Melbourne

By the end of last week I was so tired I was an emotional wreck. I walked in from work one night, unlocked the front door and burst into tears. Not because anything in particular had gone wrong, or because anything had happened, but because I was so stratospherically tired. It was tiredness that hurts, and it was compounded by work being so busy that I kept missing little things and then becoming more stressed by that causing me to ruminate and panic.

I needed to unwind, and I needed an excuse to spend the masses of overtime I was accumulating (In the last week alone , 28 hours of over time). Of course there is an electricity bill sitting there that is due at the end of the month, and I am still planning my Paris holiday, but I needed something that was actually going to get me through the next few months. So when Tiger had a $1 return flights deal for Melbourne, I booked the Monkey and I for a 36 hour getaway to remind me why I go to work in the first place.

I have not done something with the Monkey alone in months, and although there was the inevitable guilt about not taking the Elfling, right now it is the Monkey that needed to be made special. She and I have been a little fractured lately, and several hours of anticipation and then sitting on a plane together was just what this doctor ordered. So I bought her some Melbourne fit clothes, and off we trotted, cabin bags trailing along behind, in matching trench coats.

(segue, there are fireworks outside. I am eternally grateful to live somewhere where I can hear and see fireworks randomly throughout the year).

The Monkey was superlatively good for the whole 2 hour wait at the airport (we got there very early at her request) and for the 2 hour flight down. She was besotted with her tiny can of lemonade and the M&Ms that I purchased for her, and didn't spill etiher. She thanked the stewards, she made games of matching the different coloured sweets, and she chatted - thrilled to have me as a captive audience, focused only on her. We watched the cloud cities float by and I tried to explain lift and thrust and settled for jet engines instead. We watched the patchwork quilt of undulating farmland spread out beneath us and traced rivers and lakes and ridges. Then finally we swooped low over Melbourne, circled out over the sea and landed in at the airport just as the horizon was beginning to gild at the margins.

She charmed everyone she passed, dancing as she walked in her hot pink coat and stripey tights, insisting on toting her own bag behind her to the amusement of others racing past to get their nicotine fix. Then we jumped in our car, driven by a very patient Auntie and headed off to the city to part ways. She for the zoo the next morning and being thoroughly spoiled, and me for Bourke St and grown up fun.

I arrived early in the evening, just as the offices were emptying, and I perched on a cold slab in the middle of the mall and shamelessly people watched, wrapped up in my black trench and red hat, before deciding that I didn't care what people thought of me and pulled out my behemoth of a camera and began practising night shots.

I then met up with my fellow shoe fetishist and began my introduction to Melbourne City, a place I had fallen in love with from the first trilby topped gentleman that had rushed past me in the cool. We traipsed through alley ways and malls, window shopped and outright ogled before settling into a venue that I felt sure saw right through me and my Queenslandery ways that would have made me uncomfortable if I hadn't been so gleefully enjoying the vista.

The next morning we were up bright and early, red lipstick at the ready to take on a day of power shopping. I had very set ideas on what I wanted to buy - black boots being top of the table. And of course I found none I loved the whole day. Instead I bought some pretty dresses and tried on shoes and scarves and hats and chattered and laughed and hurt my back through walking all day in heels, but it was worth it.

We then headed out for dinner with friends, with lots of laughs, a very few drinks (apparently the conversation scared the waitstaff enough that they didn't do the obligatory offer drinks every few minutes - their loss!) and some delicious food. We then wandered back to the car, and prepared to come back home in the early hours of this morning. The Monkey meanwhile had had a superlative day that she talked about the whole flight home.

And after a joyfun family reunion with breakfast under the Eiffel tower, we headed home to regular life again. I then pulled out my puchases to show Bingley to get his approval or eye rolls and practised using my new eyeliner brush (a revelation! no pens again) and thinking of reasons to avoid doing the things I"d planned for the afternoon and lazing around in bed instead.

It was a lovely weekend.

Edited to add, for some reason blogger has put up very low quality images that look blurry/pixellated, but if you like any of them, clicking will take you to a higher res.

Twas the night before...

I stalled for pretty much as long as possible, to the point where pretty much everything ironable in the house is now on hangers. Something that happens at best twice a year. But now I have a very heavy suitcase sitting next to me, and a bag with 7 pairs of shoes. Because I decided I needed spiritual reinforcement and also because my very good friend - the aforementioned fellow shoe fetishist - has broken her ankle and asked me to wear heels in her honour.

So now I have a proper rainbow of podiatric perfection and am starting to get that anxious, heavy chested, twisted stomach anxiety that precipitates a big exam, or going on a big holiday and wondering if both everything's packed and if all will be OK when I get there. I had a little cry last night when I went to bed, because I am a bit of a baby. But also because I had this swamping wave of anxiety about how I would handle a bad day. When I have a bad day here - and let's be honest, in my line of work it happens relatively often - I go to bed at night, and curl under my feather quilt and snuggle into Bingley who lets me talk it all out until I'm an exhausted mess, and then I cuddle the Possum when he wakes up and it's all ok.

But there I won't be able to do that. I will be all alone. And I'm so scared. I know that it's ridiculous. I'm an independent, adventurous, intelligent 29 year old woman. But there's a part of me that's wanting to drive every night to my Mum and Dad's house a little while away from where I will be working just so someone can look after me.

So to cure my fit of imaginative morbidity I'm watching Zoolander, and it's pretty much an exact antidote. David Duchovny is making me giggle in spite of my wild imaginings of dealing with terribly sick children while wiping plague from my brow. "World's greatest hand model" rofl.

It will probably be just hard and long and relatively monotonous, and I'll be going home at night to wonder what to do with all my time and my full nights of sleep. But I can't help the little macabre imaginings. I think it's just a way of preparing for the worst case scenario. And a way of distracting myself from the fact that I won't have a giggly, snuggly little boy giving me rapturous cuddles for 2 whole weeks.

Que sera

I have a friend who I went to school with and with whom contact is now pretty much limited to facebook. I'm not sure how much we have in common any more, now that we're no longer in the running together for Dux, but I cannot delete her as she is living one of those dreams we had at highschool. Still single, she is working around the world, Copenhagen one weekend, Cambridge the next, and posting her pictures for the rest of us to enjoy with her.

I devour these albums, filled not, as per many friends, with many drunken pub photos or self posed myspace angle photos. These are landscapes and architecture. A wall of moss in Denmark or a tree in Venice. Flowers in window boxes. They make me want to cry at times and others they make me want to make that happen. Whatever that is which would allow me to run off by myself and see them.

They make me think and want to learn. I look at some pictures and will research the location for hours. The sights, the language, whatever it is about that particular set of pictures that has inspired me.

Today it has been the soaring ceilings of King's College Cathedral at Cambridge.



There is no steel reinforcement holding that up. It is only those perfectly cut stones, aligned with mathematical precision to form an elegant interlacing skeleton that allows the roof to soar. Gothic perpendicular architecture at its best.

I want so much to travel. I wish that I could pack up right now and head off, and in my wistful dreams I do. But then I am woken at 5:30am on Father's Day by the 3 very special reasons why I can't and I'm very glad for the internet, and google, and friends like Claire who keep that hunger burning in me, that I will see them yet one day.

Corona d'oro

The air is playful today. The sun is playing peekaboo with the clouds and the mist on the horizon threatens rain, but the air is joyful, childish. It tastes of the coming Spring, the sprigs of star jasmine creeping over the back fence perfuming the air with pink. I am bubbled. My blood skittish today as the warmth of the suddenly penetrating sun heats my skin improbably.

I had lunch with a group of friends today in an Italian restaurant under the Eiffel Tower with woeful service and tasty food; the Possum bouncing around at my feet charming all before him until I dared hold another infant. He was right to cry, holding a newborn in my arms immediately made my chest and throat ache, with the knowledge that I cannot ever do that again and wanting with that sweet milkiness to do precisely that.

It has been a lovely weekend - marked by it's loveliness in subtle and not so subtle ways.

Friday night on the way to pick up my fellow shoe fetishist (FSF) I nearly drove off the road, entranced as I was by the heavy orange moon sitting perfectly above the city scape. It was so perfect that I actually got tears in my eyes and wanted desperately to share it with someone who would understand it, feeling a connection with the sky that was unnerving.

The ever glamorous Ms FSF was just arriving as I pulled into the swell of airport traffic and we chatted for the next 3 days. One of those delightful friends who instantly makes you feel at ease and that there is no fear of small talk or strange silences even if it has been months since you had a proper conversation.

Saturday was all about the sort of girlish lovely things that I so rarely get to indulge these days. We went to the Art Gallery and swooned over organza and chiffon and the perfection of a swathe of red dresses designed for female curves. It was truly breathtaking looking at some of the timeless gowns (some impossible to discern the era in which they'd been created) that were designed to celebrate femininity, that emphasised hips and bust while flattering at the same time. Beautiful colours and fabrics that swirled even on static mannequins giving life and movement and beauty to the clothes. The fulfilment of every little girl's dream of Cinderella's Fairy Godmother moment, of going to the ball in the dress.





We then went shopping and tried on $850 shoes of loveliness with red soles that made my soul happy and ridiculous feathery fascinators in jewelled colours that made me smile. So much so that when I put one headband with a stupidly large fuschia rose in my nearly black hair I loved it enough to purchase and walk around for the rest of the afternoon enjoying the slightly bemused expressions of passers by.

Heading home as the sun grew heavy in the warm sky we settled the ratbag children off to bed before a night of mojitos, daiquiris, cheese and the cheertastic Bring It On. I also discovered fig paste and the way that the sweet crunchiness matches so perfectly with blue cheese. Almost as magic as the match of crisp tart apple and triple cream brie.

Warm and slow and full I drifted off to sleep tasting sweetly of rum and passionfruit and strawberries to dreams of another place. Another dimension and the feel of breath against my ear so real that I was startled to wake and find Bingley curled away from me, expecting instead the warmth of the arms I'd felt so acutely mere seconds before.

Today was then the trip to little Italy in Paris and the laughter of friends and easy company without awkwardness; the deliciousness of new life and the perfection of tiny shell nails, barely there eyelashes and skin so soft that I'm almost afraid to touch for fear of spoiling.

I feel light and playful today, playing with the wind as she inhales the delicate perfume of jasmine and ruffles the vernix slicked hair of new life. Playing hide and seek with the sun as he peeks from behind the watch of the disapproving clouds. A playmate so warm and enveloping that I want to lay in his arms even as my skin dusks pink.

Eyes threatening to gild but only at the edges, a corona of light, suppressed for too long.

Edited to add for Lissa
I was wearing a paisley kaftan that comes to mid thigh with opaque stockings and patent black stilettos with my fascinator.

Vitalogy

My new computer still hasn't arrived. I am pouting and not feeling like writing.

Also went to bed far too late last night, the Possum slept and I stayed awake waiting to hear him and he never did until 1am. Oops. I was also distracted because I was talking to a friend. Both of us should know better in our old age.

Good News Week Christmas special tonight. Going to laugh and then pass out. Hopefully the boy feels like doing the same... signs so far? Poor...