The part and the whole of our #autism family

So, things were up in the air for our family for about 6 weeks or so regarding this potential huge change. There was waiting. Exploring. Investigating options. Weighing benefits. Cognitive testing. And my mind racing, worrying, analysing, as we gradually came to the crunch of making the decision about Ash's schooling.

On the one hand, Ash's emotions were telling me that he needed something more than what he currently has. Whether that is about support, therapies or simply insight, we needed to think about what was best for him. So, it was recommended that we consider this particular school - a limited time offer, as he is at the upper age limit of enrolment already, being in year 4 this year.

Ash and I did a school tour, and he did two trial mornings in the classroom there. He liked it. He got along well with the other kids in the class. They liked him. The school suggested he might begin full time in just a few weeks. We had one full day trial left to complete before making the final decision.

Then Cedar got chicken pox (mildly, as he is immunised), and I let them know that Ash had been exposed. This postponed the full day trial for a couple of weeks. And in the meantime, my brain kept ticking over a million miles a minute. I had a meeting with the principal at the kids' current school. I had conversations with another school parent who has a great understanding of Autism spectrum kids. I had a conversation with my daughter's psychologist. I had a conversation with Ash's psychologist. I did research. Ben and I discussed the pros and cons, the costs and benefits - both literally, and to each of us, as well as to Ash (primarily, loss of his aide support). I wrote lists. Talked it out, juggled my thoughts, watched my kids.

And then I sat in a cafe in a shopping centre, with a coffee next to me, and wrote two emails to the specialist school - one to the principal and one to the teacher. Ash would not be changing schools. There was no need to complete the trial days. Their information has been invaluable (and I've since had another conversation with them getting more tips and advice). But our family is made up of more than one 9 year old boy. He is not even the only one on the Autism Spectrum. And, as completely as I love him and want to help him, we are one whole family unit.

You see, I'd been on a rollercoaster of decision making, and things were not crystal clear or self-evident as to what would be the best choice for Ash. But it was like I had blinkers on. I was looking at Ash as an individual, and what might be ideal for him on his own. I knew it would have a high personal cost to me if he changed schools, but I felt that I, as his mother, could sacrifice 15 months of my life for the benefit of my beautiful son.

And then I stopped. Ash is not an only child. We are not a family unit of 2 or 3. There are five of us here. It's not *just* about him, and it's not *just* about me. Sienna is 11.5 years old, a tween girl with Aspergers and ADHD, going into high school next year. How would it affect her if the pressure was on each morning to get ready early, quickly, quickly, or Ash will be late for his school a half hour drive away? How would it affect her if I am unavailable for 2 hours per day? If I feel too frustrated and tired by the juggling act to be a listening ear? As well as practical details, will I be able to take her to her high school transition program, an integration program for additional needs, if I also have to drive Ash in the opposite direction?

Cedar is 5 years old. He'll be 6 in five weeks, and he is in his first year of primary school. Next year he will be in year 1, and if Ash changed schools Cedar would be rushed out of the car, expected to walk in to school on his own, 15 minutes early every day. Is this really a good time for my energies to be so devoted to one child? With no guarantees? As well as all that, while weighing up these decisions our 1 year old dog Sparrow got very sick. She had a sudden and extreme bacterial infection, and I spent a week back and forth to the vet, getting meds into her and sitting next to her almost constantly.

I realised there was also the literal cost to our entire family - a sudden vet bill would be impossible to pay if I tied up all our available family income in private school fees for one child. And with my time commitment to driving 2 hours a day, I would hardly be able to earn any income to help pay for it. Even for Ash's sake, what about the school fulfilled his needs? Would it be worth it? What would happen at the end of 5 terms when he had to return to mainstream school, but no longer had aide support? And would this help when 5 terms later he had to transition again - a third time - to high school?

I know this seems like a big old brain dump, and it is - (epic, in fact, I'm impressed if anyone has read this far!) but it is still only a fraction of the thought rollercoaster I was riding for those 6 weeks. I just wanted to record the conflict, the unknown and unseen by most, that I know so many parents and families go through when weighing up decisions they need to make for their children. Professionals might tell you they think something will benefit your child, and our instinct is to jump in with both feet - yes, of course, let's do that! But even the loveliest professionals are not part of YOUR family, and they don't know the whole story of your everyday life. No one is as well equipped to make these decisions as you are. 

And there might be parts of the decisions you have to make over the years that are about you. Self-care, some call it, or your needs as an individual and not just a mother (or father). We might be reluctant to add these to the scales, on one side or the other, but really, we must. As their primary carers, our wellbeing - or not - at the end of the day is likely to have a stronger effect on our kids than we know. Your happiness has weight. You matter too.

Even though we decided not to make this big change, for Ash to move schools, it was not a decision not to change. We decided to take what we have learnt from the specialist school, take the conversations I had with school representatives and other professionals, and make smaller changes.

Our action plan now is:

• Weekly 'excursions' to reward (and incentivize) Ash for attending school every day of the week, something that is hard for him
• The development of a Sensory room at school and a strategy for including more sensory input into his day.

And that's it. Of course, each of these two things means budgeting, appointments for planning and meetings with school, among other things. But they are two key outcomes of this experience. They will both benefit others as well as Ash, and we are still showing him that what is best for him, matters to us.

It's all a learning curve, after all.

Today, bewildered - #autism and the boy

 

This boy... so incredibly lovable, he has my head spinning at the moment. Today was a particularly epic day. The kind that hindsight would advice to skip, stay in bed, don't even try. But who knows that, in the morning, right?


So, aside from the (not uncommon) reluctance to get out of bed and face school, the 75 minute separation process once I did get him there (all three kids that constant five minutes late), the skeleton onesie pyjamas being worn at school all day and the kicking, fighting, biting, beside-himself meltdown after the final bell this afternoon... aside from that, there's this feeling. The word that fits, I think most accurately, is bewildered.

I know this kid, and I know him really well. But I still find myself bewildered, wondering one day (yesterday to be precise) if a certain pattern will be our new status quo, and then flipping that back again the very next. It's not about the separation anxiety, at least, not specifically. And not about the meltdown - as amplified as his response was, there was a catalyst there.

I think the hardest thing to get my head around is the inconsistency. I am bewildered by what is different from one morning to the next. By the need to make decisions about what is best for this amazing, complex 9 year old boy, with conflicting evidence from day to day, week to week, about what those best things might be. He can be such a joy to have around, and he adores me - his anchor, his mum - like nothing else in this world. But these things won't give him an education. Hugs and teddies aren't going to make him friends. Social thinking can't be learned from one person alone.

At the moment, we are part way through the intake process at Cheshire school, a transitional school for kids with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, for Ash, as recommended by his psychologist. It's an investigative process, where actual enrolment isn't decided until a certain stage of the process, and we are not there quite yet. We're part way through. So, there have been a lot of considerations to think about, and the possibility of big change ahead. But the possibility of it not happening is there too. It's up in the air. Good things on both sides - the change, or not to change. The private, specialist school, the increased transitions, the hectic schedule for me as the driver (an extra two hours of driving a day), but the chance that this is what will work for him. And the possibility that it won't.

The principal / psychologist from the school observed Ash in his current school and classroom the other day, and we spoke a little later that afternoon. There were a lot of good points, and I agree fully with them all - he engages well with his peers, with assistance can work on the required tasks, seems generally liked by others, doesn't seem anxious within the classroom space. She could see a few things we'd spoken about as well, but the areas of concern were more subtle. These are all true things. I started to wonder if maybe this new school idea won't be the necessary goal. I hope we can avoid the big change, despite the potential benefits, for the sake of appreciating the things Ash likes about where he is at, things he would have to sacrifice to change schools. And, to be brutally honest, save the money, and driving.

But then, today, pyjamas, the morning refusal again, and the chair-tossing, workbook-ripping, heart-breaking meltdown over the end of the day, over time running out, and him not being able to do his show and tell after all. Just a final straw, on a hard day. The red beast took over, he says, and while it took half an hour to come back to a calm place, five minutes after we got home he was all hugs and apology. He's a beautiful boy. And I can easily see it. Tackling life is just a bit too much to ask sometimes.

Not on the spectrum, but... reading about hyper-sensitivity

Since I have kids with autism, and Sienna also has an ADHD diagnosis as well as Aspergers, I have a few news pages that I follow on Facebook that are relevant to them. Today a link was posted to ADDItude Mag with an article on Hyper-sensitivity, as it is something that is often – while not a disorder, but rather a type – seen in people diagnosed with ADHD / ADD. On another Facebook post, a blogger I enjoy reading posted a comment on Myers-Briggs personality types, which ties in, for me, to the kind of self-understanding that helps with being very sensitive.

I am neither on the Autism spectrum (and yes, I've even done one of those basic online tests to check likelihood / similarities to ASD) nor do I have ADHD, though I have read a fair bit about them. Well, autism in particular. Anyhow ;) I don't believe myself to be on the spectrum of either of these conditions, but there are some traits I strongly empathise with. I've also read about the myers-briggs personality types, and the book 'The Highly Sensitive Person'. So, connecting with today's article didn't come as a surprise, but it is a good reminder.

One sentence that stood out a lot for me was this: “Prior to discovering my hypersensitivity, I perceived my over-the-top emotions as a character flaw. My mom would say, “Why can’t you get on an even keel?” As a child, I didn’t have an answer. This added to my already-low self-esteem.” I find this so interesting, and for a couple of reasons. One is the reminder that I really do fall clearly and undoubtedly into this category, which apparently includes an average of 15-20% of people.

There are no words that stand out more strongly to me from my childhood and youth than “you're too sensitive”, and they didn't stop just because I became an adult. But as a child, it was more confusing, because I didn't disagree, but didn't understand why was there something wrong with me? And also because feelings being 'wrong' doesn't make them go away. If something hurts, but it hurts because 'you're too sensitive', it still hurts, but then there is the added layer of it being wrong somehow. It was something I remember repeating in some of my angsty, sensitive teenage poetry – this idea that I was inherently wrong, but without being able to define what that wrong was, exactly.

It's a formative view of myself that I still struggle with, and so far have mostly just been able to work on recognising it. Changing those thought patterns is a battle for another season, I guess. Recognition, though, has its own strength. Which brings me to another part of the comment above that I found so interesting - “prior to discovering my hypersensitivity”. The next paragraph in the article quotes Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D (authorof The Highly Sensitive Person) - “Recognizing their high sensitivity can help people stop feeling bad about themselves.”

Well that is definitely harder said than done, but I do get what they're saying. And I totally agree, as this is the basis for getting any kind of diagnostic assessment really - such as autism, or ADHD as well. Further understanding can help, both with understanding the needs of the person and with improving their self esteem as a result of that understanding. The Myers-Briggs personality types helped me figure this out when I was a teenager, and a psychologist who saw me at 17 – on the recommendation of my bookshop boss, due to my extreme shyness – only saw me twice but helped me see that I was just a different type of person than most people around me.

My first couple of Myers-Briggs tests showed me as an INFP, a rare and sensitive personality type. Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving, and at 100% of the scale for introversion, and almost that high for intuitive. A few years later, the ratio shifted a little and I've been an INFJ ever since – very interesting, as my slight P preference earlier on shifted to a more decisive J type as I grew older. This was perhaps also in response to being with my husband since that time, as he was decidedly a P personality type, whereas I had only slightly leaned that way.

It all sounds rather more serious than I really view it, which is as a great lesson in understanding and acceptance. When applied to myself, the acceptance – deep, instinctive, self-acceptance – is a lot harder than the understanding for me, but they are all tied together. And also with this third point which drew me in straight away, which is that “Emotional pain and physical pain are experienced in the same part of the brain.” Which explains why it can feel so all-encompassing to literally radiate pain from the darkness at the centre of myself, to the point where it can be felt by other intuitive people, but feel so ridiculous about it when there is no clear wrong thing to be blamed.

I may be veering off into talking about depression, here, but this is the thing. I suffer depression, I guess, in that I fit the criteria more often than not because of my thoughts and feelings about myself. But clinically... it's not purely chemical. It's this inherent wrongness that I've never been able to understand and accept about myself, which is actually not wrongness at all. It's just being different. Being hyper-sensitive.

Having “all of the feelings” (for some reason I imagine those words spoken by Tina Fey?!).

Clouds of grey sensitivity aside, the silver lining I see is that I've never felt like I quite fit. But I've always found some kindred spirits along the way. And I feel so much empathy for my kids, my amazing, fascinating, brilliant Autism spectrum kids, as a direct result of this sensitivity. I feel for them. All the time. And so I think it makes me a pretty good Autism mum. That, at least, is something good. And I can accept that.

The year of the Captain

2013 will be, for us, the year of the dog, or the beagle perhaps. More precisely, the year of the Captain.

Those who know me on social media will have seen the news of Captain's death last week. I just wanted to include it in this space, where I celebrated his introduction to our family in January, as well as how great it was having him as part of our crew. He often featured in my Instagram feed, as well as in my APPA award winning portrait of Ash as a pirate.

At 11 months old, just over 9 months since we got him, and while Ben and I were on our first weekend away without kids (since having kids), Captain got out of the yard on Monday morning of last week, and was hit by a car at the end of our road. He died instantly (as far as we can tell).
 
The 4WD who killed him didn't stop, but the person behind them did, and kindly tried to find his owner. A neighbour not far up the road and the witness of the accident together came to our door, where my poor sister answered it to such tragic news. They carried him up to our house, and I later asked a dear friend to pick him up and take his body to the vet for us.

There is a lot of frustration about how he got out - it's a long story, but the damaged fence wasn't our fault - but the truth is that he always was an escape artist of the highest order, as beagles tend to be. He was strong, and very fast, determined, curious and super excited pretty much all of the time. I had just the week before bought a second, different dog harness to try and improve our dog-walking training! He ate anything and everything, and looked super cute curled up in his little kitchen nook, snoring away.

I miss him. We all do. It's really weird being able to leave gates open, or food on the kitchen table unattended. I guess that will all become normal again. Until next time. But, of course, and as Sienna has been saying as she asks when she can get another dog -

"Nothing will replace Captain!"

These girls

These girls make my heart happy... I am grateful that Sienna has found such a lovely friend, but I'm also grateful that both of them get to enjoy the creative, free play and imaginative games that they come up with together. They've been best friends for 3 years now. It's very cool :)

I kind of had paragraphs in my head about how valuable this friendship is to Sienna developmentally, but I might just leave that alone for now. Regardless of the reasons why, everyone is different in some way or other, and some more than most, but the true acceptance of your friends simply as who they are is the most beautiful thing about love and companionship. Sienna has that, as does her friend, and it is a pretty fantastic thing.

Books and songs and not crashing

Family shot from a recent session. Totally unrelated to my blog post.

I wanted to do a grateful post the other day but, you know, forgot to. And got distracted and stuff. But here we go, now that I have other work to do and am procrastinating about, I am blogging ;)

On Wednesday afternoon, I was almost rear-ended by a very fast-moving 4WD (and I was at the tail end of a line of cars waiting for a slow truck, so it would have started a pile up) but wasn't. The 4WD went into the oncoming traffic lanes to avoid hitting me, and ended up overtaking everyone (very dangerously, as there was a car coming the other way). When I did slowly get to continue up Glenfern Road, however, I saw that the 4WD had had an accident and destroyed his car just minutes (or seconds?) after passing all of us, hitting a stobie pole at the Glenfern Valley Bushlands car park. I've done a photo shoot and a workshop there, some of you might know it. The guy who had been driving (no passengers) was sitting on a rock next to the car and seemed fine, though shocked. I felt grateful that he didn't hurt anyone else at least.

1. So, grateful not to be in a car crash. Every time I drive. Some people on the road just shouldn't be, and I'm grateful that I haven't gotten in their way lately.

2. Libraries. With some pretty lovely travel plans in the works for Sienna and I, I've stocked up on guides and books from the local library. I go online and place holds for all the books I want, at all the libraries around about, and then get an email when they are ready to pick up from the library I've chosen. Very handy, and I have rather a big stack to get through now!

I tend to pick up a novel or two for myself while I'm there, Sienna has a pile of spy-related selections and an entire series of Pirate Patch readers is sitting on the coffee table for Ash to read. It's also been good for the kids to realise we don't have to buy things to keep, as they've always done libraries at school, and sporadically with me, but still tend to default to acquiring things. I still buy a handful of kids books most months, but we're getting a bit of both worlds now.

3. I'm grateful for songs. Songs are awesome. I'm enjoying listening to spotify.com when I'm working lately, though I confess I actually listen mostly to albums I already own, but which are buried in a box under the house somewhere. They were digitised at one point, but were lost in the great harddrive crash of 2006. OK, it might not have been 2006, but it was definitely awhile ago. I've just never been motivated to get them out again, but have been loving listening to a few nostalgic albums as well as discovering more recent releases and similar artists. Nostalgic for me means:

• Counting Crows - first few albums. At the moment listening to Recovering the Satellites.
• Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes mainly
• Bjork - Debut and Post (I have later ones but love those best)
• Sarah McLachlan - Surfacing (Kell was given this album by a Canadian who worked in Glenelg years and years ago, and loved it straight away. So it's kind of her thing but I've always really liked it too)
• Frou Frou and Imogen Heap

The other funny thing about songs is that Kell got me playing (with her, and now a couple of other people) a mobile music game called SongPop. I'm really not very good at it, and it is particularly the modern "today's hits" type genres that I have no idea about! I just don't listen to the radio, or watch regular tv. So I have a narrow band of musical knowledge, LOL. Still, it is fun.

Play with your books

I have enjoyed following the 'My Little Bookcase' blog this year, and The Little Book Adventure Project. The challenge for July was to play with your books, and I've kept the email in my inbox all month to remind me, as it was something I wanted to do. It's the last day of the month, but we finally fit it in :)

Please excuse the very ordinary photos, it was quite late (and dark) by the time we actually played the game, with the dull kitchen lighting. The kids and I talked about a few different ideas for making up games based on books. Sienna actually came up with a unique board game, that I haven't quite figured out how it works as yet, based on the movie 'Brave'. She had bears, arrows, Merida character pieces, all sorts that she made up. I'll try and photograph it another time. She's all fascinated by archery at the moment, but wants an old fashioned wooden bow, like Merida.

Anyhow, tangents aside, I ended up choosing the book 'Stuck' by Oliver Jeffers (we love his picture books - there are two (1, 2) that we don't have yet but they are on my list!) as the basis and inspiration for the game. In the book, a boy gets his kite stuck in a tree. He throws all sorts of things up there to try and dislodge his kite.

Eventually, the all sorts of things get stuck up there, including a cat, the milkman, the family car, a ship, a lighthouse, the kitchen sink, a whale, a house, a fire truck, some fire men, a couple of shoes, and some other random stuff. Not in that order. Eventually he goes and gets a small hand-saw, which results in him getting his kite back before bedtime.

I drew all the objects that get thrown into the tree, sketching them quickly based on the illustrations in the book. We cut each one out, and attached it with blu-tack to the kitchen wall. Then I wrote all the names of the objects on pieces of paper, and we put all of these in our billy tin. Sienna and I drew a big tree with chalk on one of the chalkboard doors that are in the kitchen.

The aim of the game is to get the 'saw', as whoever gets the saw, gets the kite out of the tree and wins the game. So, the first step was to blu-tack the red kite in the tree. We highlighted the kite and the handsaw by adding colour to those drawings, whereas every other object was a quickly sketched line-drawing.

Starting with the youngest player, each person closes their eyes (or their brother / sister can cover their eyes for them, which my kids preferred!) and picks a word out of the billy. They then find the object that the word refers to, and blu-tack it into the tree. And so it continues until the winner pulls out the 'saw' and gets the kite.

A bowl or jar would do, of course, but we have this billy tin just hanging around in the kitchen for random use. I bought it at the Andamooka op-shop when I was doing family photo sessions in Roxby Downs a couple of years ago. Perfect outback souvenir ;) Very Waltzing Matilda-ish!

The first time we played, Sienna won the kite on the second turn. Happily, the second time we played lasted quite awhile (as you can see) and a lot of the objects got thrown into the tree before someone won. Which was Sienna again, I think. The kids had fun with it, and also were inspired to make up more of their own games, both book / movie related (in Sienna's case) and predictably pirate-oriented (like Ash, of course). A much better use of their time than nagging me to use the ipad all afternoon!

And I'm glad that I am fitting in some interesting activities with the kids, not by doing less as much as by restructuring the way I look at my time. The kids get cranky at me if I have to make dinner instead of playing with them, which is a nice thing to be cranky about I think!

Grateful again

After posting every day for 3 weeks, I have only posted once since the challenge finished. I open up my blogging window more often than that, but an information overload leads to a kind of impasse! Too many thoughts, so little time, or something like that ;)

Anyhow, I thought today how I am grateful for bits and pieces I observe around home. I am so often frustrated with mess - which is pretty standard - and look around my house with a critical eye. Not from perfectionism or neatness, but more of a consideration of what I can do to make things better. Where things can be placed differently or whatever. Details are usually mess! But I have enjoyed noticing details that are cool little pieces of our life.

There's a planet mobile that Ash and I made one day, very quickly cutting circles out of cardboard and colouring them in together. It was his idea, but he was becoming frustrated (which can lead to destruction) so I stepped in to move things along, and he was so thrilled with the result. It was hanging in his room for quite a few weeks, but recently fell down. I temporarily hung it in the lounge and I quite like it. It's so handmade and child-oriented. Like us.

Sienna is obsessed with Inspector Gadget at the moment. It's quite hilarious, and cute. She is really passionate about it, though. Spies get a look-in, but Inspector Gadget is the real winner ;) She made a couple of pictures today - on the theme - but I'll have to photograph them later. But a blog post needs a photo, so I'll just pick something now!

Day 21 - Doing things

Doing things, and keeping on doing things. I am grateful for that. It's an approach to life, I think, and a bit of an attitude thing. Proactive, I guess? Persistent, perhaps. Stubborn, probably. It's kind of the opposite of a victim mentality, or a waiting attitude. Taking action. I'm not an insanely active person, or anything, but I do try to deliberately focus on what I can do, instead of what I don't like, and it's an approach I am grateful for as it is a good starting point on the days when things seem like too much.

For instance, today we had a good first session with Sienna's new psychologist. And I thought to myself, yes, I'm glad I did the research and made the appointments and got the referral and so on. Deciding that something wasn't working, and doing something about it. And then, in the spirit of this blog series, I thought I am grateful that I have that response, reasonably naturally, to pursue solutions instead of dwelling on problems. I think of the problems, they make me feel crap, I do my best to push them aside and go, "Right, what can I do about it?"

Occasionally I do spend a day reading (while parenting, of course, as with everything) in complete denial of my to-do list, true, but a delaying tactic is sometimes just some much-needed time off. And then it's back on. A couple of things I read today also reminded me of this feeling - one was the blog of my friend Lauren. She was talking about weight loss, becoming strong and healthy. Reflecting on her amazing progress in order to remind herself that she is doing something good, she is getting somewhere, and she can keep going toward her goals, dreams, ideals. It's in her power.

Another reminder was my friend Lou talking on Facebook about making progress in the scrapbooking industry. She had a friendly rant about not giving up, putting in the dedication to your goals and dreams, waiting it out, keeping on trying. Good things will come, and do. Don't give up quickly, time could be needed to see your ideas pan out. It is an approach I like, especially when feeling hopeless about something - take action, it's the only thing you can actually DO about making things better.

Edited to add: I just went and read another fave blog of mine Maxabella Loves and just had to add here one of her comments today: "From now on, every To Do list will include a To Doing component to make sure we are heading in the right direction. Life can just go on without focus if we let it." Love it.




So I remind myself, with decisions to make about which fencing quote to go with, or whether to get another, and research about other renovations which may be possible over the next however-long. Travel which may be possible depending on saving and earning. Creative satisfaction which may be possible if I take time to do the work. If I make things work. I remind myself: don't feel helpless, help yourself. Work out how you can make it work out. Make another list - even though you lose most that you write - and get things out of your head and into the real world. Commit, to yourself, to making things happen. Step by little step. And remember to feel grateful along the way.

And I am.


Images are of the K&Co Smash Journal - Eco Green - that I worked on for Aussie Scrap Source. I love this journal, and will gradually share more pages as I fill them with dreams, plans and actions.

I am blogging grateful posts for the 21 challenge, raising awareness and funds for Australia's homeless youth. This is my last day and I am at 86% of my goal - thank you! Only $40 to go until I meet my target of raising $300 for Open Family Australia :)
 

If you would like to sponsor me or donate to the challenge, please click here.

Day 19 - Everyday luxuries

Today I am grateful for everyday luxuries. Stuff that doesn't seem like a luxury. But when you think about it, that's a totally first world attitude. That's fine, that's where we are at, but it is good to acknowledge now and then I believe and be aware that the things we consider essentials are essentially luxuries to a large percentage of the world. Rice cooker, for instance. Coffee machine. Microwave. Vacuum cleaner. One I love, and don't consider essential but revel in it's luxuriousness, is my electric blanket!

For instance, today I went and bought a toaster. In between taking Sienna and some classmates to her school soccer game about 15 minutes away, and later returning to watch some games and take them back to school, I drove to Chadstone. On a side note, bad idea if you only want to buy one thing. Full of evil attractive temptations for our little consumerist hearts. Peter Alexander, for instance, warm and foresty window display. Love.

Oh, um, back to the story. We did have a toaster, which was all well and good and fine, but on Sunday morning it sparked and fizzed and shorted out the electrical circuit it is on. Ahem. So, a new toaster.

I got a pretty funky one, I think ;) I had a Myer gift card to use, which I'm glad I hadn't spent on a whim now on some random thing, as I applied it to buying the toaster. A shiny red toaster. Which toasts bread. How exciting! And funny, too, that toasting bread can be done in all sorts of other ways, yet we consider a toaster to be an essential appliance. Rather than, say, a fire and a stick. Or a frypan or whatever. It's essential to our daily routine. An essential everyday luxury. But it's a nice toaster, it looks vibrant on my boring kitchen bench, and I'm grateful for that too. If something is "necessary" it is nice if it is also aesthetically pleasing in some way. Ooh, pretty!

Also, pumpkin scones are really nice. I made some this afternoon, which I haven't done in a long time, and they were tasty. Everyone enjoyed them, the kids, the friends they had over playing, Ben, me, my friend. It reminded me to bake more with pumpkin, which also happily suits my no-sugar challenge :)

I am blogging grateful posts for the 21 challenge, raising awareness and funds for Australia's homeless youth. With a couple of days to go, I am at 83% of my goal - thank you! Only $50 to go until I meet my target of raising $300 for Open Family Australia :)
 

If you would like to sponsor me or donate to the challenge, please click here.

Day 16 - Possibility

After my post the other day it should come as no surprise that I am grateful also for possibilities!

Dreams and ideas are rooted in possibility, after all, and I have reams of those. Something that I took from Flora Bowley's Bloom True workshop last weekend - now that I've let it filter through my mind for a few days - is a celebration of possibility. Layers of paint are created semi-randomly, with a variety of marks and colours added without specific intention, with the faith that possibilities will evolve out of such intuitive creativity.

In some ways the process was less intuitive than my usual approach to painting, which is similarly without intention but with rather less method, LOL, but in other ways it was a process of more faith and acceptance. It also was a bit more of a journey, with these two 30"x30" canvases being produced over two and a half days. I would normally work a bit faster than that. But I'm good with taking my time, it was quite a nice approach, less judgemental of what is happening on the canvas.

And when it comes to ideas and plans and dreams, whether they're for travel, hobbies, household renovations or new habits around the house, possibility gives them power. Possible, rather than not, means that something is key - actions we might take ourselves, or time, or happenstance - but our dreams have life. And if you feel a lack of possibility present in your life, then it may just be time to follow your dreams and ideas somewhere new. Anything can happen. Taking chances has a power of it's own.

On a side note, the "no sugar" part of my 21-day challenge is going well. I am using Sarah Wilson's ebook as a guide and feeling quite content about it all. Possibly because I didn't eat all that much sugar or fruit before. In any case, it's all fine :)

I am blogging grateful posts for the 21 challenge, raising awareness and funds for Australia's homeless youth.

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Day 15 - Imagination

Today I am grateful for playing, dreaming, creating things, inventions, make believe and pretend.... My favourite things about childhood, and my favourite things to observe (and hopefully facilitate) in my own kids.

This layout I did for the 'White Space' design challenge over at Aussie Scrap Source. It's a reader challenge, too, so you can also participate for the chance to win some goodies! Click over to the blog to have a look...

Today we are going to the Melbourne Museum to learn about The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia, since the kids have a curriculum day at school while the teachers write reports and whatnot. We're going to have dinner out afterwards, which will be nice, and may even help us avoid the appalling Friday night traffic in the city. Or it might not, hehe. I was going to take us all on the train, but worked out that it will cost DOUBLE what parking at the Museum will cost us (as members). So we shall drive forth!

It's noon now and we are about to head out. Hence the early-in-the-day post :) Have a great weekend everyone!

Day 14 - Far off friends

I had another thought in mind for today's grateful post, but when I read my friend Sylvia's blog post this afternoon, I changed my mind. I got a bit teary and felt rather emotional, actually. In a nice way though :)

For the record, I have soft and silky Boo curled up on my lap again ;) Lately I've been getting tradies around to quote for me on a couple of different things, mainly a fencing project, but also getting a replacement front door hung (our house can be a bit odd shaped and I don't have the right tools). Today's handyman person is also quoting me a rough figure on converting our carport into a self-contained / enclosed garage. It would be a studio, but technically could be a garage too. It's all theoretical, of course.



The fencing will happen soon, and I've booked in the door for next week, but all the other stuff I am thinking about (including painting, bathroom changes, kitchen cabinet doors, a chook shed, new roof and gutters, attic ladder / flooring) are all more long-term plans and ideas. At the same time as juggling detailed budgets, I try and allow enough room for interesting outings for the kids, tasty food, enough art supplies to keep us all happy. And I try and incorporate enough saving plans to make another trip to Europe, to visit my lovely friend Sylvia and her family too, possible.

I've been adding research to the quoting and plans and things. It's frustrating and exciting at the same time. It's weird, too, that I feel uncomfortable with skype and phone calls, for some reason it makes me feel anxious to have someone looking at me, or it's pressure or something. Anyway, sometimes I don't feel like I do justice externally to the feelings I have inside. Well, sometimes I know for certain that I don't.

But I'm grateful to have a lovely, genuine connection with far off friends.

Oh, and if anyone knows a way I could do some photo sessions, workshops or so on in France or Germany, do let me know ;) A bit of wishful thinking never hurts!

I am blogging grateful posts for the 21 challenge, raising awareness and funds for Australia's homeless youth.

If you would like to sponsor me or donate to the challenge, please click here.

Day 13 - Cats

Today I'm a bit tired from rearranging storage in my bedroom all day. We have a quite small house and our bedroom is actually the biggest room, but as it also houses all my art, sewing, scrapbooking, photography supplies, gorgeous and colourful stock for Curious Bazaar and The Outback Pride Corner Store, bags full of stuff to sell on ebay, clothes the kids don't yet fit into, the linen cupboard, the kids computer, my desk, various household storage (like inflatable mattresses, spare pillows), video games and so on, you get the problem.

It's fine, it just takes creative rearrangement on a pretty regular basis. Deciding to keep the big suitcase under the house, and the carry-on one under the bed. My cello stays, hidden in a raised corner behind the door, and boxes of books and magazines go under the house with the suitcase. The fan goes, and other stuff mostly just gets shifted around to use up every bit of space. Between my Ikea step stool and the wooden chairs I have in front of the two desks in there, I can reach everything in the room, if need be, which is the main thing!

In any case, I'm sitting on our red velvet couch in our little lounge room, with our ginger long-haired cat Boo stretch across my lap. Neko, the glossy black short-haired cat with a slightly stumpy tail, is curled up to my right. I don't have any time for the cats during the day (mostly because they like people sitting still on the couch) but in the evenings, they are soft and stretch out. Their relaxation is almost infectious. I do like having them around.

And I almost forgot to blog tonight. But I didn't. So that is also something to be grateful for.


I am blogging grateful posts for the 21 challenge, raising awareness and funds for Australia's homeless youth.

If you would like to sponsor me or donate to the challenge, please click here.

Day 12 - Pumpkin

This evening it was almost 5 before I decided what to make for dinner... wondering what vegetarian meal I can come up with that didn't involve pasta. Sienna had requested Italian Meatballs (like she had in a cafe in Belgrave, so I'm setting myself up for failure there, lol) but that will have to wait until I can get to the butcher to buy some mince...

So, we mostly had zucchini, onions, pumpkin. Um, in the garden we have thyme, native thyme, sage, rosemary. I did a bit of searching and found a tasty recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on the BBC website and ended up making Pumpkin risotto with crispy sage. Yum!

I love pumpkin. I usually buy butternut pumpkin, and roast it or use it in pasta sometimes. It always feels like it suits Autumn - pumpkin, chestnuts, warm tones. I think I might grow a pumpkin patch. Today I am grateful for the ability to choose and buy vegetables. I'm grateful for the tasty pumpkin that was in our dinner :) I'm also grateful to have naturally sweet vegies for the 'giving up sugar' part of this challenge I'm doing!

I am blogging grateful posts for the 21 challenge, raising awareness and funds for Australia's homeless youth.

If you would like to sponsor me or donate to the challenge, please click here.

Day 11 - A pretty smell

This morning I felt grateful for the pretty smell of my orange shower gel. It just adds something extra nice, enjoying a lovely scent in the morning. Something simple.

The photo above is of apples, not oranges, but it's still pretty ;) I took the photo at Reedy Creek, at Ben's folks place. Cedar had a lot of fun in that tyre swing while we were there, back in March.

Mike and Gayle were also featured on ABC Landline again this week, talking about Outback Pride and in particular how big-name chefs are taking native produce on board and are really excited about it. Check it out here.

I am blogging grateful posts for the 21 challenge, raising awareness and funds for Australia's homeless youth.

If you would like to sponsor me or donate to the challenge, please click here.

Day 8 - Committing

Today I'm grateful for committing. Not committing me, to some sort of institution - shut up, dad ;) - but me committing to stuff. In advance. Optimistically.

Today, for instance, is the first day of a three day workshop I'm attending with Flora Bowley... it was by some quirk of blog-hopping that I came across her artwork and read that she was doing a Melbourne workshop at the same time as discovering her work. On a whim, emailed to find out details, found out that it was booked out. A couple of months later was emailed that a spot had opened up, thought it sounded, and booked in. Just said yes, la de da, no problems.

Over the past week or so started gathering the supplies, bits and pieces that I need for the workshop. Making plans, stuff stuff stuff. Then in the last few days starting quietly stressing out about showing up to a room of strangers and channelling creativity and whatnot. I've done it before, it's not an unknown thing, it's more that I call upon a degree of self-possession in these situations, and it doesn't at all come naturally.

BUT I am grateful that I commit to this stuff, just say yes, confirm, whatnot, without even entertaining this process of anxiety that I go through, even though I know it happens every time. Pretty much every time I know I will be meeting someone new. But, you know, I commit and then I have something to live up to. So that's a good start.



I am blogging grateful posts for the 21 challenge, raising awareness and funds for Australia's homeless youth.

If you would like to sponsor me or donate to the challenge, please click here.

Day 7 - Making Food

Yesterday I made up a new recipe for Season with Saltbush, which I will upload soon. And I thought, I am grateful for these fresh vegetables to cook with. Herbs and spices to season and flavour with. A reckless disregard for recipes that leads to interesting discoveries ;) My naturopath's advice to avoid certain vegetables while embracing others. At the end of the day, these are beautiful luxuries. I didn't grow these plants, though I could have (and vegie gardens are part of my lovely plans for the yard).
I didn't need to. Which is pretty great.

That said, I do really want to add the vegie garden to my plan of action this year! I've had fencing quotes coming in to enclose our yard properly, and to add an enclosure for chooks too. Won't that be fun, and a shade more self-sufficient :)


I am blogging grateful posts for the 21 challenge, raising awareness and funds for Australia's homeless youth.

If you would like to sponsor me or donate to the challenge, please click here.

Day 6 - Escapism

Chick lit. Romantic comedies, in book form. While I appreciate and enjoy a good literary novel now and then, today I am grateful for escapism. Primarily in book form, this week at least, though movies are good too :) Perfect for, well, escaping, funnily enough. Time out from reality in general, absorbed in the unrealistic yet fun shenanigans of an old Jill Mansell novel.

It also qualifies as managing to achieve some sort of light-hearted "me-time" (though that phrase makes me twitch a bit, LOL), while still capable of stopping periodically to make sandwiches, change nappies and answer kiddy questions. This rewrite of Pride and Prejudice by Melissa Nathan, 'Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field', is one of my faves of the escapist fun genre. Quite funny and gooey at the same time - there is a Mr Darcy character, after all, so the ending has to make you feel squishy inside. If not, this genre is not the right kind of escapism for you ;)

I am blogging grateful posts for the 21 challenge, raising awareness and funds for Australia's homeless youth.

If you would like to sponsor me or donate to the challenge, please click here.

Day 5 - Warmth

Ooh it's been chilly today, and yesterday too. I had a nice hot shower to ward off the chills, and we've had the ducted heater going all day. When our heater has been broken we still have an open fire to use in the cold weather, which has its own lovely charm. Cedar has a virus again, nothing serious, but he's been tired so we stayed around home this week so far. I'm grateful for the warmth we've been able to enjoy, despite the Winter temps.

A local blog reader sent me an email a couple of days ago, and let me know that there was a young homeless couple staying nearby in a cubby house. Which is awful, especially on such cold nights as these. Apparently there were people making a particular effort to help, so hopefully they'll be sleeping somewhere warmer tonight.

I did this painting (above) about 14 years ago, just after moving to Melbourne from Adelaide. The colours seem particularly cosy to me.

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I am blogging grateful posts for the 21 challenge, raising awareness and funds for Australia's homeless youth.

If you would like to sponsor me or donate to the challenge, please click here.