Summary of the last quarter

It’s been a while since I last wrote, but there are reasons for that. My latest adventure is a little more close-to-home: I’m pregnant! Woo hoo! So I’ve decided to detail the comings and goings of that from now, seeing as I’m not actually travelling anywhere in particular as a result. Once again, all entries are back-logged, but that’s got more to do with the cutting and pasting from the journal in my word processor than anything else. Photos will still be available from links on this site, complete with short commentaries. To summarise the last few months:

August 2007

Building work had finally started on the new house. Took a drive to Yanchep National Park. Realised I was pregnant. Chris went away to Melbourne for a bit while I alternately puked and curled up in a ball on the couch and slept for a couple of weeks. I got a job until the end of the year at a school near Chris’ work place and where we’re building the new house. Thought I miscarried. Took a drive down to Denmark to get away from it all for a bit.

September 2007

Continued bleeding throughout the first few weeks. Finally went to a GP to get tests done. Test results still indicated a viable embryo. Marg came back from Melbourne for a visit. Emma and I met her for tea at the Stage Door. The menu had changed and the food was not as good as it used to be. Not happy. Tammy went down south for a bit, so Chris and I drove down on one of our day trips to visit her in her caravan. It was nice.

October 2007

Chris went away again for a couple of weeks. I was, once again, sick as a dog, nauseous, tired, sleepy, and basically wasted the two weeks of the third term holiday just crying and sleeping. When Chris came back he was sick as a dog. And was supposed to go away on business again but didn’t because he was so ill.

November 2007

Went walking on the Bibbulmun again. Got ultrasound results back. Results were quite overwhelming. Could see her little bones and fingers and toes. Did another round on the Bibbulmun. Nothing different there. Nice bushes, lots of flies, same old same old. Was busy with wrapping up school stuff. Reports and the like. Felt her moving for the first time. Was pretty cool.

December 2007
Told parents about the pregnancy over the phone. Didn’t go down well at all. Andrew came to visit. Had another ultrasound. Was pretty amazing stuff. Saw her in 3D, but she looked like an alien. Found out she was a she. Picked out a name. Went home for Christmas. Had confrontation with mum about being pregnant but not married. Stayed at Eugene and Caroline’s. Hung out with the girls a lot. Chris arrived and we had a really, really nice Christmas eve dinner at Caroline’s. Parents boycotted Christmas eve dinner. Spent Christmas with Chris’ family. Rupert, Edna and Anthony joined in. Was good. Beginning to look and feel more pregnant. Chris and I took another one of our insane drives on Boxing day and ended up god only knows where. But had a good time. Check out photos. Celebrated Thomas and Aiden’s first birthday at David and Jane’s. Was good fun too. Starting to get really, clucky, especially since I’m hanging out with Dré a lot too. New Year’s Eve was spent having a nice Yum Cha, then Chris and I drove to the Yarra Valley Dam before heading back to Mt Eliza to sleep off the day. And slept right through the count down into the new year. Ah well. A good omen perhaps?

12/08/07: Wave Rock

Maybe it’s going to end up being a bit of a signature thing for the two of us, but today, we’d slept in (so most of the morning was already gone) and after a nice leisurely breakfast, I said to Chris ‘let’s drive somewhere!’. But where? ‘we’ll toss a die!’ said I. And? He asked. Well, if it’s 1 or 2, we go north. If it’s 3 or 4, we head east. If it’s 5 or 6, we’ll go south. It was 3. So we packed our picnic, and drove east. And we drove. And we drove. And we drove. And… oh yeah. We just kept on driving. Five hours later – not kidding, not exaggerating, not lying – we found Wave Rock.

Sure, the sun had already set and the mozzies were out and we were freezing and the puppies had to be fed so we couldn’t very well just spend the night and we still had a five hour drive to get home; but you just can’t put a price on experience can you?

We’d come all the way out here, we were damned well going to have our picnic on Wave Rock. So we quickly climbed up, had our very quick picnic, and had to get back to the car before it was too dark to see anything at all. All in all, it was a 10 hour car drive for a 40 minute stint at a nice place we didn’t really get to see. If we didn’t laugh we’d cry.

Job well done Tania and Chris!

09/08/07: Golden Valley Tree Park

Chris was still on holidays, and this morning, I had a job interview at a high school near where we’re building the new house. So he drove me to the interview, which went well, and we went home feeling not much like doing any work.

So Chris and I, being Chris and I, hopped into the car and just drove. And we ended up at the Golden Valley Tree Park. Never had a clue it even existed. It was literally one of those ‘turn down here and let’s see where this road goes’ finds. There was no one there but us, and the weather was absolutely miserable.

We’d packed our usual picnic (crackers, salami, kabana, brie, sun-dried tomatoes, dip and drinks) and went for a walk through the park afterwards. It was sweet. Nothing particularly special as a park, but certainly a nice place to go to for a picnic and stuff.

Maybe 3 stars our of 5 I’d say.

05/08/07: Bibbulmun Track 1

It’s only been a couple of days since I got home, but I’d been feeling a little lost. Not quite knowing what to think or do. Chris and I had decided a long time ago that we’d like to do the Bibbulmun Track, and while I was gone, he’d gone out and bought the maps. So today, we decided to take the puppies out and start from the beginning, and slowly work our way down one little tiny bit at a time.

The Bibbulmun Track is a walking trail that stretches from Kalamunda in the Perth Hills all the way down to Albany in the south coast of WA. It stretches over 1000km and covers easy to difficult bush tracks.

There’s also a bike track, but it’s not completed yet. The weather was absolutely divine for walking, and the puppies were very excited. We’d planned to walk from the first car park to the next, but Chris was so stressed out about the dogs being in a national park that he just didn’t look like he was enjoying himself at all. Everyone we passed were quite happy to see the dogs, who were very well behaved the entire way. Eventually, we turned back before getting to the next car park and found a nice little spot for a picnic (the dogs even had their own bones) outside the park boundaries.

It was actually just what I needed at this point in time because I’d missed the Australian bush. The wildflowers were just starting to come out and the sky was blue and the air was fresh and the birds were singing and all was well with the world. It was nice to be home.

02/08/07: Home Sweet Home

And so it ends. Rem and I had organized to meet after breakfast and get to Gatwick together. Always safer to travel together when you’ve got luggage and stuff. Oh my god it was horrendous. We had no idea how heavy my two suitcases were. He was good enough to drag one of them for me as I struggled with the other. And we made it to Euston Station eventually. Thanks to the fact that London’s so bloody old, they’ve always got something needing to be fixed. And of course, in our case, it was the lines. Which meant significant delays. And so we’d somehow managed to lug my ridiculously heavy cases down the five flights of stairs or something stupid, only to wait in the heat underground.

Both of us were becoming more acutely aware of the time, and eventually I said to Rem ‘Look, I’ll split the fare of a taxi with you’. So we lugged the stuff all the way back up again. All this taking heaps of time of course. Found a taxi on the road and he drove us to Victoria station. It was only a short trip, but by the end of it, we knew all about his wonderfully smart grandson who got a scholarship to New York to study fashion design; his smart grandson’s beautiful girlfriend who’s sad to see him go; his poor dead wife; and the fact that he’s now dating his sister-in-law because his brother married his wife’s sister or something like that; and the fact that he’s planning on taking her out that very day to shop for a new nightie because he’s taking her away for a holiday and so on and so forth.

Anyway. We eventually got to the station and still had to catch another train to the airport. Thankfully, you can buy your tickets on the train and the trip was relatively uneventful. Rem and I discussed the many merits and demerits of living in London. Rem’s extended family comes from Tokyo, so big cities aren’t exactly novel to him. Meanwhile, we make it to the airport in one piece. And of course, they’re doing massive renovations, so the two of us were dragging my heavy-beyond-imagination trolley bags around the detours which involved walking through one, then another car park, and probably even the runway of this airport. It’s freezing, one of the stoppers had snapped of the bottom of my trolley case, my palms were starting to blister (seriously – I’m not just writing out of my arse here), Rem was being an angel not complaining at all. Eventually we get to a fork in the road (literally) and had to go our separate ways.

I take my two cases and my lap top bag and my handbag to the counter. The lady looks at me like I’m nuts and proceeds to tell me that I’ve got the equivalent of two people’s overloaded luggage and there’s no way they’re going to let me on the plane. I’m about to start crying. It was so traumatic I think I’ve gone and pushed it right to the very back of my mind.

To cut a long story short, there was a baggage shipment place at the end of the airport. I took all my stuff there, shoved a whole heap of disposables into a bin, packed the rest into a box, dumped one suitcase and went back to the counter about two hours later with less weight in my bag than a sack of potatoes. The lady was impressed. I was quite fortunate really because the baggage company was actually the same baggage company that was shipping my bike home. And they hadn’t shipped the bike yet – it was still in the dock. So they just pulled up my records and added and extra box to my shipment for a smaller cost than it would have been had I shipped them separately. Still. A lot of money had been spent unnecessarily, and I was not happy. But by this time, all I wanted to do was get home.

And I knew that with an attitude like that, there was no way that it was going to be an easy trip. And it wasn’t.

The entire journey to Dubai, some baby was wailing two rows in front of me. The only time it stopped was when it got too tired to cry any more. Surely that’s not actually possible? What on earth could be wrong with the baby to make it cry like that? To make matters worse, I was sitting next to Dumb and Dumber. It was horrendous. I’d never felt like such a snob in my life, but good god they were common! I tried ignoring them but they kept trying to talk to me. I think I ignored them to the point where it was beyond rude (is it rude to put your headphones on with nothing playing when someone’s trying to talk to you?). But what the hell. I was tired, I had sore feet and sore hands, I was poor beyond measure, I wanted to go home and I was not in the mood to lament over the fact that there was no lifeguard at that particular family’s gene pool. Clearly, I wasn’t the only person who felt that way, because I forgot all decorum and pushed and bolted my way out of that plane as soon as it landed with the one intention of getting away from the mother and daughter’s incessant and unbelievably inane prattle. As luck would have it, when I finally made it to the queue to check in at Dubai, who were right behind me? Kath and Kim. I couldn’t believe it. Talk about the gods being cruel. When we got to the waiting room, I sat down and started journaling on my laptop. An older couple sat down next to me and looked up as the mother and daughter pair walked through the clear glass door. ‘Ugh! Look!’ said the wife to the husband. My ears pricked up and I glanced up without moving my head, my fingers still moving over the keys. ‘There goes Twiddledee and Twiddledum’. The husband chuckled and I couldn’t help grinning. Looks like they’ve made a bit of a name for themselves. Thankfully, I didn’t end up sitting next to them on the next leg of the trip. I managed to sleep and got to Perth in one piece.

It was all over.

01/08/07: The Lion King, Around London II and The 39 Steps

Wow. What a day. I’d walked out the last exam for this summer program and onto Suffolk Street thinking ‘Now what?’. I was actually quite lost. I’d bought a ticket home for tomorrow. In less than 24 hours, I was out of here. How does one go about spending their last day in London? Personally, I went walking back to my dorm room for a nap and a wee cry. As soon as I lay down on the bed, I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I just wasn’t going to fall asleep. So I may as well make the most of my last day there. I had half an hour. I knew that The Lion King was playing in half an hour. I got changed in a hurry, grabbed my bag and ran all the way to Russell Square Station. By the time I got to the theatre, I was puffed, sweaty, tired as anything (don’t forget this is following several days of late-night study sessions and exam stress), and ready to blow some serious money on a ticket. And my god did they make me pay through the nose. You’d think a matinee would be cheaper. It wasn’t. Mind you, the seat wasn’t too bad. The show though, was somewhat disappointing.

I couldn’t quite say what it was. After Wicked, The Lion King seemed pedestrian to be honest. Maybe it was my already melancholic temperament; maybe it was because I was tired; maybe it was because I was surrounded by kids (every single little girl I saw there was wearing pink – I jest not: the audience looked like it had been snowing fairy floss). But I found the whole thing a little too interpretive – you know, like interpretive dancing? Where people are waving their arms and hands around and you have to guess whether they’re trying to show the audience that they a) feel like a bird trying to break free of this gilded cage; b) feel like the turbulent ocean; c) feel like an octopus in an octopus’ garden in the sea; or d) have pins and needles?

Having seen the movie that many times, the script was unfortunately all too predictable and I knew what was going to happen in the end. Even the songs seemed a little boring. I couldn’t help but feel like I’d wasted my time and money going to see The Lion King. Especially when there were so many other shows on offer in London. Ah well.

By this time, it was 5pm and I’d arranged to meet Steve for one last drink before I leave tomorrow. So met him I did and Steve being Steve, took me around his favourite haunts of London again, just like what he did on my first days here. It felt like something out of an English Lit class: the rounding up, the full circle, the completion of a journey thing. Scary. I took lots of photos, and by the time Steve kissed me goodbye at the station, I was ready to have a bit of a cry. And I probably would have if not for the fact that I’d made plans to meet up with Manish to watch another play that night at 8 – The 39 Steps.

Now this! This was grand. Everyone else had made plans for tonight of course, and this being a last minute plan, Manish and I ended up being the only ones there. He’d managed to get us some brilliant seats, and the theatre was only tiny. And I mean, tiny. There were no aisles, just the seats and the stage. The whole time I was watching this, all I could think of was how much Marg and Em and Tam would have enjoyed this, and even some of the drama kids at school. The play is based on a novel, set pre-war. It takes you from a man’s apartment, to theatres, across England, to Scotland, and then some. And all this, with nothing but a cast of four, some amazing lighting and sound works, great mimes and voice changes. There were minimal props, and basically it was like one of those old radio soaps acted out. Ah it was truly something that had to be seen to be believed. There were scenes where there were about 6 characters on stage but only 3 cast members. It was brilliant. I thoroughly enjoyed every little minute of it.

There was actually a massive booze-up happening at the student accom that night, and several boys were waiting for Manish. But after the show, he and I stopped by HJ’s in Piccadilly Circus (or Burger King as they call it over there) and had a meal and chatted and watched the world go by outside. We talked about everything and anything for absolutely ages. It was strange because we hadn’t been particularly close at all during the last six weeks in London; but I couldn’t have thought of a better way to spend my last night in London.

28/07/07: British Museum IV

Seeing as I’d be leaving in just a few days, Rachel and I decided to meet up one last time. She came down from Cambridge despite being fluey and I walked up and met her at King’s Cross Station. From there, we decided to just take a walk and hang out. We walked for quite a bit and came across some very interesting signs. Like the ‘Goodenough College’ – clearly the school of choice for the working class of London; and the park where the sign read that no one can enter unless accompanied by a child under 12. Which of course meant that we ended up walking to Russell Square and buying our lunch from the Tesco nearby. Don’t get me wrong though. It was actually quite enjoyable. Eventually, we ended up going to the museum and checking out the African section, which I haven’t done yet. To be honest it was a little disappointing. As the country that raped and pillaged the globe in search of artifacts, I would have expected that the Brits would have amassed a more substantial exhibit from the continent that essentially gave birth to civilization. What they had on display seemed to be very recent ‘finds’ and even then, it was more like a contemporary art exhibition. I didn’t take many photos; just some of tribal head-dresses and carvings. I was pretty moved by the guns exhibit, where a few sculptures had been made entirely out of firearms. Of the 70million or so guns in the continent, not one of them has actually been made there apparently. Rachel and I left pretty early because she was ill, and I had to get my study notes ready for my exams. On the way, we stopped by a phone box because I hadn’t done the touristy thing of taking a photo with a phone box yet. I opened the door to step inside so that the photo would show the ridiculous amount of postcard advertisements for prostitutes pasted all over the inside of these boxes, but the stench that emanated from within as soon as I’d opened the door was like a brick wall falling on my head. Gross! The photos show a couple of shots from the front of the National Gallery. These were actually taken on a different day but were just put into this set because there were so few of them.