Sporadic

I’m not dead. Just in case you were wondering. I think I just have to come to terms with the fact that I’m not a regular updater at the moment and stop using this blog, or the lack thereof, as yet another rod with which to beat myself.

I feel like I don’t always have a lot to say and there’s a lot of things I want to say but can’t in a (vaguely) public forum and lots of things I could say but it’d be incredibly dull. And things happen so quickly, there’s no space for me to write about it all.

So, a quick place holder post, like a bookmark in my life.

We’re still settling in. Winter has arrived on the Gold Coast. I’ve scoffed a bit – most of the time it feels a bit like autumn back in London – but after it dropped down to about 5 degrees the other night we finally caved in and (I hang my head in shame at the confession) bought a heater. It was a bit much to find ourselves having to wear jumpers, woolly socks, shawls and duvets just to be able to sit in our lounge in the evening.

But hey, at least I feel justified for the insane amount of sock wool I brought with me from England now.

I bought a sewing machine for 99 bucks at the pawn shop. It’s very loud and I don’t like it much but it’ll do for now. I busted it out to make the kids some gigantic cushion covers over the weekend. It was nice to be back behind the needle. Nicer to be making something I actually wanted to make rather than an endless procession of things I had to. And the kids were actually really appreciative. They’ve been wrestling on them which is the highest compliment one can be paid.

We’ve had three birthdays, a lost tooth, a broken arm, many tantrums.

We’ve made new friends and lost friends, bought new toys and lost toys, gone on trips to the sea and lots of bike rides.

We’ve  begun football lessons, trampolining, various obsessions with books and tv shows. Discovered the joy of the garage sale, built our first diorama, had picnics, twirled rainbow umbrellas, waged backyard water battles, made endless trips to the local library, started a burgeoning love affair with cross stitch and scraped numerous appendages, all in the first half of the year.

I’ve written the first draft of the first chapter of my thesis, gotten a few more rejection slips for my novel, entered a writing competition (skip to the end: I didn’t even make the long list but I did get lovely feedback which was the main reason for entering), spent a lot of time shouting at my computer screen about politics, and almost finished a new short story. I haven’t slept much.

It’s been busy. The second half of the year will only be more so. I’ve got three kids and a thesis to finish. I can’t promise to post more often. I can’t promise to post at all. Some days it’s as much as I can do to just live it all, let alone record it all. So, every so often, a bookmark. A little reminder. This is where you’re up to, what you’ve been up to, this is where you are.