneling and it looks gorgeous. I can now picture what it will be like to sit in our living room and see where the piano will sit. We are getting ready to move the piano into its new home so I cleared off the garbage bags and all the accumulated junk piled on top of it on the veranda. This inspired me to actually start playing again, Jess enjoys this activity too. It’s easier on my back than walking up and down the hill, but unfortunately does not help the state of the garden.

Garden life this week was again mostly left up to the sun and the rain to do all of the work. Jess and I did a little bit of weeding and made some slug and caterpillar soup, spiced with thyme and comfrey flowers. We harvested the dried rocket seeds after they had hung for a month in the shed, and threw a few in the garden while we were at it. We planted a few rows of lettuce in the teepee, and another small patch of corn. I harvested a good bunch of carrots, celery and spinach, our first white carrot! It was actually good. One evening in the dark, I transplanted some peppers, tomatoes, coriander and basil into the house garden and planted a few more rows of lettuce. It seems silly to work in the dark, but it was raining and I really like planting in the rain.

It rained so much this week that we may be able to fill up the spa now. This will be lovely for everyone, but especially for me and my heavy belly and Jacinta who has been waiting to swim again since last winter. Whenever we passed the river this winter she commented that, “I swim in the water when it gets warmer. Only fishies swim now.” Perhaps we can blame the rain for the reason we STILL have mice in the spring. It has gotten so bad that we have finally resorted to poison because they outsmart the traps. They do such strange things, though. Yesterday we found a stash of dog food that they had stolen and hidden in a cupboard. They have become so bold that they’ll come out midday and run across the cupboards in search of scraps. They make me so angry because I hate cleaning and now I have to do dishes instantly, and constantly sterilize the cupboards. But my, they are still cute to look at, but we can not peacefully coexist. They have the outdoors, and we have this house. I don’t mind seeing them run back and forth in the chicken pen!

Daisy the goat was a constant drama queen all week. We tried letting her free range one day but she went crazy and didn’t know what to do with herself. She ran up and down trying to be near us, coming onto the veranda and being chased away with a broom. At one point she ran into the new house and upon entry peed on the floor. I was irate and yelled out to Matt that “Daisy pissed on the floor!” since he was on the roof and missed it. Jess now uses this word and says that she has “pissed on the potty.” We keep telling her that it’s not really a word and that I made a mistake but she really likes the sound of it. The Daisy drama came to a climax when we tethered her to a small trailer which she then climbed upon and cut her hoof. We cleaned her up and babied her for a few days. Keith and Mary are now home so Keith has taken over the babying. She escapes from her pen now though, and as she likes us so much, does not search for food, but for love. Matt heard her early this evening whining outside, the goat having escaped was stuck in the rain, so he ran to help her. Thanks to all the rain, he slipped on the steps and whacked his head and strained his shoulder on the way down. We just love this “pet goat for Jacinta.”

I shalln’t close on that sarcastic note, instead I’ll share a joyous piece of information. I can say now, with no hesitation that Jacinta is potty trained. She hasn’t worn a nappy at night now for a week, nor during the day for weeks. Yippeee! We get a four month break from diaper care. I can honestly say though that cloth diapers are not that painful, and that I can’t wait to get out those cute little newborn soft diapers that Jacinta wore and wrap our new little baby’s bum in them.

Have a lovely week :) We miss you all and wish you warmth in your cold November.

Love,

Shana