Nika & Cat

Planning Begins

Planning has officially begun for the Hills Family's 2010 trip "around the world". A valid itinerary is in place, which will no doubt be rearranged and tweaked as we make the attempt to find a flight featuring the new airbus A380.... Christopher's dream come true. The fun (some of us would debate the use of the word "fun" at this point) begins on 1 May 2010. Our progress to England will include stops in Singapore (2 nights), Paris/France (1 week), Cairo/Egypt (3 nights), and finally on to London.

Several months later our return trip will include Zurich/Switzerland (2 nights), Rome/Italy (6 nights), Washington DC (5 nights), Indianapolis (8 nights), Los Angeles (2 nights) and home via Auckland, New Zealand! In between, we will be hopping across the channel to Holland and making a visit to Ireland for a walking (aka Guinness drinking) holiday.

Cairo is Catherine's choice, Italy is Christopher's. Garry's preference is to stay at home, but if he absolutely has to go, a visit to Ireland is essential. My vote went to France and anything else is a bonus. Okay, okay, visiting family is also part of the point - relax dutchies and americans!! We're coming... eventually.

Any feedback?

Procrastination

Since it's the final week of uni for this year, I need to inspire myself to keep working with some words of wisdom about procrastination:

Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday. ~Author Unknown

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment. ~Robert Benchley

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. ~Mark Twain

The two rules of procrastination: 1) Do it today. 2) Tomorrow will be today tomorrow. ~Author Unknown

Akeelah and the Bee

If you haven't seen Akeelah and the Bee, you've missed a remarkable little gem of a movie. I'm not sure how it slipped under our radar when it was first released... we only discovered it on DVD quite recently. It's nice to find a movie that is not only enjoyed by the whole family, but has some substance that inspires and challenges us at a deeper level. The final spelling bee, where Akeelah and Dylan face each other... well - that is such a compelling scene that Garry and I both end up in tears - with the kids rolling their eyes at us.
One of the best quotes in the movie comes when Akeelah reads out the following quote from Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow.
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or
have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own;
if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful,
be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true,
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself,
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul;
I want to know if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it is not pretty every day,
and if you can source your life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours or mine,
and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes."

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.



- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Christian the Lion

Gregorian - Sacrifice

There and Back Again

We have just returned from a wonderful driving holiday to New South Wales - particularly to visit the Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo. We stayed at the zoo overnight, which was absolutely worthwhile. The zoo accommodation is under canvas, but with luxuries such as heated tile floors and a proper wheelchair-accessible bathroom. The "lodge" was a central gathering place with common room, bar and restaurant. Our package included a three course dinner and full buffet breakfast, three 'close encounter', behind-the-scenes tours of the zoo, free bike hire - and the provision of a wheelchair-accessible taxi to drive us to the various exhibits on the tours.

While the zoo was definitely the highlight of the trip, we also had a lot of fun staying in odd places and visiting such attractions as the 'Crystal Kingdom' in Coonabarabran and the botanic gardens in Goondiwindi. Listening to audio books in the car made the time pass quickly - with family favourites "The Hobbit" (read by Garry) and "Fawlty Towers", as well as some Lemony Snickett. The kids were marvellous the whole way - waking up cheerfully, never complaining, and providing great conversation and entertainment along the way.

No doubt you will read more on the other blogs... but that's all I have time for just now.

Just quickly...

Catherine has *at last* updated her blog - click on the link to the right to navigate straight to Faerytopia.

Timber!

The treeloppers arrived yesterday morning and achieved an amazing amount of work in one day. Two enormous trees are gone - now mere heaps of wood chips on the block. It was sad to see them go.... and watching such a beautiful old tree go down is quite an experience. The word that springs to mind is majestic. Several large pieces of trunk also remain on the block, which we hope to grow vines over alongside the wheelchair pathway.



The trees really did need to come down, sadly. You can see from the above photo that one in particular had a decided lean towards the house. Garry experienced some anxious moments when the loppers were pulling down the first tree using a rope and truck - and the rope snapped, sending the tree swaying towards the house!

The skyline has changed quite a lot, as you can see from the before and after photo looking towards the house and shed from our driveway:




Postscript: One sad thing about this was that cutting down trees is so much against the way I prefer to be in the world. I would much rather plant trees, and nurture them to full growth.... to prune them into beautiful shapes... to enjoy their unique shapes and scents and sounds. Chopping them down is an ugly act, one that brings none of the creative delight that getting to know a tree does.

Awwww

Ctrl Alt Delete cat.... needs someone to hold Alt

see more crazy cat pics

HSM Ice Tour

Catherine and I travelled to Brisbane last Friday to see the fabulous "High School Musical Ice Tour". It was so much fun to take her - she loves both movies and knew all the songs and characters. The show was very impressive, with some excellent ice skaters, costumes and special effects. Makes me wish I could look as graceful on ice! The only sour note was the merchandising, which was excessive and overpriced.

All in all - it was great and we both really enjoyed ourselves.

PS, I haven't been able to upload pictures to my blog for weeks and weeks... a problem I don't know how to solve. Sorry for the pictureless posts, everyone.

Back to uni

Being back at university has taken some getting used to after the long summer holiday. The routine for Garry and myself changes quite dramatically during uni semesters, keeping both of us rather busy. I'm doing two subjects this semester - Nursing Research and Human Pathophysiology. The Nursing Research subject is irksome and should be completely revised (in my humble opinion), while the pathophys is the highlight of my study week. I love the way concepts fall into place and relate to clinical nursing in this unit, and the laboratory sessions have also been very practical and enjoyable.

So it's a mixed bag this sememster.

FreeRice

Want to improve your vocabulary and do something to alleviate world hunger? Then check out FreeRice - a website that donates 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Prgram each time you give a correct answer to a vocabulary question. The words get harder each time you get the word right, so it can become quite challenging.

You can read more about the UN World Food Program by clicking this link. I know 20 grains of rice doesn't sound like a lot, but it certainly adds up: to date, over 21,000,000,000 grains of rice have been donated through this site. The cost of the rice is carried by site sponsors, so it doesn't cost you a cent to participate!

In the last hour, the four of us have donated several thousand grains of rice between us. Catherine's best vocab level is 11, and I peaked at level 48. As Catherine says, there are three good things about this program:

1. you help people who don't have enough food to eat
2. you improve your knowledge of words
3. it's fun

Let me know if you try it by leaving a comment - we'd love to hear how many people join us!

Railway Rumours

Rumours about the new railway are rife.

It's really starting to look as though the new railway will be either:

1. passing right through our house, or
2. running just below the edge of our block

This is bad and it is sad. None of us wishes to move - but we are also prevented from doing modifications (for Christopher) and from getting even more attached to this beautiful place, until we know whether we'll be able to stay.

We are considering the following options:

1. asking Australia Zoo to loan us some koalas for our gum trees, so we can claim we are a wildlife sanctuary;
2. asking Peter Jackson to film "The Hobbit" here, so we will be a tourist attraction; or
3. burying some dinosaur bones so we can claim to have a vital archeological site on our block.

Any further ideas will be gratefully accepted.

Alert

Christopher has added a new post to his blog site.

Clive

While on holidays last week, I picked up a treasure trove in the form of a book by Clive James, called "Cultural Amnesia". It is a series of essays which are just long enough to read in one sitting, but thought-provoking and meaty enough to provide food for thought for many days. Each essay focuses on a person who has made a contribution to culture in the 20th century - although not always in a positive way.

I have enjoyed James's sense of humour and cutting insights ever since Garry and I avidly watched his TV series, "Fame in the 20th Century" (in the hazy days early in our marriage, before kids). A dear friend (Connie) pointed us to his website last year: Clivejames.com click here if you're interested in taking a look.

Time Out

One of the hardest things about having a break from caring for Christopher, is the way it highlights anew how much it usually demands of you. When you're in the midst of it there's little time to consider the full effect it has on your life. But as soon as you're removed from it for more than a few hours, you have time to realise 'what might have been'. Too, it allows for a sudden upsurge of grief that still catches me unawares after all these years.

My parents have suggested several times that Garry and I should have a whole week away together. What scares me is how much time that would give us to explore who we are when we are not carers. What if all that does is make it harder to keep going? I'm not sure it's a good enough reason not to do it - but I am afraid to set myself free for one week, knowing that at the end of it there is no choice but to return.

Of course, it's possible that one week is long enough to allow me to bring new joy and energy to the role of carer. That is a good enough reason to try it at least once!

Umeshisms

I have lifted the following directly from a blog called Graham Weekly, mainly because it's a quirky way of thinking and it caught my eye. I can relate to the one about blog entries, in particular.

Umeshisms: better strategies for life

If you’ve never missed a flight, you’re spending too much time in airports.

Scott Aaronson takes the principle of Umeshisms to be "concentrate on the high order bits" - don't have your life dominated by the effort of avoiding minor negative events, because the optimal strategy doesn't avoid those events completely. "If you have never regretted a blog entry, your blog is boring".

I was thinking about them occasionally the last few weeks, and have tried to come up with decent general form. It goes like this: If you never experience negative event X, you would be better off with a different approach, even though that approach means X might happen sometimes.

From that template you can generate all sorts of wisdom from the ages:

If you never get rejected, you aren't asking enough (Scott Aaronson).
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new (Einstein).
If you never fail, you aren't aiming high enough.
The following I started applying to my own life a couple of months ago: if you've never forgotten to lock your room, you're spending too much time going back to check.

Punting on the Avon

One of my favourite touristy outings in Christchurch was punting on the Avon River with my new friend, Lucija. Here are some pics:





It was such a peaceful, beautiful time - very special. I could happily do that for hours, with some champagne and a picnic lunch.... and Garry by my side (winks).

Clubbing in Christchurch

One of the most out-of-character things I did while in Christchurch was going clubbing (if that's what it's still called?).

Showing my age now: it has been 15 years since I last did this! It was heaps of fun. The local Golden Key chapter had organised a very thorough guide to Christchurch's best bars and clubs, so that most of us ended up in the same places at the same time.

Yes, I danced (a little, and very badly). I went to the Bog (great Guinness), the Iconic, and a Japanese bar called the Ishimoto. However, my personal favourite had to be The Grumpy Mole (aka The Angry Mole, The Grumpy Animal, The Crazy Mole, and whatever else people mistook it to be named).

A Welcome and Farewell

On our first night in New Zealand, we were welcomed by a group of wonderful Maori people in a Powhiri ceremony. Their beautiful singing and enthusiastic performance will stay with me for a very long time to come.

Very sadly, one of the group members had a heart attack as the group was leaving the university campus. Together with a number of other wonderful people, I suddenly found myself performing CPR in the carpark, surrounded by Maori relatives and friends of the man. (I only did this for a few minutes, then someone relieved me until the ambulance finally arrived).

Haunting is probably the only word that describes this experience. The way that the whole group gathered round and kept calling out for their "uncle" to stay with them was incredible. At one point, tears were splashing down beside my hands as I did compressions, and I glanced up to see one of the young women from the group weeping above me.

We learned later that the man died in hospital. I am still coming to terms with what happened, as this was the first time I'd had to use my CPR training in a real emergency. Working in palliative care has meant facing death full on, but hospice work doesn't usually require resuscitation. So it was a sad welcome to NZ in the end, which will always shape the way I remember my time there.

Kia ora tatou

Right - I'm home!

I suffered a little bit from internet withdrawal symptoms while in Christchurch, so it's nice to be back online. The conference was fantastic, Christchurch is beautiful, and I'm very, very tired.

Here are just a couple of pics - and tomorrow I hope to blog in more detail about some of the things that touched my heart, caught my eye, and challenged my thinking.

"All my bags...

...are packed, I'm ready to go"

4:30 am tomorrow, airport transfer to Brisbane International

then Christchurch - here I come!!

Hmmmm - can you tell I love to travel?

Counting Down

It's only a few days until I board a plane for New Zealand, and I'm getting pretty excited now (apart from having to leave home at 5am). You can see details of the conference program here. I am particularly looking forward to the Indigenous Cultures Forum. For the closing dinner we've been asked to dress in Kiwiana, which doesn't excite me all that much. Oh well, I can live with it... because I'M GOING TO NEW ZEALAND!!

Committee Bird

A pair of odd-looking birds has had us frantically searching through our field guide this weekend. They are wary, making it hard to spot them through binoculars too. The beak, in particular, was most unusual on a bird of this size. I think it looks like a bird developed by a committee - patching together everyone's ideas with no regard for style and grace. "Hey, let's use a toucan's beak!" "Yeah - and give it eagle's legs and feet" "Great... and since we can't decide on a nest, why not have it lay eggs in other birds' nests?" "Cool!!"

Well, all right - I don't know of any real committee that works like this, but you've got to admit the bird looks odd. It turns out to be a Channel-billed Cuckoo, by the way. Since I couldn't get a clear photo, I've used an image from "The Graham Pizzey & Frank Knight Field Guide to Birds of Australia" - you've got to love any book by a man named Pizzey. Oh, I nearly forgot... for those of you who like birdwatching, I can highly recommend Bill of the Birds as an interesting blog to visit, even if it's in the wrong hemisphere.

Catherine's Latest

Catherine has been doing some painting classes during the school holidays. They start with a blank canvas (about 30x40cm) and a template of that week's design. Three hours later they have a finished product. As you can see, the first week she was a little shaky. Up until this, she'd only done basic school artwork so it was a completely new experience.

The second week she had a bit more confidence. Afterwards she described the various brushes and why they have certain names and uses. She has one more lesson coming up, then it's back to piano classes. While I don't think we have a budding van Gogh on our hands, I think her new-found skills and confidence will give her school artwork a huge boost.

A Beautiful Life

Hermione (our cat) is sleeping on a chair, Catherine is staying with her grandparents in Toowoomba for a few nights, Christopher is entertaining himself on his computer, Garry is having a quiet afternoon in the guesthouse, and so I have a little bit of time to blog. On our car trip home from Toowoomba this afternoon, Christopher and I had a lengthy discussion on what it means to live a beautiful life. He's at such an interesting age for this sort of conversation. He began by saying it's impossible to live a beautiful life - by which he meant that no life can be perfectly beautiful. By the end of the conversation he was describing how someone living a beautiful life can reach out and wrap that around others and make their lives beautiful too.

It put me in mind of the movie, "Life is Beautiful" in which a father transforms the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp into an imaginative game for his son. It's a gem of a movie - both very funny and piercingly sad. What made me think of it is Christopher's concept of making life beautiful for others. A beautiful life is not about surrounding yourself with luxury, it's about making the world a better place for all the people that touch your life.

If this seems like it's too difficult, Christopher's analogy is that you build a beautiful life the same way you decorate your bedroom - you might start by hanging a favourite picture, then tidying the desk and looking out for an ornament that's just right for your room. You don't try to achieve a perfect room in one day - it happens bit by bit. So there you have it - some words of wisdom from an eleven-year-old who wants to "bring more peace to the world and call other people to do the same".

Gecko eating a spider

I took this photo last night, through the kitchen window. The spider put up quite a fight, but the gecko won in the end:



You can click on the photo to get even closer to the spider's hairy legs... if you wish. Catherine and I like the gecko's little eyelashes. Actually, now that I think about it, they probably aren't *real* eyelashes - they just look like it.

Look Inside Yourself

I've been doing some pre-reading for pathophysiology this coming semester, and came across this incredible movie of the inner workings of a cell:

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. Albert Einstein.

Your First Car

I began driving in the year I graduated from high school - in other words, the year I turned 17. As soon as I was allowed on the road, I headed out there. My parents had a Toyota Blizzard that I drove out to Carnarvon Gorge, but the first car I bought myself was this little Toyota Corolla. Of course, that's the year I also looked like this:

Hmmmm...

So my question today is: what year did you start driving and/or what was your first car? Also, what country did you live in at the time?

A Leunig for You

I like Leunig's cartoons - they always make me smile. This one makes me want to grab a book, find a shady tree beside a river, and just sit.

I'd probably take along a book of meditations on nature, or perhaps The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry. I'd also take a nature journal to scribble in.

What do you consider to be essential riverside reading material?

House Guests

If you noticed that all our blogs have been quiet this last week it's because we've had house guests. This was a long-awaited, much-anticipated visit by Christopher's best friend and his family. Not only has Jarred been a wonderful friend to Christopher, but he comes with a sister, Aliesha (who is Catherine's age) and lovely parents (Tiffany and Darren). Bonus!

Our guesthouse was filled to the max, with bad weather keeping all eight of us housebound for the entire visit. This did not dampen the fun in the least. The sjoelbak was popular with all, as was the chess set. Numerous other board games were dragged out of dusty corners to find new life. The playstation got a good workout as well.

Good food, great conversation and lots of playing kept us all entertained. It was especially nice to see how well the kids hit it off together. Here are a few photos of the visit:

Sjoelen (aka Dutch Shuffleboard)

We've been making use of my parents' Dutch "sjoelbak" since New Year's Eve, and it has been great! Here are some pictures of the experts in action: