Queenslander!

The first time I have had to sit down at night, before I am completely zonked, to write a little update.

Let's get straight to our news. Consider this instalment one...

We bought a house! 

That's it up there! Not the most flattering photo, but you get the drift.

After months and months of getting disheartened, thinking we would never find or be able to afford something that was even remotely 'us', we have signed a contract on a cute little Queenslander in a beautiful neighbourhood by the sea.

Think high ceilings, VJs, breezeway thingies over the doors, floorboards (to be discovered). Think unrenovated, 80-year-old, fixer-uperer that is very liveable now. With plenty of storage space. At the end of a cul-de-sac, a walk to the train (for city commutes - hello mortgage), shops, parks and the beach.

We managed to find ourselves in a very salubrious neighbourhood thanks to our capacity for putting up with (for some of us it will be less of a trial) trains. Yes, we are right next to the train line, but it's a small concession for what we are gaining.

After two-plus years of transporting our travelling circus to (and imposing on the unswerving hospitality of) Keiran's mum's place every fortnight, we now have a place of our own for our city visits! And it's still close enough for Nana to swing by - to visit us!

We are absolutely thrilled. Although it means inhabiting two houses, and all the costs that go along with that luxury, it will give us a home for our frequent city visits. And more flexibility to do stuff in the city.

And somewhere to park the bus! And fix up the bus! And dust off our dreams of one day doing some slow road tripping in the bus!

Ye grand plans are coming together.

All things going swimmingly, we pick up the keys in four weeks!

the trouble with ruts

After not knowing what to do with the other blog, I have kind of just given up without giving up. If you know what I mean. Too hard basket.

Sadly, I don't feel the love for the food blog thing anymore. I wish I did. But I mostly struggle to stay enthused with making beautiful nourishing food, let alone the all-consuming documenting of it. Probably because by the end of the day I am done, though the making of the adult dinner lies ahead. Also I think I spend too long making dinner (I have not really downgraded my standard of what is worthy of the 'dinner' descriptor since the boy arrived) and therein have grown to not really enjoy the process, because all I really want to do is sit down, spend some time with my beau and pour quantities of wine all over myself.

There are moments of spark though.

In the past fortnight I have made pumpkin and lentil burgers, vegie pasties (first time I have made shortcrust pastry since high school!), and a rad roasted beetroot salad with panfried beans, fetta and homegrown purslane. I recently made sourdough after a long lull (including making a new starter after our last au pair inadvertently binned my several-years-old starter >..<). And I smell meals with tomatoes in our future, courtesy our homegrown tomato glut.

When the householders urge me to get thy camera out, I dwell on the bad light and the prospect of picking up where I left off. You know that feeling that once you've let too much water go under the bridge?

Oh, and that brings me to thy camera. Has not seen light of day for many moons. My all-purpose lens is infirm. And it all got too much to carry a heavy baby, baby paraphernalia and a heavy camera when we went anywhere. And it is just so much easier to use the phone... thank goodness for the phone! Though I have been loving these posts and this (and her photography generally) and wanting to do so much more.

Reading, there is no time energy time mental coherence. I have a small stack of books and magazines purchased in quiet city-induced flurries of internal sunshine and hope. These get picked up intermittently and held for about three minutes and thirty seconds (including time spent discerning where I was up to after toddler has dislodged bookmark).
 
My hands miss knitting. My most 'recent' project - the boy's baby blanket (ho!) - is scrumpled somewhere in a dark cupboard after I backed myself into a corner I could not see clear of. And yet I have bought wool for future projects.

When I do get a moment, I either seize it for some physio exercises / yoga, get some chores done, or fluff around aimlessly because I don't have a project-that-I'm-not-totally-overwhelmed-by to get on with.

The trouble with ruts is that they are self-fulfilling.

I have high hopes though. I dream about blogging about creative stuff I am doing, without the technical difficulties that go along with creating stuff and blogging. Oh, utopian me!

I have resolved that rather than getting sucked into the nightly vaccuum of the lovely interwebs (but not actually doing anything productive on them because I'm exhausted, and going to bed way too late and waking up feeling hungover despite aforementioned quantities of wine being more occasional nowadays) I will spend my evenings creating, or if I'm too tired to create, relax. Seems simple. And obvious.

I have wondered whether I could morph the foodie blog into new terrain. You know, make it more about life generally. It seems like such a shame to let it lapse. I still occasionally get amazing emails and comments. Someone even offered to buy it! And did I mention the thing about being invited to have a few recipes featured in the ABC's Foodi iPad app? 

Perhaps I need to climb out of the food rut, and the photography rut, before I can get any traction on the blog rut. And probably, more generally, just start. I love this post about getting your creative spark back. 

Yes, I know this space is temporary. And this here, is my start.

we live here

Now I have that off my chest, to share the ridiculously amazing station we find ourselves in. It is nothing short of stupendous. This place, here... 

I've mentioned it before here, and here. Thanks to an amazing stroke of luck/karma/patience/brilliance, and after battling for nearly a year to find work to complement his solo web design, K landed a ranger posting. On Moreton Island. It is so perfectly him. I've never seen a job fit anyone as well as this fits him. It's as though some godly hand reached down from the sky and granted him his lifetime's wish - though I'm sure he remembers the interview somewhat differently.

And it was all so perfectly timed. Fast forward a month from the job offer. We had a baby. Needed family-sized lodgings. And now, find ourselves in the assistant lighthouse keeper's cottage ('cottage' reflecting the heritage value of our lodgings, not the size). 

And the location? So perfectly us (though only in our wildest dreams). Living on a windswept sunny Cape, a prime whale-watching spot. On the world's third-largest sand island, all but a whisker of it national park. Remote, salty, thick with coastal heath. We'd wondered aloud before, how one goes about finding a posting at a lighthouse. In the end, it found us.

It's like I blinked and life changed. Baby. Lighthouse. I know not what, next. And it sort of doesn't matter. Life is grand :)

greener pastures

It's been so long that I've gone beyond filling in the gaps. So I'll just start with now. Now, we are preparing to visit Uluru. This time next week, we'll be out there for a mini-break. Well, the break is for me. K has an interview for a ranger job. For a range of reasons it makes sense. If When he gets it, he'll move out there, working a ten days on-four days off roster. I'll stay here for the time being, til we see how things pan out. We'll see each other once a fortnight. It will be hard. But good, in many ways. I'm excited by the prospect of getting to discover the place. I have not been there since my first visit as a sixteen (?) year old. And excited to be moving forward with life-plans. K, I think, will enjoy the return to a social workspace, after months of web design from the spare room studio. And it will put us in a position to do something about our renewed case of Tassie Mania.

Indeed, it seems the stars are screaming change. At least two group-lings we know are moving to Melbourne town. (And hey, if they must move, what better place?) Mum is finally getting some traction with the medical world, after a fruitless year. For me, the current work gig is coming to an end, and I can't help but embrace the change. I'll be back to my policy post. And if all goes well in the desert, moving out there.

Anyway, that's probably all I've got for now... we are off on this very wet, blustery eve to hear Joel Salatin talk. Which I just know is going to make the Tassie Mania bug latch on.

i made it

Last month I made it to inner circle of recipients who receive a 'pinch and a punch' text message from K's Mum. (I think I also scored points for being the only sibling or partner of sibling to reply... but I digress.) This month, her phone was broken. So the first of the month kind of passed without me really realising it... or its significance. It took me until this morning, on the walk to work, to realise that I'd made it to my goal. 'The' goal. The one that I returned to Brisbane for... long service leave! My leave balance now stands at 64 days... or about three months leave on full pay, or six months on half pay. 

Wooooo! I made it!

Now we just have to work out how to use it! Of course there's no shortage of ideas... road trips through Central Australia and Western Australia, reconaissance to Tassie and central coast New South Wales... and a further school of thought (that I'd rather not hear), that says 'save it'. Still, plenty of time to decide... and it's a rather happy decision to be charged with, kind of like the 'how I'd spend a windfall' daydream.

rose coloured things

Spring is early. Dresses and skirts are out. Along with an unusual compulsion to wear pink.

Jasmine is blooming, spilling over fence-lines and filling walks to work with summery thoughts of barbecues and bare feet. Tallebudgera weekends are salt air and sunshine, walking and swimming, sunset beers on the beach. S has bent to my nudging and is going to (try to) teach me to surf. I'll help make food for her 50th celebration. The calendar is filling: a quick jaunt to Sydney to see Ben Folds at the Opera House, a weekend in a tent at Straddie.

Possibility is rife and expectant. The future is being dreamed...

The coast road. The desert. A swag and a campfire. Fishing gear and a fistful of stars. An adventure ending in a little plot of land. A deli-café? And a dog, a wood-shop and a bus. Ooh and maybe a boat!

Dreams... fluid, shimmering and unknown.