fashion fades; style is eternal

red sun rises

good morning, sydney.
smell in the air of dirt.
my seedlings and half the potting soil blown away.
dust coats the sidewalk and car (and inside my nose).
bub thinks it's pretty. it is.

some more cool photos here

for a change i'll refrain from hiding all of me from you

do you fall too?
(everytime that I)
yes, I fall.
(everytime that I)
do you want to,
(try to pacify)
fall into me?
(fall into me)
(fall into me)
into me.

we are no one

a little dramatic flare

people just ain't no good

no news from the kidney specialist. i guess i was holding out for something more, because the events of the day have left me tired and weepy.

bun's doctor just said that it's early days to see whether the medicine they're giving him is working and that the blood tests indicate nothing has improved. but he says now is the time when the cyclophosphamide should start to work, so he'll see him in a month to see whether there's any change. until then, same 3 days dialysis, same medication (except cutting down on the prednisone so that bun's insomnia can get better). i guess in the grand scheme of things, this is not a long time. one month more until we check in again and some people have been on dialysis for 20 years. i know, because they talk to me in the dialysis unit. of course.

after the appointment i took bub to the park near the hospital and then we went and visited bun in dialysis. when we left, a grubby old fat man called me a "fucking breeder" and when i told him where he could go he proceeded to hurl abuse at me. honestly, where do these people suppose THEY came from? gah! their poor mothers. while i can understand not wanting to have kids or wishing so many people didn't, it does seem like something you could keep to yourself in the presence of strangers. had to get on a jam-packed bus, fold up the stroller and drop the change on the floor. just like a fucking breeder, eh? then upon getting off the bus, bub chanted the whole way home "where's daddy. i want daddy. i want daddy. i want daddy. now. now. now."

as soon as i got in the door i let the tears i was holding back behind my sunglasses flow. stupid day.

you're not rid of me

oh, pj. i loved you and i love you still. formative heart of my heart, my guide in dark spaces of teenaged boredom and angry early 20's. delightful, phenomenal, tiny little wonder.

check it!



juliette lewis, whom i've admired since her performance in kalifornia, does a super cover in strange days. it's a good movie if you haven't seen it. a little strange and scary, but there you go. it's juliette lewis, what do you expect?

check it!



i could watch interviews with her all day long and i never want to be rid of her

ch-check it out!

i'll make like i'm a little deer grazing among the flowers

needing a holiday is something that has been happening for some months now. taking a holiday isn't. but this weekend, things are going to change. what with the need for bun to go to the hospital downtown 3 days a week, the weekends are really the only time we have for each other and bub. no work. no hospital. mini-holidays, here we go! no doing laundry, no grocery shopping.

first stop - wollemi national park, saturday and sunday. this is the first time we've taken bub camping. she's excited and already planning what to bring (well, right now she is in the bathroom, repeatedly washing her face, brushing her teeth and scrubbing at the sink with a facecloth - i keep asking her if she's okay and she says "yeah, i'm okay! i'm not sick!") obsessive compulsive, yes. sick, no. fine by me. on the list of essentials:

- a big purple ball

when i ask her what else she is going to bring she says "i don't know". i guess it's up to me to sort out the sleeping and eating bit. she's sorted out the game of catch. nice one, bub.

i try hard not to shock you (it's hard not to, with the things i could say)

i don't know why the pet shop boys "so hard" is in my head lately, but - she-ZAM! it's a great song.



see?
and one of the best lines ever:

we've both given up smoking 'cause it's fatal, so whose matches are those?

today we didn't get wet on the picking bub up from daycare adventure on the train and the train and the bus. instead, we forgot our house keys. instead, we had to go get bub on the train, take the train past where we needed to go to connect to another train to get to the dialysis unit at the hospital to pick up house keys from bun. on the way, a man stopped me on the street to ask me what it means when a woman says she "only loves you because you're the father of her kids"? this resulted in much discussion and me trying to be nice while also trying to extricate myself from a potentially long-winded and eventually emotional escapade. apparently they have been married for 22 years. in the end he thanked me for talking and decided to keep walking because it helps clear his head. okay. mobile counseling unit career, here i come. i have been trying to see the tattoo on my forehead that says "TALK TO ME" since my late teens now. no luck. everyone else can see it.

on the way (the first train), the bub decided to take a huge poop in her pants, resulting in the smelliest journey EVER. trying to travel light since the train stations all consist of ten million stairs and NO lifts, i neglected to bring a diaper and wipes from her daycare bag. i had to stop and buy some on the way, resulting in a whole pack of diapers to carry. sigh. sigh. double sigh. stick a needle in my eye. ew, no! don't! i just got carried away with rhyming. it won't happen again.

in the end, we just stayed at the hospital and ate in the cafeteria, since bun only had an hour and a half left and it would have taken as much to get home. 8:30 pm and i'm home. on the plus side, bunhead is down one of his meds (for blood pressure) and we got to go out to a snazzy dinner last night with some highly respected coworkers from canada and the uk who we haven't seen in a while. yay for my brother being in sydney. i'm gonna trade him dinners for babysitting since his apartment only has a hotplate.

looka yonder - a big black cloud come

guess who got to try out bringing bub home on the train and the other train and the bus tonight? bub stayed dry. i got wet. but we made it home while the streets ran like rivers and the day turned dark as night.

tell me why don't we try not to break our hearts and make it so hard for ourselves

it's father's day in australia. i wanted so much for things to be perfect and for the day to be relaxing for bunhead. therefore, i should never, EVER have attempted to make poached eggs. i hate poached eggs. i hate eating them, i hate the way they look like googly eyes and i hate, hate, hate (read "cannot for the life of me") make them. i also hate the woman on youtube who had a video up on how to make them and made it look so easy. screw you, poachy poach woman.

needless to say, i was a stressed-out wreck, swearing at eggs, almost in tears and bun was insisting he didn't even want poached eggs anymore (which, of course, made me more angry). at one point, i believe i wailed "no wonder you don't love me as much anymore - i can't even poach an egg!!" is being pregnant enough of an excuse to be such an emotional idiot?
i managed in the end and bun ate three poached eggs, some homemade cheddar tea biscuits (which bub helped make), smoked salmon and freshly squeezed orange juice, all in his new bath robe!

thank carl things got better after that. we went to bunnings (that's home depot, canadian peeps) and got lots of seeds and plants and stuff for our summer garden. we ripped out all the arugala and lettuces that were going to seed (and ended up with a ginormous bowl of swiss chard and spinach - i'll have to invite popeye for dinner, check out the photos below!) planted in beans and carrots and tomatoes, strawberries, cucumber, peppers, hot peppers, lobelia and more parsley. the coriander is going gangbusters and so is the nasturtium. my beets were bust, though. they didn't do NOTHIN'!

bun grilled rump steak and we had salad and steak and baked potatoes, which was a much bigger success than those damned eggs. now bub is abed and we get to watch prison break (season 4, oh how you give me heart attacks!)

bun and bub, being fatherly and daughterly and a big bowl o' green stuff







but we were never holding back, wishing that time would come to an end

i have felt lately, though, that bun and i are not as close as we were in the beginning. actually, it's more like we're too close and we don't try to impress each other anymore or go out of our way to say and do nice things for each other (oh! wait!! this is called "taking each other for granted, isn't it? how cliché). i'm sure some people would say that this is inevitable after 10 years, but i don't think so. and i think it's something we need to correct. i'm already emotional because of pregnancy and tiredness and generally being stressed out about bun's kidney failure, but it doesn't help when we make it so hard for ourselves.

see? we can be nice.

red ribbons spilt to blue a sight to sore your eyes

one two three four
i declare a life war

past 2 weeks:
bun went into the hospital with a low haemoglobin and came out with acute kidney failure, 13 different prescription medications, two giant tubes leading into his jugular vein, an impending kidney transplant and 3 days a week spent at the hospital on dialysis from now 'til who knows when?

i passed the first trimester with second baby, who i hardly ever think of except when it makes me feel sick.

i need to hire 20 staff in a week to take care of our christmas production.

what's new, pussycat?