our little trip

I’ve written about it before, but I would challenge anyone not to adore spending time at Mr You’s parents house. Surrounded by a continuous veranda under a bull nose iron awning, standing proudly at the end of a track perched on the edge of the river. The river is very wide where they are, and it’s close to the ocean so the water is tidal. Surrounded by sugar cane fields and the ponds of a prawn farm, the views from every aspect offer something new and beautiful.

The river laps at the edge of their front garden, bright birds roost in the trees, and green tree frogs sing out in chorus in the evenings.
Yep, it’s pretty hard to take.

I watched a cane fire burn on the far side of the river one night. One day Mr You's dad took us on a little boat trip down a beautiful quiet channel that comes off the main river. We ended up tying the boat up on a jetty at an old pub where we stopped for lunch and a cold beer.


Our visit coincided with the local arts festival so we spent lots of time in town watching performers and live music, and we took Mr You’s nephews to the parade night. We spent lots of time playing with the kids and cuddling the babies, there seems to be so many of them now; all the nephews and one niece.


I dreamily circled houses for sale in the local paper and wondered if I could cope living so far away from a city. …and as wonderful as this all sounds, you know, I’m still not sure I could cope. Yet. For the time being I’ll cross my fingers and hope Mr You’s parents never ever move house.

The journey home via the main highway wasn’t anywhere near as pretty as on the way there. We stopped overnight to break up the long road trip and got home last night, a bit exhausted from all the driving. Anyway, that’s it, now I’m back into it… my mountain of projects and tasks.

inland journey

Hi! I'm back. How are you? Well I've got lots of photo's to show you of our trip up north (I'll break it into a few posts though). We went to visit Mr You's family and to claim Mr You's nephew as our new God Son. Mr You's family live on the coast but this time we drove inland through the country side and took a couple of days doing it. We stopped often at quaint little country towns, and moseyed through craft shops and second hand stores finding serious bargains along the way.

The journey was amazing, watching the scenery change gradually before our eyes as it grew to include enormous skies and wide wide open spaces. The colours faded into dry earthy tones and the textures became brittle as we headed west. And there were surprises; a vivid rainbow, a firey sunset, a gushing waterfall...

A train joined us along part of the journey through the soft winding hills. Like a peaceful whale-like companion it would appear around a bend or from behind a hill, then dip away into a valley for a while. So many different coloured carriages linked together, and so very long that it's front and end disappeared into the horizon and weren't able to be seen.



That wasn't the only wildlife along the way. I've never seen so many varied creatures on one drive. Apart from the cows, sheep and horses that you expect to see in country paddocks, there was a kangaroo nibbling on grass in someone's unfenced back yard, a pair of rock wallabies in the mountains, so many slow tortoises trying to cross the roads (some had survived, others hadn't), a huge echidna munching on something by the side of the road, and a wombat too. Cockatoos, hawks and crows swirled above,
there was a shiny bright beetle on a mossy tree and thousands of flying ants that ended up smeared across our windscreen.
(if any of you from OS ever come to visit, we’ll definitely take that drive)

Slowly the soil darkened and the grass moistened into a lush vivid green. Trees left untouched in their natural state showed us how huge and grand they are supposed to be, and the rivers began to weave playfully around us as we headed back towards the coast. On the last leg on the journey, just before arriving at our destination, Mr You took us one last scenic loop, crossing a bridge over a river, then crossing back over further down the road, on a drive on ferry.

As the fields of sugar cane parted, and I caught my first glimpse of Mr You's parents house at the end of the track, a wave of familiarity drifted over me, and part 2 of our little trip began.


More photo's here, and more coming tomorrow.

on a trip

I've been a bit quiet here this week, I've been keeping myself busy in production mode. But today we're leaving to go on a little trip to see Mr You's family up North. We're going to drive inland this time, see a bit of the countryside and take a few days to get there. I'll be back in a bit over a week.

I'm taking a few projects with me, hoping that (after some quality cutting and pasting time) there'll be whole stack of these Christmas tags ready for selling when I get back.

Have a nice week everyone. I'll see you soon.

smitten

My Illustration Friday attempt for "smitten".

learning the ways of home school

Mr You is a freelancer and works from home most of the time, now I'm at home we've both being going through a period of adjustment. We’ve been getting used to each others patterns, and noises and shower times, etc. Mr You is having trouble defining the weekends, I usually provided this sense of weekend by not going to work for two days. But now it’s all different.

He’s been informing me in the “way it rolls around here”, like I’m the new girl in the workplace. I retaliate with the odd cheeky “You’re not the boss of me!”. (In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re both grade A smart-arses). Now it’s extended to talking about the office Christmas party, and inter-work relationships.

But last week an issue arose. If there’s one thing that can bring even the most harmonious workplace undone, it’s the kitchen habits of your fellow workers.

We each have our own tubs of muesli, (…it’s a long story which involves me picking giant crusty banana chips out of my muesli (yuck), but Mr You insisting they are glorious). Anyway, increasingly when I reached up to get MY muesli off the high shelf something kept falling off the top of it and landing on me. Most of the time it was a tub of sunflower seeds or almonds, etc. So I approached Mr You about it…

“Hey, would you mind not stacking your scroggin supplies on top of my muesli. Remember I’m short, I can’t see stuff up that high. I get hit on the head.”
“Sorry you’ll have to wait for the monthly meeting to raise that. Bring it up again then.” And left the room with a smirk on his face.

The next morning I opened the cupboard to find this:

(That’s MY untoasted, pure, innocent muesli tub at the bottom!)

And this was my immediate retaliation:

(That's his banana chip infested muesli at the bottom! Ha-Haaaa)

Oh, it’s war baby! Game ON!

trouble

My Illustration Friday attempt for "trouble".

…then he realised that letting his mum knit his parachute was going to cause so much more trouble than when she knitted his deep sea diving flippers.

she's typo

I had a good chuckle at the typo in yesterday's post: "She's is always doing new things". It reminded me of the way Mr You's nephew used to speak when he was younger.

"Is he's going to come swimming with us?"
"Why doesn't she's wear she's hat?

Once when Mr You was going to take him to the beach he told his nephew "I'm just going to tell Flossy where we are going"
His nephew asked "Is she's your mummy?"

This freaked me out a little, I don't look that old (i hope), but ever since I've been mindful to not nag Mr You too much about eating all he's veggies.

illo by kim

I was so thrilled to discover (and immediately recognise) one of Kim Fleming's illustrations in a Sydney paper today. She's famous. What an inspiration!

If you are not yet aquainted with Kim so far I've learnt that she lives in Melbourne, owns a red coat with white poka-dots, and is one of the hardest working, ever-striving, up and coming illustrators around. She's is always doing new things and inventing new ways to learn more about illustration and build her technique. The Creative Cup is one of her initiatives.

Go meet her, she's nice.

gusty sunday

At the end of my first week I feel somewhat unaccomplished. I didn't get anywhere near as much stuff done as I wanted to, and I spent a lot of time wondering if everyone at work was safe and well. I did relax a bit though and also had some nice outings.

The crap comic below is the story of my day today. Started out a little lost, umm-ing and arh-ing, found inspiration in the garden and sat outside in the beautiful sunny Spring weather sketching things in the back garden. Then, suddenly, an almighty wind came out of nowhere, it was like a truck hit me, I was thrown about and absolutely covered in leaves, flower bits and pollen. "Don't be deterred, don't be deterred" I kept chanting to myself, "don't let this put you off".

But the wind kept on, and each time it blew another load of leaf matter poured down the front and back of my top and stuck to my eyeballs. "Keep going, keep going, don't let this stop the roll". I kept on going for a while, until there was so much crap on my paper the pencil was no longer making contact. I packed up my stuff and headed back inside.

"This doesn't have to be the end, keep going"... so I did. I sat on the lounge inside and kept on sketching.

Then I started to itch. All over, (from all the pollen and stuff I guess).

"Don't let this be a bad thing..."

"So I filled up the bath with hot water and lavender bubbles, and sipped on a peppermint tea as I soaked in the first bath I've taken in what feels like years. I remembered passages from The Alchemist, and wondered if the Universe was using the wind to test me, like it did with the boy in the desert...

quiet

My Illustration Friday attempt for "quiet".

If there are sounds, particularly words, coming at me from anywhere else (i.e. TV, music, radio, people talking), the words I'm trying to read in a book escape to go and play with the others. They get lost and I absorb none of them. I need quiet to read.

(I've hidden some Haruki Murakami books in my illo this week; I always marvel at how he writes quietness into his books so beautifully.)

i am not doomed

My first day "on the job" (yesterday) was fine. I got up, showered, got dressed (including a bra! …which is the difference between pulling stuff on to not be naked, and actually getting dressed), combed my hair and put on the pretty earrings that a client gave me as a parting gift. Feeling fresh and ready I sat down with a cup of tea and opened up The Artists Way. I had attempted the course once before, years ago, but the morning pages exercise in the first week ground the machine to an ungraceful stop. I think I only lasted a few days. I don't do mornings very well, I never have, so I ended up just writing "f#ck I wish I was asleep" over and over. I gave up on the whole thing without getting very far through. (I think I identified that my creative block could be a nasty attitude problem).

This time I sat with my cup of tea and read the first chapter through, knowing (being older and wiser) that I don’t have to follow it word for word, I can choose to avoid the tasks that will stop me in my tracks, and cherish the ones that make me feel better. So I read the first chapter with enthusiasm and an open mind. I decided to skip the morning pages all together and jump straight to the artists date. I jotted down some phrases that gave me a spark, and was mindful of the fact that some will mean more to me now and others will be more appropriate at another time.

After this I wrote out a big colourful to-do list and headed out to stock up on art supplies. After lunch I researched portfolio sites and online stores and last night I constructed a sweet little card for my Mum's birthday then organised to take her on a Birthday "artists date" to the art gallery today.
(Note about the card: Mum loves children from the olden days. No scary chicken monster exploding from swollen abdomen here folks, no sir-ree!)

I didn't bake any cookies, or iron any undies, but I did make some tasty sandwiches for lunch.

So far, so good.

Hope your day went well also.

Oh, and Happy Birthday Mum.

resigned drummer

I tell you what, the internet makes you guys all seem deceptively close by, but when I'm dying for something to arrive in the mail I'm reminded that I'm actually at the very opposite end of a very large globe!

My 'resigned drummer' (original painted card by Troglodyte Mignon) finally arrived today!!!

Like a road-weary traveller who has travelled thousands and thousands of miles to get here, he looks sleepy and disheveled. And I adore him. He is delicate, pale, and more intricate than he looks on screen – having an original piece of artwork always reveals so much, and is therefore that much more special.

It is no secret how much I idolise the unique works of Troglodyte Mignon, they transport me into a freaky but sensitive world. These days I often find myself waiting to cross the street in a crowd of people, staring a person waiting on the other side, and in that moment they turn sketchy and washy and become one of her wonderful characters, and I wish I had her talent and could rush home to capture them.
Instead I have bought one of my very own, and I’ll keep him close by and wonder about his melancholy state.

You can get one too. They live here…
(I have my eye on “sleepy aunt”. But they’re rushing out the door, so if you want one, don’t hesitate.)

Thank-you Troglodyte Mignon!

a whole series of squelches

While I’m at it I also wanted to thank you all for your loveliness. I have honestly found so much strength and support from your great comments, I can’t thank-you enough.

One of the ones I’ve used as a mantra to get me to this point was a comment from sweet Chair:
“I think you need to listen to your gut, even when it squelches.”
hehehe, that one really suited me, because, well it's all been pretty squelchy really.

Up to this point I’ve just been concentrating on leaving work. Now that’s done (check!) I have to start thinking about what comes next.
Next on the list is… Oh GOD what’s next!?

First thing tomorrow I’ll make a big list and start at the top I guess.

It’s funny how my hard-line stance on no self-help malarky is crumbling, and I’ve been hungrily jotting down all those little proverbs; making Oprah (“You’re entitled to live your dream”) proud.

I always remember Penelope’s story of leaving her job, handing her boss a little card that said “Ships are safe in a harbour, but that’s not what ships are built for.”
I’m not at the stage of handing out cards, I’m still at the scribble on a post-it stage. So far I have two:

The traditional approach:
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” -Andre Gide

And my favourite so far (from my huge library of two) is:
“The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.” -Napoleon Hill

The hitch is I don’t know where I’m going. First thing tomorrow I’ll start with a list.

exit

Feeling so anxious about my last day at work on Friday, I woke up at 5:30am and did what any nervous woman with no chocolate in the house does... manically scrubbed the bejeezus out of the bathtub!

By the time I got to work a few hours later I still felt a little manic, but mostly sad and so dizzy. I know I've winged about work from time to time, but honestly I've been really lucky to have such a great job, with such a nice boss, and a cool bunch of people to work with. The day went by in a blink and at 3pm we locked-up and headed out of the office to party! They took me to the Arthouse Hotel: a bar that doubles as an exhibition space, and we had an absolute ball.

It was a tough week for me last week; I've been at my job with my boss for 8 years. When you work in a small team in an open office you get to know each pretty very well. After all you spend more time with them than with your family or friends. So on Friday I was really quite sad. Once we left the office I felt better, and after a mojito or four I was really feeling quite good!

You know, the good part about leaving is that everyone is so nice to you. They are kind and thoughtful, they engage in meaningful conversation and share sweet sentiments. They all gave it their all to make my last night a great one, and they showered me in wonderful gifts! My boss, who never usually makes speeches at these types of things, made a really sweet speech saying that he would miss me immeasurably. It all meant an enormous amount to me.

To avoid feeling those feelings of sadness and loss, we threw a party at home the very next night with all our friends! Again showered in loveliness, but now it’s all died down and it’s time to face the music… and try to dance.

a change of heart

Sorry for the gory illo last week. But don't worry, I think seeing Esme may have changed my mind.

(but I'm still a few years off)