Moved

I've moved - to Country Victoria. I hadn't seen the house until I arrived with all my boxes but it's everything it possibly could be. A mud-brick home on a couple of acres of land with a dam, it's absolutely beautiful. A shingle hanging from the front of the house carries the name Faraway.

People ask me "How did the move go?" and all I can say is "Smoothly." Quite incredible really. Willo and I spent about 48 hours over 4 days packing with the day before the most concerted, prolonged effort. We'd hired Mini Movers and they were fantastic - like moving machines! our apartment was on the second floor and was two storied with no lift. The movers didn't complain with all those stairs, and they hardly stopped but at one point when I suggested it was okay to do so they said "This is tough, even for us."

After packing up all the gear - we were suprised at how much stuff we had, but then isn't everyone when they move? We are great accumulators. Mini Movers stacked everything so beautifully into their truck before driving the couple of hours out to Green Gully.

We came up in Willo's Ford and arrived before the movers. Willo had taken the scenic route for me through roads lined with Autumn trees and stopped at the district's best bakery for a pastie-stop before carrying on to the house. As we pulled off the main road it seemed to me as if we were driving into the bush. The road up to the house is less like something for vehicles and more what torrents of rainwater have carved out of the surrounding vegetation. Thank goodness he has a truck, a smaller car may have fallen into the deep grooves and tracks. His parents arrived not long after, complete with food and a six-seater table so we'd have somewhere to sit and eat. They also gifted Willo a chain saw which he loved to receive and his dad used to cut lots of wood for the open fire in the living room.

Unpacking continued until it was done - completely done. Bed made, books shelved, pictures hung. No living out of boxes, every day counts, don't you know! Over the last couple of weeks we've been settling in. Getting used to the oven, killing mice, getting a log fire put in where the open fire was.

It's been three weeks since we moved in and I figured out within the first few days this has been one of the best decisions I've made in a while. Not that I've been making bad decisions, I have a pretty fantastic life with great, close friends and a wonderful life in Melbourne. But right now I feel better than I have in a while. I think I might be happy - might be too early to tell but I feel good. I am sleeping well, reading lots, eating well, feeling energy, and meeting so many really lovely lovely people. Willo grew up here and has life long friends and school mates he's kept in touch with, and of course through Chopped which is held in Newstead (just up the road) and they're all like him - good peoples. From what I've seen too, they are just so happy he's moved close enough for them to see him more often.

We both miss Fox and Jet but they're coming up to visit us soon, and we're only a trainride to Melbourne and can always meet up for drinks or dinner etc. In fact both Willo and I stayed in the city last Friday night - I stayed at Mars and Chaz's house back in the old neighbourhood. Saturday was a gorgeous day in Melbourne. One of those bright, light, cold Winter days that really suits this city. I walked from Collingwood, through the parks and the city, to the train station to meet Willo and the 1:35pm train. He'd been shopping and I'd been meandering.

I was struck on my meanderings how much I thought Melbourne was a great place to visit. To visit. I love that city but our full-time together has passed, for the most part. I couldn't wait to get back home to the country and Faraway. To my own bed with windows full of views of trees and wattle, of gum leaves against bright blue skies. The little wrens that peck at my window in the morning snatching small insects and tapping me awake. To the quiet and the cosy that our home is becoming. I was sitting next to Willo on the train after he had stowed his new Scanpan in the overhead baggage rack. He plonked next to me and said he'd walked through the city and said how interesting it had been to see Melbourne "through a different lens." I told him my "to visit" revelation and we were both amazed at how we felt at all, let alone after such a short time.

Change: as good as a rest

I've been alive a while now, and during that time, I've moved house a few times too. Today I am packing in anticipation of making a move to my 21st residence. It won't be the last time I move - but it's a move, none-the-less.

In the years I've been alive, I've moved in all manner of ways. From highly-organised-strategically-planned-flawless-executed ways to the worst-nightmare-you'll-ever-experience-helping-me-move-don't-ever-ask-me-to-help-again kind of ways.

This move is somewhere in between.

I am a week from physically moving my stuff - and two weeks from actually moving in to the new place. Yes, Mr Mathematician - you are right - there is a gap of a week in there that I will need to cope with, but more about that in a future instalment.

So I have boxes, I have packing tape, I have butcher's paper (newsprint paper to the kiwis out there), I hear there is bubblewrap available to wrap my artwork in. I have laundry in the washing machine, a dog on my bed, two movers and a truck on order and things are looking a bit organised except for the part where I keep stopping to play on my computer. But hey, I'm a 4.5 days from moving so it's not like it's critical or anything. Yet.

I am moving from "the city" to "the country".

Complaints queue forms to the left

There are a growing number of people who are calling me crazy. Me? in the country? amoung the trees and the farmers? where the wild things are? Do you *know* about the drop bears, Michelle? Some have barked their incomprehension right to my face with considerable volume and some finger-jabbing. You're crazy! they say You're a city kid! they point out. Some are even saying it's going to be a terrible mistake for me and I'm going to hate it. HATE it. A team manager at work told me I was a topic at their meeting the other day, generally questioning my sanity and basic grip on reality. You, too, might think that I have flipped my lid, but me? I'm good thanks. I'm as sane as I've ever been and super excited about the move. I'm excited about what it means for me, my life style, and general (much discussed) sanity.

I'm excited about experiencing real Australian country life: the weather (super freezing cold in the Winter; ultra hot and combustible in the Summer); owning a car again; wildlife; trees; lack of convienience; country folk; farmers' markets; choral groups; vegetables; home brew; screen printing; yard work; chain sawing; dogs off their leads.

The whole super awesome choc 'nana that lving outside a city will bring will mean I'll have loads of stuff to share and show - stay tuned! More details to come :)

Red Rag

I was like a bullet out of a gun leaving work today. Keeping up maximum velocity until I hit Gertrude Street to slow to a slower stroll because I knew I was (literally) on the home stretch. Not unlike when I was a pre-teen and had very strong feelings against school - you know, before I got a handle on all that 'learning is awesome you can be a student foreve I'm never going to leave!' thing - and couldn't wait to get out of my daily institutional commitment every single day.

When I was a pre-teen I hated school. HATED primary school. I had more stomach aches than I had hot dinners (I was a pesky, picky child so I hardly ever ate my dinners hot) resorting one time to fake paralysis (due to fake polio) one day to avoid school. Hey, don't judge me, it worked and I got to stay home; one may say I was imaginative. Not that my mother believed me for a single minute, but she was so exasperated and late for work she just left me there 'paralysed' in my bed for the rest of the day.

My memory is poor but I suspect I was a melodramatic kid. My mother always says she wondered how come the teacher's report told of this quiet, well behaved little girl in class - delightful, one might suggest - while it was a raging, dramastic she-devil child who used to arrive home each day to fight with her brother and be a nightmare to feed and put to bed. Well she never said those words exactly but she sure did suggest I was no walk in the park at home.

I have no recollection of being anything but delightful

I can't remember the last time I lost my temper. I am not sure it has happened at all since I stopped being the mother of a teenage daughter. Not that I've stopped being a mother only that the daughter has stopped being a teenager and I have a bit more of a grip on how to behave in petrol station forecourts.

Recently, while seeing a councellor through work (for my perscribed "over sensitivity" to idiots) it was suggested that I have not got a better grip on my temper, but am in fact afraid to speak my mind because I believe that I will lose control and yell. This was based, I have been told, in my past and the experience of only being heard when I raised my voice and stomped my feet and threw dishes of cold dinner across the room and so forth. You know, the married times.

I have to say, if we're talking about 'learned behaviour' here, the one thing I actually learned during those times was that no matter how loud or angry I got, no one listened to a single thing I had to say and mostly THAT was why I was so god damned mad in the first place!

God is there anything more frustrating than not being heard? Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

"Your team is going to tell you what they need. Whether it's gossip, rumours, staring, pacing, or yelling, your team is always telling you what they need to know. This means your job is not just to be an information conduit; it's also to employ a policy of aggressive silence. In this silence, you're going to be forced to listen. Try it in a staff meeting: just shut up and see what your team says when you're saying nothing."

Managing Humans by Michael Loop

Of course, you can only be angry if you care enough about something. The very real danger is when, frustrated with a lack of response, respect and responsibility, you push right on through and end up not caring at all. How can you do anything of any value or credibility, if you just don't give a crap.