Learning curves

It was my little brother's birthday yesterday. He was forty years old! I'm not sure why your little brother turning that age should make me feel older than when I turned the same age, but somehow it does.

I went looking for a picture of him as a baby to illustrate this post and can't find one. Dad emailed me one a couple of years back when he was working out how to scan slides but it seems to have been in the inbox of one of our old PC's that totally died recently - I'm much better at backing up now!

I can still remember my Dad telling us that Sean was born - it was a windy wild spring morning in Southland - and we were outside playing when he came out and told us. Dominic was pretty pleased he had a brother. After school we went into Invercargill and stopped at a wholesale flower garden to buy flowers for Mum. I was stereotypical enough to want blue flowers - but ended up with red tulips and gathered some information about plant genetics on the way as I think was the first time some-one tried to explain how plant colours were developed and the search for a black tulip.

I learnt quite a lot from being Sean's big sister - One of my most vivid memories is of when he was about nine months old and Mum was out. I decided (I think with sibling assistance) to give him raspberry ice-block that someone had bought him and Mum had put in the freezer. We sat him in the high-chair seat on the floor (it was one you could lift off the legs) and quickly relised that it was melting faster than he could eat it. With great problem solving skills I went and got a shirt out of the ironing basket and wrapped that around him. One of Dad's white business shirts that is...My memory of Mum's reaction as she walked in the door is that it was fairly constrained in veiw of the mess! And the lesson I have consistently applied since that moment is to avoid raspberry iceblocks at all costs for little people under the age of about eight!

Even now everytime I play peek a boo with a baby I remember playing it endlessly with Sean in his pram with one of Dad's hankerchefs. And that's after five children of my own - that is still the first thing I remember.

So happy birthday little brother - I hope you had more yummy things to eat and drink than raspberry ice blocks or the pureed silverbeet and pumpkin you spat out at me. (Did I mention that I also learnt to delegate to much younger people the task fo feeding solids from having to do it for you :) )

Chasing butterflies...the gift of time.

I'm feeling slightly freaked out now it is really happening but I am dropping down to working a four day week. The way I plan on doing it is to have a long weekend (Fri,Sat,Sun,Mon) each fortnight. Of course there is scepticism in my family as to how this will work but in that respect I am quite optimistic. I can see it making a big difference when Nick is traveling a lot - just in terms of keeping everything flowing. And of course it will also mean that I have some time to put in place my other plans.

I have spent quite a lot of time over the last couple of days doing some digital scrapbooking. I had almost forgotten how (I was heavily into it about 18 months ago) I was getting frustrated and then realised that it was stretching my learning curve with my graphics programme which is going to be a help for developing web graphics. This was the third one I did which I have since done some further work on to create shadows on the paper. I was actually thinking that saved for web scrap pages could be quite a good solution for the retrospective aspect of our new family website. The irony was that I'm feeling a bit daunted by the coding and was just thinking that as I switched to HTML view and moved the picture where I wanted it because it wasn't dragging easily!

Picking daisies...the garden

One of my resolutions, if you could call them that, for having a better quality of life is to take the moments to appreciate the garden. Because there is usually something beautiful to find there.



This past weekend I was faced with the annual decision about the iris that grows along the front of one of the borders. I think it probably started at the base of the tree and has spread. I really need to take them out and maybe move them but they seem to flower just as I get my spring gardening burst and I can't bear to disturb them. They are such a beautiful purple blue - a colour it is hard for the camera to capture.

The motivating factor this year is all the annuals I planted behind them. I'm feeling particularly pleased that the poppies have taken so well in that spot. One of my many failings as a gardener is that I make emotional choices about what I plant. Poppies are one of my favorite flowers from the time I was about five years old. We were living in Oteramika (about half an hour out of Invercargill) and I can remember watching the poppies out the window while I was sick in bed. I liked the combination of the bright colours, their dark heart and the papery texture of their petals. The first time I tried to grow them in our previous house they were all stolen, but I've had more success here. This one isn't standing tall and hasn't got a dark centre but it's still beautiful and looks like the first of many. Poppies are a real picking daisies flower that you have to stop and appreciate in the moment as they dont last long.

As well as the poppies the other flowers that always find a home in my garden are pansies.
Like poppies I can still remember when I first decided that pansies were beautiful flowers. I was only about three years old and was playing in the garden of our house in Rawene when I stopped to admire the pansies in a border. I've only just realised they have a dark centre too - maybe this is some deep Fruedian thought.
I should have planted more of these pansies in this spot ... I have scattered the contents of the punnet all over the garden.

This weekend has been quite buzzy...

I have achieved a whole lot of things that have been in my face (or hidden behind a cupboard door but I KNEW it was there) for awhile.

I'm not sure if it is of first importance but maybe it was prophetic that RJ (my amazing stylist!) reckoned I was far more relaxed than usual when he was giving me one of his magic scalp massages on Friday. But it has turned out to be the kind of weekend you have when there aren't a trillion work pressures sitting on your shoulder.

I got out and did some gardening - and had time to admire my pretty flowers (another post in that) as well as clearing masses of overgrown shrubbery. I rewarded myself with a trip to the garden centre and found the LAST kakabeak which I have wanted for sometime to go in one of the big holes I have just made in the shrubbery.

I had an assessment at the gym - now there would be some, including me to be honest, who could wonder why I would invest in yet another gym membership given how slack I am at actually using it. But I wonder if this time might be different because for once my motivation is quite specific on something that is actually meaningful to me. Basically my long term goal is to be able to do a day's ski-ing without feeling like every muscle I have is going to go on strike.

We had another family around for dinner last night (admittedly that was Jon's idea) but it was laid back and relaxing and easy...like time with friends should be when we make the time.

I was catching up with my December 98 friends and was inspired by Lise to spend an intense twenty minutes cleaning out a laundry cupboard - one tiny step closer to an organised life! (thanks Lise)

And of course last but not least I spent quite a bit of time creating my own blog header (the butterflies come from a cool kit called Poppy Fields designed by Lauren Bavin at Digital Scrapbook Place

So that's my start and tomorrow it's back to work.

Why another blog?

The last few weeks as I've been considering life directions and all the possible twists and turns I decided I needed a blog that was just about me... Pretty random really and I'm not sure many out there in cyberspace will be interested (maybe my Mum?)

But anyway this is the beginning of my random life and all the other things I do badly or well outside the world of work and academics.