emma_in_dream

Had a hideous day yesterday. Not enough sleep the night before, then nowhere to go in the hideous heat on a public holiday so stuck at home with the cranky kids.

I was stuck at the bottom of the Mazlo hierarchy of needs, so tired that I literally kept nodding my head down and then jerking back from the micro-sleeps. I was just above the need for oxygen, water and not having a bullet in the head.

Ruby just went off in the evening - not sure what went wrong (except that I was tired and in a terrible mood) but two and a half hours of screaming when she was held, screaming when she was not held and screaming when she was patted. Jesus.

Absolutely rotten parenting on my behalf, dealing with it with anger and resentment. Poor Pearl also unable to sleep in her new room next to the banshee.

Have yet to decide if it is a good idea to have them in together. Pearl calms down if I sit in the room with her quietly; if I do that Ruby gets excited. Very bad combination.

All the books on decluttering talk of the feeling of satisfaction in clearing things away, but frankly I just feel exhausted and unsure.

Although this work was first published in the twentieth century, I am sneaking it in as it began its life as an illustrated letter sent to a sick child in the 1890s.

As is well known, Potter lived a life of extreme isolation. Her parents’ ideas of what a middle class girl should do precluded pretty much every human activity, except, as it turned out, keeping small pets and doing watercolour illustrations of them. So she obsessively studied animals (including dissecting them and reconstructing their bodies - which her parents did not know about) and practised drawing.

Which I suppose is all to the good for the world because eventually it occurred to her that her little tales could be printed. She paid for the first edition herself and then it was picked up and she became a publishing phenomenon.

The nicest thing about the Peter Rabbit books is, I think, that they are deliberately designed to be small enough to be held by a small child. This fits with her aesthetic which includes many extreme close ups done in miniature.

The illustrations are, of course, fabulous and, I believe, reliable best sellers in postcard form at the Tate. They show anatomical exactness and plausible animal behaviour, while being in a fantasy world. The moment when Peter loses his shoes and runs on all fours and goes faster is an example of the merging of the two worlds.

The prose is also great, with only a spare sentence or two on each page. Her style echoes the James version Bible, especially her fondness for semi-colons.

Potter does not talk down at all. There is a death joke on third page. And the vocabulary is great. I love the sparrows who implore him to exert himself.

I was wondering if there is someone who could come by next Saturday (21st January) to help with moving some furniture upstairs?

*Artisanat* and *Fred_mouse* helped me rearrange the downstairs and now it is beautiful! The upstairs so desperately needs to be done now. (Thank you so very much - there is so much space that the kids ran around squealing with excitement.)

I have made a list of what needs to be done and will check the measurements again tomorrow.

I feel that my whole life is in a state of suspension until it is done.

I read 279 books last year, 140 for the first time, the rest rereads. As usual they were mostly novels and non fiction with a smattering of poetry and art books and art and parenting magazines.

4 from 1810s, 1 from 1840s, 5 from 1850s, 1 from 1860s, 1 from 1880s, 3 from 1890s, 2 from 1900s, 1 from 1910s, 10 from 1920s, 14 from 1930s, 7 from 1940s, 4 from 1950s, 3 from 1960s, 2 from 1970s, 11 from 1980s, 109 from 2000s, and 61 from 2010s, plus an outlier from 380.

This is the same pattern as usual - a few from the nineteenth century, quite a lot from the 1920s and 30s, then a big dip with very little from the next few decades, and then a big rise starting in the 1990s, with most from the 2000s and 2010s.

I am fascinated that I read so little from the mid-century. I get that there was little publishing in the 1940s because of the war but I wonder why I like so little from the 1950s, 60s and 70s? Can think of very few authors who I really like who were active in that period - only Rosemary Sutcliff really.

I am feeling very tired at the moment, perhaps because between them Pearl and Ruby had me up from nine til one and then four til four thirty last night.

Perhaps because I am in the middle of a major change to my life. I have decided that this home reorganisation is as important to me as moving house - it is the equivalent in my mind.

As soon as I get the TV cabinet out of the lounge, I will be able to begin the fun, actually cleaning up part of things. So far I have made more and more mess and cannot begin to clear it away.

After that, I need to organise getting a water-proof shed (and arranging a concrete base for it to sit on).

Then the upstairs part needs to be done too - I just really want to have it completed. I find this waiting for step by step so frustrating.

I have decided that I have to focus on the positive of staying here. I get to work fewer hours and spend more time with my kids, which is what I want. I am lucky that I am not locked into a large mortgage on some McMansion. (Though, you know, my house is about a quarter of the size that the ABS says is average, so it could be doubled and still not be a McMansion.)

So, advantages of decluttering:

1, It will make my house seem larger.
2, It will hand on things I don't want to charity.
3, I have made nearly $80 selling things I don't want on Ebay. Hooray! (Though I have also spent $113 on baskets to store things in, so not cost neutral yet.)
4, The kids will have more room for playing.
5, I get to spend more time with the kids.
6, We get to keep living close to my parents.

2.43 Narelle McRobbie, Who's that Jumbum in the Log? (1996), illustrated by Grace Fielding

It's a Magabala Book, so you know it will be a good quality picture book. It is the story of a witchetty grub who has to move out of her log and find a new home.

I thought, frankly, my daughter might be a bit put off by the illustrations of the two central characters (both puffy white grubs) but she liked the book.

The book was written by Narelle McRobbie, who is of Pacific Island and Aboriginal descent and grew up in far north Queensland. It was illustrated by Grace Fielding who grew up at the Wandering Mission in Western Australia and whose artwork combines traditional dot art with contemporary images.

I was wondering if someone could come by my house on Sunday, late in the day, for a visit and to help me move out a desk and a TV cabinet ready for Anglicare to pick up on Monday morning while I am at work?

I am desperate to get this out of my house...

Good Sammies won't take it! Does anyone want a TV cabinet? If not, I may actually have to bin a perfectly good cabinet.

Can someone work me through the steps of copying an image from Facebook onto a CD so I can take it away to print? I keep just getting copies of the address on the CD.

Spoilers.

( Read more... )

So, part of my decluttering involves getting rid of the TV and TV cabinet because they take up too much space. (It was that or get rid of the couch.)

But I will still need to be able to play DVDs - can play region 4 ones on my laptop but I will need another laptop to set to region 1 to play American DVDs. (Seriously, why is it a feature that you can't play DVDs as you choose? Maybe that's OK in American where most things are released in a compatible form but it really sucks for the rest of us.)

Anyway, does anyone have advice on where to get a cheap, second hand laptop. It literally needs to do no word processing, no anything other than allow me to watch DVDs on occasion.

I am about half way through the reorganisation of the downstairs part of the house. Frankly it looks much worse at the moment. I can not wait til it is all done because I had a melt down on Thursday when I just sat there ranting about the squalor and the mess.

I have weeded about 400 books. This has freed up the nicest and largest bookcase to be used for toy storage. Which it can be once the table is moved. Which it will be once the TV cabinet and TV are removed. (If you want a TV or TV cabinet, please come over and take one. Otherwise, assuming no one makes an Ebay offer, I am going to try to get the Good Sammies to take it next week).

Then the desk can also be removed and the available floor space should expand to several square metres.

Once all this is done I will have the mental energy to begin the more difficult parts - organising a loan so I can get a swish, waterproof shed to store my craft stuff (which will open up a gap which I hope will fit a deep freeze) and then doing the unbelievable amount of work which will be involved in swapping bedrooms.

I think the steps will be:

1, move all the books out of my bookcases and carry them downstairs (ie. about 1500 books).
2, move the bookcases into the bathroom (though, now I think of it, nine bookcases are not going to fit in the bathroom so I am going to have to take them downstairs too and this may mean disassembling them as they went up in Ikea kits).
3, dismantle my bed and move it downstairs, and have it taken away because it will not fit in the smaller room.
4, dismantle Pearl's bed and move it into my room.
5, put her bed back up and move Ruby's cot parallel to it.
6, swap the clothes between our storage units.
7, move Pearl and Ruby's bookcase and books.
8, buy a new single (possibly lofted) bed and take it upstairs and assemble it.
9, rearrange the furniture in Pearl's room, including throwing out the hideous storage unit with Ruby's clothes in it.
10, move the bookcases out of the bathroom.
11, all the books will then have to come upstairs.

Just thinking about this makes me want to weep. I can see no way to do it in a day and to do half and stop is a recipe for Pearl to have a meltdown. She needs to be presented with a done deed. She is thingy enough about the downstairs being rearranged.

Perhaps the best way to do it is to have the kids spend the night at Nanna and Pop's (and me too) and I can work on it for all of two days.

Must go now as a naked girl is telling me that her bed needs changing after rest time.

*The Tale of Peter Rabbit* is the first book of the year.

And, if you fancy a little rift on this, try *The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Tank Killer*: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hawk914/2159973655/#/

I enjoyed Yuletide enormously - it was the first thing I'd written since Pearl was born.

Anyway, I was asked for a serious work set in fifteenth-century Italy, perhaps featuring an artist. And I produced a romp about Lucrezia Borgia styled after Bridget Jones. I found it incredibly hard to exaggerate her life comically as it was basically one long stream of exaggeration (though often not of the comical sort).

http://archiveofourown.org/works/295617

Anyone interested in a copy?

Frontier Wolf - http://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2011/works/296513

Vorkosigan saga - A Fine and Private Place - http://archiveofourown.org/works/294074/chapters/470439?show_comments=true#comment_505165

Bagthorpe sage - Bagthorpes v Zombies - http://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2011/works/297348

Misfits - Fucking with Destiny - http://archiveofourown.org/works/301580?collection_id=yuletide2011&view_adult=true

Singin' in the Rain - Tea for Three - http://archiveofourown.org/works/301580?collection_id=yuletide2011&view_adult=true

I was going to write a great big post about my plans for 2012 but I am currently too tired and grumpy to manage. Ruby was up at 15 minute intervals from 8:00 til 1:00 last night. Nappy need changing? Changed. Bed need remaking? Done. Hungry? Fed. Thirsty? Given water. In pain? Gave her panadol. Why? Why? Why?

Anyway, my big plans are as follows.

We are not moving to a bigger house!

I investigated and decided that the time away from the kids involved in working 3 or 4 days a week (necessary for a loan) is not worth it. I would rather be with them, so I will keep working 2 days per week.

So, to achieve this I have been decluttering. I've taken about 4 loads of stuff to the charity bins, put some stuff up on Ebay, and binned quite a bit. I've got two boxes to go to the second hand book shop, one to go to the second hand shop at the university when it reopens, and one to be donated to the university library.

I still have the space under the stairs to go through. Feel quite pleased with the progress.

I am going to make major changes to the lounge. I've decided the desk will have to go (will put the computer on the table) and the TV and its cabinet will have to go as well. It was that or the couch.

Eventually I am going to swap around the rooms upstairs so Ruby and Pearl share the big room I am currently in (with Ruby). I will have to get a single bed, possibly lofted, to fit into the little room.

Also, I am going to see if I can get a loan to fix some things up around the house. (And they did really want to give me a bigger home loan so surely they'll agree to this.) The broken screen door can be fixed, the upstairs cold water tap reground, the drain replaced, the reticulation fixed.

Am feeling very positive about this.

I would rather live with less money and space and more time with the kids.

Does anyone know how to end an Ebay sale?

Am taking them to the second hand store on Sunday, so let me know if you want anything.

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emma_in_dream

January 2012

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Recent Entries

Sleep

Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901 but first written out in 1893)

Bigger Help

2011 Books

Plans

2.43 Narelle McRobbie, Who's that Jumbum in the Log? (1996)

Little Help?

Ikea TV cabinet

Facebook

BBC's A Scandal in Belgravia

Cheap Laptop

Reorganisation

Beatrix Potter

Yuletide

Norah of Billabong

And the fabulous Yuletide fic for me...

Yuletide Recs

Big Plans, No Words

Ebay

All the books must go!