From the category archives:

at home

We try to contain you

21 March, 2010

in at home, commentatrix, we are family

le="FromA little over ten years ago, I arrived home from abroad with the exciting knowledge that the puppy I had chosen before leaving would soon be old enough to come and live with me.  In that brief interim I did a lot of shopping, choosing pet toys, food bowls and a crate to double as a bed.  I went the round of the pet stores; none of these things were inexpensive.  Some survived our first six months together while others were chewed to bits or broken.  I learned a lot, too, about the utility that dogs bring to objects of all kinds: a cardboard tube could bring young Arthur as much enjoyment as a brand-name chew toy.  (I also learned to keep my laundry basket above floor level, after more than one occasion on which he raced through the living room, a bra flown aloft from his jaw as if the pennant of a winning team.)

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Minor anniversaries

13 March, 2010

in at home, dogs

… a spunky little dog that loves to know what is going on, who is going to be there, and generally be the center of anything that is going on.

The puppies are a one-month-old delight today. The only regret I have is the limited amount of time in the day there is to spend with them, narrowed as it is two-fold by my working schedule and their sleeping schedule, each of which is extensive. They are making a good fist — or rather, face-full — of solid food and Tom, physically the most precocious, is already cutting teeth.

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A Short History of Stuff: DIY Edition

6 March, 2010

in at home, dogs, in Aotearoa, we are family

The hard work that produced this state of affairs on TwitpicDespite being New Zealand-born and having lived in this house for nearly eight years, I have done little in the way of renovation and redecoration.  There has been some moving of beds, some purchasing of couches, and some routine maintenance, but not a lot else.  I tend to caution, renovations-wise, I think, since in the back of my mind there’s always a worry that I’ll run out of money, time or taste.  I haven’t minded living in a house that’s in effect a period-piece, since most fixtures have stayed in reasonable order, save some harrying by the dogs.

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Anniversary Labours

17 February, 2010

in O internet, at home, commentatrix, dogs, in Aotearoa, we are family

Adventures with Average Baby

This spring-and-summer pregnancy is already twice the length of its winter predecessor, and as different, thereby, as two things of the same kind can be.  Not least among these differences was the way in which we passed the first eleven weeks in a kind hopeful lockdown, wary to put too much pressure on the future to carry hope that might yet be redundant again.

The brain, the spine, the beating heart that was our gift before Christmas opened the door to a different kind of experience, territory as unknown as the very notion of being pregnant was the first time around.  The tremendous good fortune whereby my morning sickness (a most inadequate moniker) receded by New Year has given me back my old ability to think about anything other than how terrible I feel (and the accompanying certainty that nobody understands or cares sufficiently) and something of a hopeful forward-gaze.

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My own land; she makes things

19 January, 2010

in O internet, at home, commentatrix, in Aotearoa, we are family

As someone who does neither gardening nor baking, it surprises me the extent to which I enjoy reading online about the gardening and baking of others, particularly since in the past I would have berated myself for my lack of competence and enthusiasm, respectively, in both areas.  (I put this down to something like the general settling of life that has come out of being married, with our mown-lawn harmony and store-bought treats.)

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I am from the streets of Queen[s]land, Australia

10 January, 2010

in O internet, at home, commentatrix, traveller's fragments, we are family

I’ve emerged from the last fourteen weeks as if from a haze of nausea-induced amnesia, homicidal crankiness receding as the passenger within shifts its focus to consuming all the calories I ingest.  This bilious mélange of ailments has given me some insight as to why earlier societies might think women were cursed by god or gods.  As someone who has lived a brain-in-a-jar existence for much of her adult life, it has been a rude shock to be thrown back into continual consciousness of the body in this way.  You’ve read enough of these pages to infer what it did to my mental health as well.

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Come play our game, we’ll test you

6 January, 2010

in at home, dogs, in Aotearoa

Feena, Eddie and Fern 11 March 2007As it was three years ago, so this has been a summer for mating Norwich Terriers.  This is never without drama, and the heat doesn’t help anyone.  There is a week or so to go before expert hands will palpate the abdomens of Evie and Fern to see if anything lies within.  I have given up any pretense of soothsaying via participant observation and will have to wait and see.

High summer is also the time when Norwich Terrier upper airways get irritated, for a whole raft of reasons.  There is some interesting science going on in this regard, of which you can read a layperson’s summary here (an article with both pathos and data by my breeder friend Magda).

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Gravidity

29 December, 2009

in at home, meta-diarist, teaching & learning, we are family

So, yes; I’ve been quiet at these pages for several weeks because I’ve been pregnant, and working under a twofold limitation: the physical self-obsession that this generates and the shadow of our July loss.  The first shrank my usual range of narrative topics and the second meant that what remained could not be written about anyway.  This may not have been such a bad thing, interest-wise, since I’ve been exhausted, emotional and, as Grinderman has it, “so thin and sick“.  You may imagine me as a shadow of my bridal self, waking up with groaning and panic attacks, eating desultory handfuls of dry crackers and lacking, in every way, a sense of perspective or humour.  I am grateful for the online honesty of others, particularly Brenda, in this regard; their forerunning of my own experience has offered, if not hope, then something like solidarity.

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Overheard in Sockburn

16 November, 2009

in at home, in Aotearoa

Leaving for work this morning, I was walking along the short pathway between the back door and the door to the garage, when I heard a voice say, right in my ear,

You can take the dildo out now, and run the batteries down; I’m coming over.

It took me at least thirty seconds to realise it was my neighbour standing directly on the other side of the fence, talking on the phone to someone else, and this I only grasped when his wife started laughing from inside their house.

This is what happens when dwellings are built close to a shared boundary.

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Family 2.0

13 November, 2009

in at home, we are family

Yesterday harvestdad bought one of these and I bought one of these.

It seems inevitable, therefore, that our afternoon should be spent taking pictures of ourselves with our new technology and sending them to each other, and inevitable too, furthermore, that in between we should talk on the phone and by email about the pictures we have taken and are sending.

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