Bits and Pieces of an Absent Month

warning, I've included some photos of sketches of nudes.. so up to your discretion

Another apology owing... :) I have to say.. when I first started my blog, I was encouragingly surprised that I got stuck into it and posted up each week; I felt it was good as an outlet and connection to the outside and to friends and it kept me honest.

But I have to admit, since being really busy the last month - being occupied every weekend (my normal blog time) - giving me a forced break; since then I have found it very hard to come back to my blog. I still feel all the above reasons but I guess I put a lot of time into it (mostly the photos) and to what purpose? Who reads my blog? A few very treasured people :). But is this blog really worth it? to anyone? Well.. ok, its worth it to me, but I guess its a little discouraging to think most people just aren't interested. Its fair enough, I mean, of course I'd find my trip to Canada and my day to day stuff interesting .. of a sort :D. Anyway, I'll put my little violin away now; on with the good stuff! Or at least some news :P.

Dogz in da Hood! = title of my blog suggested by my husband :). This is 'softy' and his usual mode of travel.

So.. in the last fortnight we got flooded, bogged, nits, over grown with mold, sick, allergic, caught in the rain, ant invaded, lost stuff, etc, but nothing serious ;) :P, we're ok, kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop though.


Its been raining hard incessantly all up and down Queensland, to such an extent the soils so sodden its just come through the walls under the house (we're on a hill), through the entry and garage. Not much house damage, but I threw out all my old work clothes, $100 suits.. my pregnancy clothes, some of my funky skinny clothes (saved some, yay, now just the skinny part to worry about :P) and all my art work.. that was the real kicker. I shed a tear and took photos of what I could, its all a bit crinkly. Would you like to see some stuff I used to draw? :)

After school I did a year of Interior Design (I didn't continue because I got married and had to find a job.. that and I didn't really want to continue :)). One subject - building studies involved drawing up exact floor plans including exact scaled widths of walls etc; well I hated it.. so I was allowed to pick up another subject instead. I finally found figure drawing, a night class and loved it. Was so peaceful, and beautiful and organic.

The silver lining is we've had stuff in cardboard boxes under the house since we moved here (3 years?), waiting to be 'unpacked' (lol) and although I promised I would do it this year, I have some motivation now ;). Everything down there is all musty stinky and has been stopping evaporation which in turn has been adding to the mold problem in the house. I don't know quite what to do, I obviously want to keep most of the stuff.. that's why its there, but I don't know how to get rid of the smell or where to put everything!

Left: acrylic on canvas, done from a photo of my brother and I. See the degradation of the canvas on the right? I believe things were sitting in moisture/water/mold for some time :(. Right: Ayres Rock, Uluru, acrylic on canvas board.. I believe this was my second painting not done at school. My first was a wave by water pencil on paper, a gift to my brother.

So we've had 502mm of rain in the last 14 days, 159.8 of it in 1 day, schools have been closed temporarily and roads flooded. Down at the local video store the river broke its banks and came lapping at our car.. I would have loved to take shots of the road there completely under water, but alas no camera. Since then I've been carrying my camera in my handbag ;).

Left: you can just see beyond the last car the road is actually covered in water, the whole road was under the day before. Right: the creek had risen more the 2 meters the day before to flood the area, and gone back down two meters over night.

The phallus multicolor mushroom sprouted at school during the rain and in 1 week has spread from 1 eruption to the entire front of the school; pock marked along the road. It is spread by flies which are attracted by their smell (quite potent, rotting meat smell) and has been known to kill dogs. For me it means I hold my breath on the way to school and the kids walk faster ;).

pretty though isn't it

I have been trying to take more photos and I am excited that I see so much more beauty these days, things I wouldn't have looked twice at before; but I don't often stop to take photos. I guess that's the next step :).

portraits.. top left: my brother. top right: Phill, my husband. bottom left: Athena, a good friend years ago. bottom right: Phill when we were dating and he'd put up with posing for me ;).

I've decided to start another blog. I'm slowly making my way towards the plan ;), the plan of finding an internet home and business so I can stay at home and be creative and sell things I love. I spent a entire night contemplating name ideas; that's a hobby of mine.. a game - I love dreaming up 'what if' names. Names of cafes, restaurants, chic boutiques, niche shops.. you know - that 'what if I had such and such a shop, I'd call it xyz'. So I've got all sorts of ideas up my sleeve, but could I find the perfect name? Nooo, I found 20 really good ones, but it had to fit just right.


Well... I woke up with it :). And I love it, it fits me down to the ground. Its whimsical, animal friendly, pretty, quirky and fun. I keep feeling like I need to put my life in order before starting on this epic journey but I know from experience that the journey only starts now, not when things are in order ;). But, I do need to do its heading, background and buttons! Which is like, um, yeah, er, how? So.. Beauty and the Bestiary.. is coming to a desktop near you.

Biggest snail we'd ever seen! Apparently its an African snail and they're a big threat. We didn't know that at the time so we peaceably put it back in the grass :P.

The kids' music teacher show them stuff on youtube, so they've been coming home showing me new stuff like 10 million fireflies and crazy frog and renewing deeply suppressed interest in stuff like beat it and fat. I've been spending a few too many hours watching movie trailers on youtube and The Guild and Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.

I've started reading Blythe The Secret Garden but gee, its pretty depressing lol. Its first bunch of chapters are all about how to emotionally neglect a child and be a badly behaved child. I'm looking forward to reading more instructing and productive chapters ;). But I've been looking forward to this day since.. well probably since I was a child being read stories by my mother and I have to say it doesn't disappoint. The feeling of sharing something you love so much (reading) with your daughter who means the world to you and her loving it too. I love doing the yorkshire accents too, but I'm afraid they're coming out scottish :D, I think that's the only accent I can do.. except for something cross between indian and irish :P.

I uploaded my photos to flickr this time, but when I tried to upload images from the net nothing appeared. Something to work out..
Next blog: Our Gold Coast adventures (last weekend fortnight), more photo goodness like normal with that one!