two in the bed

last saturday (22^nd october 2011) paul and i re-arranged the kids bedroom while they were spending the day at their grandparents home.  we had primed them prior, so they new they’d be coming home to a change.

what was so important it required a couple of hours of hefting and lifting and fiddling and cleaning?  the answer is ‘new sleeping arrangements’!  tally has outgrown the cot.  the cot does have an additional bit that will stretch it to a small single bed but, as you might remember, percy occupies a double bed all on her ownsome.  not any more she don’t.  now percy and tally sleep across the double bed together. 

that is, when they do actually sleep.  paul very wisely kept the mattress from the cot and stored it under percy’s bed.  on this mattress, on their bedroom floor, is where we finally got tally to fall asleep on sunday nite.  then we lifted him back into the big bed.

there is no cot in our house now.  it’s packed down in the shed.  (well, it’s sort of packed down in the shed.  even with my superior packing skills i couldn’t get all the parts back in the original box.  even with paul’s superior “googling it” skills, he couldn’t find any tips or instructions.)  with foresight that was i’m sure unintended and unrealised paul got the cot into pieces, ready for packing, before i was free to help.  i had no opportunity to say goodbye.  say goodbye to a piece of furniture??!  well, yes.  both our babies slept in that cot and i’ve stood beside it rocking tousled heads, singing atrociously or leaned over it stroking brows and gazing with stupefied exhausted love at our babies for more hours than i can count.  it has an attached significance because of the precious cargo it carried, far beyond its use as a nice looking cot.  once it was busted up into its different parts, it kind of wasn’t the cot it used to be.  so as i entered the dining room where the dismantling had taken place, i paused, drew a breath, said “oh”, nearly leaked a tear and then said a silent goodbye to tiny babies in enormous cots, to growing babies and to toddlers standing and hollering over the side to be let out.  no more of that for us.

so how’s the co-sleeping going?  pretty good.  we did psych ourselves up for a week or two of incessant fighting, hair pulling, bouncing on each other, blanket snatching, eye-poking and general unpleasantness, and we’re only half a week into that period.  sunday and monday nite tally went to sleep on the mattress on the floor first.  because he was bugging percy too much and not settling down.  last nite he buggered around for a short while before falling asleep in the big bed.  i’m going to call that progress.

one negative that has come to light is that of tally losing his stuffed toy companion, rocco.  i expect in the cot if he let go of him while sleeping rocco didn’t move far because there was no space for him to do so.  last nite, twice tally got us up to help him hunt down rocco, who had wriggled his way out of hands reach under the blanket.  hmmmm…tie rocco to tally?  probably not wise.

am i a man?

right, clearly i’m not, the question is asked tongue-in-cheek.

but here’s the ‘affirmative’ case…

1. i hate shopping.  if i need something i’ll steal, buy or borrow it.  (not so much on the stealing side these days.) but i can’t abide wasting time wandering thru malls and shops and “just looking,” waiting for an impulse buy to strike me.  (unless it’s window shopping for or inspecting houses and buildings.  that i have a probably, just-a-little, mostly-harmless, obsession with- and could do all day long, for most days of the week!)

2. i hate cooking.  it seems very pointless to me to spend an hour or more chopping and slicing and cutting and mixing and cooking and whatever else goes into it, to have it eaten in 10 minutes to then spend another hour cleaning and tidying and washing and putting away etc.  i’m all for eating, i’d rather just see it on the plate and not have to do the kitchen part, before or after.  i know this point suggests that cooking is a womans domain and many chefs/cooks are men; my point is closer to the family home, where, given society’s gender imbalances, most of the home/family cooking is done by women.  i find cooking a lot like alchemy- mucking around with stuff you don’t know much about to get a result nothing like you might expect.

3. i like activities that use my hands.  and no i don’t count scrap-booking or giving hand-jobs in this category.  i mean things like woodworking, painting (the house, not water colours) gardening, building things…  that sort of stuff.  i like tools.  the wooden or metal kind.  and machinery.  i like trains, steam ones in particular, i think the bicycle might well be the greatest invention ever.  (seeing that an invention to get your kid to sleep exactly when and for how long you want, hasn’t been invented yet.)  i like hot air balloons and the awesome abilities of a wing.  or two, very much so when attached to a plane i’m flying in.

4. i’m incredibly spatially aware.  i ADORE maps.  if maps were still drawn by hand and i could learn the skills to make them my ideal job would be cartographer.  i’m not so keen on computer generated maps.  on the flip side i dislike gps’s.  pointless, silly, bound-get-you-lost, or -mad, or both devices.  i have an innate sense of space and location and how things fit together.  there’d be no hiding secret rooms or passage ways in a house from me.  once i have a look at the outside and get a feel for the inside walls i’d be able to say “hey, there’s 2 metres missing from somewhere in here.”  i’m not sure that’s a modern-day useful skill but it’s one i certainly would love to practise.  i never get lost.  one look at a map and i can place myself in the real world and travel thru it very competently.  i love byways and highways and laneways and short cuts.  it just seems there’s more to the adventure if you can anticipate what might be next.

5. i’m never fashionably-dressed.  i might occasionally be well dressed and i’m often interestingly or quirkily dressed but i’m never fashionable.  i can’t afford it and i’m definately not interested.  fashion clothes seem to largely be made from plastic and wear out in less than a year.  if fashion is a womans domain, i’m definately male.

6.  i prefer balls games and outdoor playing with my children, to dress-ups and role playing.  tho when i was a kid myself it was the reverse.

a couple of ambigious matters:

1. i admire the sleek lines and beauty of a sail boat, cars leave me cold.

2. i love building houses (if only i could!) but i also love decorating the insides.

i feel sure there’s many more things i could list but that’s what comes to mind just now.  to be sensible i think there’s a great many characteristics that are shared across genders and preferences and likes and dislikes are not wholly specific to one type of gender.  this was just a little giggle on a rainy afternoon.

taboo topic no. 2

look around you ladies (and gents), look at the women near you.  every second one is suffering a silent debilitation.  it’s not something you’ll see on her skin, in her face or in her eyes.  it’s something much simpler and much harder to fathom.  it’s not spoken about and yet it’s something that can be fixed completely in 90% of cases.  if it’s so straight-forward, why don’t we talk about it, and get it fixed?  i’d say a good part of it is embarassment and the rest is shame.

i’ll tell you my little story.  it’s nothing special but it might open a door or two.

following percy’s rather difficult birth i didn’t think about it much that every time i sneezed, coughed or laughed lovely hard i wet myself.  not a gush of fluid, but definately something that required either a change of clothing or the wearing of incontinence pads.  yup, at the age of 31 i had become incontinent.  not a topic for the dinner table.  or even, i was to discover amongst girlfriends.  but look around you again, one in two.  if it’s not you, it’s the woman sitting next to you on the bus, the one in the check-out queue in front of you, the one pushing her kids on the swing… 

forward on to tally’s birth, which while much easier i’m sure didn’t help my pelvic floor any.  and forward on another two years of pelvic floor exercises, no other exercise and never running with my children, daily pad wearing and crossing my legs and gripping like all hell whenever i caught a cold, i got a referral from my old gp to a gyneo/urologist.  kindly dr benness saw me in his offices a few weeks back and ascertained that it be best if i did a particular test to check the function of my bladder and pelvic muscles.  he saw me out of his offices in tears as i confessed i was the fatest i’d even been in my life because i could no longer move faster than a medium walk without wetting myself, that sex is fraught with embarassment as i fear peeing on my husband (for the record, we’re not into that!), that i can’t play with my children as i’d like, that i’m fricken’ 35 and incontinent!!

a couple of weeks later i received a telephone call from dr benness’s office informing me that a cancellation had rung in and could i make a much sooner appointment?  hell, yes i can.  so what happens at this test?  well, not that much.  if you’ve given birth in a hospital it’s certainly less intrusive than that.  a catheter up your urethra, a camera up your vagina and another sensor of sorts up your bum.  they pump you full of water, as much as you can take, and then see what happens when you cough, stand up with your legs spread and cough and run water over your hand.  there is no dignity, however dr benness and his nurse were very kind and matter-of-fact, i’m sure they do it every day so it’s nothing new to them.  it was funny to finally pee the pumped in water out.  because it’s only been in your body a few minutes and it isn’t actually pee, just water, it’s cold; and it feels weird to be passing something that is cold.

suitably re-attired, dr benness and i consulted on our next actions.  he gave me the option of continuing with pelvic floor exercises, which he’d previously confirmed i was doing correctly.  (sometimes i wonder how many people have had their finger in my vagina on a purely medical/scientific basis?  probably best i don’t count.)  i said ’thanks, but no thanks.’  it’s been unsuccessful for over four years now, i want something more.  which is what i got last friday.  day surgery to fit a “tvt sling” to help support my pelvic muscles.  i don’t remember a bit of it being under a general anaesthetic.  not looking forward to getting the anaesthetists bill! 

we had hoped day surgery would actually mean me going home the same day but i slept, or did that doze thing you do when in a hospital ward with 17 beds in it, for the remainder of the day and much of friday nite.  come saturday i had to prove i could pee and have less than 100ml left in my bladder (checked by ultrasound) three times, before i was considered well and safe to go home.  i finally achieved this via drinking litres and really trying while hovering over a bedpan, at mid-day saturday.  home.

i have a bloody bandage over my belly button and over the tiny incision low on my belly.  they are to stay on for five days.  i was a bit sore yesterday, less today.  i’m tender but i’m otherwise physically fine. 

there is one other thing…  since the surgery was in the vicinity, i had my tubes tied too.  no more babies for me.  which is fine, and cool, and what i wanted…  but i do think there is something that has to be done to grieve the loss of my fertility.  paul and i agree that our two darlings are perfect for us.  i don’t want to go thru another bout of psd.  my experiences of pregnancy are over.  it will just take a little time to let that go.  being pregnant is life changing and a momentous feeling every day.  i need to dwell on that a little while and then let it slip away.

so there’s taboo topic no. 2.  i hope it may help someone else.  because i know you’re out there and maybe reading this and thinking i don’t have to live with incontinence.  you don’t.

the cost of complacency

quite a few months ago our three chickens took to roosting on the waist high boundary fence between us and our nice neighbours at no. 16.  they seemed quite comfortable up there, snuggled alongside each other.  they never went over the fence into the neighbours, possibly because of the couple of metres drop between our ground level and theirs on the boundary.  (nasty retaining wall that will have to come down in the future.)  seeing as the chookens (as percy and i affectionately call them) were happy to make their own nite time arrangements, and because it’s much easier to stay indoors on cold, wet, windy winter evenings, rather than tromp down in the dark to catch and stuff them in the coop, we left them to it.

chickens like to roost up as high as they can, gives them a sense of safety.  not for ours as it turned out.

one evening last week paul tore past the bedroom door calling “petra, wake up!”  i was on my feet and into the kids room, scanning for danger and calamity in seconds.  quite a few seconds later my brain lumbered off the pillow, crossed the corridor, climbed like a wet rag up my jamie bottoms, rested on my shoulder to catch it’s breath and then wheezed its way into my ear hole and plunked down in its usual spot on my brain stem with some grumbles and more wheezes.  it was only at this time that i realised the kids were soundly, safely asleep and paul had bolted out the back door.  i quickly followed him, colliding at the door where he asked me “do you hear that?”  yes, i did, and for just the smallest of split seconds i thought our not so nice neighbours daughter had taken up where the son had left off and was screaming blue murder.  yes, i’m an awful person.  of course it was not a person, it was a chicken, calling it’s death throes to the unconcerned nite at 2:30am. 

grabbing the torch I leave handy for checking on the kids at nite we tumbled down the back stairs and ran across to the coop and fence roost.  nothing to be seen, except one dazed chook who did not like being grabbed and rammed into the coop.  the other two?  no feathers, no blood, no incriminating evidence at all.  we didn’t spend a long time at that early morning hour searching and those of you that know our back yard will sympathise that a 3 metre plunge into a tangled jungle is not likely to be fun in your jimmy-jams and ill-fitting wellie boots.

 we gave up and returned to our beds.  temporarily at least.  within five minutes paul turned to me and asked “do you think anyone could have come into the house while we were outside?” no, I didn’t think it likely at all.  to get in our back door you have to come down a yucky bumpy driveway, open or leap over a country gate and then up the steps, or down the other side of the house which is even worse and climb or tear down the chicken wire fence on that side.  parents being parents, this was not good enough… paul got up and checked all the rooms and the kids cupboard to find no possible assailant.  parents being parents this still wasn’t good enough… i couldn’t sleep, now having the seed planted that my kids were in danger.  i eventually said to paul, “sorry, i can’t stay, i’m going to sleep with percy” (one good thing about your four year old having a double bed.)  so i spent the remainder of the nite, dozing non-restfully in my daughter’s bed prepared to defend her and her brother from the crazed chicken man that was still lurking, undetected because i was too fumble-headed to look, under her bed.

 

taboo topic (no.1)

here’s a news flash that won’t really surprise anyone that knows me.

i dislike the company of children.

there.  done.  said.

and in ten years when percy and tally might be reading this i’m really sorry to you my darlings.  disliking the company of children is not connected to and has no bearing on my love for you.  i love you totally and absolutely.

i dislike the constant crying, whinging, piss, shit, snot, struggles, arguments, attitude and anything else you care to name.  i’ve grown out of playing with lego, dolls, dress-ups, painting, trucks and make believe.  i’m wholly unsuited to the company of children.  i can force myself to do these things for perhaps 15 hours a week, i’m away at work for between 28 – 30 hours in a week and the kids sleep approximately 10 hours every nite; that leaves 53 hours every week that i am in the company of chlidren and probably disliking it.  if i can be absorbed with something else as well, for instance trips to museums or dance classes or whatever, then the wearying constancy of it, is diminished.  of course the screaming match it takes to get out the door in a reasonable manner counts as a negative.

i’m sure i’m not alone.  but that doesn’t make the situation that percy and tally find themselves in fair or in any way alleviated.  i’m sorry my sweets that it’s turned out this way.  had i been able to predict this nasty, depressed side of myself i would have seriously assessed having children at all/ a lot harder.  i don’t know how to end that sentence; which ending fits what i’m really thinking and feeling more?  i couldn’t say.

i think one of the more telling, sad parts in this, is that despite swearing to all the gods of all the heavens that i would not be the parent my parents are, i am becoming them after all.  is it genetic?  are we doomed?  surely recognising the fault is good enough to ensure it doesn’t repeat.  but clearly not.  my father hates children.  how we (my brother and i) came into being is unknowable.  i certainly don’t hate children but i find i’m unable to calmly work thru daily life with them.  my mother is a judgemental bastard and i think i don’t judge my children (or any others) but i plainly have other weak and horrid faults.  anyways, there’s many years of keeping a shrink employed in this, making me reluctant to go into it here and now.

so there’s taboo topic number one- never speak about your negative, painful, fault-ful, hurtful feelings around being a parent.  i have another topic that hopefully i’ll be able to address from a happier place before the end of the year.

percy’s school career (part 1)

i figure once you get to thirteen years of something you can consider it a career.  kindergarten to year 12 is a long time to stick at one thing.  of course that one thing is aimed at getting you into your next career; uni or a real job.  one hair cut to go please!

last monday 8^th august 2011 percy become enrolled at oyster bay public school.  yesterday, thursday 11^th she, along with paul and i, attended the kindergarten open morning.

after a short welcome from the principal we were divided into small groups accompanied by a year six student to tour the rooms and facilities.  i must say i was pleased and impressed with our guide laura.  she conducted herself very well, answered our questions and was patient with our pre-schoolers.  i ought to write to the school to say so. 

the classrooms look much like the classrooms i remember, except for the whiz-bang ‘smart boards’ (thank you kevin rudd) and perhaps more craft and creative thingys hanging from the ceilings, windows and walls.  I don’t remember much of that, but that could just be me.  i remember reading mostly, and the look on my teacher’s face when she looked down at all her little charges neatly sitting cross-legged on the floor to see my friend had neglected under wear that day.  (paris hilton is sooo johnny-come-lately.)

i thought the library looked a little thin but as there seemed to be a great many books in the classrooms and the special reading room, perhaps it doesn’t matter.  plus i imagine a good number of them were borrowed out.  the playground is nice with lots of mature trees and grass as well as surfaced areas and under cover areas.  the vegetable garden is huge and i was pleased to learn that some of the produce does make its way to the canteen, the rest is sold for a gold coin at the school gate on friday afternoons apparently.

kindergarten class size is 20 kids.  seems a lot to me but i’ve never tried to look after 20 kids in one go!  the school is anticipating three, maybe even four kindergarten classes next year.  they often have composite classes too.  i think it would be lovely if percy could be in a class with our friends meghan and/or aiden who started school this year.  i think it would help her confidence and let her settle in even faster.  later on i’ll ask if this could be accommodated.  the school runs a buddy system that teams up a newbie kinder kid with a year six kid.  they get together once a week to do activities together.  i hope this works well for percy, i suspect it will as she loves the company of older children- particularly if they are accommodating of her and let her take the lead!

 At the end of our visit we re-grouped in the OOSH (‘out of school hours’, for those on the learning curve with me) care room for question time.  i chickened out and didn’t ask the question i wanted to until everyone was milling about preparing to leave.  “what do the children that don’t attend scripture classes do instead?”  the answer was delivered a little ‘round-aboutly stating that ethics classes aren’t offered yet so the children are supervised in reading or other activities.  personally i think it’s unethical to have ‘special religious education’ classes in secular schools!  take your god-bothering where it belongs…  (where? oh, you know, safe injecting centres, brothels, homeless shelters…)

i’d already been in touch with the st james ethics centre so i knew there is no co-ordinator or volunteers to run the ethics classes in oyster bay yet.  perhaps if i can find some time next year i’ll volunteer for it.  i reckon i could learn a lot too!

 there is an orientation day and two transition days to come later this year.  adventures, adventures!

selling smiths lane

well, we’ve finally agreed now is the time we must sell our erko place.  i’m both excited and saddened.  it’ll be nice to have a far smaller mortgage and pay off some of our debts, and be free to start really getting into building our new house here in oyster bay.

on the other hand, i have very fond memories of erko and some strong emotional attachments to it.  both percy and tally spent their first months of life in that house.  in one way i’m glad our planned home birth with percy didn’t happen because had she actually been born in that house i don’t think i could ever part with it. 

i had in my mind a little (alright, not so little) fantasy that we could keep the place forever and percy and tally could live there while they went to uni.  of course they would have to go to syd uni, uni of tech, syd or unsw but derrr! they would wouldn’t they?  anyways, that fantasy is to be put aside.  i’m sure there are others i can take up!

so, if anyone wants to buy a two bedroom townhouse in erskineville, either to live in or as an investment- we have good tenants in there for two years now- please contact shaun stoker at ray white double bay (surry hills office.)

going to miss that place…

A Song to Sing: an Operatic Afternoon

last sunday percy and i attended a musical afternoon at the sutherland entertainment centre.  i complain a lot about the lack of activities that the kids can participate in or that we can do as a family out here in the ‘burbs.  i’ve been corrected, and i do see that there is plenty for them and us to do.  i think my whinge at the time should have been more that everything requires a vehicle to get to.  we’d been spoiled for options living in erko- three train stations in walking distance, buses to the beach and just being in walking distance to most everything anyways.  so, sigh, “get used to it!”

back to our sunday outing.  we had a great time (even tho we had to drive there.)  i really wasn’t sure what to expect from the concert, nor from percy.  the concert turned out to be a thirty piece brass band and two vocalists, playing a mix of pieces lasting for two and half hours!  the two and half hours is significant because that is a very long time to expect a four year old to sit thru and listen to music they have largely never heard before.  there was an intermission, at which time i introduced percy to the fun of maltesers, one of many favourite chocolates!

the program ran thus: strike up the band, puttin’ on the ritz, edelweiss (to which percy sang along dreamily), le vie en rose, mr sandman, largo al factotum, myfanwy, nella fantasia (which i, call me a musical infidel, can not remember having heard before and really enjoyed), west side story (medley), vienna marches – intermission – grand march from aida, sing sing sing, new york new york, april in paris, i dreamed a dream, bring him home (two of the saddest songs, along with ‘empty chairs at empty tables’ that i know), singin’ in the rain, merry widow waltz, aspects of andrew lloyd webber (medley), my way and time to say good bye.  phew!

percy was a doll up to nearly the end.  she marched in place during the marches, sang and danced too.  we were fortunate that the remaining three seats at the end of our aisle were empty such that percy occasionally took her folded up jacket as a pillow and lay down on the floor along these seats.  she did get restless at the end.  partly because i had said we would go to the library after the concert, not realising that the concert ran well over library closing time.  she really wanted to get to the library!  so at the end, when an encore started, even tho it was waltzing matilda, a song we often sing together (don’t get me started on explaining suicide and the great depression to a four year old!) we climbed over the chairs and made our retreat.

i really do think she did a good job of displaying “concert manners.”  a concept we have learnt from our painist friend carl- “if you don’t like it curl up on your seat and go to sleep”, whose daughters have attended hundreds of concerts from birth.  those of you at our wedding may recall carl played while his elder daughter sang during parts of the ceremony.  aren’t they great?

and percy too is great.  i hope she enjoys music and movement throughout her life.

time to begin!

time to begin the serious business of getting into our new house.  we moved into the future demolition site (current home) over the october long weekend in 2009.  time to get a wiggle on now, in my opinion.

 some leg work has been completed to date.  possibly most importantly we have decided on the type of house we want to build.  i scoped out some architects and we even had a meeting with one to discuss our desires.  long story short; we can’t afford a bespoke, architect designed house.  so then i trawled the project home websites.  now i’ve always had a dislike of project homes because they are all “cookie-cutter” designs that have no regard to the location they are built in, and generally are built in new subdivisions one after the other, ad nauseum….  macmasions without a tree or a footpath in site.  i did not have much hope.  but lo-and-behold! we did find a design that 1. fits the narrowness of our site, 2. is able to be tweaked about, 3. fits the slope of our site, 4. provides the spaces we want, and 5. might even be affordable.

 (just a little aside- i find it hilarious that after living in erko, where our terrace was 3.7m wide, our block of land now, at 12.9m wide is considered narrow!)

 importantly i think we can also work with the project home architect to change the basic design to something that suits us even more.  i’ve often heard one needs to have a good relationship with ones’ building designer/architect; now i’ll find out for myself.

 our second step was to meet with our local council town planners.  that was a barrel of laughs!  i ought to record my impressions of the meeting for posterity.  maybe I’ll get to it one day…

suffice to say to get what we want we have to bend a few of the council rules.  this is not an unusual situation to be in.  you may recall that i myself earn my living as a town planner.  for a number of years i worked in assessing development applications, funnily enough for two of those years with the very council we are now living on the other side of the fence with.  my point is the rules are bent all the time.  sometimes a little bit, sometimes a lot.  we want a little bit of bending, being- remove a tree, vary a side setback, vary a front setback (twice).  in my opinion, professional opinion, not just greedy home owner opinion, the bending is logical, fair and would result in better outcomes for all.  yippee!  or not, in council’s opinion.

 since the meeting with council, over a month ago now, we’ve done nothing.   a little flummoxed and disappointed i think.  council saw no reason for any bending.  hmmmm…

 anyways, time to climb back in the saddle and try a little trot again.  we need four things at present, the first; a favourable arborist’s report that encourages the removal of the tree, the second; a geoscientist’s report that states the site is “fit for purpose”- ie. there is no contamination on the site that would make residential development inappropriate, third; a complete topographical survey of the site, and fourth; a set of plans and an SEE (statement of environmental effects) that shows clearly what we want and makes the case for it.

 we have previously employed an arborist on another matter.  we just have to find a mutually suitable time for him to inspect said tree.  tick- can do.

 we have had a geoscientist visually inspect the site and detail the work and expense in getting a “fit for purpose” report.  the investigation and report could cost up to 10k, it might be less but i’m a pessimist (so i’ve been told!)  again a mutually suitable time for the investigation to be done needs to be found.  tick – can do.

 shortly after purchase we had a boundary survey made of the site.  (no encroachments i was happy to learn.)  we can engage the same company to bulk up the survey to include all the detail necessary.  tick – can do.

 working with the architect i’m sure we can compile plans and the SEE.  to engage him tho we’d have to sign the contract to buy the project home.  i think we’ll do the other steps first and i’ll get started on writing the SEE myself beforehand.  tick – WILL do.

 can you be bored enough to want to hear what variations we want and therefore what I need to address in the SEE?  perhaps.  or perhaps when i’ve finished it i’ll just post it in here.

 keep reading… i intend to regularly update our progress- and there WILL BE progress!

some bad things

i’m intending to record these bad things so i can remind myself to never take our new house for granted.  when putting yet another load of dirty clothes into the washing machine in my pristine white laundry i’ll remember that i didn’t have go outside, in a rain storm, down some slippery steps, in the dark to a “laundry” with a dirty bare concrete floor with possum shit on it to do so.  when i load yet more dirty dishes into a humungous dishwasher in my big, custom designed and built, pristine white kitchen i’ll remember that one step in either direction would have meant running into a murky yellow coloured, cupboard or a wall previously.  when i’m doing my business on one of four toilets in clean, pristine white bathrooms i’ll remember that i’m not knocking my knees on the antiquated (not in a good way) blue basin positioned so close to the toilet that sitting sideways is a viable option for comfort.  when i step between the three levels of my architect designed house i’ll remember that i’m using stairs now, not compensating for different floor levels between rooms due to uneven-ness or a change of floor covering.  when i set a fire in the hydronic in-floor heating linked wood fireplace, i’ll remind myself that my house is insulated to within an inch of its life, has double glazed windows in insulated frames, pelmets and radiating heat sinks and remember without any fondness whatsoever shivering thru layers of clothes over a useless wood heater that dribbled out a little heat after six hours of effort.  when i play with my children and our friends on a well-drained lawn and go adventuring and building cubby houses in our forested back yard i’ll remember that there are no pools of stagnant water and a cramped porch to be our only outside experiences.  when i hang our clothes away in pristine white wardrobes and have a spot for the vacuum cleaner that isn’t anywhere near my dresses i’ll remember getting everything tangled and be happy that’s over.  when we have guests visiting every day and sleeping in new beds in large bedrooms, laughing without care while we, as hosts relax and lay out the “my home is your home” welcome, i’ll remember never inviting anyone to stay because they simply wouldn’t fit.

did you notice my fixation with pristine white rooms?  oh yes, wait and see…